admirals and marshals when both were employed to one end, namely, the
defense of the nation, the overthrow of an enemy, and the security of
the national possessions. The ministry of the interior ought in like
manner to combine the departments of commerce, police, and finances,
or it belied its own name. To the ministry of foreign affairs belonged
the administration of justice, the household of the king, and all that
concerned arts, sciences, and belles lettres. All patronage ought to
flow directly from the sovereign. Such ministries necessitated the
supremacy of a council. Each required the work of two hundred
officials, and no more, in its central administration offices, where
Rabourdin proposed that they should live, as in former days under the
monarchy. Taking the sum of twelve thousand francs a year for each
official as an average, he estimated seven millions as the cost of the
whole body of such officials, which actually stood at twenty in the
budget.

By thus reducing the ministers to three heads he suppressed
departments which had come to be useless, together with the enormous
costs of their maintenance in Paris. He proved that an arrondissement
could be managed by ten men; a prefecture by a dozen at the most;
which reduced the entire civil service force throughout France to five
thousand men, exclusive of the departments of war and justice. Under
this plan the clerks of the court were charged with the system of
loans, and the ministry of the interior with that of registration and
the management of domains. Thus Rabourdin united in one centre all
divisions that were allied in nature. The mortgage system,
inheritance, and registration did not pass outside of their own sphere
of action and only required three additional clerks in the justice
courts and three in the royal courts. The steady application of this
principle brought Rabourdin to reforms in the finance system. He