ions taken together
mount up to 119-4/10 centimes.

[5] 'Privileges' were, in fact, abolished only by Napoleon in 1804.

I have no wish to weary myself or my readers with figures. But these
figures tell the story of the difference between the government of
France under the much reviled Empire and under the present government,
which is represented to us as the natural and admirable 'evolution' of
republican institutions in this country. In 1870, as I have stated, the
receipts and expenditure of the city of Amiens balanced one another. The
city paid its way, and lived up to, not beyond, its means.

With the war came upon it, of course, heavy and unexpected burdens:
German local exactions, its share of the general German ransom of
France, local war expenses, and its share of the general war
expenditure. For three years the citizens left their affairs, thus
disturbed and encumbered, to be managed by a municipal council trained
in the methodical habits of the imperial administration, with the result
that in 1874 the expenses of Amiens amounted to 2,479,802 francs, and
its revenues to 2,016,130 francs, leaving thus a deficit of 463,672
francs, substantially accounted for by the necessary payments on a loan
of 5,000,000 francs negotiated in Brussels by M. Dauphin at the very
high rate of 7-1/2 per cent. The affairs of Amiens were arranged three
years afterwards by a municipal Commission, which turned them over, in
1878, to the 'Republicans of Gambetta,' with a budget involving an
expenditure of 2,686,660 francs, against a revenue from taxation of
2,249,245 fr. 52 c., showing a reduced deficit of no more than 437,405
francs.

By 1880 the expenditure had risen to 3,156,616 francs, while the revenue
stood at 2,531,762, showing a deficit of 624,854 francs, being an
increase of nearly fifty per cent, in two years! From that time the gulf
has gone on widening between the receipts and the expenditure of the
ancient capital of Picardy, until the figures laid before me, as taken
from the official reports, show during the seven years 1880-86, a total
of 18,530,477.01 francs of receipts against a total of 24,551,977 francs
of expenditure, leaving a deficit for these seven years of 5,021,500
francs, or more than the amount of the Dauphin loan incurred by Amiens
as a consequence of the German occupation, and of the exactions of Count
Lehndorff!

What has been done during the past three years can only as yet be
conjectured. The ac