M. Combos, the French Premier, delivered on Monday a great
speech at the annual meeting of the Republican Com- mittee of Commerce and Industry. We have said a good deal elsewhere about this important deliverance, but may mention here that M. Combes was more than decided—haughty and combative—as to the suppreasion of the monastic teaching Orders, whom he evidently regards as open enemies of lay society. He was strongly for peace as necessary to prosperity, and spoke of the Army as essentially a defensive force. He trusted—vainly, as it now appears—that the general strike of miners would be averted, but promised legislation in the miners' favour on certain points which he did not specify, and gave a sharp reprimand to the "ridiculously vain (vaniteux) bourgeoisie" who "conspired to make their millions serve for the intimidation and subjection of their workmen," a remark the financiers of Trusts will do well to ponder. It was, in truth, the noteworthy speech of a sincere and resolute man who, having once worn the tonsure, has an overweening dislike of Clericals, and who thinks that much of the future belongs—or is it ought to belong P—to a well-considered and regulated Socialism.
