Who could hope ever to do anything to the satisfaction of the
press? After having declaimed and gesticulated against the
enormous size of the budget, here it is clamoring for increased
salaries for an army of officials, who, to tell the truth, really
have not the wherewithal to live. Now it is the teachers, of
high and low grade, who make their complaints heard through its
columns; now it is the country clergy, so insufficiently paid
that they have been forced to maintain their fees, a fertile
source of scandal and abuse. Then it is the whole administrative
nation, which is neither lodged, nor clothed, nor warmed, nor
fed: it is a million men with their families, nearly an eighth of
the population, whose poverty brings shame upon France and for
whom one hundred million dollars should at once be added to the
budget. Note that in this immense personnel there is not one man
too many; on the contrary, if the population grows, it will
increase proportionally. Are you in a position to tax the nation
to the extent of four hundred million dollars? Can you take, out
of an average income of $184 for four persons, $47.
Pages:
566
567
568
569
570
571
572
573
574
575
576
577
578
579
580
581
582
583
584
585
586
587
588
589
590