As the late parliament on the very last day of its existence adopted a plan proposed by M. Doumer himself for re-organising the system of _Tresoriers-Generaux_, and making these officers regular members of the staff of the Finance Ministry with fixed salaries, my friend in the Aisne thinks it likely enough that one of these posts may fill the eventual perspective of M. Doumer's political career. Meanwhile the defeated candidate for Laon has been comfortably lodged, at the public cost, in the Legislative Palace, as Secretary of the President of the Chamber, M. Floquet being President, and receives a salary of 15,000 francs, with perquisites and other advantages. We do this sort of thing occasionally in the United States, for the benefit of defeated political candidates. But in one important respect the professional politician in France is better off than the professional politician in America. Our pension list is by far the largest in the world, but we do not offer any prospect of a pension to civil servants. Nor have we so many paid legislative berths in which to lodge our professional politicians. The parliamentary business of the sixty millions of people who now inhabit the United States is done by eighty-four senators and 330 representatives, who receive something over $2,000,000 a year. The parliamentary business of less than forty millions of people inhabiting France is supposed to require the services of 300 senators and 578 deputies, who receive for doing it 11,937,940 francs, or, in round numbers, about $2,587,560. Whether the 878 French legislators really earn half a million of dollars more by their annual labours than do the 414 American legislators is a question which I leave my readers to settle after they shall have settled the previous question, whether either of those considerable sums of money is really earned by either body. But there can be no doubt, I think, that, under the existing economical conditions of society in the two republics, the aggregate number of professional politicians aiming at the 878 prizes of the profession in France is likely to be considerably in excess of the aggregate number of professional politicians aiming at the 414 prizes of the profession in the United States. Of course, too, this increase in the aggregate number of the competitors must necessarily be attended by a decline in the average standard of character and capacity among them: and as it is the settled policy of the French Republicans of the 'true Republic,' who have been in power for the past decade, to exclude all persons not of their party from any share in the general administration of the Republic, it is obvious that this lowering of the level of character and of capacity must be most marked among the professional politicians of the Republican party. This is a matter of scientific necessity, and not at all of sentiment; and it suffices to account for the unquestionable average inferiority of the Government members of the