This resistance, be it understood, does not affect the essential things of public polity.
The collection of taxes, recruiting, punishment of great crimes, as a general thing do systematically go on; but outside of such recognized necessities, all legislative decrees which affect customs, morals, private interests, and certain abuses, are a dead letter, owing to the sullen opposition of the people.

At the very moment when this book is going to press, this dumb resistance, which opposed Louis XIV.

in Brittany, may still be seen and felt.

See the unfortunate results of the game-laws, to which we are now sacrificing yearly the lives of some twenty or thirty men for the sake of preserving a few animals.
In France the law is, to at least twenty million of inhabitants, nothing more than a bit of white paper posted on the doors of the church and the town-hall.

That gives rise to the term "papers," which Mouche used to express legality.