THE present Bonaparte, early in his reign devised a method of making the conscription easier to the people, and at the same time more effective for his own designs. This consisted in offering a bounty of 2,300 francs to every soldier who would re-enlist at the expiration of his term, with increased pay, and a pension after twenty-five years' service. This had the effect of deranging the trade in substitutes, which the conscripts were allowed to furnish. The price which all able to afford it were willing to pay to avoid the pursuit of glory was so considerable that companies were formed to deal in the article, which they would provide at the rate of 3,000 francs, or about $600. Finally, the government took the monopoly into their own hands, reduced the price to about 2,500 francs, and yet had so many applications for re-enlistment that the bounty was considerably reduced without lessening the demand. The effect of this new policy was, obviously, to constitute the army of men who liked the business, and who were fully weaned from civil life, on whom the government could rely much more entirely than on men entering into the service reluctantly, and always looking forward to the happy hour of their release. The new necessity which the sudden aggrandizement of Prussia has created that France must raise her effective and reserve force to more than a million of men, in order to save her from being obliged to fight, has raised the annual tribute of youths demanded by the war-demon to one hundred thousand! What an amount of domestic distress and anxiety, not loud but deep, is represented by that enormous figure! The only hope of deliverance to France and to most of the countries of Europe from this cruel burden lies in the direction of bankruptcy. France is annually running far behindhand in her accounts, and has to impose new taxes and create a fresh debt in order to pay the interest on the old one and her current expenses. Italy is in a worse condition; and that of the Pope is worst of all. And the larger infusion of fresh and reluctant material thus drawn from the mass of the French people must qualify the trustworthiness of the army as a picked and permanent body, on whom the despot can rely at all times. The army has always been a broken reed, piercing the hand that rested on it in the time of their utmost need; for the troops are Frenchmen, after all, and they have always been swept along with the rest of their countrymen by the tide of revolutionary sympathy. It was so in 1789, and again in 1830, and yet again in 1848. The witty question of the Edinburgh Reviewer, when a standing army was affirmed to be the extinguisher of rebellion—"But suppose your extinguisher should take fire?"—was answered on those occasions, and may be again. It may well be that this last burden imposed by Bonaparte on the patient people may topple over on himself, and crush him and his dynasty under its weight.