ariff policy. This resulted in several tariff disputes and
engendered bad feeling with various countries, including Italy.

The desperate attack of the Royalists, engineered mainly against the
Republic in the Panama scandals, helped to bring the Pope and the State
still closer together, so that at certain times the Rallies or
Republican Catholics and the Royalists fought each other violently. The
Panama scandal was planned in view of the elections of 1893. During the
decade following 1880 Ferdinand de Lesseps, the successful builder of
the Suez Canal, had organized and tried to finance a company to
construct a canal at Panama. The prestige of Lesseps's name and the
memory of his previous achievement made countless Frenchmen invest huge
sums in the company. But the expenses were enormous and the financial
maladministration apparently extraordinary, for the directors of the
company were led into illegal steps in order to influence legislation,
or pay hush money to the press to hide the condition of affairs, and
then were blackmailed into further outlays. The company failed in 1888,
and efforts to put it on its feet proved abortive. Hints of the scandals
leaked out, and the Government played into the hands of its opponents by
trying to conceal matters.

In November, 1892, some Royalist members of the Chamber brought matters
to a head and the Government was obliged to do something. It was decided
to proceed against Ferdinand de Lesseps, his son Charles de Lesseps,
Henri Cottu, Marius Fontane, members of the board of directors, and G.
Eiffel, an engineer and contractor and the builder of the famous Eiffel
Tower. At this juncture a well-known Jewish banker of Paris, Baron
Jacques de Reinach, died suddenly and most mysteriously on November 20.
He was openly charged with being the bribery agent of the company, and
his sudden death was by some called suicide, while others hinted that he
had been put out of the way because of his dangerous knowledge.

Under these exciting conditions a Boulangist Deputy named Delahaye made
an interpellation in the Chamber hinting at the campaign of corruption
carried on by the company through the agency of Reinach and two other
Jews of German origin, Arton and Cornelius Herz, the latter a
naturalized American citizen. By this campaign it was charged that three
million francs had been used to corrupt more than a hundred and fifty
Deputies, and much more had been spent in other ways.

A commissio