uger, its Sully, its de Choiseul, or its Colbert to
direct even vast administrative departments. Besides, constitutionally
speaking, three ministries will agree better than seven; and, in the
restricted number there is less chance for mistaken choice; moreover,
it might be that the kingdom would some day escape from those perpetual
ministerial oscillations which interfered with all plans of foreign
policy and prevented all ameliorations of home rule. In Austria, where
many diverse united nations present so many conflicting interests to
be conciliated and carried forward under one crown, two statesmen alone
bear the burden of public affairs and are not overwhelmed by it. Was
France less prolific of political capacities than Germany? The rather
silly game of what are called "constitutional institutions" carried
beyond bounds has ended, as everybody knows, in requiring a great many
offices to satisfy the multifarious ambition of the middle classes. It
seemed to Rabourdin, in the first place, natural to unite the ministry
of war with the ministry of the navy. To his thinking the navy was
one of the current expenses of the war department, like the artillery,
cavalry, infantry, and commissariat. Surely it was an absurdity to
give separate administrations to admirals and marshals when both were
employed to one end, namely, the defense of the nation, the overthrow of
an enemy, and the security of the national possessions. The ministry
of the interior ought in like manner to combine the departments of
commerce, police, and finances, or it belied its own name. To the
ministry of foreign affairs belonged the administration of justice, the
household of the king, and all that concerned arts, sciences, and belles
lettres. All patronage ought to flow directly from the sovereign. Such
ministries necessitated the supremacy of a council. Each required
the work of two hundred officials, and no more, in its central
administration offices, where Rabourdin proposed that they should live,
as in former days under the monarchy. Taking the sum of twelve thousand
francs a year for each official as an average, he estimated seven
millions as the cost of the whole body of such officials, which actually
stood at twenty in the budget.

By thus reducing the ministers to three heads he suppressed departments
which had come to be useless, together with the enormous costs of their
maintenance in Paris. He proved that an arrondissement could be managed
by