200 SCIENCE SKETCHES. 
The citizens of Issoire, accustomed to having their 
taxes paid by the people of Clermont and Lyons, 
would not submit to any form of direct taxation. 
Had the Common Council said, ‘‘ We must have 
so much money; we propose to take it from your 
pockets by a pro rata assessment,” the people 
would have risen as one man and put the opposi- 
tion candidates into office. Direct taxation is a 
confession of barrenness in expedients. Where 
money is to be raised, it should always be col- 
lected from foreigners, if possible. This is a 
maxim in political science, and all successful finan- 
ciers from Julius Cesar down have acted in accord- 
ance with it. 
The falling off in the Clermont trade, due to the 
new wagon law, had made a serious reduction of 
the revenue. And now appeared the wisdom of 
the mayor’s original suggestion. What Issoire 
needed was prosperity along the whole line. A 
partial octroi means only partial prosperity. A 
universal octroi insures prosperity which is un- 
bounded and universal. 
And so the schoolmaster took a copy of Littré’s 
“ Unabridged Dictionary” and the “ Dictionary of 
the Academy,” and from these he drew up a list 
of three thousand eight hundred and seventy-two 
articles on which the city government might levy 
the octroi. And the mayor and the City Council 
sat up half the night to decide just how much 
octroi each one of these articles should bear, in 
order to secure the best results to the community. 
The list began: — 
