XII.
CONCLUSION.
Now as to a practical conclusion to what we have said. Some incurable and radical blindness must have come over the French to prevent their seeing that in this their Third Republic, as in the first two, everything is steadily deteriorating from bad to worse. France in a state of Republicanism seems never to be able to' avoid those crises when everything threatens to fall to pieces in the fury of social war, as Greek civilization fell in the convulsions of Athenian demagogy, and Roman civilization in the corruption of the Later Empire.
While Victor Hugo's drama, "Le Roi s'amuse" (a gross and scandalous libel on the character of Francis I. and, in his person, on the principle of Monarchy), is for the moment turning Frenchmen's interest from home and foreign politics to the theatre— that institution so dear to every Frenchman— the question of the Budget and the lamentable deficit it reveals has called out able and alarming articles from the pen of MM. Leroy-Beaulieu and Leon Say. The force of public opinion sides with the Opposition at present on the subject so strongly, that the numerous caricatures representing the Ministers all feeling their pockets for the "missing hundred millions," and accusing each other of having made away with them, are allowed to stand in the shop windows, where they draw crowds of spectators, without the police wanting to interfere.
Whatever the causes of the deficit in the Budget for 1881 may be, the fact remains that it exists, and that it has to be dealt with. The Report for the past year shows that France imported one thousand one hundred millions of francs more than she exported. The commercial situation is consequently on a par with the financial one. The commercial decadence is attributable by many to the Treaty of 1860; and the Republic is made for not
