Page:ONCE A WEEK JUL TO DEC 1860.pdf/650

 642 of Canada, as to the treasury of the Hapsburgs, if the advances are to be expended upon gunpowder. By recent accounts, too, French finance is not in a very flourishing condition; and it would be strange if it were so, considering the monetary scale upon which the enterprises of the Emperor have been conducted. Europe has never yet seen the true French bill for the Russian war. The expenditure both of actual wealth, and of male adults in the prime of their strength (who are wealth in another form), must have been enormous.

That Italian campaign, too, must have cost the French tax-payers a good round sum; for Savoy and Nice, although a tangible return for the expenditure, have not as yet brought back any grist to the Imperial mill. Take the French expenditure upon the arsenals—upon the new ships of war—upon the rifled cannon—and other matters of military preparation, and the sum total, if fairly laid before the French nation, would give them serious thoughts for the future. Greater, however, even than this expenditure upon war, and preparations for it, must have been the sums spent upon the civil management of the country in various forms. How much improper expenditure must have been tolerated in order to maintain the zeal of partizans at a proper point of fervour! How many bubble schemes must have been winked at, if not actually encouraged, as they certainly have been by the machinery of the Credit Mobilier, and by direct concessions from the Government! The capital sum which would represent the extent to which the partizans of the Emperor have profited by the institution of the Empire must be very considerable. At the present moment we find that the subject of Finance—as well it may—is occupying the serious attention of the Emperor.

Money is scarce in France, but in the first days of the Bank of France had still obstinately refused to have recourse to the natural remedy which we in England know to be a regulation of the public discounts on conditions which may be in harmony with the actual commercial position of the country. To do this would be to confess that France has of late been outspending herself—that there has been over-speculation, and injudicious speculation, and that the time had arrived when the nation must pause awhile, and allow the restorative action of accumulation to repair the breaches made in the national prosperity. The Emperor as yet has preferred the false system—speaking in a commercial sense—of borrowing money in order to maintain the profuse expenditure, and to encourage the speculation which must have been injudicious, or France would now be a lender, and not a borrower. It is clear that the Emperor has taken the matter directly in hand himself, and is interfering in the very details of the difficulty. A large portion of the stock of specie in the French Bank is silver. Silver is a commodity just like tea, or tobacco, which is always purchasable at its fair value in the markets of the world. The means of the Bank Directors are crippled—here they have in hand a stock of silver with which they might tide over their present difficulties, but Louis Napoleon would not for a time permit them to part with a single bar.

It is to be regretted that we have not before us a true balance-sheet of the French Empire. The figures presented from time to time by the Government to the pseudo-representatives of the nation are of course fallacious. If our own share n the Crimean war cost us 100,000,000l., what was the amount of the French bill? for the Emperor went into the business far more heavily than we did. Was the cost of the Italian campaign much lea! What is the figure which would represent the French share in the China business? What is the total real addition to the National Debt of France since Louis Napoleon took the French government is hand? Something appalling, if the statements are fairly made.

At the same time the position of the French Emperor is different indeed from that of his Austrian brother. If Louis Napoleon is minded to go to war next spring, he will find plenty of capitalists to advance him the money upon reasonable terms, even if the opening of public loans in France be not responded to in as speedy and satisfactory a way as heretofore. It is most probable that he will not go to war if he can help it, because the seat of hostilities would again be the Italian Peninsula, and in the present temper of the European cabinets any serious attempts at territorial aggrandisement in this direction upon the part of France would no doubt give rise to an opposition which even a man of so firm a mind as the French Emperor had rather not encounter. Now, he cannot afford to go to war again unless at the close of the campaign he is prepared to show the French nation that he has gained for them an equivalent for the expenditure of blood and money which must certainly be incurred. The phrase of going to war “for an idea” may sound vastly well in the columns of a French journal, but it conveys cold comfort to the humble peasant family in Languedoc, who have been called upon to sacrifice poor Jean-Marie, or Pierre, in obedience to this magnanimous impulse. Still less does it carry consolation to the French tax-payer, whose liabilities to the treasury are every year heavier, and still heavier—for your French tax-payer is proverbially a hard-fisted man.

The ignorant impatience of the people under taxation is still greater in France than in England; and even here people are grumbling loudly enough about our temporary income tax, which next session will very probably be screwed up to a shilling in the pound. Still we must not be blind to the fact that Louis Napoleon may be forced into a war against his will. A rash and inconsiderate movement at Vienna might force him once more to despatch the armies of France into Italy. He could not stand by quietly, and see those results to which the blood of the French nation has so largely contributed actually neutralized. This would be to confess failure—and failure is a word which must be blotted out of the Imperial Dictionary, or it will be found to have a terrible synonym. The peace of Europe next spring actually depends upon the action of the Austrian Court,—and who will be bold enough to do more than hazard a conjecture as to what this action will be? What the calculations of prudence would be we can tell; but who can foretell, with