the
Treasury had received and spent 35,892,849 francs from sales of this
property. It had also received and spent, from the sale of timber cut in
the forests belonging to the property, 18,601,019 francs. Putting this
large sum aside, it is obvious that in the shape of property actually
sold, to the amount in round numbers of 36,000,000 francs, between 1853
and 1870, and of the interest on this amount during the same time, the
Imperial Government had really converted to its own uses 70,000,000
francs which did not belong to it. Not one penny of these millions of
francs was restored to its owners by the decrees of 1872. What the
decrees of 1872 accomplished, with the approval of such extreme
Republicans as M. Henri Brisson, was to put a stop to this public
robbery of private owners. The Orleans estates not yet sold in 1872 were
then estimated to yield an income of 1,200,000 francs. Before final
action was taken by the Assembly, the Orleans princes voluntarily came
forward and announced that they would accept no 'restitution' at the
expense of the taxpayers of France of their property sold and alienated
under the spoliation of 1852; and the text of the law as finally passed
in 1872 expressly ordains that 'conformably to the renunciation offered
before the presentation of the bill by the heirs of King Louis Philippe,
and since renewed,' their unsold property, 'real and personal, seized by
the State and not alienated before this date, be immediately restored to
its owners.' As a matter of fact, therefore, under this law, the heirs
of King Louis Philippe actually made the French Government a present in
1872 of many millions of francs, which belonged to them and did not
belong to France or to the French Government. By doing this, they
co-operated most creditably with every man of common honesty in the
French Assembly in repairing the wrong done to every French citizen by
the decrees of January 22, 1852, decrees justly described by M. Pascal
Duprat in the Chamber, on November 22, 1872, as 'decrees of flat
spoliation which had violated the sacred right of property, disregarded
the fundamental rules of law, and profoundly wounded the public
conscience.' However profoundly wounded the public conscience may have
been by these decrees in 1852, the scornful words of the Duc de Broglie
attest that it suffered in silence and for twenty years made no
adequate outward sign!

This cool and caustic statesman was born and brought up in the