land and of the inquisitorial investigations of the new bureaucracy.
Under the new dispensation the King's inquisitors, the King's tax-gatherers, and the King's inspectors would be with the ordinary householder from the cradle to the grave :— "They will be with him at the cradle to make sure that he is a fifth child, and so exempt from taxation. They will be with him all through his life, to watch his incomings and outgoings, to see that no unearned increment may escape the inspector. They will be with him in the prime of life to see that he gives nothing away without their knowing it. They will be waiting at his death-bed to hear the death-rattle in his throat, so that they may measure and mulct his substance. I cannot imagine why this Government is so hostile to individual liberty and so partial to bureaucracy, which has always been considered the antithesis of the old Liberalism. The bureaucracy is a great evil, at least we used to consider it a great evil. It is a chronic evil in France. It is almost strangling France."
