The growing wealth of France, displayed in the readiness with
which all requests for loans are met, has tempted the Republicans to recommence the Napoleonic policy of enormous public works. The Minister of the Department, M. de Freycinet, has obtained the sanction of the Assembly and the Senate to a plan for expend- ing twenty millions a year for ten years, to be raised by loans on harbours, canals, and rural railways. It is believed that all these works will pay, and M. Leon Say, in a speech at Boulogne —where a new port has been sanctioned as one of the first of these works—stated his full belief that the money could easily be raised. So great are the savings of the people, that more than £10,000,000 sterling has been deposited in the savings- banks in the past seven months, and the credit of France, as shown in the last effort to negotiate redeemable Three per Cents., is slowly approaching that of England. The Government can obtain money more cheaply than at any time in the past thirty-five years, and the people are complaining that they do not get interest enough. Whatever the other consequences of the law of equal partition in France, it certainly has developed the passion of industry to an unprecedented degree. The French peasant, owning his land, works and saves as no man works and saves, certainly not the Englishman, who, though industrious, has not acquired from the possession of property the instinct of thrift. Twenty years hence, if peace can be maintained, France will only feel her, taxation as a whip, stimulating an industry which, if it reaped its full reward, might flag from plethora.
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