Attacking the purse is quite as grave a mistake as attacking the religion of the thrifty, economical, and provident Frenchman. The financial policy of the republic is unpopular. The annual deficit and the increasing taxation are crying evils even more difficult to handle than are religious troubles, while conservative republican statesmen, like Senator Barthelemy Saint Hilaire, tell me that the national debt keeps on increasing at such a rate that the bankruptcy of France seems sure in the more or less distant future. The present tendency towards a high protective tariff is an attempt to bring money into the national treasury, and thus relieve the peasant and manufacturer not only from foreign competition, but from the disagreeable claims of the tax-gatherer. The Alsace Lorraine imbroglio must, of course, be mentioned in any list of the dangers threatening the French republic. But it is not so dangerous as might appear at first blush, for, although it is quite true that a war with Germany, especially if it should terminate disastrously, would shake the republic to its foundations, and perhaps topple it to the ground, this same Alsace-Lorraine difficulty is, in home affairs, almost the only question in whose consideration all parties unite on the common ground of patriotism. A republican orator is sure to win the applause of the Right when he refers in eloquent terms to the "Lost Provinces," "about which," as Gambetta said, "a Frenchman should always think but say nothing." My picture is full of dark colors. But I do not think that I have exaggerated the faults and weaknesses of the third republic. But it should be borne in mind that in this brief paper I have dealt alone on the faults and weaknesses. If I were to go farther and examine the merits and strong points of the present government of France, I could easily prove that notwithstanding these faults and weaknesses, it is highly probable that the various royal and imperial pretenders, their children and their children's children, will, live and die without ever being able to set up again in France the throne of the Capets or that of the Bonapartes. LEADERLESS MOBS. BY H. C. BRADSBY. Office-holding politicians who have heretofore led the people, are leading them now, until we, the hapless voters, find ourselves confronted with the following so-called issues, or rather absurdities:-- Protection with reciprocity--_Republicanism._ Free trade with incidental protection--_Democracy._ The Democratic ex-President and the Republican President are in perfect agreement on the question of remonetizing silver and many sub-leaders and able party newspapers on both sides are in accord with these two successors of Washington, and the sub-lieutenants pass the word around, "Do not discuss the silver question, it is an immaterial issue." These are the anomalous conditions of American politics stated in all seriousness as they appear to a layman.