rather hazardous in reproducing a plan which may be thought the
politics of a chimney-corner, it is, nevertheless, necessary to sketch
it so as to explain the author of it by his own work. Were the recital
of his efforts to be omitted, the reader would not believe the
narrator's word if he merely declared the talent and the courage of
this official.

Rabourdin's plan divided the government into three ministries, or
departments. He thought that if the France of former days possessed
brains strong enough to comprehend in one system both foreign and
domestic affairs, the France of to-day was not likely to be without
its Mazarin, its Suger, its Sully, its de Choiseul, or its Colbert to
direct even vast administrative departments. Besides, constitutionally
speaking, three ministries will agree better than seven; and, in the
restricted number there is less chance for mistaken choice; moreover,
it might be that the kingdom would some day escape from those
perpetual ministerial oscillations which interfered with all plans of
foreign policy and prevented all ameliorations of home rule. In
Austria, where many diverse united nations present so many conflicting
interests to be conciliated and carried forward under one crown, two
statesmen alone bear the burden of public affairs and are not
overwhelmed by it. Was France less prolific of political capacities
than Germany? The rather silly game of what are called "constitutional
institutions" carried beyond bounds has ended, as everybody knows, in
requiring a great many offices to satisfy the multifarious ambition of
the middle classes. It seemed to Rabourdin, in the first place,
natural to unite the ministry of war with the ministry of the navy. To
his thinking the navy was one of the current expenses of the war
department, like the artillery, cavalry, infantry, and commissariat.
Surely it was an absurdity to give separate administrations to