'And so, after now _ten years_, we have the true Republic which got complete possession in 1879 of all the machinery for giving force and effect to the "beautiful and generous" idea of co-operation, and for giving wings to that idea, leaving it still under the blighting curse of the Imperial law of 1867. 'And Doumer alone! Brother Doumer, whom Providence and the freemasons of Laon sent to the Chamber in 1888, has met the questions which have been "urgent" ever since 1848 with the grand practical solution of a "report" fifteen pages long, and of a "project of law" consisting of six titles and about a hundred clauses! 'Take this pamphlet with you,' said my friend, after going over it with me; 'take it, look into it minutely, and tell me if anything you have ever heard or read in the way of our Conservative attacks upon the flatulence, the fatuity, and the hypocrisy of these pretended friends of labour and of the working-man is to be compared, for cold-blooded cruelty, with this exposition made by Brother Doumer of the methods of his party. 'I don't know,' he added, 'what portfolio Brother Doumer expects to get if the Government carry these elections of 1889. He has kicked M. de Freycinet, as you see, into one corner, and President Carnot into another, for the benefit of his friend and ally, M. Floquet, so I suppose he expects to secure some commanding position, neither M. de Freycinet nor President Carnot being strong enough to resent the impertinences of an eminent freemason. But wherever they put him, this wonderful Report of his ought to be printed and circulated freely all over France by the Conservative committees. It is the most concise and eloquent history, that I know, of ten years of the true Republic in its relation to the working classes of France. You have seen at St.-Gobain the results of a co-operative association of working-men organized under statutes drawn up by a practical and liberal friend of labour, M. Cochin, in 1866, a year before the Imperial law of 1867 was passed. 'Wherever elsewhere in France you find the principle of co-operation adopted and bearing fruit for the benefit of working-men, pray remember that the "true Republic" has for ten years persistently evaded and dodged the problems with which the Empire grappled, and to which the Emperor gave a practical answer nearly a quarter of a century ago!' After following my friend carefully through his amusing and instructive vivisection of the Report presented to the late Chamber by the masonic member for Laon upon the project of law touching co-operation proposed by M. Floquet, I was not surprised, of course, to learn that the 'project' still remains a 'project.' It was adopted in what is called a 'Friday session' by the Chamber, and then sent up to die a natural death in the Senate--the Senate, be it remembered, being the absolute stronghold of the existing Republican Government.