who established the credit of France after the war, insured the acceptance of republican institutions. The prodigality of the Chamber since 1876, when the results of that conservative management were seen in five years of surplus revenue over the increasing expenditures, awakened the distrust in the workings of the present political system which has recently shown itself. In no other country except the United States is the expenditure of the public moneys so subject to political and electioneering influences, or less closely watched by the people. The Government plunged into every kind of ambitious project. At one and the same time it sought to rival Germany in its army and defenses, England in its navy and colonies, Switzerland in popular education, and America in railroads. The pension-list was largely augmented and new offices created to suit the exigencies of party politics. Instead of seeking new sources of revenue to meet the increased expenditures, there were certain reductions made in the taxes, which impaired the revenue without affording a proportionate relief to the tax-payers, as the Government was guided rather by political motives than by fiscal principles. The Treasury could have been relieved by the conversion of the debt at a lower interest, but for political reasons this was deferred for seven years, until under the pressure of deficits it became necessary. In 1875 the ordinary expenditures amounted to 2,626,000,000 francs, which was 1,005,000,000 more than the last budget of the empire, that of 1869. The service of the debt required something over 1,000,000,000 francs, leaving about 1,600,000,000 francs for the expenses of the Government, which was from 400 to 500 millions more than in the year before the war. From 1875 to 1880 the expenditures increased at the average rate of 40,000,000 francs per annum. Since 1881 the rate of increase has been two and a half times as great, and during the same period the expenditures have exceeded the revenues, and an annual deficit has been added to the public debt. From 1875 to 1880 there was an annual surplus. In 1881 a surplus revenue was reported, but the critics of the budget find that it was produced by counting the surplus of the preceding year among the ordinary receipts, and transferring certain permanent charges on the revenue to the account of extraordinary expenditures, so that there was an actual deficit of about 50 millions. The Government reports a deficit for 1882 of 47 millions, which by the stricter method of book-keeping would amount to 167 millions. The budget for 1883 was fixed at 3,044,000,000 francs. At the end of the first quarter supplementary credits had been added to the amount of 43 millions. These supplementary votes are an evidence of the lack of a rigid control over the public purse. In 1881 they amounted to 181,000,000 francs, in 1882 to 220,000,000 francs. The budget for 1884 is placed at 3,103,000,000 francs, nearly 200 mill ions more than the total ordinary revenue for 1882. The increase in the annual charge of the public debt was from 4673 million francs in 1869, to 1,130 millions in 1876, and 1,282} millions in 1883; the expenditure on the army from 382 to 812 millions in 1876, and 6671 millions in 1883; that on the marine and the colonies, exclusive of Algeria, from 175 millions in 1869, to 250 millions in 1883. In addition to the heavy but more or less necessary increased expenditures on these heads the Chamber raised the budget of public works from 125 millions in 1869 to 575 millions in 1883, and that of public instruction from 25 to 112 millions. Until the decrease in the yield of the taxes in 1882 and 1883 there was no reason to apprehend that the burdens would prove excessive for the tax-paying capacity of the French people. In the twelve years of the republic up to that time there was a surplus in eight years which exceeded the amount of the four deficits by 388 millions. The budget for 1884 states the expenditures under the main heads as follow: BRANCHES OF EXPENDITURE. Public debt. Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs Colonies. Fine Arts.. Total ordinary expenditures..... Francs. 1,818,222,266 80,899,116 11,760,780 86,120,392 51,999,006 62,319,158 9,406,430 20,135,870 2,355,642 605,307,000 204,570,877 33,392,209 134,838,151 16,686,195 20,701,714 25,760,640 96,188,200 48,848,240 888,609,107 20,456,500 8,108,441,198 tax on mortmain property, etc. The indirect internal taxes include excise duties on drink (425,753,000 francs), domestic salt (12,166,000 franes), and sugar (101,757,400 francs), inatches (16,065,000 francs), paper (15,895,000 francs), etc., the produce of sales of tobacco (137,450,000 francs), and powder (14,914,000 francs), a tax of 20 per cent. on tickets for railroad express-trains, etc. The estimated amount of taxes collected in Algeria is 30,279,353 francs. In 1793 all the debts, annuities, and other liabilities of the Government were funded in 5 per cent. perpetual rentes which required the annual payment of 174 million francs. The consolidated debt was reduced by repudiation and repayments out of the confiscated property of the church and nobility until at the beginning of the nineteenth century the annual charge was 40 millions. At the fall of the empire the interest charge was 63 millions. From the Restoration in 1814 to the Revolution of July in 1830, 165 million francs of new rente were added, representing the indemnity of 1,000 millions paid to the confiscated nobles, the war ransom of 700 millions, and the cost of the occupation, while reductions equal to the former annual interest were effected by amortization and conversion, leaving the rente charge 165 millions. During the same period the current accounts of the Government showed an average annual deficit of 1,268,000 francs; under Louis Philippe (1830-'48) the average deficit was 55,437,000 francs; under the second republic (1848-'51) it was 89,844,000 francs; under the third empire (1852-'69) it was 123, 807,000 francs. On the 1st of January, 1882, the amount of the public debt was 24,002,751,531 francs, and the rente charge 872,543,575 francs. The state of the debt in 1883 was as follows: Nominal Francs. French rentes were held in comparatively few hands until under the third empire they began to be distributed among the people. In 1870 the number of holders was 1,254,040, the annual rente amounting to 358 million francs. In 1881, when the interest was about 852 millions, the number of holders was 4,617,900. The long-deferred conversion of the 5 per cent. rentes was finally resolved upon in 1883, in view of the emergency in which the Government found itself with increasing expenditures and a failing revenue. The French Government had postponed the operation, though it would save many millions annually, from a reluctance to curtail the income of the bondholders, who form so large a part of the population. The scheme of exchanging 3 per cent. bonds for the 5 per cents. at an equivalent capitalized value was proposed for the sake of permanence and uniformity, as part of a scheme to convert the whole debt into 3 per cent. rentes; but, as it would preclude all future reductions in the interest charge and increase the nominal amount of the debt two milliards, the Government naturally preferred to effect about the same annual saving of 35 millions, with the prospect of future reductions of over 100 millions per annum more, by exchanging 4 per cent. stock at or near par for the 5 per cents., pledging itself against a further conversion within five years. Paris and the other municipalities have debts which were greatly increased by the war. The budget of the city of Paris for 1880 estimates the revenue at 233,622,125 francs, derived 6,786,650,000 principally from the octroi tolls, which were 881,855,000 estimated at 128,713,600 francs. The largest 11,152,000 item of expenditure is the interest and sinking 12,089,922,000 fund of the municipal debt. The capital amount 1,200,000,000 in 1880 was 2,295,000,000 francs. 775,908,000 20,919,579,000 The charges on account of the public debt and other obligations of the Government are given in the budget for 1884 as follow: France. 789,901,282 Prince Bonaparte's Manifesto.-In Gambetta the republic lost perhaps the only man who possessed the political strength and prestige to lead it through a crisis. He himself, by the adventurous foreign policy and the idea of personal rule which he represented, had done not a little to unsettle the public mind, and to reawaken a desire for the strong governing hand to which France had formerly been accustomed. His programme, although it had cost him the premiership, had restored him to the position which he held after the national defense as the champion on whom the republic must rely in the hour of its need. He assumed this position more distinctly in his later appeals. The monarchical parties echoed the demand for a strong and stable government, and 886,589,751 when Gambetta died they prepared to renew their agitations. The various radical groups, of a more or less socialistic bent, had been visibly kept in restraint by Gambetta. There was a prospect that the center of gravity in the government would now shift farther to the left, and to the régime of the freethinkers would succeed one of socialistic experiments. With a make-shift ministry, a Chamber which served only as a forum for wordy contests with the foes of the existing order, and with the wide-spread mistrust which Gambetta had fomented, that the republic, constituted as it was, was incapable of maintaining the interests and dignity of France abroad or a stable order at home, the situation was favorable for a coup de main or revolution if any of the hostile parties were able or willing to profit by it. A Legitimist agitation was set on foot in the Vendée and the south of France, at Montpellier, and the other strongholds of royalism. There was talk of reorganizing General Charette's royalist legion, which in 1870 was reputed to number 8,000. Rumor exaggerated the preparations into 1,500 Papal Zouave veterans in Paris, and 33 legions organized as hunting-clubs in the country, with a treasure of 15,000,000 francs in London. The Count de Chambord was expected to issue a manifesto. A sudden damper was thrown upon the movement by an unexpected act of Prince Napoleon, who, in order to forestall the Count de Chambord and claim the position which his party denied him, of head of the Bonapartes, placarded on the walls of Paris and published in the "Figaro," January 16th, a manifesto in the form of an arraignment of the republic and apology for his own position. On the same day on which this manifesto was issued Prince Napoleon was arrested and confined in the prison of the Conciergerie on the charge of an “attempted act against the safety of the state, for the purpose of changing the existing form of government." The manifesto had no popular effect, but it rallied to the prince the Bonapartist politicians, who, on account of his republican principles and radical sympathies, had sought to thrust him aside in favor of his son, Prince Victor. Pretender Question. In the Chamber the manifesto was the signal for calling forth, not so much the fears, as the antipathies, of the Republicans against the Bourbon princes and the socially powerful though politically prostrate section of the community which clung to the principles of royalty and aristocracy. The Duc d'Aumale and his aspirations to the presidency of the republic were more dreaded than "the King" in Frohsdorf, or the discarded head of the Bonapartes. A bill was at once brought in by M. Floquet to banish from the soil of France and the colonies, and deprive of all political rights, the members of families which formerly reigned in France. Urgency was voted by a large majority. A government biil was presented by M. Fallières, Minister of the Interior, which would empower the Executive to expel from French territory any prince whose presence might be considered dangerous to the state, and, if an officer of the army, to place him en disponibilité. The committee appointed by the bureaux to discuss the measure at first reported a bill as rigorous as the Floquet proposal, but finally agreed to a compromise, incapacitating the members of dynastic families for any electoral function or any civil or military employment. M. Duclerc, the Premier, and Gen. Billot, Minister of War, refused to accept the Fabre compromise, and the Cabinet, in consequence, resigned. Admiral Jaurréguibery, Minister of Marine, had already tendered his resignation. President Grévy simply accepted the resignations of the three ministers who objected to a compromise, and, upon M. Jules Ferry's declining to form a Cabinet, intrusted M. Fallières with the premiership, January 29th. On February 1st the bill passed by a vote of 855 to 142, 53 Republicans voting with the minority, and 42 abstaining, mostly because the bill did not go far enough.* Interim Ministry.-The Ministry of War was offered to Gen. Campenon, a Gambettist, who declined the office. It was accepted by Gen. Thibaudin, who, though absolved by a council of officers, was supposed by many to have broken his parole in escaping from imprisonment in Germany and joining the army of the national defense. At the time that the crisis culminated, M. Duclerc was seriously ill, and sent his resignation from a sick-bed. In the midst of his first speech as Prime Minister, M. Fallières was also taken ill, overcome by anxiety and loss of sleep. M. Fallières was about forty-four years of age. Like the other meinbers of the Duclerc ministry, he was new to office, but passed for the ablest speaker among them. Before entering public life he was a lawyer in the small town of Nérac. The aged M. Duclerc was well known and respected in the Chamber, but had not the eminence and weight of character which could command the obedience of the majority. M. Déves, the Minister of Justice, was not an eminent lawyer, nor did M. Duvaux, Minister of Public Instruction, formerly professor in the Lycée at Nancy, add to the authority of the Cabinet, though all *The princes of Orleans, who are retired from active service in the army, though not deprived of their military rank, by the pretenders' bill, were proscribed under the empire, but returned to France in virtue of an amnesty law, passed in 1871. Prince de Joinville and Duc de Chartres had served in the Second Army of the Loire under assumed names, with the knowledge of Gen. Chanzy, who sought in every way to ad vance their interests. The Prince de Joinville was discharged and sent out of the country by orders of Gambetta, but the Duc de Chartres concealed his identity and was decorated with the cross of the Legion of Honor. The Duc de Nemours and the Duc d'Aumale figure on the army lists as generals of division, having been advanced to that grade during the reign of their father, Louis Philippe. At the time of the passage of the act the Duc de Nemours was in the reserve, the Duc d'Aumale was en disponibilité, the Duc de Chartres was in command of a regiment at Rouen, the Duc d'Alençon commanded a battery of artillery, the Duc de Penthièvre had resigned, and his father, the Prince de Joinville, retained the rank which he had received by royal ordinance, of viceadmiral in the navy. Of the Bonapartes, Roland, the son of Pierre, held a captaincy in the line. of them were respected as men of sense and ability. For these reasons the Duclerc ministry had several times to experience adverse votes which were not intended to express want of confidence, but simply signified absence of party discipline and lack of a vigorous leader. When Duclerc retired, the rump Cabinet was only retained as an interim ministry pending the settlement of the pretender question. With two portfolios vacant, and M. Fallières still too ill to attend to affairs, it could not even present the semblance of constituting a government. In the flux and disorganization of parties, the crisis was prolonged, and passed through various unexpected phases. When the bill came before the Senate the first feeling was in favor of its rejection pure and simple, in which sense the committee made its report. But the leaders of the Left Center, unwilling to block their path to future office, proposed a compromise which secured a majority. This, the Say-Waddington bill, made public acts or demonstrations of pretenders belonging to exregnant families tending to jeopardize the state, punishable by banishment. Another proposal, suggested by M. Barbey, was to give the Executive discretionary power to expel princes for acts and demonstrations as pretenders. At the beginning of the long debate in the Senate the circumstances were altered by the quashing of the complaint against Prince Napoleon. The thirteen judges of the Chambre des Mises en Accusation found that no indictment lay against the prince, since the publishing and placarding of his proclamation was admissible under the press law, and, in the absence of overt acts, did not constitute an attempt to overthrow the government. Prince Napoleon, released from his three weeks' confinement, betook himself to Belgium, where, having been acknowledged for the first time by the ex-Empress and a section of the party, he continued the role of representative of the imperial cause and "Napoleonic ideas"; but, later, the old differences with the Bonapartist politicians were renewed, and Prince Victor was induced to come out in opposition to his father. On the 13th of February, when the pretenders' bill was passed back to the popular assembly in the form of the Say-Waddington amendment, the headless and useless ministry formally resigned. At this stage the Paris merchants expressed their uneasiness in a petition to President Grévy. The work ing-men followed with a petition for the expulsion of the princes and a bolder foreign policy. The Chamber, on the return of the bill, refused to consider the Senate amendment, dallied with the Barbey compromise, and then finally sent up to the Senate the original Floquet bill. In the Senate, by the shrewd tactics of the leader of the Right, the Duc de Broglie, who had left the field free for the republican opponents of exceptional legislation, the bill was now rejected by a majority of five, after a month of impassioned discussion. The vote was taken February 17th. Ferry Cabinet.-Jules Ferry, who had postponed taking office until the expulsion question was decided, upon the collapse of the bill undertook to compose a ministry and formulate a programme which would secure the support of enough of the 140 members of the Republican Union, Gambetta's Opportunist group, to make, with the 180 belonging to the Democratic Union and Center groups, a steady majority over the 90 members of the Right and the 90 of the Radical Left and Extreme Left, re-enforced by the remainder of the Gambettists. On the 21st the list was published, as given near the beginning of this article. M. Ferry, after the death of Gambetta, was the most conspicuous figure in the Chamber, and was the only ex-Premier who had not been precipitated from office by an expression of want of confidence. His constructive work in the reform of education gave him a title to greatness which was no longer darkened by the stormy polemics which assailed him as the ministerial representative of the anti-Clerical policy and the author of "Article VII." The retention of Gen. Thibaudin and the appointment of M. Challemel-Lacour, the most vigorous advocate of the ostracism of the princes, indicated the attitude of the new ministry on this question. The Foreign Minister was known as a doctrinaire Republican who commenced life as a teacher of philosophy in the Lycée at Pau, was imprisoned and banished after the coup d'état, translated works of German philosophy and officiated as Professor of French literature at Zurich, and after his return to France in 1856 became a journalist. He was Prefect of Lyons during the war, and had to contend with the communards under Arnaud. He was appointed by M. Waddington to the London embassy. Although he had repeatedly been spoken of for a portfolio, bis friend and leader, Gambetta, did not include him in his Cabinet. M. Charles Brun, a naval engineer of high reputation, who had sat in the Chamber since 1871, but without taking an active part in the debates, was the first civilian who has filled the Ministry of the Marine. M. Mélines, the Minister of Agriculture, a lawyer by profession, had distinguished himself as an advocate of protection, and was reporter of the general tariff committee. MM. Tirard and Cochery had held the same positions in the preceding Cabinet, and M. Hérisson, the Minister of Commerce, was transferred from the Ministry of Public Works. M. Waldeck-Rousseau, one of the most prominent of the younger politicians, was Minister of the Interior under Gambetta. M. Raynal was Minister of Public Works, and M. Feuillée sub-Secretary of the Department of Justice in the same ministry. MM. Challemel-Lacour and Charles Brun represented the Cabinet in the Senate. In the declaration which Minister Ferry read in the Chamber, he announced that the princes in the army would be placed in non-activity, and the order was issued immediately. This was done by straining an old army law of 1834. Revision Question.-The question of the revision of the Constitution was the first one pressed upon the new ministry. Dr. Clemenceau, at the head of the Radicals, made a vehement appeal to have the question with which Gambetta had temporized finally decided, and sentence pronounced upon the Senate after the collision with the Chamber on the pretender question. M. Ferry took a firm stand, refusing to subject the country to the agitation of a dissolution of the National Assembly and a conflict with the foes of the republic over this delicate question. The Chamber, by a majority of 150 votes, approved the decision to postpone revision until after the general election of 1885. Socialist Agitations.-While Prince Bonaparte was undergoing internment, and the Floquet proposal for the ostracism of the French princes was before the Chamber, the trial of the Lyons Anarchists came to an end. Prince Krapotkine and the other accused, 52 in number, were brought to trial under an act directed against the International Society. They were arrested after the labor riot at Montceau-les-Mines in 1882, and a disorderly demonstration in Lyons occurring at that time, consisting of the explosion of a dynamite cartridge in a coffee-house. They acknowledged and defended their anarchist and socialistic doctrines, but denied belonging to the International Association, which had gone out of existence. Prince Krapotkine recounted the story of his life, saying that witnessing as the son of a Russian serf-proprietor cruelties which matched the tales of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," his sympathies were drawn to the oppressed, while the vices and corruption which he saw in the Russian military service gave him a contempt for his own class. While Professor of Mathematics in St. Petersburg he was arrested as a Nihilist, and witnessed in prison horrors which drove nine fellow-prisoners to madness and eleven to suicide. The accused Anarchists were convicted of belonging to an international organization and were condemned, Prince Krapotkine with three others to five years' imprisonment, ten years of police surveillance, and five years' deprivation of civil rights, and the rest to lesser punishments. Scarcely had fears from the Legitimists been allayed by the adoption of the pretenders' bill, and the assumption of the government by firmer hands, when the opposite party of disruption, the heirs of the Commune, began to lift their heads. An open-air meeting of Parisian artisans out of work was convened for March 9th by placards issued by the Carpenters' Union, announcing as the order of the day "To call upon the Government to take immediate measures to provide bread for those who have none." The distress among the working-people, owing to commercial stagnation and a severe winter, was greater than it had been for many years. "If our rich republic," the address declared, "has no longer work to give us, it ought at least to feed the creator of its wealth and its firmest bulwark-the artisan." The task of providing work for the unemployed was tacitly assumed by the republic from the beginning, though not freely acknowledged by responsible statesmen. It was the principal cause of the expenditures on public works which created financial embarrassments for the Government. The mechanics of Paris, Lyons, and the few other large cities where revolutions are enacted, stood as arbiters over the republic; but, as they became more imbued with socialistic theories, they became estranged from the Government, and torn by internal dissensions which prevented them from making a direct impress on legislation; their latent power, however, increased, and after the amnesty of the cominunards the labor question bore the character of an issue to be dealt with in the near future. Clemenceau and the Radicals adopted the less advanced propositions of the Socialists, such as the revision of contracts which have alienated public property, mines, railroads, canals, etc., and the progressive income-tax, as the platform by which they hoped to succeed to power. French socialists are divided into three principal schools-Blanquists, Collectivists, and Anarchists. The disciples of Blanqui, the most conspicuous of whom is Eudes, general under the Commune, is not a numerous group, but a compact one, formed of bold and energetic men. They are averse to the discussion of social theories. All that is clear in their programme is the political method whereby they would accomplish sweeping, but undefined, changes in the constitution of society, which is by concentrating the power of the revolution in few hands, and granting their leaders dictatorial authority. They are therefore pure revolutionists, descendants of the Jacobins of 1792. The Collectivists base their demands on the familiar historical and economical arguments of socialists, and hold in the main the doctrines of the teachers of German democratic socialism. Their aim is to make machinery, raw materials, and all the apparatus and means of production the collective property of society, and would accomplish this by a revolutionary overthrow. To a small group, which has its headquarters in Belgium, the appeal to physical force is repugnant. These, known as Colinsians, expect to effect the transfer gradually by means of a tax of 25 per cent. on succession, and the reversion of property to the state where there are no direct heirs. The revolutionary Collectivists are split, through personal rivalries, into two warring factions, the larger of which is called the Union Fédérative, and the other the Fédération du Centre. The Anarchists, represented by the imprisoned Prince Krapotkine and the geographer Elisée Reclus, like the Collectivists, desire to make capital and the means of production social property, and are opposed to all centralization of authority or fixed political organization. |