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The minister of the interior stated in a report (made to the king), that this expenditure amounted in 1823 to something under four millions; in 1824 it was nearly ten millions; in 1825, nearly fifteen millions; and the estimate for 1826, exceeded twenty millions. But these canals and roads, instead of being the fruits of a spirit of private enterprise, were the undertakings of a public board; and private individuals, instead of sharing in them, impeded them. The minister complained that, although the compensation proffered to the proprietors of lands through which a road or canal was to pass, uniformly exceeded the market value of 'the ground or buildings which it was necessary to purchase, the board, with all its precautions, was met by perpetual delays, disputes, law-suits, and losses; and, instead of the assistance which it might reasonably expect from individuals, it was often hampered by vexatious opposition, however clear might be the advantage to be reaped from the proposed measure.

ever the steam-boat system was adopted, as adopted it must be. The military establishments were still more roundly taxed with inefficiency. The two royal manufactories of muskets, made about two hundred thousand annually, but made them so badly, that it was necessary to subject them to an additional, and expensive process, to render them fit for use. The army, instead of being 240,000 men, which was the peace establishment, consisted of only 231,000; and, for the last ten years, instead of sixteen millions being annually devoted to the repair of the fortresses, the sum so bestowed, it was admitted by ministers, was only four millions. The situation of the frontier, since the restoration, had rather rendered increase imperious, than justified reduction : Swiss neutrality had vanished; Landau belonged to Bavaria; Prussia, a first-rate military power, was on the banks of the Mozelle, and could manoeuvre her troops within twenty leagues of Paris; Belgium was no longer simply an Austrian province, with a distant government, but had become a kingdom united to Holland, armed with a triple line of fortresses, and these fortresses commanded and inspected by Wellington. collect, gentlemen," exclaimed M. Casimir Perrier, in that theatrical style of rhetoric which characterizes French eloquence, and amid shouts of "Order," and violent and tumultuous interruptions from the mortified national pride of the Chamber, "Recollect the tears of despair which we shed on seeing the Prussians, the laurels of victors in their caps, guarding your barriers, and parading your squares! Do you wish to see the matches again lighted, ready to blow up

In the British parliament, the opposition had endeavoured to force a reduction of the army: in the French Chamber of Deputies, the opposition to the army and navy estimates was, that they were too low. Ministers were accused of acting so as to reduce France to the rank of only a third-rate naval power, and of adopting a false and pernicious economy. General Sebastiani reproached them more especially with having paid no attention to the construction of steamboats, which were rapidly bringing about a maritime revolution; and he assured the chamber that all Tthe money now expended in building ships of war was wasted, for the vessels would be useless when

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your bridges, your public edifices, and that immortal column raised to the glory of your armies." The minister of war admitted that the present military means were insufficient; but they might be expected to improve annually, and could not be insufficient merely from being 9,000 men below the fixed peace establishment. As to the fortresses, Lisle had been neglected during the whole period from 1794 to the restoration, but, since the restoration, 1,500,000 francs had been expended on it. Although the finances were flourishing, and only required a pacific ministry to keep them so, the variations in the prices of some of the public funds had produced a great deal of individual misfortune and disappointment. They had been most observable in the three per cent stock, which, within a short time, had been up at 78, and down at 59, and had fallen in the confidence of that portion of the public who invested their money as prudent men for security, not as gamblers for stock-jobbing gains. Ministers were accused of lending themselves to produce these fluctuations by shewing an undue preference to the three per cents in applying the sinking fund, and M. Casimir Perrier moved for the appointment of a committee to inquire, whether the laws respecting the sinking fund had not been violated with regard to the holders of the five per cents. He contended that the purchases made with that fund ought to be made exclusively in the five per cents; and he complained that, in violation of the law, the commissioners gave a preference to the three per cents which he designated, with as much warmth and virulence as if he had speculated in them, and had come off a loser,

a wretched abortion, sprung from the immoral union of stock-jobbing and delusion. On the other side it was contended, that the preference given to the three per cents was no injustice to the holders of the five per cents, as the law did not specify any particular stock to be the subject of the operations of the sinking fund, but left the commissioners at liberty to make their purchases wherever they could make them to the best advantage. The motion for the committee was lost by a large majority. A similar display of virtuous indignation against stock-jobbing was manifested by M. Hyde de Neuville and M. Perrier, on a petition for the prohibition of time bargains. M. Villèle checked the career of the latter gentleman by qucting a paper to which M. Perrier had affixed his signature in favour of those very concerns which were now denounced as polluting and corrupting what was termed France morale. When lotteries were abolished in England, not a voice was raised in defence of their principle, and the practical evil of their re sults was monstrously exaggerated. The stake in this country w always too high to create a spirit of gambling in those who would have been injured by indulging it the lottery was beyond the reach of the lower ranks; and, even in the middling classes, it was never a general or a ruinous passion. In France, as in the other continental countries, and particularly in Italy, it was much more easily accessible, and therefore much more general; but the morality of the Chambers could not be brought to suppress it. M. Villèle admitted that such gam ing was improper, and that gover ment, in the game, had a great alvantage over the buyers of tickets,

the combinations being such as to make it inevitable that the majority of the players must be losers; but he asserted that it had been less injurious during the last year than at any former period, and added that "it was in the year 1825, that the riches and prosperity of the country had reached their greatest height." The fact is, that the lottery was too productive a source of revenue to be dispensed with; and the passions of the Exchange, and the Palais Royal, were too powerful for la France morale.

"3. The average price of all the regulating markets designated by the law of the 4th July, 1821, shall be officially published every month, without distinction of the above four classes.

Among the politicians of France there existed the same difference of opinion regarding the value of protecting and prohibitory duties on the importation of foreign products, which reigned in Britain; and the agriculturists of Essex or Sussex were scarcely more eager to be shielded by legislative enactments than were those of France. The distressed state of agriculture was frequently alluded to during the session; and, after the budget had been voted, the chamber of Deputies took the state of the Cornlaws into consideration, in secret committee. A committee which had been appointed to inquire into the effect of the importation of foreign corn presented a report, in which they expressed a formal wish that the government would make use of the power vested in it by the existing law of 1819, immediately to secure a more extended protection to native-grown corn against importation from abroad. The committee then proposed the following resolutions, embodying a plan for the future regulation of the corn trade, adopting the system of monthly averages, fixing a price at which importation should be altogether prohibited, and imposing, when corn should have risen above

"4. There shall be received, upon the importation of foreign corn, a permanent duty, by metrical quintal, of twenty-five centimes by French ships, and of two francs by foreign ships. This duty shall be raised to fifty cents for flour in the first case, and to four francs in the second case.

5. The exportation shall be prohibited when the average price of corn shall have attained the limit fixed for the importation."

In discussing the law imposing the duties of the customs, many opinions were expressed, and many propositions made, approaching to a more liberal system of commercial intercourse, and others again of a very opposite character. The high duties on wood, iron, and foreign

wool, were severely attacked, as checking the exchange of commodities, and provoking other countries to make reprisals. An unsuccessful attempt was made to reduce the duty on iron one half. The restrictive measures, which prevented the exportation of wines into Belgium and other northern countries, and by laying on articles to be imported in return a duty which excluded them altogether, were particularly inveighed against; and M. Riboul said, that if this prohibitory system were persevered in, the inhabitants of some departments would soon be obliged to renounce every kind of exchange, and consume the whole of their own produce. On the other hand it was wished to augment the duty on foreign linens; and an amendment was moved containing an impost which would have been equivalent to a prohibition, but the more moderate views of the minister of finance prevailed. He maintained, in point of fact, that the French linens required no protection, because even in foreign markets they were preferred to those of every other nation; and several members, allowed that the cotton manufacture stood much more in need of being guarded against competition.

In her commercial regulations, likewise, France followed the example of Britain, in departing from the jealous system of discriminating duties, and trading upon principles of reciprocity. In the month of January a commercial treaty was concluded between her government and that of England, by which the vessels of both countries were put upon the same footing. The ships of either country, departing from or entering into, the harbours of the other, were to pay no higher rate of tonnage, pilotage, light

house dues, and other similar exactions, than should be paid by vessels belonging to that other country itself. Goods imported into Britain in French vessels, or into France in British vessels, were to pay the same duties as if they had been imported in vessels of the country to which they were brought, with this exception, that the produce of Africa, Asia, and America, should not be imported from these countries into Britain in French ships, nor from France in British ships, for the purpose of home consumption in Britain, but only to be warehoused, or exported; France reserving a power to make a similar declaration. European productions, again, were not to be imported into France in British bottoms for home consumption, unless they had been loaded in some port of the United Kingdom, Britain reserving the right to make a similar declaration against the importation of such goods in French vessels. It was further declared, that all goods which might be legally exported from either coun try, should pay the same duties, and be entitled to the same drawbacks and bounties, on exportation, whe ther exported in the vessels of that country or of the other; provided that they sailed directly from the ports of the one to the ports of the other; that no fishing boat, driven into a port by stress of weather, should pay any dues, unless a cargo, or part of a cargo, was there taken on board; and that neither country should grant to any third party greater privileges than by this treaty they granted to each other.

The principles and provisions of this treaty were received with much approbation by the Chamber of Deputies, where they seemed,

the law of primogeniture agitated Paris much more deeply than any other measure of policy foreign or domestic. No question raised since the Resolution had excited so much popular and adverse feeling; the re-establishment of the censorship would not have been resisted with a clamour and ardour so nearly approaching to what might have been expected in defending at once a personal possession and a national right. The elevation of an eldest son above his brethren seemed to be connected, in the minds of the Parisian public, with the horrors of the darkest times of feudalism, and the insulting tyranny of an exclusive oligarchy; politics and economics were equally unable to convince them that those who are born to have power ought to be able to exercise it in a spirit of independence, and that it is no advantage to a nation that every man should be his own farmer. The journalists and the pamphleteers both raised and repeated the voice of Paris-and Paris is France

however, to be so much misunderstood, that although they were undoubtedly a relaxation of the ancient system of British maritime policy, and had many and powerful enemies in this country as being injurious to its commercial prosperity and its naval power, M. de St. Chemans hailed them "as a first step towards a Navigation act similar to that which had so powerfully favoured the development of the commercial riches of England." They were a first step towards the adoption of principles of reciprocal freedom in commercial intercourse; the Navigation acts were founded upon principles of exclusion and restriction. M. Casimir Perrier wished to improve upon the measure, by imposing upon French vessels coming from Britain into French ports, a duty not exceeding that imposed upon foreign vessels; for by paying less in England, and more in France, than they had done before, the owners would still be gainers, and a large sum would flow into the Treasury. "Suppose, said he, "to take round numbers, that before the treaty our ships paid 3000 francs in England, and nothing on their return to France; a thousand ships, then, paid three million francs in England, and nothing at home. By the treaty, the English have reduced their duty, I will suppose, to 1000 francs, and the French government lays a duty on our own vessels to the same amount. The thousand ships, then, will pay only two millions instead of three, one million to England, and one million to our selves. The owners will gain a million; and our Treasury will receive a million which it did not receive previous to the treaty." The proposed introduction of

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that primogeniture was not merely a violation of the charter, which said not a word upon the matter, but the invasion of the ordinary rights of humanity; and an attempt to resume the national domains would scarcely have come more home to every man's supposed interest, or have covered the ministers with more unpopularity. The opposition to it, out of the cabinet, was nearly universal: for it was far from finding unconditional favour in the eyes even of the peerage, whose influence and respectability it was intended to support.

The language, in which the measure had been mentioned in the Speech from the Throne, was moderate aud sensible, and had