He pressed on the Exclusion Bill with all his power, and, when that and the inquiry into the payments for secret service and the trial of the five peers, for which too he had been eager, were brought to an end by a sudden prorogation, he is reported to have declared aloud that he would have the heads of those who were the king's advisers to this course.
Other exceptions are the " Institutions of the Empress Marie," which absorb, inter alia, the duties on playing-cards and the taxes on places of public entertainment; the imperial civil list, so far as this does not exceed the sum fixed in 1906 (16,359,595 roubles!); the expenses of the two imperial chanceries, 10,000,000 roubles per annum, which constitute in effect a secret service fund.
In fact it was transformed into a separate department of the ministry of the interior, and, provided with an enormous secret service fund, soon dominated the whole ministry.
A parliamentary commission, appointed to inquire into the charges against him, discovered only that Crispi, on assuming office in 1893, had found the secret service coffers empty, and had borrowed from a state bank the sum of £12,00o for secret service, repaying it with the monthly instalments granted in regular course by the treasury.
He naturally relied on his secret service to warn him in such time as would enable him to mass and meet the foe.
