The Express.
London, England, 1848-09-21 00:00:00

tonal as some of them must have been—of his perni-
cious notions about absorbing railways and erecting
banks—there Was• a considerable portion of common ,
sense in the ihrtearea ei the Wiry or thb' unlucky I
citizen' *rola the • events of that "Prodigious
24th liPebrimery" trenefteared into a minister ci
finance. HA went Ow right way to work
whet be dazed the insimilate usetmensat of an ad-
&ions! 45 centhass on the direct taxes, and his
notion of laying the interest on mortgagee under con-
tribution, although decried and postponed, was at i
length adopted. We dace my that a sudden ex- I
anodes of tbs demands of the tax-gatherer to the
extent of demanding 95 francs where he used to be I,
despatched with 50 is a disagreeable incident in •
man's daily experience. Bat the thing cannot be
helpsd. nee was the debt, and there was the ne-
cessity of paying it, and the option was a very short
one—either to be dishonest or obedient.
M. Domino, en the other hand, was a man of a
different stamp. He also recognised a deficit. But
he bad, or conceived he had, a golden role for dealing
with deficits. There was naturally peat 'admit,
to be made acquainted with the =sidles sweet
Whatdiditontsprehend? Atransaniationefthentetals ;
or a feat in leading or a same he impressing the
revenue by mg the taxes; or a new science
of compound interest exesapillied by a sinking fund ?
Now of theme eeppadtleas were wart the truth. M.
McLain arplawl hirreel4 end all he had to say
wee to advise a Mad loam of nobody knows how
many millions from the Bank of France. The radical
oath of this mines were enveloped and garnished
with a' fringe of magablest hypotheses. He pro-
posed to ratanfi memos ant of the most asto-
nishingly = wares
• t . He projected a
national co; and he reckoned on a group of
millions from the ale of old timber and the lease of
sterile lands. The thing, however, was too prepos-
terous, and the events which have raised the
23rd and 24th of June, into the terrible cata-
I logos of the days which mark the ens of the first
revolution conveniently relegated M. DOCLIP.O into
his primitive wad congenial deurity.
M. GOUDCRAOX contrived to invest his advent to
office with a species of eclat. Assuredly he would
have been a person of pee-eminent dulness if he could
not have seen the advantage of affecting candour
alter the exhibition, with such poor success, of so
I much impudent exaggeration. The exposition of
M. CIOUDCHAUX delivered in the National Assembly

on the 6th July last is, without question, the nearea
approximation to the truth in official quarters which
the republic has so far had the advantage of. But.
comparatively candid and ingenuously just as is the
statement of the present possessor of the financial
portfolio, it would not require any very profound cri-
ticism to detect in it many serious errors ; and before
we quit the subject we will substantiate our statement
by something stronger than assertion.
The end, therefore, is simply this—that the republic
inherited an enormous deficit—that it has gone on
increasing that deficit by almost every decree which
it has sanctioned on the subject of its finances—and
that, u all the world knows, the ordinary sources of
the French revenue since the month of March have
fallen short to a most alarming extent of the receipts
of average years. There was, therefore, a deficit to
start with, and there has been a growing deficit to
go on with ever since. What it amounts to at pre-
sent, and what has been done toarreat or to neutralise
its pressure, we shall proceed to inquire in our next.