peasantry--The National Accounts of France not balanced for
years--Conservatives excluded from the Budget Committee--The
Boulanger programme--Expenses of the political machine in
France, England, and America--The Boulangist campaign conducted
by voluntary subscriptions--General Boulanger and the
army--The common sewer of the discontent of France--The
local finances of a French city--Municipal expenses of Amiens--Pressure
of the octroi--A local deficit of millions since the
Republicans got into power--The mayor and the prefect control
the accounts--Immense expenditure on scholastic palaces--Estimated
annual increase in France since 1880 of local indebtedness,
10,000,000_l._ sterling--M. Goblet on the growth of young men's
monarchical clubs--History of the _octroi_--General prosperity of
Picardy--Rural ideas of aristocracy--Land ownership in Ireland
and France--'Land-grabbing' in Picardy a hundred years ago--The
corvee abolished before the Revolution, but it still exists
under the Republic, as a _prestation en nature_--Public education
in Picardy two centuries ago--Small tenants as numerous under
Edward II. in Picardy as small proprietors now are--Home rule
needed in France--'The opinion of a man's legs' 95-124

CHAPTER VII

IN THE AISNE

St.-Gobain--Paris and the Ile-de-France--Reclamation of the
commons--Mischievous haste in the Revolutionary transfer of
lands--The evolution of property and order in France and
England--The flower gardens of France--The home counties
around London compared with the departments around Paris--Superiority
of the French fruit and vegetable markets--The
military city of La Fere--A local cabbage-leaf--French farmers
and the Treaties of Commerce--Arthur Young at St.-Gobain--The
largest mirror in the world--The great French glassworks--'An
industrial flower on a seignorial stalk, springing from a feudal
root'--Evolution without Revolution--Two centuries and a half of
industrial progress--Labour in the Middle Ages--The Irish apostle
of North-eastern France--The forests of France--A factory in a
chateau--A centenarian royal porter--The Duchesse de Berri and
the Empress Eugenie--A co-operative association of consumers--A
great manufacturing company working on lines laid down under
Louis XIV.--Glass-working, Venetian and French--A jointstock
company of the 18th century--The old and new school of fa