And the worst of it is that this taxation, pressing as it is, does not meet the expenditure, and there is an annual deficit of fully twenty million pounds sterling. The hope that the late elections would send up a majority of deputies determined to reorganise the finances seems to be vain. M. Constans is the real power in the present ministry, and how he fears a move in the direction of economy is shown in the utterly unscrupulous way in which he succeeded in getting the distinguished economist M. Leroy-Beaulieu counted out at the recent election. The plan adopted was a very simple one. " He was opposed by a Radical of no particular prominence, M. Méuard Dorian, whom the Prefect openly and hotly supported. On the 22nd of September a certain number of votes in one commune thrown for both candidates were annulled for some informality. When the returns reached the Commission de Recensement, all. these informal' ballots thrown for M. Leroy-Beanlieu were rejected; but those thrown for his opponent were counted, and M. Ménard-Dorian was proclaimed the elect of the people!" The government, according to Mr. Hurlbert, practically owes its present majority to similar tamperings with the electoral urns. If the new Chamber had really desired to reform the finances, it would have elected as its president the economist and financier, M. Leon Say, instead of M. Floquet.
President Carnot can do nothing to stop Republican extravagance for he has publicly promised to govern "in conformity with the ideas and the wishes of the Parliamentary coalition by which he was elected." Mr. Hurlbert asks if he is likely now to depart from that promise; and he concludes with these words an article which, even if it is not unbiassed, is well worth reading "To depart from it is to break the combination by virtue of whi alone the Republicans now rule, 'To keep to it is to drive the Republic headlong on to the ruin predicted for it on the 19th December, 1888, by one of the ablest Republicans in the Senate, M. Challemel-Lacour, in a speech on the Budget of 1890. ''lhe Republic,' said a Republican friend of imine to me in Paris just before the late Chamber came to an end, is in the condition of the noble and unfortunate Emperor Frederick III. If it is rid of the cancer it will die of the cure. If it shrinks from the cure it will die of the cancer.'"
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.