29th
Vendemiaire re-established it; and in the next year, VIII., provided
that the privilege should be exercised as under the sanction of the
National Government, the National Government reserving the right to
revise the tariffs fixed by the municipal councils, and thereby making
the restored privilege of the _octrois_ another string whereby to fetter
and control the local action of the people on their own affairs. The
_octroi_ of Amiens was re-established on the 3rd of Brumaire next
following. Under the Empire, the Restoration, and the Monarchy of July,
the Council of State granted the _octrois_. Under the Republic of 1848
this power naturally went to the National Assembly as a means of
legislative pressure and corruption. The Second Empire restored it to
the Council of State; and it has now, naturally, gone back to the
Chambers. Neither the people of the cities nor the rural populations
like the _octroi_, but, in the immortal words of the late Mr. Tweed of
New York, 'What can they do about it?' It is a ready-money tax, from
which the taxpayer receives no visible equivalent, as he does when he
pays a penny for a postage stamp. When he has paid it, he is simply
allowed to take his own property where he wishes to take it, and do with
it what he wishes to do. It is quite likely that this _octroi_ may have
something to do with the disinclination of the common people in France
to part with small change as readily as do the Americans, and even the
English. They must always have 'money in the pocket' if they want to
bring a sausage and a bottle of beer through a 'barrier,' whereas an
American is never called upon to pay cash down to his Government except
at a custom-house when he returns to his country from a foreign trip,
or in exchange for a licence or a document of some sort which represents
value received in one or another form.

The time wasted over this tax in a city like Amiens is an extraordinary
burden on the patience of the people, trained as the French people are
to submit to a torment of eternal red tape, a week of which would drive
an American or English town into open revolt. At Amiens, for example,
there is a central bureau of the _octroi_, where the tax is received
from the great breweries and warehouses after the amounts have been
fixed by the officers on duty at those establishments. Then there are
ten bureaux or 'barriers' at the railway stations, the slaughter-houses,
and the fish-markets; and then again