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The financiers of the Revolution, we are told, yielded to gloutonnérie révolutionnaire; they liked coarse dishes and common wines. There were four dishes, of a deplorable vulgarity (quoth our author), invented in all that time: one, la sauce Robert; the other, the poulet sauté, with a seasoning of oil and garlic, which afterwards was called le poulet à la Marengo; the others were the matelote Normande and la sauce en tortue, plats abondants (says this great connoisseur), et pleins de trivialité. Yet the restaurateurs and cooks, patronized by the revolutionary celebrities, Capefigue tells us, had been antecedently the cooks of the ancient aristocrats. Thus, the Frères Provençaux had been the cooks of the Archbishop of Aix, and Robert, says Capefigue-mark the words!—had belonged (avait appartenu) to the Prince de Condé. The excellent pâtissier Bailly came from the mansion of M. de la Poplinière, and Richaud Frères, les grands sauciers, had been employed in the kitchens of the Prince de Rohan Soubise. Carême, says Capefigue, fut leur élève chéri. This is certainly a new manner of writing history-a manner of which Mr. Macaulay would do well to take note. The charges made against Talleyrand in this book are really of the most serious kind. Between the 18th and 20th Brumaire he is said to have netted 1,500,000f. by successful gambling for a rise. between the interval of the two days, it should be observed that the French funds rose from 17 to 30.

Such was the condition of finance speculative and official morality in France from 1790 to the Revolution of 1830, and in the more than a quarter of a century that has elapsed since this latter period we greatly doubt that there has been any improvement; indeed, for the last four years, things have grown decidedly worse. Every one remembers, in the reign of Louis Philippe, the scandals caused by the affairs of Pellapra, Teste, General Cubières, the case of the Directeur des Subsistances at Rochefort, who put an end to his existence to avoid the exposure of his defalcations, and the cases of Benier, Drouillard, and Lagrange, all of whom were defaulters, and the failure of Lehon; but, since the inauguration of the Empire, gambling on the Exchange of Paris, and gambling in joint-stock companies, have increased to a frightful extent. When society is afflicted with such a malady as this, to use the language of Capefigue, it becomes tainted with a Jewish and venal spirit, and is ready to do anything for a sufficient per-centage or profit. The misfortune in France, of late years, has been to confound public credit with that which, in the language of the French

Difference between Speculation and Agiotage.

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Bourse, is called l'agiotage. No two things, however, can be more distinct.

Wholesome and reasonable speculation is useful and favourable to any well-constituted commercial country, but agiotage, or stock-jobbing, is the very reverse. In free and civilized communities, enjoying security and peace, healthful speculation is sure fully to develop itself without extrinsic aid; whereas stockjobbing, fund and share gambling-in a word, what the French call agiotage-are never so active as in times of public calamity and trouble. Legitimate speculation proceeds by open and regular courses; agiotage is a kind of betting or gambling, in which there is always a lurking design to gain an advantage over your neighbour. To commercial speculation the investment of capital is necessary; in agiotage, on the contrary, operations are carried on without capital: a purchaser buys public securities, what is called à terme in the language of the Bourse of Paris, for the purpose of realizing as soon as possible, without the outlay of a sou.

That there are many indefensible and immoral things done on our own Stock Exchange, and among our own stockbrokers, jobbers, and dabblers in funds and shares, we are well aware. But our Stock Exchange and sharebrokers, at all events, have no connexion with the Government, and no public man in office is supposed to have any transactions on the Stock Exchange, or with commercial affairs of any kind. In France, unfortunately, it is different. All the Bourses are under the immediate dependence of the Government, which regulates them at will. The Prefect of Police of Paris is charged under the Minister of Commerce with the regulation of the Paris Bourse. The operations are carried on by sixty Agents de Change, sixty Courtiers de Commerce, and eight Courtiers d'Assurance. The sixty Agents de Change are named by the Government-they are in every sense of the word ministerial functionaries,—and they have the right of naming their successors. Each of them gives a security or cautionnement of 125,000f. But, although the sum appears large, yet it has practically been found insufficient to cover the debts and deficiencies of defaulters. By the French law the Agent de Change ought not to operate on his own account; but every day this law is violated with impunity. The Bourse opens at one in Paris, and business begins at half-past one, when a crier announces the prices of each sale. This price forms the cours; but, irrespective of the cours, operations à terme, i. e., bets on a rise or fall, are made everywhere-in the Rue Vivienne, on the Boulevards, in the Passage de l'Opéra, at

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Tortoni's, at the Café de Paris-so that there is now a small or petite Bourse in all the thoroughfares of the Grande Bourse. is an established custom of the Bourse that women are excluded from its salle. But, though the fair sex may not enter the salle, they carry on their operations on the promenoir oron the peridrome around its walls. About 2000 men may be daily seen speculating within the salle, and half the number of women are often congregated in the promenoir and adjacent streets. These 2000 are changed six times in the day, for, on an average, 12,000 persons frequent the Bourse daily. It is not in the Three or the Four and a half per cent., or the shares of the Bank of France, that these women are speculating, but in the Crédit Mobilier, in the Crédit Foncier et Obligations Foncières, in the Actions des Chemins de Fer du Nord, d'Orléans, de l'Est, de l'Ouest, or la Méditerranée. Sometimes the fair dames venture to speculate in foreign railways, and very often in Omnibus, Petites Voitures, and Gas Shares. The droit de courtage, or brokerage, is one-eighth per cent. The greatest number of marches à terme are fictitious. That the Parisian Bourse requires a complete, general, and sweeping reform is admitted on all hands. The Agents de Change, Courtiers, Marrons, and Coulissiers have, it is computed, twenty-five milliards of securities in French and foreign funds, and shares of all kinds to negotiate. This mass of securities is daily increasing, and no one knows what would happen if any serious crisis were to come suddenly on the market. That a crisis may arise any day, none will deny. The money power of France has been greatly taxed by loans for the war, by calls for the railroads, domestic and foreign, and by the operations of the Crédit Mobilier and Crédit Foncier. We learn by the Journal des Chemins de Fer, that the sum required to be raised for railroads this year would amount to 300 millions of francs, or about 12 millions sterling, and that the entire sum spent on railroads within a very few years has been 125,200,000l. sterling. This is an immense sum, and although railways are ultimately paying and productive in highly civilized countries, yet they slowly become so. Railroads yet remain to be constructed in France, involving an expenditure of 50 millions; and when all these shares, in addition to French docks and Russian railways, are thrown on the market, the frenzy of speculation will be quintupled. It is computed that from 11,000 to 12,000 people now daily frequent the Bourse. Should an addition of another 100 millions of francs of different shares be thrown on the market, we shall find from 20,000 to 30,000 persons frequenting the salle daily. The place of Agent de Change is now considered to be worth from 100,000 to 150,000f. If the market be saturated with new shares, and the number of

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Agents de Change be not increased, the place will be considered worth from 200,000 to 250,000f. No two institutions in France have so much induced a spirit of gambling among all classes as the Crédit Mobilier and Crédit Foncier, both of which date from 1852. The operations of the first-named society extend through a great part of Europe, and the operations of the second are also very multifarious. M. de Morny, at present French Ambassador in Russia, has been much mixed up with the operations of the Crédit Mobilier, and his proceedings have not tended to raise our estimate of French politicians. Should any financial crisis come on France within the next year, woe to the reckless shareholders and purchasers in the Crédit Mobilier.

The society of the Crédit Foncier de France was authorized by the decrees of the 28th of March and the 10th of December, 1852. Its operations extend over the whole of France, with the exception of six departments. The capital consists of 60,000,000f., and the society cannot lend to any one individual more than 1,000,000f. nor less than 300f.

The Société Générale de Crédit Mobilier, established by a decree of 18th November, 1852, is a species of bank, the partners in which have not given their names. Its principal operations consist in purchasing or acquiring shares in public companies, provided they be en sociétés anonymes. Secondly, in circulating its own securities for a sum equivalent to the shares or stock purchased. Thirdly, in selling and exchanging all actions and obligations so acquired. Fourthly, in lending on public securities, on the deposits of actions and obligations, &c. The capital of the society is fixed at 60,000,000f, and it is represented by 120,000 shares of 500f. each. The society can circulate its own 'obligations' for a sum six times as large as its capital. It will be seen how dangerous a power this confers on the many speculators and projectors connected with the company. A day of reckoning is sure at length to come, and then the final settlement may be as disastrous as the affairs of the Tipperary and Royal British Banks.

ART. VIII.—(1.) Five Years' Progress of the Slave Power. Boston. 1852.

(2.) A Few Months in America. By JAMES ROBERTSON. London.

1853.

(3.) The Constitution of the United States compared with our own. By H. S. TREMENHEERE. London. 1854.

(4.) An Address illustrative of the Nature and Power of the Slave States, and the Duties of the Free States. By JOSIAH QUINCY. Boston. 1856.

(5.) A History of the Struggle for Slavery Extension or Restriction in the United States, from the Declaration of Independence to the Present Day. By HORACE GREELEY. New York. 1856. (6.) A History of the American Compromises. By HARRIET MARTINEAU. London. 1856.

(7.) America Free-or America Slave; an Address on the State of the Country, delivered by JOHN JAY, at Bedford, Westchester, New York, October 8th, 1856. New York. 1856.

SOON after the appearance of M. de Tocqueville's Démocratie en Amérique, a young student fresh from the University, and strongly imbued with ultra-radical principles, was so much delighted with the Frenchman's glowing account of the republican institutions of the United States, that he resolved to translate the work into English for the benefit of his benighted fellow-countrymen. Having completed his task, he offered the manuscript to a publisher holding opinions similar to his own, on the condition that the work should be brought out at a low price, so as to place it within the reach of the million. The publisher, after looking over the translation, declined the task, on the ground that the book was much more likely to injure than to promote the cause of democracy in this country. In that opinion of the radical publisher we fully concur. Were we desirous of converting an ardent republican theorist to more wholesome political thought, we could not place in his hands a more useful book than the one we have named. If a course of De Tocqueville, coupled with a careful study of the actual working of the model republic during the last twenty years, is not sufficient to make the most grumbling Radical thankful that he lives under what Dr. Arnold called the kingly commonwealth of England,' we should deem his condition utterly hopeless.

One of the most interesting chapters in De Tocqueville's work is that relating to the mode in which the President is elected. Up to the time he wrote (soon after the revolution which drove

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