e
Interior--if the French people fail to learn this.

A very much higher price will have to be paid for the extirpation of
religion out of France, and the education of the French people into what
M. Jules Ferry fantastically supposes to be 'Herbert Spencer's' gospel,
identifying duty with self-indulgence!

The late Chamber, doubtless having the then impending elections in view,
voted to abolish the Secret Service Fund of the Ministry of the
Interior. It was a Platonic vote, referring only to the Budget of 1890,
nor did it take effect. But on December 14, 1889, M. Constans, having
made the re-establishment of this fund a cabinet question, got up in the
Chamber and boldly declared that he wanted a Secret Service Fund of
1,600,000 fr., or about 64,000_l._ sterling; that he did not care what
the Right thought about such a fund; that he meant to use it to 'combat
conspiracies against the Republic,' and that he expected the majority to
give it to him as a mark of their personal confidence.

That the War Office, in a country like France, should need a Secret
Service Fund, is intelligible. It is intelligible that a Secret Service
Fund should be legitimately required, perhaps, by the Foreign Office of
a country like France. But why should a Secret Service Fund of more than
60,000_l._ sterling be required by the Home Secretary of a French
Republic which is supposed to be 'a government of the people, by the
people, for the people'?

I have an impression, which it will require evidence to remove, that no
such Secret Service Fund as this is at the disposal of the Chancellor of
the German Empire; and I find the whole expense of the Home Office of
the monarchy of Great Britain set down at less than half the amount
which, after a brief debate, the Republicans of the new Chamber in
France, by a majority of a hundred votes, quietly put under the control
of the French Home Secretary, to show their 'confidence' in the
excellent man to whose unhesitating manipulation, through his prefects,
of the votes cast in September and October last, so many of them are
universally believed in France to be really indebted for their seats!

In the year 1889 the British budget shows an outlay on the Home Office
of 29,963_l._

More than this, the 'Secret Service Fund' voted out of the pockets of
the taxpayers of France into the strong box of the Minister of the
Interior, considerably exceeds the cost of the British Treasury Office!
In 1888 the Briti