counts are made up at the mayoralty office, and
thence sent to the prefecture, and they do not get within range of the
taxpayer for at least a twelvemonth afterwards.

But M. Fleury assures me that between the years 1884 and 1888 the city
expended in buildings, chiefly 'scholastic palaces' erected as batteries
of aggressive atheism from which to beat down the temples of religion,
no less than 1,700,000 francs; so that the total of deficit of the
budget of Amiens, from 1880 to the present time, in all probability
exceeds six millions of francs.

If we assume the local finances of the rest of France to have been
handled during the last decade on the same lines, there is nothing
extravagant in the estimate made by a friend of mine, who formerly held
a very high post in the Treasury, and who puts the accumulation of local
deficits and the local indebtedness in France, independently of the
national deficits and the national loans, since 1880, at two milliards
of francs, or eighty millions of pounds sterling. For, although
Amiens is an important city, it represents only about one
four-hundred-and-fiftieth part of the population of France.

While I was at Amiens in June M. Goblet came there and made a rather
remarkable speech. It was in the main aimed at a society called the
'Association of the Conservative Young Men of Amiens,' all of whom, I am
told, except the president, are young working men--mechanics, clerks, or
the sons of clerks, mechanics, and working men--in short, a kind of
French 'Tory democracy.' They are not Boulangists at all, but outspoken
royalists. They support Boulanger simply and avowedly in order to get at
a revision of the Constitution and make an end of the Republic. 'This
association,' said M. Goblet, 'is making a tremendous stir. I admit its
right to do this. It holds meetings and conferences; it listens to
speeches in the city and the suburbs; it attacks both democracy and the
Republic in no measured terms; it does not hesitate to denounce its
enemies personally and by name, and neglects no means of acting on
public opinion. These conservative young men speak and act
energetically. They believe in the re-establishment of the monarchy;
they desire it; they preach a reaction against all that we have done for
twenty years past!'

There could hardly be a more signal proof given of the reality and
vitality of the anti-Republican movement in this part of France than
these words of a Republican leader wh