.The clerks, relishing their influence, never fail to persuade the minister that he cannot separate himself from command in a single detail." Bureaucratic at the center, arbitrariness, exceptions and favors everywhere, such is a summary of the system.

"Sub-delegates, officers of elections, receivers and comptrollers of the vingtiemes, commissaires and collectors of the tailles, officers of the salt-tax, process-servers, voituriers-buralistes, overseers of the corvees, clerks of the excise, of the registry, and of dues reserved, all these men belonging to the tax-service.

Each of these will, aided by his fiscal knowledge and petty authority, so overwhelm the ignorant and inexperienced tax payer that he does not recognize that he is being cheated." [1435] A rude species of centralization with no control over it, with no publicity, without uniformity, thus installs over the whole country an army of petty pashas who, as judges, decide causes in which they are themselves contestants, ruling by delegation, and, to sanction their theft or their insolence, always having on their lips the name of the king, who is obliged to let them do as they please .-- In short, the machine, through its complexity, irregularity, and dimensions, escapes from his grasp.

A Frederick II.

who rises at four o'clock in the morning, a Napoleon who dictates half the night in his bath, and who works eighteen hours a day, would scarcely suffice for its needs.