Despatches from Paris, 1784 - 1790. Selected and Edited by Oscar Browning,
M.A. Vol. L, 1784-1787. (The Camden Society.)— The appearance of the second volume with the introduction is postponed on account, we are sorry to see, of the editor's illness. Meanwhile we may briefly notice this instalment. We find in these letters what we expect,—proofs of the absolute blindness of the French governing class to the signs of the times. Money was so scarce that an admitted claim of £12,000 of a British subject had to be paid by annual instalments ; but it was spent with reckless extravagance-on palaces, &c. " The additions to St. Cloud are estimated at eleven millions ; fifteen hundred workmen have been employed for some months past at Fontainebleau." "The inconsiderate people of the capital are constantly boasting of the immense resources of the kingdom without reflecting that these resources are found in the most wretched and oppressed class in -mankind." In November, 1786, the Court removed from Fontaine- bleau 4.0 Versailles, a distance of leas than forty miles. To do -this two thousand one hundred and fifteen horses were employed for three days, besides horses for the heavy baggage. A few weeks afterwards we read that "a number of edicts by which new taxes are laid on are ready and will be registered by Parliament at the end of the year." Other interesting matters occur. " M. Montgolfier pretends to have at last discovered means of
directing the course of Balloons he engages to depart from a town in Auvergne, 'distant from Paris 150 miles, and to descend at or near that city in the course of seven hours the weight he proposes to carry exceeds that of a waggon load." In 1787 "the Imp% Territorial, affecting most materially every Person of landed property in the Kingdom, could not fail of meeting With the utmost determin'd opposition." Three speculators buy up all the shares (seventeen thousand) of the East India Company at twelve hundred Mires each share, spread reports to the adDiantage of the Company, and sell them at sixteen hundred, " making a gain of near five [sic) million of livres,"--e, delightfully simple operation. A French plan of carrying on a trade with the East Indies through Egypt and by Sues is described as " chimerical in the highest degree."
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