The Express.
London, England, 1863-01-01 00:00:00

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LONDON, THURSDAY, JANUARY L

ON the 6th of last October M. FOULD assured
the French public that there would be no deficit
at the close of 1862, that the expenses of the
Mexican war had been amply provided for, and
that the year 1863 would require no additional
burdens or loans.

With commendable frankness, M. FOULD has now
come forward to declare that the hopes entertained
by him twelve weeks ago are by no meanaso certen
or so brilliant as he then announced. The French
military and naval commanders in Mexico have
drawn for another million sterling, which breaks
through the very fine network of checks which the
Finance Minister had drawn round the ministerial
officers and the Emrsiron himself. The new law
has not, indeed, been broken by either ; but
the French Admiral at Vera Cruz, in drawing bills
upon the Paris Treasury, which must be honoured,
has set all the recent financial regulations at de-
fiance. We do not say that he was not warranted
in thus drawing, or that the Chamber will find
fault ; but it only shows that the power which can
ordain distant military and naval expeditions,
keeps thereby the strings of the public purse in its
hands, beyond the possibility of Chamber or Fi-
nance Minister preventing it.
The French forces in Mexico have spent three-
and-a-half millions sterling in 1862 above the
allowances of the budget. The French Mirixter of
Finance naively expresso; the hope that the
bill will not be so high for 1863, as the army
will be in an abundant countai, and there will
not be the same expense for transport as in the
present year. This looks as if M. Form]) contem-
plated the permanent residence of General FOREY
and his army in Mexico, and that for some year.
to come the military Budget will not be charged
with the expenses of bringing them back. He
hopes, in fact, that the war support the war,
and the Mexicans pay the supplementary Budget,
instead of the French taxpayer. The Mexicans,
perhaps, form very different conclusions on the
subject, and may compel very large errata in M.
POULOS supplementary Budget for 1863.
This consideration, however, M. Fortn may
adjourn till towards the cluse of the parliamentary
session. For the present there is to be no loan ;
the deficit of a million and a half starling will be
added to the floating debt. And the French Mi-
nister lives on in the hope that the return of
manufacturing prosperity will enable the produce
of the taxes to increase, and so cover augmented
expenditure by augmented revenue. We cannot
but regard the foundations of such hopes ea alight.
The French cotton manufacturing district., better
supplied than our own, were later to suffer. But
they suffer now in the extreme; and there don not
seem any likelihood of America becoming once
more what it was, a source of supply for the raw
material, and a market for French manufactures.
M. Fourn's Report is not of a nature to dis-
arm criticism. It will probably be asked, where is
his promised surplus f What the amount of
floating debt, reduced by new taxation and by the
conversion of the Four-and-a-Half per Cents.
one year, to be swelled the next for the sake of
visionary glories in Mer'co 1 These resources
are no more at M. FOULD'S command. Now
none are left but a loan. But a loan would have
been far more prudent and profitable at a moment
when the public had the fullest confidence in AL
FOULD'S financial predictions, than at a period
when events will have fully proved they- fallacy.
Fettered as may be the pens of the press
and the months of the deputies, M.
FOULD is on no bed of roses, and the Government
will find the propitiation of the Committee on the
Budget, in which is centred the substantial business
of the session, no easy or agreeable task.
One victory, indeed, AL FOULD may boast, and
that is, in having put a complete stop to the pro-
digality of the ministerial offices. Each of these,
with the exception of the War and Navy de-
partments in the matter of Max :can expen-
diture, has kept itself within the limits
of the Budget. And instead of the litit
millions sterling spent in 1861, on the mere
signature of the EMPEZOI at the demand of a
single Minister, not more than • million and a
half has been expended without the previous
sanction of the Chambers in 1862.

The only reduction of expenditure that M.
Fonts, bolds out for 1863 amounts to 17 millions
of francs less in the extraordinary Budget than
what was set down in the present year. The only
new source of revenue beyond casualties is to pro-
ceed from the sale of those State forests along the
sea-coasts of the South, which produce resin.
As to the ordinary French Budgets, with the
army and naty estimates, these seem stereotyped.
And here is the great drawback upon M. FOULD'II
financial improvements. He almost confines the
action of the Chamber and its Committee
to the extraordinary and supplementary ex-
penses, leaving the sixteen millions sterling of
the army budget, and the six millions o:
the marine, permanent ; and thus the supple-
mentary budgets, urdor every restriction, annually
swell to twenty-seven, twenty-eight, or thirty
millions sterling. This is enormous, exorbitant,
and we cannot but think unneeded. And this it
is which obliges us and other nations to undertake
in self-defence vast expenses, which surpass all
estimate and all patience. Were the science of
defence a fixed and solid one, we might at least,
hope this expense, once incurred, would suffice for'
centuries, and that posterity might be fairly asked
to contribute towards it. Bat in the present
experimental and inchoate state of that science, it
becomes doubtful whether an army, and a popula-