‘The last republic,’ said Ampere, ’did some of these things, but very timidly and moderately.  It gave to its paper a forced currency, but was so cautious in its issue, that it was not depreciated.  It created the ateliers nationaux, but it soon dissolved them, though at the expense of a civil war.  Its worst fault was more political than economical:  it was the 45 centimes, that is to say, the sudden increase by 45 per cent, of the direct taxes.  It never recovered that blow.  Of all its acts it is the one which is best recollected.  The Provisional Government is known in the provinces as “ces gredins des quarante-cinq centimes.”  The business of a revolutionary government is to be popular.  It ought to reduce taxation, meet its expenditure by loans, abolish octrois and prohibitions, and defer taxation until it has lasted long enough to be submitted to as a fait accompli.’

‘I fear,’ said Madame de Tocqueville, ’that our working classes are in a much worse frame of mind than they were in 1848.  Socialist opinions—­the doctrine that the profits of capitalists are so much taken fraudulently or oppressively from the wages of labourers, and that it is unjust that one man should have more of the means of happiness than another—­are extending every day.  The workpeople believe that the rich are their enemies and that the Emperor is their friend, and that he will join them in an attempt to get their fair share, that is, an equal share, of the property of the country—­and I am not sure that they are mistaken.’

‘Nor am I,’ said Beaumont ’Celui-ci fully sympathises with their feelings, and I do not think that he has intelligence enough to see the absurdity of their theories.’

‘You do not deny him,’ I said, ‘intelligence?’

‘Not,’ said Beaumont, ’for some purposes, and to some extent, practical intelligence.  His ends are bad, but he is often skilful in inventing and pertinacious in employing means for effecting those bad ends.  But I deny him theoretic intelligence.  I do not think that he has comprehension or patience to work out, or even to follow, a long train of reasoning; such a train as that by which economical errors and fallacies are detected.’

‘Are there strikes,’ I asked, ‘among your workmen?’

‘They are beginning,’ said Beaumont.  ’We have had one near us, and the authorities were afraid to interfere.’

‘I suppose,’ I said, that they are illegal?’

‘They are illegal,’ he answered, ’and I think that they ought to be so.  They are always oppressive and tyrannical.  The workman who does not join in a strike is made miserable.  They are generally mischievous to the combined workmen themselves, and always to those of other trades.  Your toleration of them appears to me one of the worst symptoms of your political state of health.  It shows among your public men an ignorance or a cowardice, or a desire of ill-earned popularity, which is generally a precursor of a democratic revolution.’