§ 32 

I know well enough that these novelties will not please many of my Readers. But they have amused me very much and I consider it my duty to tell them to the Public, among whom I never doubt that there are many who will honestly share my amusement.

Uncertainty as to the succour of my Native Country has made me think of this subject, and as a free Swedish Citizen it was my duty to know the Statutes of my Country. I compared them with each other, but I missed the consistency which is generally to be found in a careful master's orders, i.e. that they should all aim at one purpose.

I hear complaints of people leaving the country and at the same time I see many arrangements that drive them away. We want to encourage Trade, yet we prevent the diligent workman from supporting himself. We wish that the prosperity of the country should be promoted, and prohibit a whole Province from buying bread, only on the pretext of stopping Smuggling. Obedience is claimed for the orders of the Crown, but many of these orders are several Centuries old, so that the Lawyers themselves can recognise them only with difficulty, and sometimes they are such that they can hardly be obeyed, if people are not to perish in misery.

We complain of an unfavourable balance of trade, and we impede one another as much as possible in selling our goods abroad. We want to enlarge trade, and we work for its limitation to fifteen or twenty persons. We grow emaciated through a high premium on foreign Bills, yet we try with all our might to restrict Remittances to as few Drawers as possible, who besides this already have quite an autocratic power over the Rate of Exchange.

We want to increase the National gain, and at the same time we occupy our people with work in which they can scarcely earn bread and water for the day. We think of Loyalty and of reducing the number of Lawsuits, and yet we add to our Laws daily, so that the judge himself hardly recognises them in the Statute Book, and scarcely onehundredth of the citizens know their duties. Just tell me, my benevolent Reader, what will finally result from all this?

I, for my part, cannot but sing with Lucidor, the Misanthrope:

"I hear many words, my thoughts are far astray;
I see so many lights that I mistake my way.
Too much of arguing makes me confused, I fear,
And though I Swedish know, I know not what I hear."