V These expenses were still more unpopular, and still more warmly was the final adjustment of them opposed in the Chamber of Deputies, because almost a certainty had been obtained, that great part of the money had been grossly misapplied by the frauds of the army-contractor, Ouvrard, and the peculations even of the generals who commanded the army sent into Spain; and it was maintained that no money ought to be yoted for the service of that year, until these charges had been investigated, and all the transactions connected with the supplying of that army fully explained, M. Casimir Perrier said, it was evident that a dilapidation of the public property had been committed either by the superior authorities, or by their agents; and he moved as an amendment, "that ministers shall present, in the next session, the accounts of their operations relative to the war in Spain, and propose the definitive settlement of the expenses of that war." The argument of the ministers was, that, in submitting to the Chamber the documents already laid before it respecting the expenses of sending the army into Spain, they had done all that the law required of them; that the expenses of the occupation were diminishing, and no new credit required for them; and that the effect of the amend ment would be, to postpone indefinitely the final adjustment of the accounts in question, and excite new discussion regarding mat ters on which the Chamber had already decided. After a stormy debate, continued during two sit tings, the amendment was rejected, and the investigation and punish ment of the alleged guilt were left to another tribunal. ) Chamber of Peers now took up the case, as the alleged frauds of Ouvrard affected its character by implicating some of its members as accomplices. Some doubts were entertained of the power of the Chamber to proceed in such an investigation; because no peer had been distinctly named or accused, and because there was no charge of high treason to constitute a jurisdiction in the peers. But, although there was no impeachment, nor any complaint regularly made, it was no secret that the public voice loudly accused the highest officers in the army of having been participators in the contractor's schemes of peculation, and the name of the Dauphin himself, who had commanded the army, was not spared. Count Bourdesolle and general Guillemi not were specially pointed out as culprits, and the latter was returning, or had been recalled, from his embassy at Constantinople, to meet the charges against him. The Chamber appointed a committee to inquire and report whether they could competently proceed; and, in the mean time, Ouvrard was kept prisoner in St. Pelagie, which had formerly been his residence, under the sway of Napoleon, for pecuniary debits of a similar description. The charges against him were, that he supplied the army sent tinto Spain with articles in much smaller quantity, and greatly inferior in quality, to those specified in his contracts; that the prices fixed by those contracts were exorbitant; and that he had been able to affect this spoliation by bribing his superiors with part of the plunder. It was only with this bribery and corruption that the peers had any concern, as The affecting the purity of their own body; for the quantity, quality, and prices, of the articles supplied were mere matters of contract, and, even if the prices were exorbitant, that could only prove the rapacity of the contractor, and the ignorance or carelessness of the minister of war, in concluding the bargain. On receiving the report of their committee, they thought enough had been discovered to justify inquiry, and, by a large majority, a committee, consisting of the marquis de Pastoret, count Portalis, count Julien, and general count Beliard, was appointed to institute a supplementary investigation. The committee continued their inquiries till seul, in one of his speeches characterized the proceedings in this matter as a judicial jubilee. In the budget for the year 1827, the expenditure was estimated at 915,773,042 francs, and the ways and means were expected to produce, taking as the basis of the calculation the income for 1825, 916,608,734 francs, leaving a disposable excess of 835,692 francs. The expenditure of 1824 had been originally estimated at 990,119,582 francs, and had actually amounted to nearly two millions and a half more; but the revenue for the same year, estimated at 992,333,953 francs, had exceeded that sum by examininge middle of July, more than two millions and a half. a multitude of witnesses and documents, when they presented a report, concluding, that there were no grounds for proceed ing against counts Guilleminot and Bourdesolle, the two peers who, at first, had seemed to be implicated. The Chamber adopted the report; and, as there was thus no ground of accusation against any of its own members, declared itself to be incompetent. All the weight of the ministry employed to The revenue required a to meet the expenses of the present year was greater than that required for 1821, by 35,371,340 francs. This had arisen partly from an addition which had been made, since the latter year, to the permanent debt, partly from naval expenses to complete the operations of that department in the colonies, which would not be incurred again, and partly from remittances allowed from the revenue of the post bring about this ason of an office, and other branches of reve affair which threatened ultimately to involve themselves; for, although money had undoubtedly been lost to the nation by an improvident bargain, Ouvrard would have lit tle difficulty in allowing that he had taken for his goods the highest price he could obtain: and the negligence or incapacity of those who had contracted with him on the part of the public, would not have added to their popularity. Alluding to the religious jubilee which had just been celebrated over the Ca tholic world, and the te universal ab solution of sins which was its greatest benefit, the duke de Choi nue. On the other hand, the ordinary sources of revenue had, during the same period, been increasing. In 1821, they yielded 891,614,678 francs; while the gross produce for the present year would be 916,608,734 francs. The report of the committee of the Chamber of Peers on the budget, was "By the attentive examination which we have made of the expenditure, we have seen, that, if there are several heads under which a reduction may be justly hoped in future, and some which might receive a more useful application, they are collectively useful and judicious." In the Chamber of Deputies great diversity of opinion prevailed regarding the purpose to which the excess of revenue over the expenditure should be applied. Some members proposed that the duty on strong beer, others that the duty on cider, should be reduced, and others that, in the rural communes, houses of only one story, and the rent of which did not exceed fifty francs, should be exempted from the door and window tax. All these propositions were rejected in favour of the motion of the minister of finance to employ the surplus in reducing the land-tax. Twenty-five millions were voted for the civil list, and seven millions for the Royal family. On the vote for the expenses of the minister of justice being proposed, M. de Labourdonnaye accused that department of protecting and rewarding criminals, and declared that he would never consent to vote the public money to a minis ter "in whose hand the sword of justice was wielded for the protection of assassination." This charge excited much confusion in the Chamber, till the member explained himself by saying, that he had documents in his possession which proved, that, in Corsica, several assassins, under sentence of death, and others against whom proceedings were commenced, had been set at liberty by the order of the minister of justice, with an injunction to pass into a foreign country. The minister admitted the fact, and justified it on the ground that from the effervescent nature of Corsican passions, it was impossible to maintain absolute order in the island, and it was necessary to countenance the expatriation of some persons condemned for homieide committed from revenge. But surely it is a new doctrine both in polities and morals, that in proportion to the aptitude of dangerous passions to break forth, the means intended to weaken them should be diminished, and that punishments ought to be more mild and rare, precisely where crimes are most frequent and atrocious. The Papal government has sometimes bribed bandits from their calling by pensioning them off; and they have thus, at least, one motive to good conduct, and the means of living without rapine; but it is very doubtful whether even such a system has ever prevented a robbery or a murder. Relegation from Corsica can scarcely be an evil, and supplies no motive for controlling the angry passions whose indulgence have produced it. ་་ To improve and maintain the internal communications of the country, 422,000 francs were voted, in addition to 28,000 francs for new works, and certainly, considering that thus only about 17,000%. were to be expended upon all the roads in France, it is easy to believe in the justice of the complaints, made by some of the members, of the state in which the roads were kept. The annual expenditure, however, upon canals, and other public works, had been gradually increasing 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. 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 the money now expended in building ships of war was wasted, for the vessels would be useless when 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. "Re 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 vic tors in their caps, guarding your barriers, and parading your squares! Do you wish to see the matches again lighted, ready to blow up 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 misforand a wretched abortion, sprung from the immoral union of stock-jobbing and delusion. On the other side it was contended, that the preferende 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. Hydende Neuville and M. Perrier, on a petition for the prohibition of time bargains. M. Villèle checked the career of tune disappointment. They the latter gentleman by quoting a lad most observable in the paper to which M. Perrier had affixed his signature in favour of those very concerns which were now denounced as 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 results was monstrously exaggerated. The stake in this country was always too high to create a spirit of gambling in those who would 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 Ithemselves to produce these fluctuations by shewing an undue prefervence to the three per cents in applying the sinking fund, and M. Casimir Perrier moved for the ap-have been injured by indulging it: pointment of abcommittee to in- the lottery was beyond the reach quire, whether the laws respecting of the lower ranks; and, even in othel sinking fund had not been the middling classes, it was never violated with regard to the holders a general or a ruinous passion. In of the five per cents. He contended France, as in the other continental that the purchases made with that countries, and particularly in Italy, fund ought to be made exclusively it was much more easily accessible, in the five per cents; and he com- and therefore much more general; plained that, in violation of the but the morality of the Chambers law, the commissioners gave a pre-could not be brought to suppress it. Inference to the three per cents which M, Villèle admitted that such gams he designated, with as much warmthing was improper, and that governand virulence as if he had speculatedment, in the game, had a great adin them, and had come off a loser, vantage over the buyers of tickets, 0 |