to their seat at the National Council Board, not even the right of prescription; they are,—to put it mildly,—intruders, and they know full well that they will have to slink away without any notice to quit at some near date. Since they must make the best of their short tenure of office, they live on courting their careless supporters, namely, the ignorant and heedless majority of the human family, the grossly cheated victims of the universal franchise, who are, knowing not the meaning of self-restraint, ever ready to give up their citizenship and sell their vote in exchange for liberitismand material gratifications. Yes; from the universal franchise, to-day, shamefully hawked about electoral booths, spring the evils of contemporary France. Thanks to the sentimental policy in the past of narrow-minded and obstinate Conservatives, together with the to-day unchecked audacity of the Demagogy, the French Monarchy has in turn been, since February 22, 1848, the prey to designing adventurers or unscrupulous upstarts, a fair average of them belonging to the groups of the Free-thought International Community. French Free-thinkers! Beings whose efforts are not only to expel all ideas of religion and patriotism from their own schools, but will venture further afield and insult the feelings of people of a different opinion. Beings towards whose unmanly teaching, unreasonable writings, and clamorous meetings Democratic Cabinets are known ever to maintain a too "prudent" reserve, and in fact make common cause with them sometimes. Such is the case indeed with MM. Léon Gambetta (whom the enjoyment of power for some months seems to have left more moderate, and apparently less "anti-clerical"), Jules Ferry, and Paul Bert, with their pack of rabid or disappointed political "fruits secs" like Rochefort and Victor Hugo. Englishmen of thought and taste, earnest reformers and philanthropists, agree that the least said of such political allies the better. Since every man's ambition is to be something when short of being somebody, the fanatical—when not abusive—Rochefort elected to be the mouthpiece of street mobs and the leader of the French "racaille," of social anarchists, bandits, incendiaries, and assassins. His head-quarters are in Paris, but are not the foreign branches,—those in England too,—branches of the same scampish school, whether they be French, German, or
