THE FRENCH BUDGET.
WE have repeatedly expressed the belief that if Democracy wrecks itself in Europe, it will be either by rash legis- lation about property, which will make Conservatives of all who wish to accumulate, or by recklessness in the management of national finance; and we hold that belief now more strongly than ever. Nothing serious has been done yet, an old genera- tion of statesmen still holding the reins ; but the signs of the day are most disquieting. In this country, the old spirit of economy which marked the Ten-pounder has died away, and, as we have pointed out elsewhere, the electors seem willing to spend, and spend lavishly, in two directions at once, and to consider vast projects for the increase of the National Debt with an equanimity which dismays the older economists. The people seem unable to think clearly about tens of millions, and one guide of public opinion recently discussed quite coolly the chances that the Public Debt of Great Britain, reduced as the Kingdom is to be to one small island, would reach in a little while three thousand millions. The country, such dreamers think, is to be crushed into a paradise by a load of debt. In France, the same disposition shows itself in an even worse form. The people, who are individually thrifty to a penurious degree, show themselves bitterly impatient of new taxes, so impatient, indeed, that no Government dare impose them when an election is at hand ; but they are comparatively careless of expenditure, and wholly indifferent to additions to the Debt. They rush to place their savings in new loans, and, it is asserted, are really pleased when the price of Rentes is low—that is, when the State credit is bad—because they then obtain, at their own expense, larger interest for their hoarded money. For years past State financiers in Paris have been pan- dering to this divided disposition, by proposing grand schemes of expenditure on Public Works, on fortifications, on com- munal schools, on military reforms, and leaving them to be paid for out of loans. The system, stated briefly, has been to meet all regular expenditure out of revenue, and show, if possible, a trifling surplus, but to include all extra charges in an Extraordinary Budget, and meet them either by borrow- ing through Exchequer Bills, or by absorbing the large amounts standing to the credit of the Savings Banks, the Military Funds, and similar institutions. Votes for the Extra- ordinary Budget are easily obtained in the Chamber, each Deputy thinking his Department will be pleased to get some- thing ; and the vote once given, the public hardly notices how the money is obtained. No taxes are imposed. The volume of the Rentes is not perceptibly increased, and the price does not necessarily decline. Nothing, in fact, happens, except that the mass of indebtedness which the Government may be called upon to pay at short notice swells and swells, until the per- manent officials take alarm, and insist with the Finance Minister that a remedy must be found. In the present instance, the volume of the Floating Debt has been allowed to reach the enormous sum of sixty millions sterling, and is increasing so rapidly, that the Ministers, in spite of their pledges not to open loans, have been compelled to take the Chamber into their confidence.
M. Sadi Carnot meets the emergency of the hoar with some boldness and thoroughness. He proposes to abolish the Extraordinary Budget, which is the grand screen for extrava- gance, and to place all expenditure whatsoever within the Ordinary Budget, thus compelling the Deputies, when they vote grants, to recognise the additions they are making to the national expenditure. He also proposes to limit the right of borrowing from the Savings Banks to four millions a year, and thus to force the Ministry, when they want large sums, to ask the Chamber to provide some new resource. He finally asks for a loan of seventy millions nominal, the interest on which is to be provided for by a heavy increase in the existing Spirit-duties. This sum will be applied to pay off the Floating Debt, and the French Treasury, thus relieved from all fear of a suspension of payment such as might have happened had a panic caused a rush on the Savings Banks, will go forward once more safe, though with an additional weight to bear. The loan, it is said, will be eagerly subscribed, the peasants having once more accumu- lated hoards, and to all outward appearance the Republic will financially be as strong as ever. She has, however, the interest on a thousand millions of Debt to provide for before any other charge is met ; she is spending no less than 1150,000,000 a year; and she has made no sufficient provision against a recurrence of the present emergency. The rules against borrowing are quite useless when the Chamber can suspend them by a vote ; there is not the slightest evidence- that the Government will cease to propose, or the Deputies to sanction, new expenditure ; and there is every evidence that the Ministry alike dread and reject the two strongest alternative guarantees against a recurrence of difficulty. One, and the best, is a determined reduction of expenditure in every Department ; and this is not so much as proposed. If the Government frankly declared that it had over-spent itself, stopped all non-essential Public Works, reduced the Military Budget by two millions, and pared down the civil expenditure by another two, the finances would soon recover themselves, and the Chamber, warned by results, must and would abstain from waste. The constituen- cies would be conscious of the reductions, and the demand for retrenchment would become, as it often has in England, an irresistible cry. The Government, however, obviously believe that the classes affected by the reductions would become hostile, and fear them more than the less observant mass of the people. They allow the expenditure to go on, and do not, their financial critics say, even care to produce an equilibrium in the regular Budget. On the other hand, direct taxation would produce economy at once. The peasantry would not bear it; and a large scheme, such as might of itself make the Treasury solvent, would produce an outcry before.
which only a retrenching Ministry could stand. The Govern- ment, therefore, propose nothing beyond a surtax on spirits, and, content with their release from the Floating Debt, leave the future of their finance to take care of itself, or, rather, for that is the truth, make up their minds to borrow a few millions every year until the time is convenient for repeat. ing the funding operation. They will live from hand to mouth, hoping that, even if no favourable turn of events should come, some other Government, possibly one not Republican at all, will have to provide for the resulting difficulties.
A great deal of the financial weakness of the successive Republican Ministries of the Republic arises from their short duration. No Minister believes that he will remain in power for more than two years at the outside, and no Minister, therefore, feels inclined to undertake disagreeable work, the benefit of which will be reaped, if at all, by his successor. His own responsibility is so limited, his own chance of success so slight, his own fear of consequences is so reduced, that to carry on his Department for the time becomes his only ambition. He is, in fact, in his own eyes not a Minister at all, but only a man charged with affairs until a successor is chosen, who, if a composite majority is offended, may arrive at any moment The first object, therefore, is not to offend that majority, or, rather, any of its component parts ; and boldness of counsel, or even of criticism, becomes absolutely impossible. M. de Freycinet and his colleagues are not only afraid to retrench and afraid to tax, but they are afraid to defend the plainest social rights. Four- fifths of all Frenchmen are property-owners, yet because a small section of the Liberals are Extremists and a smaller section Socialists, the Ministry are afraid to say that at Decazeville, as elsewhere, they will carry out the laws ; and while proclaiming the rights of the State and of the labourers, they treat the rights of owners as claims which cannot, it is true, be denied, but which require apology. The weakness of the Ministry during the discussion on the Decazeville strike has pro- duced a profound effect in France, at which no one who at all understands French society need wonder. The Govern- ment almost apologised for not confiscating the mines because the miners wished it, and tried hard to show that in refusing they were actuated mainly by consideration for the miners, who, said the Minister at War, need not mind the presence of the soldiers, for they were drawn from the same classes as themselves. It is openly said in Paris that if doctrines like these are to prevail, there is no hope except in the Orleanists ; but, in truth, they do not prevail. A Republican Ministry which dared to put the finances right, to defend the rights of property as rights, and not as accidentally existing obstacles to Communism, and to say plainly that no
quarrel about wages justified capital punishment by Lynch- law, would be supported by three-fourths of France, Re. publican- as well as Reactionary, and would probably obtain
a long lease of power. The peasantry in France are certainly not fickle in their likings. It is the weakness of successive Ministries, and the anarchical character of a Chamber which cannot be dissolved, that are ruining theRspublic, and not any change of opinion in the great body of the people. The Republic, however, is being rained ; and if any accident— such as an affront to the Army—should produce a Dictatorship, every proprietor in France would feel that a danger had been removed: Now, in Prance there are- five millions of pro- prietors.
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