tion, and for
giving wings to that idea, leaving it still under the blighting curse of
the Imperial law of 1867.

'And Doumer alone! Brother Doumer, whom Providence and the freemasons of
Laon sent to the Chamber in 1888, has met the questions which have been
"urgent" ever since 1848 with the grand practical solution of a "report"
fifteen pages long, and of a "project of law" consisting of six titles
and about a hundred clauses!

'Take this pamphlet with you,' said my friend, after going over it with
me; 'take it, look into it minutely, and tell me if anything you have
ever heard or read in the way of our Conservative attacks upon the
flatulence, the fatuity, and the hypocrisy of these pretended friends of
labour and of the working-man is to be compared, for cold-blooded
cruelty, with this exposition made by Brother Doumer of the methods of
his party.

'I don't know,' he added, 'what portfolio Brother Doumer expects to get
if the Government carry these elections of 1889. He has kicked M. de
Freycinet, as you see, into one corner, and President Carnot into
another, for the benefit of his friend and ally, M. Floquet, so I
suppose he expects to secure some commanding position, neither M. de
Freycinet nor President Carnot being strong enough to resent the
impertinences of an eminent freemason. But wherever they put him, this
wonderful Report of his ought to be printed and circulated freely all
over France by the Conservative committees. It is the most concise and
eloquent history, that I know, of ten years of the true Republic in its
relation to the working classes of France. You have seen at St.-Gobain
the results of a co-operative association of working-men organized under
statutes drawn up by a practical and liberal friend of labour, M.
Cochin, in 1866, a year before the Imperial law of 1867 was passed.

'Wherever elsewhere in France you find the principle of co-operation
adopted and bearing fruit for the benefit of working-men, pray remember
that the "true Republic" has for ten years persistently evaded and
dodged the problems with which the Empire grappled, and to which the
Emperor gave a practical answer nearly a quarter of a century ago!'

After following my friend carefully through his amusing and instructive
vivisection of the Report presented to the late Chamber by the masonic
member for Laon upon the project of law touching co-operation proposed
by M. Floquet, I was not surprised, of course, to learn that the