While his host was engaged in procuring this luxury a man entered the
room and told Popanilla that he had walked that day two thousand five
hundred paces, and that the tax due to the Excise upon this promenade
was fifty crowns. The Captain stared, and remarked to the
excise-officer that he thought a man's paces were a strange article to
tax. The excise-officer, with great civility, answered that no doubt at
first sight it might appear rather strange, but that it was the only
article left untaxed in Vraibleusia; that there was a slight deficiency
in the last quarter's revenue, and that therefore the Government had no
alternative; that it was a tax which did not press heavily upon the
individual, because the Vraibleusians were of a sedentary habit; that,
besides, it was an opinion every day more received among the best judges
that the more a man was taxed the richer he ultimately would prove; and
he concluded by saying that Popanilla need not make himself uneasy about
these demands, because, if he were ruined to-morrow, being a foreigner,
he was entitled by the law of the land to five thousand a-year; whereas
he, the excise-man, being a native-born Vraibleusian, had no claims
whatever upon the Government; therefore he hoped his honour would give
him something to drink.
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