How easy were fiscal Edicts, did you know for certain that the Parlement of Paris would what they call 'register' them! Such right of registering, properly of mere writing down, the Parlement has got by old wont; and, though but a Law-Court, can remonstrate, and higgle considerably about the same.
Hence many quarrels; desperate Maupeou devices, and victory and defeat;--a quarrel now near forty years long.

Hence fiscal Edicts, which otherwise were easy enough, become such problems.

For example, is there not Calonne's Subvention Territoriale, universal, unexempting Land-tax; the sheet-anchor of Finance?
Or, to show, so far as possible, that one is not without original finance talent, Lomenie himself can devise an Edit du Timbre or Stamp-tax,--borrowed also, it is true; but then from America: may it prove luckier in France than there! France has her resources: nevertheless, it cannot be denied, the aspect of that Parlement is questionable.

Already among the Notables, in that final symphony of dismissal, the Paris President had an ominous tone.
Adrien Duport, quitting magnetic sleep, in this agitation of the world, threatens to rouse himself into preternatural wakefulness.

Shallower but also louder, there is magnetic D'Espremenil, with his tropical heat (he was born at Madras); with his dusky confused violence; holding of Illumination, Animal Magnetism, Public Opinion, Adam Weisshaupt, Harmodius and Aristogiton, and all manner of confused violent things: of whom can come no good.