utterly, the more it will be to their credit.
Its abolition and rejection will be only consistent
with their claim, just in very many
respects, to march in the van of European
civilisation. This motive is the old, old
privilege assumed by the government (formerly
by the feudal tyrant and the monarch)
to a right to a monopoly in the sale of salt,
and to all the profits directly and indirectly
thereto appertaining. A right to a monopoly
in light and air would have pretty nearly the
same foundation in justice. In France, the
whole contents of the sea itself is, actually, a
contraband article; that is, the contents of the
salt sea, of the English Channel or the
Atlantic Ocean. A freshwater sea, such as
the upper part of the Baltic or the Black
Sea, would not lie under the same restrictions,
pains and penalties. Were the Bay of
Biscay to dash an extra-high wave into the
streets of Bayonne, distributing sundry tuns,
gallons, and pints, of clean salt-water amongst
the inhabitants, the bay would be guilty of a
heinous breach, not merely of any dykes or
dunes which may exist, but of the French
revenue laws. It is not lawful to fetch salt
water from the sea without a permit from
the Customs officials. If you take a dip in
the sea, at Treport or Dieppe, and after
swallowing, voluntarily or involuntarily, half
a pint of the briny wave, you return to
dress yourself in France, instead of starting
for England or America to perform
the operation, you actually do defraud the
revenue by the act. What you ought to do,
legally, is this; instead of drinking salt in
solution from the billow, you ought to buy
the same quantity of taxed salt at the
grocer's, and swallow it then and there, or
throw it away, no matter which, so long as
you pay for it. In old times, when salt was
exorbitantly dear, famishing peasants have
been severely punished for fetching a little
water from the sea, to season their miserable
insipid soup. That a baker, instead of putting
salt into his bread, should mix up his
flour and meal with clean sea-water, was a
crime to be put down by the severest inflictions
of fine and imprisonment.

You cannot, at the date at the head of this
number of the Household Words, have a sea-water
bath without observing the prescribed
formalities to obtain the water. Staying on the
French coast, I have kept sea-anemones alive
in glasses, and have been warned to be careful
how I fetched my water from the sea, lest the
Customs' officers should interrupt me. My
bottle being very small, they let it pass on the
principle that the law does not care about
extremest trifles; had it been a pailful, the
case would have been different. A lady,
keeping a marine aquarium, explained her
wants to the local head of the Customs. He
came to see it; found it beautiful; and
being a gentlemanly man, with some love;
for natural history, he gave a written order
for the procuring of any reasonable quantity
of water from the sea. Every time the needful
element was brought from the shore, it was
accompanied by its passport, as formally as if
it had been a cask of wine, or a suspicious
stranger. French salt-sellers thus enjoy the
height of protection; they are protected even
from their colossal competitor, the sea.

The pages of the French Tarif contain a
couple of columns which are the height of
absurdity in our eyes, namely, those which
treat of the export duties. It would seem
to us scarcely possible that a nation endeavouring
to attain commercial prosperity
should cut its own throat by the imposition
of export duties, going to the length of absolute
prohibition in certain cases. The sending
out of the country either charcoal or poles,
such as hop poles, is prohibited; why, it would
be hard to tell, as the growth of timber
suffers no greater checks in France than
elsewhere. From high to low, the people
cannot understand exportation. The French
populace is notoriously excited whenever any
large shipment of corn or potatoes is made.
A certain French port had sent a great many
calves to England, and was driving a thriving
trade in the offspring of the cow. But the
butchers got up a calf riot, which assumed
the character of a regular political émeute,
by persuading the people that they were
going to be starved, and that there would be
no meat left in the country to eat. The imbecile
rioters forgot that man does not live
on veal alone; that the calves, moreover,
were not given for nothing; and that the
money paid for them would purchase bread
and bacon, even if the payment were not
made in kind by a shipload of flour.

One instance of the pleasant and convenient
working of the export duties, is the following.
China silk pays ten centimes the kilo in its
unboiled or raw thrown state, but pays three
francs thirty centimes in a stained state
whether raw or boiled. The difference is
made to gratify the jealousy of the French
dyers. A party whom we will call X, after
the fashion of the French newspapers, imported
some China silk dyed black and boiled,
and of course paid the duty of three francs
thirty centimes. But finding that the quality
of the silk did not suit his market, he wished
to send it back again, and applied to the
Customs for permission to do so. The answer
he received was, that he could not do so without
paying an export duty of six francs
seventy centimes the kilo. Had the same
silk only been raw, X would have had to pay
just the ten centimes to come in, and nothing
at all to go out. X wrote to Paris to the
Director-General, to get a special permission
for this particular case; his answer was that,
whether the silk had paid duty or not, it
must be assimilated to the Tarif of the French
for exportation.

An article of apparently trifling importance
will illustrate the spirit of the French and
English tariffs, and their effects. English