1. There is, first, its most obvious _economy_, which is so
glaring, that, according to a familiar French expression, "it
leaps into the eyes." Undertaking even briefly to set it forth, I
seem to follow the proverb and "show the sun with a lantern."
According to the "Almanach de Gotha," the appropriations for the
army of France, during the year of peace before the war, were
588,852, 970 francs, [Footnote: Almanach de Gotha, 1870, p. 599.]
or about one hundred and seventeen millions of dollars. Give up
the Standing Army and this considerable sum disappears from the
annual budget. But this retrenchment represents only partially the
prodigious economy. Beyond the annual outlay is the loss to the
nation by the change of producers into non-producers. Admitting
that in France the average production of a soldier usefully
employed would be only fifty dollars, and multiplying this small
allowance by the numbers of the Standing Army, you have another
amount to be piled upon the military appropriations. Is it too
much to expect that this surpassing waste shall be stopped? Must
the extravagance born of war, and nursed by long tradition,
continue to drain the resources of the land? Where is reason?
Where humanity? A decree abolishing the Standing Army would be
better for the French people, and more productive, than the
richest gold-mine discovered in every department of France. Nor
can imagination picture the fruitful result. I speak now only in
the light of economy. Relieved from intolerable burden, industry
would lift itself to unimagined labors, and society be quickened
anew.

2. Beyond this economy, winch need not be argued, is the positive
_advantage, if not necessity,_ of such change for France. I