On one very important question of French politics, M. Fleury, as a practical politician in this great and active department, gives me a good deal of useful light. This is the question of the expenses of the electoral machine. In France, as in America, no limit is set by the law to the possible expenditure of a political candidate. I have already given the estimate made for me in Artois of the general cost of the legislative elections, and I have been told by more than one well-informed French politician in other parts of France, that the average cost of a candidacy for a seat in the Chamber may be roughly estimated at twenty-five thousand francs, or a thousand pounds sterling. This would show, allowing two candidates only for each seat, an expenditure of thirty millions of francs, or twelve hundred thousand pounds, at each French parliamentary election, being very nearly the figure given me in Artois. We send only 330 members to Washington, but we elect a new House every two years. The British House of Commons, though more numerous even than the French Chamber, probably spends a good deal less upon getting itself elected than either the French or the American House.[4]
[4] At this time (October, 1889) there is a difficulty in New York about a good candidate for the seat vacated by the death of the late Mr. S. S. Cox, being a prominent democratic member of Congress, because the candidate must consent to an annual 'assessment' on his salary for political purposes. The French Government, I am told, collects these 'contributions' easily, the deputies 'recouping' themselves by patronage.
One of the 'working sub-prefects' of the Boulangist party in Picardy gave M. Fleury a very frank estimate of the expense of electing the General in 1888, in the Somme. He put it, in round numbers, at nearly or quite one hundred and twenty-five thousand francs, or five thousand pounds. This unusual outlay was made necessary by the great efforts of the Government to defeat the General. Furthermore, it was swollen by the disinterested devotion of many of the General's friends. Some of these auxiliaries spent days at the best hotels in Picardy labouring for the cause, with the result of a special hotel account, amounting to several thousand francs. Nothing makes men so thirsty as political emotion. Another partisan, at the head of a journal, sent in a bill for forty-five thousand francs expended by him upon printing and stationery, no charge being made for his personal services! The chief agents received about two thousand francs apiece. One of them must have worked very hard, for he earned no less than fifteen thousand francs. While all this expense was incurring in Picardy, furthermore, two other elections were pending, in each of which the General was a candidate, one in the Charente and one in the Nord. It would seem to be probable enough, therefore, that on these three elections In 1888 General Boulanger, or the Boulangists, must have spent at least two hundred and fifty thousand francs, or ten thousand pounds.