found among
the workmen: it is to be found among the people who do not work. Of
course, everybody knows that it is the great chemical and glass works
here which make Chauny prosperous. But for St.-Gobain we should be where
we were a hundred years ago. And so there is a tendency all through the
Department to come to Chauny, in hopes of finding work under the
company. Of course, in nine cases out of ten, those who seek it thus do
not get it, for it is the rule of the company always to give the
preference to people from Chauny, or the immediate neighbourhood.

'Of course the unsuccessful "immigrants" linger about the place, and as
they don't find work they go lounging about the town, and take to drink
too often and, in short, soon become the raw material of which in these
days the freemasons are making what they call "Republicans." You have it
all,' he added, 'in the letter which M. Allain-Targe has just written,
refusing to be a candidate this year for the Chambers.'

I remembered very well the energy shown by M. Allain-Targe, as a
Republican Minister of the Interior, at the time of the elections of
October 18, 1885. He then issued an official circular instructing all
the public functionaries that, while they were to be absolutely
'neutral' as between Republican candidates of different colours, they
must exert themselves to the utmost as against all 'reactionary'
candidates. I was much interested, therefore, to learn the present
opinion of M. Allain-Targe as to the outlook of the Republic under his
successor, M. Constans, in 1889. It was very instructive to find that M.
Allain-Targe now declines to be a Republican candidate because, to use
his own words, though the High Court of Justice may 'deliver the
Republic from General Boulanger and his confederates, it is beyond the
power of the High Court of Justice to bring France back--let us not say
to the heroic age, but to the age of good faith, of disinterestedness,
of common sense, and of that prudent, sincere, and loyal policy, thanks
to which, during long years, France passed safely through so many
serious trials.'

'The new generations of electors,' says M. Allain-Targe in this
remarkable letter, 'exact of their representatives conditions to which I
will not submit. I will not undertake to make the promises which it is
now the fashion of candidates to lavish, and which I cannot regard as
serious.' These 'new generations of electors' are the 'new social
strata' about