Then we have the smaller amounts invested in the spunge and coral fisheries and in the various metallurgical and mechanical industries contributing to the production of the machines, implements and utensils used for the various purposes above enumerated. Adding these together we have a grand total of 422,000,000, or let us say in round numbers 450,000,000.

Under the old régime the Marine Insurance Associations numbered eighteen in all. Now there are seventy-five of them. In 1859 the total number of commercial and industrial associations was one hundred and sixty-three, in 1868 they numbered three hundred and three, of which two hundred and eighty-seven were national, thus showing an increase of one hundred and forty, fifty-five being marine insurance associations, and eighty-five for other objects.

Touching the next consideration-liberal legislative measuresM. Sances observes that the Italian system, if not altogether perfect, is at least conceived in a spirit worthy of a free and enlightened nation.

The Maritime Code now in force originated at the Conference for the Revision of Laws affecting the Mercantile Marine, held at Geneva in September, 1859, at the suggestion of Count Cavour.

It was promulgated on 25th June, 1861, and took effect from the 1st January following. The instructions in case of war are in accordance with those agreed to at the International Congress at Paris in 1856, interpreted in a still more liberal spirit. With certain disciplinary reservations, its punitive dispositions are entirely subject to the common law of the kingdom.

A previous decree of January 1861 abolished a whole furrago of old-fashioned laws affecting the sea service, which had sprung up at various periods in the different provinces, at the same time dealing with the difficult question of "dues" in a broad far-seeing spirit opposed to any undue measure of fiscality. Many of these arrangements have subsequently been modified, but the Italian Maritime imposts, according to M. Sances, remain lower than those of any other country. This is chiefly due to the fact that harbour and light-house dues do not exist, and that the charges to which vessels are liable are precisely the same in every port. Every vessel under 50 tons burthen is liable to a single anchorage tax in the year, whatever her number of entries during that period. This advantage was formerly possessed of vessels under 30 tons only.

All vessels of superior tonnage pay an anchorage fee at the port at which they touch first, which fee clears them at all other ports of the kingdom, for thirty-days if a steamer, and four months if a sailing vessel, provided no foreign port shall have been entered in the interim. Native vessels and foreign bottoms in the service of natives, the same being sailing vessels, or steamers of any

nationality employed solely in tug service, may further commute these charges by an annual payment of 1 lire 50 centesimi per ton.

The Maritime Inscription is in force, but the terms are more lenient than in any other country where the institution exists. So says M. Sances, who appears fully to recognize the evils which result from such a measure, especially when carried to excess, as in France.

By the law of 1861, every Italian seaman was enrolled from twenty-one to forty years of age, and bound to serve four years with the flag, the remainder of his nineteen years' engagement being a continuous furlough. Some ameliorations were subsequently introduced by which men of thirty-two years and over who had served their active period, and fathers of families above thirty-five years of age, were held to have completed their engagements. In 1864 the terms of service were assimilated to those of the army, being reduced from nineteen to eleven, five with the flag, and six on furlough in the reserve. New ineasures are promised in the course of the current year, having for their object a further conciliation of the interests of the Military and Mercantile Marine as far as may be possible, without detriment to either.

FRANCE:

A FEW REMARKS ON THE PRESENT CRISIS.

BY MAJOR W. P. JONES.

No. 11.

In a former article I followed the course of the war up to the last week in December.

During the five months since the commencement of hostilities, the struggle had passed through three distinct phases. In reality and intrinsically a War of Races, it had at first assumed the character of a hostile attack on the governing power of the rival nation; it had then appeared as a war of one people against another, and finally it has become a direct contest between the two prevailing forms of sentiment and feeling at this time governing the minds of men in Central and Western Europe. These may be shortly stated as the preserving and the innovating; the conservative and the destructive. In other words the contest has now become one of stern common sense, and the military spirit against sentimental, and even somewhat silly and vain-glorious socialistic Republicanism. The one typified by Bismarck and Moltke, as the other is by Garibaldi and Victor Hugo. Far be it from me

to under-value the gallant efforts made by the Republic and its leaders-pre-eminently by Gambetta, whose zeal and energy are something wonderful-to save their country and cause from the overwhelming power and force of the antagonist principle; but though thousands and tens of thousands of brave youths and honest peasants pour out from every part of the country to fill the ranks of the armies, no great general or commanding genius comes forth to lead them. Equality is not prolific in great men. When that rather envious Goddess shall produce one, she will find in him either a victim or a master.

To return for a moment to the course of events since our last article. We left the Army of General Chanzy, formerly the left wing of the Army of the Loire, still, during the Christmas week, making some head against the Duke of Mecklenburg in the country about Vendome.

Although much inferior in numbers, the Duke was enabled, by the superior quality of his troops, gradually to gain ground upon the French; but the contest in that quarter was plainly yet undecided.

Prince Frederick, part of whose army had followed the right wing of the French in their retreat to Vierzon and Bourges, was still in the neighbourhood of the former town, or at Orleans. While Manteuffel and Werder held their respective ground in Normandy and on the Saone. During the months of November and December, an Army had been forming in the Northern departments, chiefly from the garrisons of the frontier towns, sup. plemented by Mobilised National Guards, seamen-gunners, &c. At first placed under command of General Bourbaki, it had, on his recall to the seat of Government at Tours, been entrusted to General Faidherbe. For some time it had effected nothing considerable. The northern fortresses were one after another attacked and taken by the Germans, without either Bourbaki or Faidherbe being able to delay their fall or to interrupt the enemy's communications. Nevertheless, Faidherbe had gradually brought his army to some degree of efficiency, and had increased their numbers to about 60,000 men. His advance southward disturbed Manteuffel in his Norman operations, and obliged him to strike across from Rouen to the vicinity of Amiens, and on the 23rd of December, the German Army advanced from the latter city and attacked the French positions on the banks of the small river, Hallu. There can be little doubt that Faidherbe was greatly superior in numbers, and well furnished with artillery, but of cavalry he was almost entirely destitute; a deficiency to which he in great measure owes his defeats, as well in this, as in the subsequent battles of the campaign.

The regular forces of the French, now as well as subsequently, appear to have fought with spirit, making strenuous efforts to recover the positions from which they had been driven by the

enemy; but the Mobiles behaved ill. In fact here, as elsewhere, the want of discipline and training, and the defect in outpost duty and intelligence of the enemy's movements, consequent on the want of cavalry, rendered Faidherbe's 60,000 men no match for half or even a third part of their own numbers. Indeed in so little estimation were the possible efforts of the French regarded by their opponents, that a little later during the bombardment of Peronne, when the division under Von Goeben, which covered the operation and numbered only 15,000 men, was attacked at Bapaume, ten miles distant, by a force outnumbering them at least three-fold, the fire against the town was not for a moment intermitted. When Faidherbe made the forward movement which terminated so disastrously, the garrison of Paris made a sortie on a grand scale against the lines of the Saxon Army in rear of Le Bourget. The enterprise came to nothing; but was attended by circumstances for which it is difficult to imagine a reason. The troops were kept for the four nights previous to Christmas-day, bivouacking in the open fields with the thermometer at 14 degrees of frost; the effect upon an unsuccessful army must have been eminently unfortunate. Encouraged by the repulse of this attempt to break out, the Saxons determined to circumscribe the circle of the French outposts, and accordingly on the 27th of December opened a heavy fire from their batteries on Mont Avron, of which the French had been for several weeks in possession, and on which they had erected works of a formidable character. Either the attacking fire was too heavy to be resisted, or the French infantry had had the heart taken out of them by the events of the last few days; for the place was evacuated the following day, much to the surprise of the captors. The advance works being thus easily surrendered, the Germans next unmasked their siege batteries; and on the 1st of January commenced a tremendous cannonade on the forts on the east side of the city, which was extended in the course of the week to those on the south side. The Prussian commanders, finding that famine was not doing its work with sufficient rapidity, determined to add the terrors of an active assault to the efforts of that gaunt adversary.

Here we will leave them for the present; to attend to the movements of those provincial armies upon which Paris still relied for her deliverance. On the 27th of December, that part of the Army of the Loire under Chanzy, having obtained suffcient re-inforcements, put itself once more in motion, and moved forward to the banks of the Loir in the neighbourhood of Vendome, its numbers were estimated-however made up-even by the Germans at a hundred and forty thousand men, and its intended route was supposed to be by Chartres on Versailles. But all chance of success, in that quarter, was destroyed by another of those extraordinary mistakes which have marked the conduct

of the French generals since the beginning of the war. On the 24th of December it was reported that General Bourbaki, who had succeeded to the command of what was once the right wing of the Army of the Loire, which had fallen back on Bourges after the defeat at Orleans, was moving to the eastward. At first the rumour was not believed to be possible, but it was soon discovered to be true; Bourbaki marched towards Dijon with the reported intention of relieving Belfort, then besieged by the Germans, of falling upon their communications, and even of penetrating into Germany itself.

Whatever his intention, his act placed a distance of three hundred miles between the two parts of the Army of the Loire, with the victorious forces of the Duke of Mecklenburg and Prince Frederick between them; the consequences were as might have been expected.

Prince Frederick who had been watching Bourbaki from the neighbourhood of Orleans and Vierzon, instantly countermarched, and joining his corps to that of the Duke fell on the Army of Chanzy with terrible effect. After some preliminary skirmishes, the Prince attacked the French in front of Le Mans on the 10th of January and drove them back on the city with great loss. On the 12th he again defeated them with a like slaughter, splitting their army into two parts, one of which retreated upon Laval, while the other took the road to Alençon.

The manœuvres of Prince Frederick were conducted with his usual skill. Chanzy surprised to find the Prince in front of him, whom he had supposed far away following Bourbaki, was attacked from two different directions, his flanks turned, and his divisions thrown into irremediable confusion. These victories in fact utterly ruined the Army of the Loire; the regular troops suffering terribly in killed, wounded, and prisoners; while the untrained Mobiles and armed peasantry either surrendered in thousands or threw away their arms and dispersed; and thus terminated all chance of succour to Paris from the west.

We turn for a moment to the east. Von Werder, who had hitherto remained in the vicinity of Dijon, in all probability hearing of the eastward march of Bourbaki, fell back on Vesoul. Nothing particular had occurred in his front for some time past, except skirmishes with the Garibaldians. And here let me remark on the very small service afforded by them to the French cause. I have carefully read all the letters from correspondents with Garibaldi, and except the surprise of a small detachment of Germans by Riciotti, I cannot discover that they have effected anything. Another proof that political adventurers, however brave or honest, are not necessarily generals, because they have conquered kingdoms and overthrown dynasties.

Meanwhile Bourbaki continued to advance on the road to Dijon and Baume, making towards Belfort. Von Werder, on