The farmers and landholders are better off, but they also complain of the heavy taxes, and low price paid for what they bring to the market, which frequently, for want of ready money, remains long unsold.  They take nothing but cash in payment; for, notwithstanding the endeavours of our Government, the notes of the Bank of France have never been in circulation among them.  They have also been subject to losses by the fluctuation of paper money, by extortions, requisitions, and by the maximum.  In this class of my countrymen remains still some little national spirit and some independence of character; but these are far from being favourable to Bonaparte, or to the Imperial Government, which the yearly increase of taxes, and, above all, the conscription, have rendered extremely odious.  You may judge of the great difference in the taxation of lands and landed property now and under our Kings, when I inform you that a friend of mine, who, in 1792, possessed, in one of the Western Departments, twenty-one farms, paid less in contribution for them all than he does now for the three farms he has recovered from the wreck of his fortune.

LETTER XXVII.

Paris, October, 1805.

My Lord:—­In a military empire, ruled by a military despot, it is a necessary policy that the education of youth should also be military.  In all our public schools or prytanees, a boy, from the moment of entering, is registered in a company, and regularly drilled, exercised, and reviewed, punished for neglect or fault according to martial law, and advanced if displaying genius or application.  All our private schools that wish for the protection of Government are forced to submit to the same military rules, and, therefore, most of our conscripts, so far from being recruits, are fit for any service as soon as put into requisition.  The fatal effects to the independence of Europe to be dreaded from this sole innovation, I apprehend, have been too little considered by other nations.  A great Power, that can, without obstacle, and with but little expense, in four weeks increase its disposable military force from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and eighty thousand young men, accustomed to military duty from their youth, must finally become the master of all other or rival Powers, and dispose at leisure of empires, kingdoms, principalities, and republics.  Nothing can save them but the adoption of similar measures for their preservation as have been adopted for their subjugation.