erybody longs to
have money without working for it; you may hedge the desire about with
restrictions, but the gambling mania immediately breaks out in another
form. You stupidly suppress lotteries, but the cook-maid pilfers none
the less, and puts her ill-gotten gains in the savings bank. She
gambles with two hundred and fifty franc stakes instead of forty sous;
joint-stock companies and speculation take the place of the lottery;
the gambling goes on without the green cloth, the croupier's rake is
invisible, the cheating planned beforehand. The gambling houses are
closed, the lottery has come to an end; 'and now,' cry idiots, 'morals
have greatly improved in France,' as if, forsooth, they had suppressed
the punters. The gambling still goes on, only the State makes nothing
from it now; and for a tax paid with pleasure, it has substituted a
burdensome duty. Nor is the number of suicides reduced, for the gambler
never dies, though his victim does."

"I am not speaking now of foreign capital lost to France," continued
Couture, "nor of the Frankfort lotteries. The Convention passed a
decree of death against those who hawked foreign lottery-tickets, and
procureur-syndics used to traffic in them. So much for the sense of our
legislator and his driveling philanthropy. The encouragement given to
savings banks is a piece of crass political folly. Suppose that things
take a doubtful turn and people lose confidence, the Government will
find that they have instituted a queue for money, like the queues
outside the bakers' shops. So many savings banks, so many riots.
Three street boys hoist a flag in some corner or other, and you have a
revolution ready made.

"But this danger, however great it may be, seems to me less to be
dreaded than the widespread demoralization. Savings banks are a means of
inoculating the people, the classes least restrained by education or by
reason from schemes that are tacitly criminal, with the vices bred of
self-interest. See what comes of philanthropy!

"A great politician ought to be without a conscience in abstract
questions, or he is a bad steersman for a nation. An honest politician
is a steam-engine with feelings, a pilot that would make love at the
helm and let the ship go down. A prime minister who helps himself to
millions but makes France prosperous and great is preferable, is he not,
to a public servant who ruins his country, even though he is buried at
the public expense? Would you hesitate