sition, namely, that it would be a pretty thing to aid the Americans with English money. Neither is this difficult.
It would suffice should Your Majesty, adopting an English usage that exacts a tax of 75 per cent, ad valorem on all French vehicles entering England at Dover, decree that in future all foreign vehicles and horses landed at our ports shall pay a tax equal to that levied on ours when entering England.
.......
By putting in practice this conceit, Your Majesty would have the pleasure of using for the relief of the Americans the very money squeezed out of the English, and this seems to me to be quite an agreeable consideration, and, so to speak, like planting a few flowers amid the dry waste of explanations of the output, return, and profits of the commercial capital of the firm of Hortalez, of which Your Majesty is about to become the sole proprietor. * * *
Caron de Beaumarchais.
