According to the latest accounts from Paris, the Goblet Ministry
is in danger. The Budget Committee insist on larger reductions in expenditure, and the Premier, unable to reduce the Military or Naval Budgets, and afraid of irritating Deputies by curtailing the civil outlay, promises nothing but new taxes. He offered only a saving of £60,000, which the Committee treated as a poor pleasantry. The matter is therefore to come before the Chamber, and it is calculated that M. Goblet must either sacrifice his Finance Minister or go,—a change which involves the great Boulanger question. Is the War Minister to go too P If he does, all France will be in agitation, and the Army in ferment ; if he does not, he will be con- sidered in Germany as independent of Ministries, and there- fore doubly dangerous. It is hoped that a peace will be patched up, and as General Boulanger desires no change, and nobody wants reductions, the wish being only to swore the credit of reducing, it is probable that an arrangement will be made. A positive pledge to knock off a million next year, or a promise to suspend the Budget of Public Worship, will suffice for the day, and between this time and May, 1888, many things may happen. One of them is war.
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