These regulations are to affect workmen who contribute to what is known as the 'National Retiring Fund for Old Age.' This fund was established originally in 1850 under the presidency of Louis Napoleon. It was re-organised by a law passed in July 1886, and by a decree issued in December 1886. It is under the guarantee of the State, and is administered by a committee co-operating with the Ministry of Commerce. Its object is to enable working-men and others to secure annuities up to the amount of 1,200 francs a year, at or after the age of fifty, by the payment of small regular assessments on their wages. The smallest sums are received by the fund, which of course is managed on principles not unlike those of the great life insurance companies. A running account is kept with the treasury to meet the current expenses of the fund, but all the rest of the money received by it is invested in the French public funds, or in securities guaranteed by the State. No part of the compound interest received by the fund is deducted to meet the expenses of administration. It all goes to the account of the depositors, the current expenses being met by the Deposit Fund, which manages the Retiring Fund. If at any time before that fixed for his enjoyment of the retiring pension, the depositor should be made incapable of work by some illness or accident, he is at once put into possession, without awaiting the age fixed in the original agreement, of a pension or annuity proportioned to the amount of his actual payments and to his age at the time when the incapacity is medically and legally established. Every year a certain amount is voted by the Chamber as a subvention to this fund, and out of this annual appropriation these 'premature pensions' may be increased by the committee in charge of the fund. This is a sort of practical State socialism beyond a doubt. But it is at least as respectable as the expenditure made in this year's budget of 6,500,000 francs, or about one fifth of the whole amount of the French naval pension list, on annuities of indemnification 'to the victims of the _coup d'etat_ of 1851,' the _coup d'etat_ of 1851 having been simply a collision between the Legislature of that year, trying to suppress the Executive, with the Executive trying to suppress the Legislature, with the result that the Executive carried the day, and that the French people, by an overwhelming majority, approved the victory of the Executive.