Fully to appreciate what followed, it is necessary to bear in mind that local tobacconists are in a somewhat anomalous position.  They occupy a social status superior to those of many other countries.  They are not private merchants or ordinary citizens; they are, in a manner, servants of the State.  A native tobacconist is empowered to dispense Carta BOLLATA, which is the official stamped paper used for contracts and other legal documents requiring registration; he deals in tobacco and postage stamps—­government monopolies; he sells, by special licence, wax vestas, on each box of which there is a duty so minute as not to be felt by the individual purchaser and yet, in its cumulative effect, so great as to enable the State to pay, out of this source of revenue alone, for the upkeep of all its colonial judges at a monthly salary of forty-five francs apiece.  It is a reasonable tax.  Don Francesco, who had notions of political economy and knew something of English life, having preached to thousands of Catholic miners in Wales and confessed hundreds of Catholic ladies in Mayfair—­an occupation in which he might still be engaged, but for a little contretemps which brought him into collision with the Jesuits of Mount Street—­Don Francesco, who could voice the Southerner’s one-sided point of view, often adverted to this match-tax when proving the superiority of his country’s administrative methods over those of England.  This is what he would say to his intimate friends: 

“The Russian has convictions but no principles.  The Englishman has principles but no convictions—­cast-iron principles, which save him the trouble of thinking out anything for himself.  This is as much as anyone can ever hope to grasp concerning this lymphatic, unimaginative race.  They obey the laws—­a criminal requires imagination.  They never start a respectable revolution—­you cannot revolt without imagination.  Among other things they pride themselves on their immunity from vexatious imposts.  Yet whisky, the best quality of which is worth tenpence a bottle, is taxed till it costs five shillings; ale, the life-blood of the people, would be dear at three-pence a gallon and yet costs fivepence a pint; tobacco, which could profitably be sold at twopence a pound, goes for fivepence an ounce.  They will submit to any number of these extortions, being persuaded, in the depths of their turbid intelligence, that such things are devised for the good of the nation at large.  That is the Englishman’s method of procuring happiness:  to deny himself pleasure in order to save his neighbour’s soul.  Ale and tobacco are commodities out of which a man can extract pleasure.  They are therefore appropriate objects for harassing restrictions.  But nobody can extract pleasure out of lucifer matches.  They are therefore pre-eminently unfitted for exploitation as a source of governmental revenue.  So keen is their sense of pleasure and non-pleasure, and such is their furor PHLEGMATICUS on this particular