millions (£1, 330,000,000), to be employed in building 100 towns, to accommodate each 150,000 souls, in the most agreeable situations to be found in France. As the testator recognizes that all the specie in Europe would not reach this amount, it is left to the discretion of the executors to buy land and real estate. 5. Finally, with regard to the last sum of 100 livres, amounting nearly, with the ac cumulation of 500 years, to four millions of millions of livres (136,000,000,000 sterling): six thousand millions to be employed in pay ing off the National Debt of France, " upon condition that the kings shall be entreated to order the comptrollers-general of the fin ances to undergo, in future, an examination in arithmetic, before they enter upon their office "; twelve thousand millions of livres (£525,000,000) to pay off the National Debt of England. "It may be seen," says this astute and far-seeing philosopher, " that I reckon that both these National Debts will be doubled in this period; not that I have any doubts of the talents of certain Ministers to increase them much 'more, but their operations in this way are opposed by an infinity of cir cumstances which lead me to presume that those debts cannot be more than doubled. Besides, if they amount to a few thousand of millions more, I declare that it is my in tention that they should be entirely paid off, and that a project so laudable should not be deferred for a trifle, more or less. "I beg that the English would not refuse this, slight mark of the remembrance of a man, who was indeed born a Frenchman, but who sincerely esteemed their nation. . . . I earnestly desire that, as an acknowledg ment of this legacy, the English nation will consent to call the French their neighbors,
and not their natural enemies, that they may be assured that Nature never made man an enemy to man; and that national hatreds, commercial prohibitions, and, above all, wars constantly produce a monstrous error in calculations." Into the further legacies we do not pro pose to enter — they include funds for the encouragement of peace, the extinction of State lotteries and sinecure offices, for the increase of priestly stipends — "on condi tion that the clergy forego their fees for saying masses "; for bringing waste lands into cultivation, for education, for public or municipal houses of labor, where any who demand work shall have it; for hospitals; for the furtherance of the employment and proper remuneration of women, etc. A modest residuum of some three millions of millions odd livres is left to the discretion of the executors — six in number — who are to be replaced perpetually on the death of any one by the votes or nomination of the survivors. These gentlemen receive nothing from the first sum, but at the end of the second hundred years there is a sum of 125,000 livres unappropriated; of the third, 711,000; of the fourth, 32,000,000, which sums they arc requested to accept as a compensation for their expenses and trouble. The will concludes with the following characteristic paragraph : — "May the success of these establishments cause one day a few tears to be shed on my grave! But above all, may the example of an obscure individual kindle the emulation of patriots, princes and public bodies; and engage them to give attention to this new but powerful and infallible means of serving posterity, and contributing to the future im provement and happiness of the world! "
