Chapter 6

IN THE SOMME--(_continued_)

Amiens--Party names taken from persons--The effect of Republican misrule at Amiens--Why the Monarchists acted with the Boulangists--The Picards incline towards the Empire--How the Republic of 1848 captured France--Armand Marrast and the French mail coaches--Mr. Sumner's story--The political value of paint--Paris and the provinces--M. Mermeix offers with a few million francs and a few thousand rowdies to change the French Government--General Boulanger's campaign in Picardy--Capturing the mammas by kissing the babies--The Monarchical peasantry--The National Accounts of France not balanced for years--Conservatives excluded from the Budget Committee--The Boulanger programme--Expenses of the political machine in France, England, and America--The Boulangist campaign conducted by voluntary subscriptions--General Boulanger and the army--The common sewer of the discontent of France--The local finances of a French city--Municipal expenses of Amiens--Pressure of the octroi--A local deficit of millions since the Republicans got into power--The mayor and the prefect control the accounts--Immense expenditure on scholastic palaces--Estimated annual increase in France since 1880 of local indebtedness, 10,000,000_l._ sterling--M. Goblet on the growth of young men's monarchical clubs--History of the _octroi_--General prosperity of Picardy--Rural ideas of aristocracy--Land ownership in Ireland and France--'Land-grabbing' in Picardy a hundred years ago--The corvée abolished before the Revolution, but it still exists under the Republic, as a _prestation en nature_--Public education in Picardy two centuries ago--Small tenants as numerous under Edward II. in Picardy as small proprietors now are--Home rule needed in France--'The opinion of a man's legs' 95-124