s importance given to General
Boulanger by his terrified former associates in the Government seems to
me to be a very striking proof of the little confidence they really have
in their own hold upon the country, or in the permanency of 'republican
institutions' as they now exist in France, and this adequately explains
the readiness of speculators to 'invest' in what may be called the
'Boulangist bonds.' Such a report as that presented not very long ago to
the Chamber by M. Gerville-Reache on the state of the navy in France
suffices to show that the speculative maladministration of the French
finances has been so great as to make it quite certain that any 'honest
government' coming into power must reconstruct the system of the public
indebtedness. That is an operation which can hardly be carried out by
the most scrupulously honest government without very great profits to
the financiers concerned in it, and I only set down what is said to me
by respectable Frenchmen when I say that the Boulanger campaign funds
are openly described, by persons not at all hostile to 'Boulangism,' as
'bets on the General.' 'The difference between the managers of the
Boulangist campaign and the managers of the Government campaign,' said a
gentleman to me in Amiens, 'is simply this--that the Boulangist managers
are playing the game with private funds, and the others with public
funds. So the latter, I think, will win, for they have the longest purse
to draw on.' This gentleman is of the opinion, however, that but for
General Saussier, in command of the garrison of Paris, General
Boulanger, after the election of January 27, 1889, in which he took the
capital by storm, might have turned the Government neck and heels out of
doors. The weak point of Boulangism,' he said, 'is Boulanger.' 'He has
no strength with the officers of the army. They have no confidence
either in his character or in his ability; not that they think his
character bad or deny his ability, but only that they regard him as a
shallow, vacillating, and mediocre person who made himself valuable to
the Republican politicians by going into alliances with them to which
other officers of strong character and high ability would not stoop. As
for the quarrel between Boulanger and these politicians, it is a
beggars' quarrel, to be made up over the pot of broth. But it won't be
made up, because they can't agree as to the distribution of the broth.
Meanwhile all the chickens of France are goi