been given new powers by the local decree of 19 March 1913; Cambodia also possesses its native consultative assembly and in the Laos district the government commissioners have as assistants Mandarins," if not like the other countries of the union, native chiefs who by their situation and authority are most useful auxiliaries.

No French colony is more densely populated than Indo-China, none possesses a richer soil, so suitable for the most varied products or more abundant and intelligent labor. Its resources are immense. A European can, if he takes proper hygienic precautions, easily live in the country which is not too close to the swampy regions of the coast, or the forests of the interior. These conditions explain the rapid development made by Indo-China from an economical and commercial point of view since French occupation.

Live Stock.- The distance of Indo-China from France does not allow of the exportation of live stock and for the present the preparation of preserved meat is the only form in which Europe has benefited from its cattle breeding industry. According to the latest estimates drawn up in 1916, the Indo-Chinese livestock amounted to no less than 634,525 head of oxen, 523,553 cows, 289,939 calves, 618,939 buffaloes, 631,709 female buffaloes, 334,024 buffalo-calves, 2,662,534 pigs. The skins and horns of the oxen and buffaloes give rise to a certain amount of exportation (3,000 tons of raw hide in 1913). Silk is exported to an amount of about 100,000 kilos (220,000 lbs.), but a large quantity of the silk produced is employed for local uses. The "stock-laque," an insect product, may later on give rise to a good business.

Fisheries.- Indo-China, with its 2,500 kilometers (9,650 miles) of coast, its large rivers, its numerous arroyos and especially the great lakes in the Cambodia region, is essentially a country suitable for the fishery industry on a large scale. Deep sea and river fishing permits of the exportation of a large quantity of dried and salted fish, of by-products and of fish oil. The government grants concessions of fishing rights from which it derived a revenue estimated at 500,000 piastres for 1915. The value of the fish exported from Indo-China gives 12,000,000 for Cambodia, 3,000,000 for Annam and 200,000 to 300,000 for Tonkin; the totality of fishing products exported for 1913 amounted to 18,000,000 francs ($3,600,000). Another local industry allied to the fishing trade is the preparation of different fish sauces, the most noted of which is the nuoc

mam.

Other Products. Among the vegetable products, fatty matters hold a prominent place. The exportation of copra fluctuates between 6,000 and 8,000 tons. Arachide is cultivated in Annam where, however, it is mostly consumed locally. Castor oil, the exportation of which has increased from 42 tons to 600 tons, is principally shipped to China. Cotton oil is also cultivated locally. Rice is the principal crop of Indo-China and is consequently exported in large quantities. Indo-China is second only to Birmania as regards rice exports, being more important than Siam. Laons and Annam do not export rice and Cambodia only in small quan

tities (about 150,000 tons), but Tonkin exported in 1915 250,000 tons and the figures for Cochin-China-the principal exporter -were 1,295,000 tons in 1914 and 1,085,000 tons in 1915. Rice is treated at Cholon, the big Chinese town near Saigon. Maize was first exported in 1904 and from that time its culti vation has considerably increased, being classed! at the present time third in the list of exportations, accounting for nearly 16,000,000 in 1913. Arrowroot, manioc and soja are cultivated for local consumption.

Sacchariferous plants, such as the sugar cane, are grown throughout Indo-China, and especially in Annam. The sugar palm is highly interesting, its sweet juices being estimated at 200,000 hectoliters (5,200,000 United States gallons) a year.

Textile raw materials are abundant. Cotton is cultivated nearly all over Indo-China for the local use of the inhabitants. The cotton from Cambodia is greatly valued by the spinners but practically the whole of the exportation -some 5,000 tons is dispatched to Japan. Kapok is found in Cambodia in the proximity of the native habitations. Jute is not much cultivated in Indo-China; the local production is used by the natives for manufacturing mats. Ramia is not extensively cultivated and the Annamites use it for making fishing nets. Bambous are treated for paper pulp. Cane is abundant and Indo-China exports from 2,000 to 3,000 tons to Singapore. Mats from Tonkin the manufacture of which is exclusively carried on by the Chinese-represents an exportation exceeding 800,000 tons.

Spices and condiments are found in IndoChina. The exportation of pepper for 1915 amounted to 4,007 tons, spices to 800,000 tons in 1913, while cinnamon amounted to 1,500,000 tons for the same year.

The rubber crop has fallen off during recent years, the natives having imprudently cut all the creepers. Hevea Bresiliensis has been much developed in Cochin-China; this is also found in southern Annam and in Cambodia, the area planted amounting to some 14,179 hectares (35,000 acres) representing 4,626,000 trees and the exportation reaching 914 tons in 1913, or a value of 962,708 francs ($192,541). The Indo-Chinese rubber plantations have a brilliant future before them. Coffee is principally exported from Tonkin, showing an average for the five years 1910 to 1914 of 1,815 hundred-weight. The average annual exportation of tea is 900 hundred-weight. Tobacco is cultivated all over Indo-China for local consumption, but the French Régie - which imports nearly 30,000,000 of tobacco from abroad - did not forget Indo-China which exported to France in 1913 tobacco, in various forms, amounting to 865,000 francs ($173,000). The principal commercial aromatic plant is the aniseed tree, the fruit of which is used mostly in the manufacture of the liquors known as "Anisette" and "Absinthe." The exportation of this product amounted to 230 tons in 1913, of a value of 2,500,000 francs ($500,000). The general resources of the country in vegetation comprise medicinal plants, such as cocoa, dyeproducing plants such as indigo, and fruits, such as bananas, pineapple, lemons, papaws,

etc.

fact that intellectually the Revolution had been going on in France for years before the fall of the Bastile, an event which symbolizes the high tide of public resentment against the autocratic and unjust acts of the irresponsible rulers of France during the pre-Revolutionary period. The growth of the principles announced by the Revolution is, in fact, the history of the rise and fall of the autocratic power of the French sovereigns; and it is the symbol of the revolt of the nation against the accumulated grievances of two centuries.

The

Pre-Revolution France.-After the breaking up of the Roman Empire, Europe became split up into many principalities and a few larger powers. All these political bodies were frequently at war with one another; and the country suffered from the unsettled condition of the age and the lack of anything like unity of aim. The whole of Europe was overrun with robbers and military, many of whom were not much better than robbers. Little by little the kings of France, whose power, in the beginning was very shadowy, succeeded in conquering the different principalities now included within modern France, and consolidating the government of the whole country under one royal head. But though this had been done the government of the sovereigns of France was still far from arbitrary; for the nobility retained very extensive power, and throughout the rural districts the communities practically governed themselves without the interference of the central authorities. peasants had preserved the memory of their freedom and local autonomy under later Roman rule. This spirit was shown in 997 when the peasants of Normandy conspired against the oppression of their masters, proclaiming the equality of man. In 1224 the peasants of Brittany, under very similar conditions, revolted; and a most desperate and bloody war ensued before the nobility got the upper hand. Some cities had actually preserved their independence since the days of the Romans; others had purchased freedom from needy nobles; while others had boldly fought for and won independence in local government. This spirit of independence grew as the wealth of the country increased. But there was no unity in all these concessions or different forms of local government, each of which thought only of securing its own advantages and liberties. So when the French sovereigns had finally broken the power of the great barons and established the sovereignty and power of the Crown over all France, they turned their attention to the communes, as these local governments were called. Louis XIV consolidated all this power in his own person and became virtually autocratic ruler of France. The consolidation of the power of the nobles in that of the sovereign was beneficial for the country as it tended to make it a united nation, which it in no sense was previous to this extension of the sovereign power over the whole country. This concentration of power enabled the sovereign to do away with many abuses from which the peasantry and the middle classes suffered at the hands of the nobles. But all this was not done without a long and interesting battle. The independent princes and barons having been subdued by playing one off against another, the "king's peace" was -established throughout the land for which univer

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sal laws were made instead of local observances. Francis I (1515-59) largely increased the royal power. He refrained from calling together the States-General; and he proceeded to divest them of power by taking each separate entity by itself; and he forbade the Parliament of Paris to "meddle in affairs of state or any other matters except those of justice." He set the fashion for the building of magnificent palaces and residences in imitation of those of Italy; and the nobles and the rich generally followed his example all over the land. Extravagance became fashionable at court. But the StatesGeneral were not dead. In 1576 they so seriously threatened the authority of Henry III that he was forced to side with them. Thus the struggle went on, sometimes quietly, sometimes openly, until Louis XIV proclaimed the doctrine of absolutism "I am the State," and succeeded in as nearly making good his boast in this direction as any other sovereign of Europe. He not only believed in it himself, but he made France believe in it and he succeeded in getting the Church to teach it. During his long reign (1643-1715) the States-General were never called together. He did away with state and municipal liberties; and by an edict passed in 1683, the financial management of the cities of France was placed in the hands of the royal intendants. Under Louis XIV municipal life became a thing of the past. Thus every attempt was made, unfortunately for the royal family itself, to incapacitate the French people for democratic ideas or self-government. The king himself became the centre of all life, whether court or municipal. He destroyed the independence of everything but himself. please his own vanity he patronized the brilliant literary men, philosophers and thinkers of his day, who all shone in his reflected glory. These very men, practically all of whom belonged to the middle classes, represented the rise of that class which Louis further encouraged by advancing them in industry and commerce as well as literature. Boileau, Racine, Molière, and the other brilliant thinkers of the age, were digging the grave for the autocracy that their royal master was so sedulously upbuilding. The middle class was also advanced in the Church. All these factors were with the sovereign; but the very fact that they were indicated a breaking away from the old policy of the value of blue blood and long ancestry. The king even raised illegitimate children of princes and nobles to power. Brilliancy, debauchery and profligacy distinguished the court, while the peasantry remained in ignorance, wretchedness and poverty. The long and costly wars of the reign of Louis XIV and the extravagance of the court, coupled with the vast scale on which royal palaces and other edifices were constructed, had already, toward the end of the reign of the king, placed the country deeply in debt. Monopolies, trade and commerce restrictions and the quartering of soldiers on the populace increased this misery of the peasantry and the middle classes; and the constant plundering of the unpaid military made life unbearable. In many districts the peasantry had become almost savages. But the king was set against all. reform. Fénelon, exiled to Greece for suggesting the improvement of the condition of the masses, from there proclaimed that "governments are made for the governed,"

one of the first signs of the coming revolution. This excessively angered the king, who did not know that he was himself playing the principal part in the greatest tragedy of the age (though he thought it a royal drama) when he was fostering the brilliant lights of poetry, drama, history, art, philosophy and science; for they embodied the idea of liberty of thought which was destined to ultimately destroy the doctrine of autocracy and the divine right of kings.

The very power that the king was putting into the hands of the middle class to serve as a foil against the ambitions of the princes and nobles, while it served his day, built up a resistance on the part of the masses against which royal autocracy was pitiably powerless when the great test came in 1789; for the middle classes had got rich and ambitious and were strongly imbued with the idea of protecting themselves and their own interests and property from exactions on the part of the nobles and the sovereign. The sum of the national intelligence had risen enormously during the reign of Louis XIV and with it the power of national resistance had increased proportionately. The very organization that the king had given to literature, with Colbert as Minister, in order to control it, gave it a dignity and influence that it had never before possessed and enabled it to reach the great and growing middle class. The boldness of the writers and thinkers of the age presaged the coming revolution. Molière, Boileau, La Fontaine, Voltaire were names that were on every one's tongue. They attacked the vices and follies of their age and respected only what their royal patron wished respected. Thus, in the reign of the most absolute of all French monarchs, the leaven of democracy was industriously working; and the independence of thought shown by the great writers of the court was interpreted by each community and each separate interest in its own way and from its own point of view; so that, when the climax of the great drama came, the French intelligence had been quickened to a point perhaps greater than that of any other nation in Europe. This explains the sudden and ceaseless activity of the French people following the fall of the Bastile and the brilliant organization, innovations in government and sociology and masterly strategy in war with which they astonished the whole civilized world. All this was the legitimate result of that spirit of inquiry which began early in the reign of Louis XIV and continued with increasing impetus throughout the reigns of his successors. It was during this long period that was born the eager, earnest, venturesome, serious, witty, sympathetic France such as we know her to-day; for the autocratic Sovereigns of the French people were working better than they knew or suspected.

The Struggle with Autocracy.-The death of Louis XIV left as heir to the French throne a boy of only five years of age, and the regencies and ministers of his minority worked together unconsciously to discredit the system of autocracy which the late sovereign had built up during his long reign. The dignity and regal splendor of the court gradually disappeared and cynicism, debauchery, frivolity and reckless extravagance took their place. Pleasure of the worst kind became the great god

of the French court and of the nobility; and this evil permeated the body of the ever-increasing wealthy middle class. The debt of the court and the nation increased by bounds. The autocratic judicial system which Louis XIV had attempted to force upon the nation had worked as all artificial systems are apt to work; but in this case the effects were especially bad because the system was disorganized, disjointed and ineffective owing to a bewildering diversity of laws and customs which still held sway over France. In fact autocracy in the administration of the law was only a name in so far as any intelligent sovereign direction or administration was concerned. None of the officers of the law were paid by the sovereign and they were forced to help themselves as best they could. The French courts, as a result, became known as the "halls of robbery.» Over 300 different customs or series of local law codes were in use in France at this time. Hence the whole, nation, with the exception of the sovereign and the nobility, groaned under this burden of legal injustice and oppression, which had made the securing of justice the most expensive thing in France. Corruption became so great in every branch of the royal and court service that only a comparatively small part of the money extorted from the public in the way of taxes, fees and fines ever reached the royal treasury, though the odium of the system rested upon the Crown which had farmed out the collection of its revenue. The revenue farmers got their concessions through favorite courtiers and powerful nobles. Thus courtiers, nobles and revenue farmers grew rich at the expense of the taxpayers, who consisted of the middle class, since the lower class was too poor to pay anything and the nobility and the clergy found means to avoid contributing to the purse of the nation and the court.

The Church itself was in a position which tended to divide it against itself; for the upper clergy alone profited by the exemption from taxes, the control of a large part of the land of the country and special privileges extended to the Church by the court. The lower clergy were miserably poor, all the lucrative and honorable offices in the Church being almost altogether in the hands of the nobility or sons of rich middle class families who had wealth enough to pay for special privileges and dignities. Thus, on the eve of the Revolution, France was in reality divided into two nations which had nothing in common with one another, the possessors and the dispossessed. So great had become the gulf dividing these two classes; so heavy the burden and so grievous the condition of the dispossessed, that it was only a question of time when the slumbering. fires that burned in the subterranean depths of the nation should burst forth into volcanic passion. This discontent of the masses was increased on account of the burdens and interference under which industry and commerce groaned and the restrictions placed upon the right to work at whatever trade or occupation one wished to. The possession of nearly all the land of the country by the Crown, the nobles and the clergy and the excessive taxes on all rented land had led to the rapid decline of agriculture and to the consequently increased poverty of the agricultural popula

tion and the control of agricultural products by a few unprincipled jobbers working in the interests of a handful of nobles with special privileges from the court, ruined the peasant farmers and frequently brought on want in a land of plenty. This general misery of the masses and exploitation of the industrious middle classes soon began to have its influence upon the court and the government which were unable to obtain money enough to meet the growing expenses of the administration of the affairs of the nation and the increasing robbery of the public treasury. Finally, in 1787, the court, to avoid calling together the StatesGeneral, through which alone the national purse could be reached, finally compromised matters by calling an Assembly of the Notables, who were more inclined to look after their own interests than to help the court out of its financial troubles. Brienne, the Minister of the Crown, won over the Parliament to his ends by promising to call together the States-General (1788); and this was actually done the following year by his successor, Necker, because of the financial troubles of the government. But, in the meantime, the whole interest of the nation had become centred in the meeting of this the only representative body of the whole French people. The States-General met in 1789, under very different conditions from what it had assembled in the past; for now the Third Estate, as the representative body of the nonnobles was called, had become the representative of a rich and powerful section of the country which had been paying the bills of the nation for many years. The interest of the masses in their representatives, as the members of the Third Estate were called, increased from hour to hour. Clubs of many kinds were formed in Paris and all the more important towns of the country to further the interests of the middle classes. These were the forerunners of the democratic and revolutionary clubs that became so notable after the fall of the Bastile. The public unrest found a leader in Mirabeau, a brilliant orator and man of initiative, force of will and character, who was trusted by the people, notwithstanding his noble birth, because of the determined stand he had taken in their behalf. He went about the country stirring the people, by his fervid eloquence, to action in defense of their rights.

The States-General opened at Versailles on 5 May 1789; and they soon proved that they were in no mood to play the rôle the Crown had set apart for them. After considerable wrangling between the three orders which composed it, the clergy, the nobility and the Third Estate, the deputies of the latter declared themselves a "National Constituent Assembly" (17 June 1789). This was done in protest against the action of the other two orders in refusing to act with them in any measure or in any way, holding themselves above the representatives of the people. This action was equivalent to a declaration of war in the sense that it meant that the commons had decided to maintain their rights at all costs and against all opposition. Their attitude coupled with the evident joy with which it was welcomed by the populace of Paris and the surrounding cities and country aroused the court and the nobility to their own danger; and they met in secret

session, locking the doors against the Third Estate. The latter at once met in a tennis court, where all the members solemnly swore not to disband until they had secured a constitution for France. This was the signal for the lower clergy, who formed the great majority of the priests, to join the commons and to throw open the church of Saint Louis to them. There the assembly, though warned by the king to disperse, declared the inviolability of its members and defied the sovereign. Louis XVI realizing the danger of the situation, persuaded the other two orders to yield to the Third Estate; and a truce was patched up. The commons had won out. But the contest was not over. The court threw troops around the city. The following day all Paris showed that it was with the Third Estate in no halfhearted way; and the electors of the city constituted themselves an administrative body (13 July). They formed a guard of the citizens which, in a few hours, reached 80,000 armed men. In fear, the king withdrew the troops. Again the commons had won out. The following morning the excitement of the populace, which already realized its power, reached fever heat. The mob attacked the Bastile, the emblem of autocratic power and oppression, and captured it; murdered the provost and several others, and putting their heads on pikes marched in parade about the city. The Revolution was in full swing; and the court and the nobility were powerless to withstand it, for arbitrary government had long ago deprived the upper classes of all organization and power of resistance.

The news of the fall of the Bastile spread rapidly over the whole country. In fear the nobles hastened to relinquish all their privileges, seigniorial, ecclesiastical and jurisdictional; and their ancient rights were restored to the municipalities. The day might have been saved for the royalists had they known how to handle the situation. But they thought only of regaining their lost privileges by force of arms; and to this end they plotted in secret. This came to the ears of the people and they hastened to Versailles and forced the king to accompany them to Paris, and with him went the queen and the assembly. All three found themselves in the hands of the revolutionists (6 October), who from this time on, with justice, continued suspicious of the good faith of the king and the court. On the anniversary of the taking of the Bastile an immense crowd assembled in the Champs de Mars took the oath of fidelity to the new Constitution; and among them were the king and Lafayette, commander of the National Guards of the kingdom. The excesses of the ultra-revolutionists increased from day to day and the plottings of the nobility and the court kept pace with it. Thus the two extremes of French society drew rapidly apart. The queen, Marie Antoinette, urged the king to assert his rights. The populace replied with the establishment of all kinds of clubs which became more revolutionary from hour to hour. Finally the royal pair decided to escape from France and to appeal to the sovereigns of Europe to help them restore the kingly power in France (20 June 1791). They had already had the promise of large bodies of troops from Austria, Spain, Prussia, Switzerland and Pied