cannot be said of savings or the assistance of friends if and when these sources of income induce a worker to continue in a badly paid trade. These are legitimate sources of income; and, if they render a working population less mobile, it is difficult to see on what grounds the public authority is justified in interfering. But really the case does not arise. On the average we may be perfectly certain that the possession of an income or a home is not a cause of low wages, but that, on the contrary, these things constitute as it were a private strike fund enabling the owners of them, to that extent, to pick and choose their occupations. This picking and choosing means the distribution of labour in the direction of the better market. The low wages and other disagreeable conditions of some forms of needlework, of hand nail-making and chain-making, are sufficiently repulsive (in the etymological sense of the term) to cause a gradual diminution of the numbers employed; and they are sufficiently punitive in their character to render complete prohibition of such employments unnecessary. gradual extinction of these trades, as can be gathered from a study of the occupation returns of the census, is being brought about by natural economic causes; and there is probably no need to prohibit such employment On the contrary, the sudden and arbitrary prohibition of certain forms of wage-earning is much more cruel than the gradual discontinuance of uneconomic trades by the drafting of the rising generation, and the adventurous of the present generation, into more promising industries. The Apart from the fact that it is foolish to decline to accept and circulate the purchase power arising out of even inadequate wages, it is important to insist that wages do not depend on the cost of the labourers' maintenance, but ultimately on the relation between the demand and the supply of labour. These considerations should dispel, once and for all, the dismal chimera of the so-called parasitic trade; indeed a closer examination of the position shows that, far from being a disadvantage, it is extremely desirable that workers should acquire a habit of looking to savings as well as to wages. Many of the risks of life have to be met by man's appreciation of the fact that wages can only be earned during the ablebodied years. Sickness and old age and the care of widows and orphans are risks which cannot be met by current wages, but by savings from former wages. The alternative is that these things shall not be matters for private responsibility at all, but shall be provided for by the State. As we have already said, however, we are not arguing with the convinced socialist who is eager to embrace this solution, but only with the ordinary politician who still likes to think that he is not a socialist. This sort of person is not yet prepared to plunge into the gulf; and it is our business to show him that he is on the brink of the abyss. It remains then that the risks which we have mentioned above must be met, as hitherto, by individual effort or individual responsibility; and it is perhaps one of the economic harmonies of liberty that these risks, and the need of meeting them, have probably supplied the first primitive motive for the accumulation of capital. It is a kind of discipline from which the working class will in the future derive most beneficent guidance. Our general conclusion then must be, first, that this proposal for fixing a legal minimum rate of wages would be very difficult to enforce; that to enforce it, without finding some alternative employment for those who are dispossessed, would be vexatious and even cruel; and that attempts to supply this alternative would involve us in a very drastic system of Protection, and in something akin to the disastrous policy of national workshops. It is in fact a comparatively unimportant step in a very much larger policy, which most of us still believe to be impracticable. Secondly, and on this point we more emphatically insist, the proposal is unnecessary. Natural economic causes are eliminating gradually the less favourable occupations. This natural method is more humane and considerate to the class for whom we are concerned; and, further, the only guide which we possess for the better redistribution of labour is dependent on the indications of the open market. From these labour has already received many benefits; if they are not thwarted and suppressed, the future may be safely left to their control. Art. 5. THE FOUNDATION OF THE THIRD RE 1. Histoire de la France Contemporaine. By Gabriel Hanotaux. Vols. I-III. Paris: vol. 1, Combet; vols. II, III, and IV, Société d'Édition Contemporaine, 19031906. English translation by J. C. Tarver. Vols. I-III. London: Constable, 1903-1907. 2. Histoire de la Troisième République. La Présidence de M. Thiers; La Présidence du Maréchal. By E. Zevort. Second edition. Two vols. Paris: Félix Alcan, 1899. 3. Histoire Contemporaine. By M. Samuel Denis. Vol. IV : 'La Chute de l'Empire,' etc. Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1903. 4. Le Seize Mai et la Fin du Septennat. By M. de Marcère. Paris Plon-Nourrit, 1900. 5. L'Assemblée Nationale de 1871: Gouvernement de Thiers By M. de Marcère. Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1904. 6. Histoire de la République de 1876 à 1879. By M. de Marcère. Première partie. Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1908. 7. Notes et Souvenirs pour servir à l'Histoire du parti Royaliste, 1872-1883. By the Marquis de Dreux-Brézé. Fourth edition. Paris: Perrin, 1899. 8. Notes et Souvenirs de M. Thiers. Paris: CalmannLévy, 1904. 9. Souvenirs Politiques, 1871-1877. By the Vicomte de Meaux. Paris: Plon-Nouritt, 1905. 10. My Memoirs. By H. S. de Blowitz. Second impression. London: Arnold, 1903. THE armistice signed by Count Bismarck and Jules Favre on January 28, 1871, provided that the Government of National Defence should summon a freely-elected Assembly to decide whether the war was to continue, or on what conditions peace should be made. It was further agreed that the Assembly should meet at Bordeaux, the commanders of the German armies giving every facility for the election of deputies. A short telegram was despatched the same night to the delegation at Bordeaux informing them that an armistice for three weeks had been concluded, and that an Assembly was to be called together for February 12. They were instructed to carry but the armistice and to have the elections held on February 8. On the following day a decree was issued reviving the main provisions of the electoral law of 1849, namely, election by scrutin de liste, the enjoyment of the franchise by every Frenchman over twenty-one years of age, and eligibility at the age of twenty-five, the prefects alone being disqualified for elections in the departments administered by them. Considerable anxiety was felt by the members of the Government as to the probable attitude of Gambetta, who had assumed the powers of a dictator and advocated la guerre à outrance. To preclude the risk of resistance they decided to send their colleague Jules Simon to Bordeaux with full powers to act in concert with the members of the delegation and to execute the decrees of the Government. He also carried secret instructions (only to be produced in case of unavoidable necessity) empowering him to act alone in the event of a refusal to carry out the orders sent from Paris for holding the elections. Armed with decrees embodying his powers, he reached Bordeaux on February 1. Gambetta's opposition was quelled without much difficulty; and, the elections having taken place, the National Assembly met on February 13. The composition of the Assembly justified in a large measure the apprehensions expressed by Gambetta that the country, if left to itself, would not send up a strong and compact republican majority. In the rural districts the predominant feeling was monarchical, and would probably have manifested itself on even a larger scale had not Gambetta at an earlier date filled as many administrative posts as possible with republicans of his own colour. Two forms of political rule, however, had incurred almost universal reprobation-the Second Empire, which had plunged France into an abyss of ruin; and the dictatorship of Gambetta, who had preferred the interests of the Republic to those of the nation, and had continued the war long after the moment when further resistance had become useless. The shortness of the interval left little time for canvassing the electors or even for framing lists of party candidates; but, for this very reason, the elections reflected more exactly the spontaneous feeling of the nation. The returns showed four hundred Monarchists, almost equally divided between Legitimists and Orleanists, two hundred Republicans, and only thirty Bonapartists; and the cause of the Republic appeared to be hopeless. The first important act of the Assembly was to elect as its Speaker Jules Grévy, a Republican of the purest type, whose chief merits, in the eyes of the Conservatives, were the fact that he had refused to form part of the revolutionary Government of National Defence placed in power on September 4, 1870, by a Paris mob, and his declared disapproval of Gambetta's dictatorial proceedings. The second was the adoption of a proposal, brought forward by Dufaure, Grévy, and others, to place Thiers at the head of affairs, with the title of Chief of the Executive Power of the French Republic.' These last words evidently prejudged the whole question of the future form of government; and the committee appointed to report on the proposal would have done better, from the point of view of the majority, to eliminate them. To avoid an inopportune dispute, they recognised the Republic as existing de facto, while affirming the right of the country to dispose of its future. So they added a preamble asserting that it was necessary, before the National Assembly, as depositary of the sovereign authority, came to a decision on the constitution to be hereafter adopted, to provide at once for carrying on the administration and conducting the negotiations. Then they added without alteration the single clause of the original proposal: M. Thiers est nommé chef du pouvoir exécutif de la République française; il exercera ses fonctions sous le contrôle de l'Assemblée Nationale, avec le concours des ministres qu'il aura choisis et qu'il présidera.' After a vain protest from Louis Blanc against the preamble, which he regarded as signifying that the Republic was accepted only provisionally, the resolution was carried by acclamation. The Conservatives have been blamed for not making use of their majority to establish monarchy forthwith; but there were practical difficulties in the way of filling the throne so long as the Legitimists and Orleanists were unable to effect a fusion. Another consideration was that any treaty of peace must inevitably result in a cession of territory. They would prefer that this humiliation should attach to the Republic rather than to the descendant of Henri IV. Moreover, the Assembly had |