'The Republicans won the elections in 1877 by frightening France into a belief that a Conservative victory at the polls would be followed by a new German invasion. I am not sure, mind you, that this was an idle scare. For under the Conservative administration of our affairs we had cleared off in six years' time the frightful burdens imposed upon us by the war, by the senseless Parisian revolution of 1870, and by the Communist insurrection of 1871; and it is likely enough that Bismarck may have made up his mind to attack us if he saw us persist in a sane and sensible public policy. Be that as it may, Gambetta, Leon Say, and Freycinet, between them, did his work for him by plunging the country back into the financial morass from which the Conservatives had rescued it. They carried the new chamber with them into Gambetta's scheme for doing systematically and successfully what had been clumsily attempted in the Ateliers Nationaux of 1848. France was to be made a republic by spending nearly the amount of the German War indemnity on the construction of railways, canals, and ports all over the country. The sum stated in the outset was four thousand five hundred millions of francs--rather a pretty penny you must see!' 'I remember it,' I replied, 'and I remember thinking, when the scheme was first developed, that the adoption of it was a wonderful evidence of the financial vigour and vitality of France.' 'Thank you,' he replied rather bitterly. 'It was just such a proof of vigour and vitality that Dr. Sangrado used to get from his patients with his lancet. It was a great political manoeuvre, no doubt, and it commended itself to all the hungry politicians in France so promptly and so warmly, that within three years' time, in 1882, M. Tirard, who was then Finance Minister, and who is now on the box of the Carnot coach, had to admit that the expenditure then contemplated in carrying out this great idea could not possibly fall short of nine thousand one hundred and fifty millions of francs! This, observe, was seven years ago. To-day it has swelled, at the least, into eleven and perhaps to twelve thousand millions of francs. Why not? Gambetta, Leon Say, and Freycinet proclaimed the millennium of civil engineers and local candidates. What becomes of equality and fraternity if the smallest hamlet in the recesses of the Jura is not as much entitled to a local railway at the public expense as the largest port on the Bay of Biscay? Once let it be understood that the Government means to spend ten thousand millions on public works, and all the voters are ready to believe the Government has found the philosopher's stone. Nobody but the tax-gatherer will ever make them understand where the money comes from. And between the tax-gatherer and the taxpayer, a truly clever finance minister can always interpose successfully, for a certain length of time, the anodyne banker with a new form of public loan! We are the