Higher education is provided, also by the State, through the facultés d'état, of which fourteen are for letters and science, one for letters alone, and one for science alone; fourteen are for law, and six for medicine. More than twothirds (8,500) of the students attend the various facultés in Paris alone.

Since 1885 there have been no theological facultés supported by the State. Religion is supported on a footing of impartial toleration, every denomination with more than 100,000 members being entitled to a grant. The Roman Church claims 78 per cent. of the population, the Protestants nearly 2 per cent., and persons "declining to make any declaration of religious belief," nearly 20 per cent. Jews and Mussulmans are sufficiently numerous to receive a grant. The religious expenditure of the State in 1887 was about £1,460,000. The Roman Church is governed by 17 archbishops, 67 bishops, and about 54,500 clergy. The Lutheran Protestants are governed by a General Consistory, and the Calvinists by an administrative Council. Under the Second Empire France adopted a liberal commercial system, based on commercial treaties with most of her allies. The treaty with Great Britain, negociated by Cobden in 1859, was allowed to drop twenty years later, and the other chief commercial treaties will expire in 1892. The policy of the country is now again relapsing into a system of protection. "During the five years," says M. Yves Guyot, "which preceded the AngloFrench Treaty, from 1855 to 1859, the average importations and exportations of France were respectively 1,732 and 1,894 million francs. During the five years after the treaty of 1860 the figures were-importations, 2,447 millions; exportations, 2,564 millions. From 1879 to 1883, which

Finance.

comes under new treaties, the average exportation was 3,457. It must be remembered that with this commercial expansion there has not been an increase of population. England refused to renew the treaty with France on the conditions offered, and in 1881 we were put on the same footing as the other nations. . . . All reference to agricultural elements was purposely excluded from the treaties of 1881, and instead of these treaties, as some people believed, leading towards free trade, the effect has been quite the contrary. The Government was to deal with the subjects excluded from the treaties, and this is the result: the tariff on cattle has been augmented, wheat has been taxed several times, a duty of 10f. per 100 kilogrammes has been imposed on eggs, and the tariff for cod-fish has been increased from 123f. to 48f. Among the 580 articles subjected to tariffs all sorts of raw materials suffer, and the cost of production thus becomes too high."

The finances of France have been in a most unsatisfactory condition since the German war in 1870, the annual expenditure being nearly doubled. It now approaches £150,000,000 for the year-including, in round numbers, £50,700,000 for the charges of the public debt, and £34,400,000 for the army and navy. In order to raise this amount the country taxes itself at the rate of about £4 per head, and recourse is had to such out-of-the-way imposts as those on doors and windows, salt, and many other necessaries of life. In 1887 the direct taxes were £17,600,000, and the indirect taxes £96,500,000.

The Public Debt, bearing interest at from 3 to 4 per cent., was in 1887, 21,449,066,123 francs, or £857,962,600. But this is only the consolidated debt. "According to a recent statement of M. Sadi-Carnot in the Chamber of

Deputies, the capital of the funded debt amounted on July 1, 1885, to 19,722,000,000 francs, while in 1884 M. Tirard calculated the engagements of the Treasury, the redemption of which was obligatory at a date not later than 1960, at 16,152,736,554 francs, or a total debt of 35,874,736,554 francs, equal to £38 per head of the population." *

The debts of the communes are estimated at nearly £120,000,000, and of Paris alone at about £100,000,000.

FRENCH DEPENDENCIES.

The Dependencies and Colonies of France are as follows: In Africa-Algérie, Sénégal, Guinée, Côte d'Or, Congo, Gabon, Obok, Ste. Marie de Madagascar, Mayotte, Nossi Bé, La Réunion (Bourbon I.).

In Asia-Etablissements de l'Inde, Cochin-Chine, IndoChine.

In America St. Pierre, Miquelon, Martinique, Guadeloupe and its dependencies (Désirade, Saintes, Marie-Galante, and St. Martin), Guyane (Cayenne).

In Oceania-Isles Marquises and Taïti, Nouvelle Calédonie and its dependencies.

Under Protection-Tunisie, Annam, Comores, Cambodje, Madagascar (conditional).

Area of possessions, about 800,000 square miles. Population, about 26,000,000.

Algeria is not regarded as a colony, but as three departments of France. The population in 1881 was 3,360,000, of whom 233,937 were French, 2,850,866 indigenous Mussulmans, and 189,944 Europeans of various nationalities.

See further Statesman's Year Book, 1887.

The government is in the hands of a Governor-General, assisted by a consultative and a financial Council. The departments of Alger, Constantine, and Oran, are organized to some extent on the model of the French Departments; but these in part, and the desert fringe of the dependency entirely, are under military government. A corps d'armée is always present in the country, whilst the stationary troops consist of Turcos, Spahis, Chasseurs d'Afrique, Zouaves, and a Foreign Legion.

The laws of Algeria are made by the French Chambers— each of the three departments being represented by one senator and two deputies.

The French schools are of three grades, and are attended by about 90,000 students of various ages; the cost of education to the State approaching £100,000. In this sum are included grants to Arab, French, and Mussulman schools.

The expenditure in 1883 was £1,540,000, which left a surplus of about £200,000. Three years later the expenditure had risen to £2,100,000, and the revenue was less than that sum by £400,000.

France claims to have had commercial establishments on the east coast of Madagascar since 1642. Early in the present century the factories on the mainland were abandoned, in favour of Ste. Marie and Nossi Bé, with an assumed protectorate over the Sakalavas on the north-west coast. The Hovas, who in the course of the century had made themselves masters of a large part of the island, having wronged several French colonists and refused to recognize the right of France to protect them, were attacked by a French force in 1883. By a treaty concluded in December, 1885, Madagascar agreed to receive a French resident, to pay an indemnity, as security for which France was to

collect the customs at six ports, and to permit her relations with other Powers to be regulated by France. Great Britain, Germany, and Italy, have refused to interpret the last clause as requiring their consuls to present their papers through the French representative. The Resident is stationed at Tananarivo, with a military escort; but he is precluded from meddling with the administration of the country.

Tunis has been under the protectorate of France since May, 1881, and the relation is much closer than in the case of Madagascar, inasmuch as the French Resident and his staff control the administration of the country, under instruction from the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Paris. In 1884 the old consular courts were replaced by French judges administering a mixed code.

Financially the affairs of the country were submitted to an International Commission, subsequently replaced by French controllers. The public expenditure in 1885 was £1,230,000, as against little more than £60,000 in 1880. The debt is £5,700,000.

1887.

The ministerial crisis in France which substituted M. Rouvier as First Minister in place of M. Goblet was something more than an ordinary shuffling of political cards. To lookers-on from the outside it seemed like a mere manoeuvre designed to get rid of General Boulanger. Judged by English methods, it might have been regarded as a natural outcome of the ministerial defeat on the budget, which M. Rouvier had attacked. But a closer consideration of the circumstances, aided by subsequent events, leads us to a more interesting and important con