From 1871 to 1877, France was governed, under the form of a republic, by a majority of men who neither had, nor professed to have, any more confidence in the stability of a republican form of government, than Alexander Hamilton had in the working value of the American Constitution which he so largely helped to frame, and which he accepted as being the best it was possible in the circumstances to get. But they did their duty to France, as he did his duty to America. To them--first under M. Thiers, and then under the Marechal-Duc de Magenta--France is indebted for the reconstruction of her beaten and disorganised army, for the successful liquidation of the tremendous war-indemnity imposed upon her by victorious Germany, for the re-establishment of her public credit, and for such an administration of her national finances as enabled her, in 1876, to raise a revenue of nearly a thousand millions of francs, or forty millions of pounds sterling, in excess of the revenue raised under the Empire seven years before, without friction and without undue pressure. In 1869, the Empire had raised a revenue of 1,621,390,248 francs. In 1876, the Conservative Republic raised a revenue of 2,570,505,513 francs. With this it covered all the cost of the public service, carried the charges resulting from the war and its consequences, set apart 204,000,000 francs for public works, and yet left in the Treasury a balance of 98,000,000 francs. It is told of one of the finance ministers of the Restoration, Baron Louis, that when a deputy questioned him once about the finances, he replied, 'Do you give us good politics and I will give you good finances.' It seems to me that the budget of 1876 proves the politics of the Conservative majority in the French Parliament of that time to have been good. The Marechal-Duc de Magenta was then president. M. Thiers had resigned his office in 1873, in consequence of a dispute with the Assembly, the true history of which may one day be edifying, and the Assembly had elected the Marechal-Duc to fill his place. I have been told by one of the most distinguished public men in France that, in his passionate desire to prevent the election of the Marechal Duc, M. Thiers was bent upon promoting a movement to bring against the soldier of Magenta an accusation like that which led to the condemnation of the Marechal Bazaine, and that he was with difficulty restrained from doing this. Monstrous as this attempt would have been, it hardly seems more monstrous than the abortive attempt which was actually made, under the inspiration of M. Gambetta and his friends, to convict the Marechal Duc and his ministers, 'the men of the 16th of May,' of conspiring, while in possession of the executive power, to bring about the overthrow of the Republic and the restoration of the Monarchy.