Similar augmentations, in various shapes, are
applied to most other articles. It would not
be easy for the same family to get in two
second-hand pianos at once; they might be
suspected of making a trade of them. It is
not that the Customs' officers are unfair or
exacting in respect to the estimated value of
such instruments; but the French instrument-makers
look upon their arrival with a
very evil eye, and will get up a piano-riot
some of these days, to the cry of "Protect
us!" if a too formidable invasion of second-hands
goes on. The duty on a church-organ
(from which a good chamber-organ would
have a difficulty in escaping) is four hundred
francs.

It will hardly be believed that an enlightened
nation, one of the pioneers of
scientific progress, should virtually exclude
all optical instruments, all instruments of
calculation, observation, and precision, by a
duty of thirty per cent, on their value, besides
the additional load of over-and-aboves. Respecting
these instruments there is a special
proviso; as the people at the Custom House
are likely to be ignorant of the true value of
philosophical wares, and might be misled by
a false declaration of value, you cannot take
possession of your English telescope or box
of mathematical instruments, on their arrival,
without signing a declaration that you will
pay any additional duty that may be adjudged
by the Consulting Committee of Arts and
Manufactures at Paris, supposing that they
estimate the value differently to you. The
tax adds next to nothing to the revenue; it
is a vexatious check on mutual and international
instruction; and is merely a protection
to some half-dozen makers of scientific
instruments. In any case of a dispute with
the Customs in respect to the value or the
merit of an instrument, you must receive
judgment from those very men, or their
intimate friends and colleagues; because the
choice of a scientific tribunal is necessarily
limited; they themselves are the only
experts. An English microscope, value forty
pounds, must pay three hundred francs, according
to the Tarif, to get into France. But
it does not get in for so little as that, on
account of the additional décimes, and so on.
Surely it shows that French opticians, with
all their pretensions, which are justifiable to
a certain degree, are nevertheless terribly
afraid of English competition. Meanwhile, a
serious hindrance is put to opportunities of
scientific observation. But if Nachet, and
others, can make better and cheaper microscopes
than ours, they need not be alarmed
at the admission of our instruments. Let
them petition the Government to take oft
the illiberal and obstructive tax. They won't
do any such thing.

The Diana of the Ephesians shows her
spirit down to the very question of spoons
and forks. Instead of the precious metals
being welcomed, gold and silver plate find
the door as good as closed against them.
French silversmiths are delighted to have
your family plate excluded by a barrier of
five-and-twenty per cent., unless you like to
have it broken up and refashioned by them,
in which case you get it in at a cheaper rate,
This, and the tariff on scientific instruments,
defeats itself rather than benefits the Government.
An optical instrument is a combination
of metal and glass, whose value consists
in the skill of that combination; disjointed,
it is valueless and unintelligible to ordinary
beholders and manipulators. Once well fitted
together, it can be unscrewed again into bits
of brass and bits of glass, whose use is unknown
to those not in the secret. And so,
morsels are smuggled in, one at a time, till
the forbidden help to knowledge is reconstructed.
That is how the law works, in
numerous instances. The same of plate.
There is an immense deal of foreign plate in
France, daily displayed on dinner-tables,
which entered without submitting to the fine
of twenty-five per cent. I have even partaken,
with relish, of repasts that were served
and eaten by the help of these surreptitious
utensils.

A Government is only fulfilling its duty
when it teaches its children to walk alone
and to lean on as few foreign crutches as
possible; but there is a difference between
encouraging home-made machinery and giving
way to a perfect machinophobia. French-made
machinery, sent to the Great Exhibition
at London, has had great difficulty in
getting back home again, and has even had to
pay duty for the privilege of landing on its
own coast. The very name of a machine
puts the whole army of douaniers into feverish
excitement. Of this weakness X. had a
laughable proof on the occasion of his importing,
for the use of his family, a homely
utensil which, unluckily for him, had received
the sounding title of American Washing-machine.
The pretentious word machine
condemned it at once. Ambition was its
ruin. But, poor thing, it was a very humble
attempt at machinery. It was nothing but a
tub lined with zinc, containing a few loose
wooden balls, and having attached to it a
simple lever with a cast-iron ball at the end.
For this unpretending vessel the same duty
was demanded as for the most complicated
machine possible to be constructed, and all
because it had been raised by the maker
to the style and dignity of a washing-machine,
thus levying a duty of five-and-thirty shillings
on a thing which cost only fifty shillings in
England, and so priced as a patent article,
If free from the patent, it could be built for
twenty shillings.

Let us cull a few final flowers from the
Tarif, and tie them together as a parting
bouquet. Salt pork pays from thirty-three
francs to thirty-six francs thirty centimes the
hundred kilos; fresh butcher's meat, nineteen
francs eighty centimes. The taxes on