DEAR SIR, - The custom-house officers at Boulogne, though as
alert, are rather more civil than those on your side of the
water. I brought no plate along with me, but a dozen and a half
of spoons, and a dozen teaspoons: the first being found in one of
our portmanteaus, when they were examined at the bureau, cost me
seventeen livres entree; the others being luckily in my servant's
pocket, escaped duty free. All wrought silver imported into
France, pays at the rate of so much per mark: therefore those who
have any quantity of plate, will do well to leave it behind them,
unless they can confide in the dexterity of the shipmasters; some
of whom will undertake to land it without the ceremony of
examination. The ordonnances of France are so unfavourable to
strangers, that they oblige them to pay at the rate of five per
cent. for all the bed and table linen which they bring into the
kingdom, even though it has been used. When my trunks arrived in
a ship from the river Thames, I underwent this ordeal: but what
gives me more vexation, my books have been stopped at the bureau;
and will be sent to Amiens at my expence, to be examined by the
chambre syndicale; lest they should contain something prejudicial
to the state, or to the religion of the country. This is a
species of oppression which one would not expect to meet with in
France, which piques itself on its politeness and hospitality:
but the truth is, I know no country in which strangers are worse
treated with respect to their essential concerns. If a foreigner
dies in France, the king seizes all his effects, even though his
heir should be upon the spot; and this tyranny is called the
droit d'aubaine founded at first upon the supposition, that all
the estate of foreigners residing in France was acquired in that
kingdom, and that, therefore, it would be unjust to convey it to
another country. If an English protestant goes to France for the
benefit of his health, attended by his wife or his son, or both,
and dies with effects in the house to the amount of a thousand
guineas, the king seizes the whole, the family is left destitute,
and the body of the deceased is denied christian burial. The
Swiss, by capitulation, are exempted from this despotism, and so
are the Scots, in consequence of an ancient alliance between the
two nations. The same droit d'aubaine is exacted by some of the
princes in Germany: but it is a great discouragement to commerce,
and prejudices every country where it is exercised, to ten times
the value of what it brings into the coffers of the sovereign.
I am exceedingly mortified at the detention of my books, which
not only deprives me of an amusement which I can very ill
dispense with; but, in all probability, will expose me to sundry
other inconveniencies.
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