This made bad blood in that
department.
Everybody fell to complaining that the taxes levied for the support of
the army, the navy, and the rest of the imperial establishment were
intolerably burdensome, and were reducing the nation to beggary. The
emperor's reply--"Look--Look at Germany; look at Italy. Are you better
than they? and haven't you unification?"---did not satisfy them. They
said, "People can't eat unification, and we are starving. Agriculture
has ceased. Everybody is in the army, everybody is in the navy,
everybody is in the public service, standing around in a uniform, with
nothing whatever to do, nothing to eat, and nobody to till the fields--"
"Look at Germany; look at Italy. It is the same there. Such is
unification, and there's no other way to get it--no other way to keep it
after you've got it," said the poor emperor always.
But the grumblers only replied, "We can't stand the taxes--we can't stand
them."
Now right on top of this the cabinet reported a national debt amounting
to upward of forty-five dollars--half a dollar to every individual in the
nation.
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