programme of Boulangism as 'a programme of
liberty.' 'I mean,' he said, 'real liberty, such as exists in America,
not our Liberalism, which is spurious and archaic. Our actual
republicans of to-day are Jacobins, sectarians. Their only notion is to
persecute and proscribe, and they are infinitely further from liberty
than you royalists are, for you have at your head a prince who has a
thoroughly open mind. The form of government, after all, signifies
little. The real question is not whether we shall have a monarchy or an
empire, an autocracy or a democracy. It is whether we shall have
liberty.'[3]

[3] M. Turquet ran in September in the first arrondissement of the
Seine against M. Yves Guyot, and there was no election. At the
election in October the Government proclaimed M. Yves Guyot elected
by a small majority.

'I answered him,' said M. Fleury, 'that what he said was very fine, and
that the friend of Fourier, Victor Considerant, had said it before him.
What I wanted to know, however, was, what the Boulangists proposed to do
with the Catholics, the believers, in France should the General get into
power.'

'We shall begin,' said M. Turquet, 'by suppressing the budget of
worship. We shall do this to satisfy the blockheads who are a noun of
multitude.

'But we shall restore, in another shape, to the clergy the indemnity
which is certainly due to them. We shall give the bishoprics either a
fixed sum, or a revenue proportional to the population of each
bishopric, so that the people may receive gratuitously the offices of
religion. This is a public service, and it shall be remunerated as it
ought to be. As to the Religious Orders, they shall have full liberty to
constitute themselves, to educate children, to care for the sick and
infirm, so long as they keep within the limits of the common law. All
property in mortmain shall be suppressed. A community of teachers, for
instance, may own the college necessary for the students, but not a
forest adjoining that college.'

To M. Fleury's natural question how the college should be maintained, M.
Turquet replied, 'You know as well as I do, that wealth no longer
consists in real estate alone. You can now carry in your pocket a
fortune in bonds payable to the bearer. The Religious Orders may own
these, like other people. A dozen of us in the Chamber hold these views.
You seem to think us Utopianists. But General Boulanger will make it
possible for us to apply t