Why? For this reason:--First,
justice always suffers from it in some degree. Since James B. had
laboured to gain his crown, in the hope of receiving a gratification
from it, it is to be regretted that the exchequer should interpose, and
take from James B. this gratification, to bestow it upon another.
Certainly, it behoves the exchequer, or those who regulate it, to give
good reasons for this. It has been shown that the State gives a very
provoking one, when it says, "With this crown I shall employ workmen;"
for James B. (as soon as he sees it) will be sure to answer, "It is all
very fine, but with this crown I might employ them myself."
Apart from this reason, others present themselves without disguise, by
which the debate between the exchequer and poor James becomes much
simplified. If the State says to him, "I take your crown to pay the
gendarme, who saves you the trouble of providing for your own personal
safety; for paving the street which you are passing through every day;
for paying the magistrate who causes your property and your liberty to
be respected; to maintain the soldier who maintains our
frontiers,"--James B., unless I am much mistaken, will pay for all this
without hesitation. But if the State were to say to him, "I take this
crown that I may give you a little prize in case you cultivate your
field well; or that I may teach your son something that you have no wish
that he should learn; or that the Minister may add another to his score
of dishes at dinner; I take it to build a cottage in Algeria, in which
case I must take another crown every year to keep an emigrant in it, and
another hundred to maintain a soldier to guard this emigrant, and
another crown to maintain a general to guard this soldier," &c.
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