ustry, finding raw
material at a low price, could compete with foreign nations without the
deceptive help of customs. The rich carried on the administration of the
provinces without compensation except that of receiving a peerage under
certain conditions. Magistrates, learned bodies, officers of the lower
grades found their services honorably rewarded; no man employed by the
government failed to obtain great consideration through the value and
extent of his labors and the excellence of his salary; every one was
able to provide for his own future and France was delivered from the
cancer of pensions. As a result Rabourdin's scheme exhibited only
seven hundred millions of expenditures and twelve hundred millions of
receipts. A saving of five hundred millions annually had far more virtue
than the accumulation of a sinking fund whose dangers were plainly to
be seen. In that fund the State, according to Rabourdin, became
a stockholder, just as it persisted in being a land-holder and a
manufacturer. To bring about these reforms without too roughly jarring
the existing state of things or incurring a Saint-Bartholomew of
clerks, Rabourdin considered that an evolution of twenty years would be
required.

Such were the thoughts maturing in Rabourdin's mind ever since his
promised place had been given to Monsieur de la Billardiere, a man of
sheer incapacity. This plan, so vast apparently yet so simple in point
of fact, which did away with so many large staffs and so many little
offices all equally useless, required for its presentation to the public
mind close calculations, precise statistics, and self-evident proof.
Rabourdin had long studied the budget under its double-aspect of ways
and means and of expenditure. Many a night he had lain awake unknown to
his wife. But so far he had only dared to conceive the plan and fit it
prospectively to the administrative skeleton; all of which counted for
nothing,--he must gain the ear of a minister capable of appreciating
his ideas. Rabourdin's success depended on the tranquil condition of
political affairs, which up to this time were still unsettled. He had
not considered the government as permanently secure until three
hundred deputies at least had the courage to form a compact majority
systematically ministerial. An administration founded on that basis had
come into power since Rabourdin had finished his elaborate plan. At this
time the luxury of peace under the Bourbons had eclipsed the