In

estimates make the last impossible for the present. at Havre of all the furniture, wine, &c., which We are therefore driven to the ultimatum of bor- were destined for the French transatlantic steamrowing money to pay our debts. With an annual outgoing payment of no less than £31,000,000, interest, &c., on our existing debt, we are about to add to its principal, and this, too, at a time of as little promise and encouragement as can well be expected. And what guarantee have we that this additional charge shall not be a permanent one? and that the next year we shall not be compelled to. borrow afresh to discharge the encumbrance with which we have laden ourselves this year? So far the prospect is unpleasant. It is always more agreeable to pay than to contract debts; but there is no step which combines so many disadvantages as to incur a new one for the liquidation of the old. But this is now inevitable. We have no alternative. We have spent actually on the existing debt, and the current service of the past year, £52,422,000; we have also taken out of the exchequer, and have to refund into it, some £1,700,000 and odd, for the Caffre war, the Irish emigrants, and the navy excesses; in all our liabilities for the year are upwards of £54,000,000, and the revenue to meet them is not much over £52,000,000. The deficiency must be supplied, and, as the House of Commons reasonably enough refused to increase the income-tax, it could not be

ers. This republic cannot afford to enter into competition with New York. Algeria will be chosen as the country of the June insurgents under transportation; the fourth large convoy from Paris reached Havre yesterday morning. I have been struck by the subjoined paragraph of the National, urging the selection of Algeria: "Our right is not contested in our other possessions beyond sea. Africa, a numerous aboriginal population, hostile, warlike, defeated, but not subdued, watches to spring on the invaders. They view us as spoilers, not as the proprietors of the soil; and perhaps they do not widely err, for the right of property can accrue only from the cultivation of the soil. Let us, therefore, send as many cultivators as possible." Twenty thousand workmen of Paris have joined in a petition to the Assembly for aid to emigrate to Algeria in a body. Well, if scores of thousands more could be despatched. The two hundred thousand prolétaires in the capital are more dangerous to it and to France, than the millions of American negro slaves to their masters and states. It is admitted now, from the experience of France, Germany, and Italy, that, when mobs seize the ascendency, they cannot create, they will not brook, any regular government; their leaders soon fall into discord, and military, absolute sway becomes the sole cure for destructive and ignominious anarchy. The popular enormities and the usurpations and rapine of the demagogues discredit and preclude all republicanism. Society-civilization-morality— property-reason-all sound principles, interests, Art. 3. Letters and paquets of papers weighing and relations grow desperate, and resort to extreme more than 15 grammes, and not exceeding 100 efforts and expedients to beat and chain down the grammes, shall be charged 1fr. If the weight ex-rabble, and the agitators of every description. We ceeds 100 grammes, it cannot be sent by the post.

so unreasonable as at the same time to refuse its sanction of a loan.

The Moniteur of the 29th inst. contains the law of postal reform, just enacted. Its main provision is a simple, universal charge of four sous on every letter not above seven and a half grams.

Art. 2. Letters weighing 7 grammes, and not exceeding 16 grammes, shall be liable to a charge of 40c.

Art. 4. Letters recommended, and letters enclosing money, shall be subject to double postage. These letters must be prepaid.

Art. 5. The post-office is authorized to sell stamps, or labels, at 20c., 40c., and Ifr. each, the affixing of which on the letter will be equivalent to

66

An attempt was made, with plausible arguments, to substitute ten grams for the 74 in the first article. The minister, in resisting it, raised some merriment by this language: Envelopes may be excluded by the smaller weight; but merchants, any more than people in straitened circumstances, do not use envelopes. It is a new fashion; quite aristocratic; it clashes with the spirit and tendencies of the age!" The tribunals of commerce are recast; they were elective, but the bill enlarges the scheme of suffrage; all traders with licenses and residence are entitled to vote; so sea-captains and skippers. On the 11th of next month, there will be a public sale

are in this career; at Berlin and Vienna it is begun; at Rome it must soon be pursued. Ere long, every principal city south of the Scandinavian borders may be under martial law. The vindication and enforcement of some law admit of little delay. A new and beautiful coup d'œil is furnished in the centre of the Champs Elyseès-that of two hundred graceful tents in the square of Marigny; the effect, with the adjacent verdure and the groves, is highly picturesque; yesterday, the soldiery and their officers were variously employed in duty of camp, and hosts of city spectators delighted in the show.

At yesterday's sitting, the Assembly decided that the discussion of the constitution shall commence next Monday, and some hours every day, without intermission, be devoted to the subject. La Réforme, of this morning, says "The constitutional gospel bears the impress of the recent alarms and trouble of mind and spirit. There must, therefore, arise stormy debates on the suppressed points, and we trust that the revolution of February, however weakened by adverse events, will have its turn of reasoning and weight in legal discussion." This means that socialism and the red republic will strain every nerve to fashion the system conformably to their interpretation of the February affair, and

the order of things suited to their doctrines and be discerned through the haze of his poetic lanviews. The same oracle predicts that the debates guage. There was Ledru-Rollin, to set up mere will not be terminated for a long time. Three democracy, himself a candidate for the highest days hence a motion to inquire into the lawfulness place. Louis Blanc, so eager to establish a coopof the recent suspension of journals will engage the erative model that he could not take time or thought attention of the Assembly, with the assent of Pres-like skill. Blanqui Barbès, and their more savage to do it with the commonest degree of workmanident Cavaignac, who promises to give satisfactory adherents, laboring for a Red Republic. Caussidière explanations. His interdict on the Gazette de and Sobrier, occupying the Prefecture de Police, France, and some ministerial project of dealing in feigned foes, bent on a predatory communism not like manner with the Constitutionnel, have caused to be confounded with Proudhon's rigid theories or irritation within and without the Assembly. We Louis Blanc's eclectic Fourierism-Caussidière and Sobrier did their best to establish a reign of terror; apprehend a very animated, if not fierce and angry, Sobrier and his Montagnards performing the rough jostling. The list of journals launched in Paris work, while Caussidière winked at it and preoccuwithin the last spring teaches as much as a volu- pied the police so as to shield the lawless terrorists minous history or lecture. In the sitting of yester- against the visitation of hostile authority. The day, philosopher Pierre Leroux pronounced a dis- Napoleonists, the Legitimists, the Monarchists, quisition against repealing the ten hour labor law, joined in the scramble, but only at the edge of the which nearly prostrated the audience, but he was cut short by a ludicrous accident. His thick manuscript slipped from his hands; the numberless leaves flew on every side; the serjeants helped him to gather and assort the fugitives. What with this difficulty and the laughter and joy of the house, he surrendered the tribune.

From the Spectator, 26th August.

HOW REVOLUTIONS ARE MANAGED.

crowd.

erdashery. The "shindies" in the supreme council emulated that recorded by the ingenuous M. Chenu, at the Prefecture of Police; where Caussidière accused a fellow patriot of treachery, politely invited him to commit suicide, and, with an excess of considerate attention, tendered the loan of a "four-barrelled pistol" for the purpose. M. de la Hodde was rude enough to refuse the obliging invitation, and nearly enjoyed the honor of murder perhaps did so.

It was the shoemaker Chenu, a hero of the Risvised the provisional government, composed of the quons-tout expedition against Belgium, that improleading elements, all conflicting as they were. And no sooner was it formed than it set to work to destroy itself by internal antagonism. The Red Republic was contested in the councils; Ledru-Rollin against the large-voiced Arago, Lamartine splendidly generalizing, and Louis Blanc compromising the dispute by substituting a red riband for a red flag. For in that stirring time more than one tranIr is established by evidence distinct and indis-sitory institution rested on a basis of eloquent habputable, that "France," or the "French people," had no more to do with founding the republic than it had with overthrowing the monarchy-far less. The evidence taken by the committee of the Assembly on the insurrections of April and June throws a valuable light on the whole anterior history of the revolution. The witnesses were the actors in that immense drama: each man paints himself a hero, an injured-by-his-ungrateful-country patriot; but most of them concur in damning each other, and all agree in proclaiming the anarchy of their councils. It was no majority of the nation that acted or decreed; there was no majority every active party was manifestly a minority, and there were many of them. The monarchy did not fall before a new institution all ready formed; the monarchy fell by its own fault, and the republic turned up peradventure: its founders were not even agreed what it should be; but it was sketched on the spot by a shoemaker, who evidently contemplated something very different from that which exists under the dictatorship of M. Cavaignac. The cabinet of the monarchy, mismanaging the contest about small reforms, raised a commotion which shook down the monarchy; and in the sudden hubbub a host of political adventurers leaped forward to scramble for the power as it lay rolling about the streets of Paris. There was no common purpose, no understanding between the scramblers; so little, that the scramble really went on long after the first outbreak. The sceptre of power was snatched from one set after another, just as the valuables of an European crew murdered by savages pass from hand to hand in the precarious ownership of ignorant possession.

The men who conspired to scramble had motives as opposite as their purposes: they conspired, many of them, with ulterior plans for the destruction of their accomplices. There was Lamartine, glorying in the opportunity to compose a state as he would compose a poem or invent a book of travels; big with the idealism of something—of what, is not to

The measures were as distracted as the men. The history of the national workshops is a sample. Established by M. Marie to provide work for the dangerously idle, they were seized successively by Louis Blanc as a basis for his Socialist experiment, by young Emile Thomas as an electioneering apparatus, by Caussidière as a dépot fer émeutes, and finally they supplied the army for the insurrection of June. The Garde Mobile, eliminated from the same class="created" by M. de Lamartine, as he declares," on a piece of grey paper"-ranged with the side of order: " they were proud," says M. Arago, "of their uniforms." The National Assembly, elected by the universal suffrage of that France which had become involuntarily republican, was obstructed by the " democrats," who tried to tamper with the universal suffrage; but, having struggled into existence, the Assembly creates the dictatorship of General Cavaignac, and cheers his rebukes to those showy patriots who "think too much of themselves."

But where is "the people" all this while? Where is "France"? Was it with Ledru-Rollin, the democrat, the dictator in posse that was, the accused?—with Lamartine, who sees political parties through the foggy atmosphere of a Parisian Ossian, and comes forth from his retirement to tell his interrogators that "facts are connected together in political order in the same manner as in moral order;" that " on the 25th of February a fact produced itself, and besides that fact an excess"-vide

pressed our opinion that the interests of Europe,
and indeed the well-understood interests of Austria
herself, required the abandonment by that power
of purely Italian territory; and we moreover ex-
pressed our approval of the policy of her majesty's
government in not accepting, in the then position
of the contending parties, the offer of mediation on
the basis laid down by the cabinet of Vienna.
We see nothing in the reverses of Charles Al-
bert to make us change this opinion.

licet, a wish to wipe away society as well as the throne; that "the red flag was imagined as the sign of this idea ;" that he "created" the Garde Mobile on grey paper" to redress the balance; and that practical General Cavaignac-this is the most tremendous and incriminating charge against the general-was not very eager to obey poetical M. de Lamartine in the matters of strategy? Was the people with Caussidière and Sobrier, now denounced as assassins; with Louis Blanc, the defeated; with Barbès, the inflamed; with Blanqui, Had Lord Palmerston consented to propose a the spy? Chenu the shoemaker, was he" France?" mediation on that basis, if would have been as-"L'état! c'est moi" was it for him to borrow suredly then refused by one of the contending that vaunt?-Yet these were the men that created, parties, while the principle would have been abanand were, the government. Not only is it the re-doned on which we maintain that this and all simiverse of true that any of these persons had the au-lar questions should, and indeed can only definitivethority of France" or represented the people," ly, be settled-viz., that in the new territorial but each represented an inconsiderable fraction al distribution which must result from the present minority. fermentation, such a settlement should be arrived at as shall guarantee a permanent and natural state of European peace.

We cannot but think, too, that there is something premature in the pæan of reactionary triumph so loudly raised of late, and which we believe to be certainly at variance with the acknowledged political sympathies of this country.

"A people cannot govern"-it cannot even shape a government: it is too big, too clumsy and slow, to achieve an operation needing so much adroitness and promptitude. Chenu had the start of this majestic world altogether, and fairly beat it. Chenu can make a government, on the shortest notice, with punctuality and despatch; quicker than he can turn out a pair of shoes to order. The man whose boots All popular movements are marked by fitfulness, he was to have sent home that 25th of February and a want of the perseverance required to carry was fain to fight in old boots, and got his feet wet-out immediately the triumphs won in the first burst ted; but M. Chenu gave France its provisional of their irrepressible enthusiasm. We are not government on demand. Now France could not have done that for itself.

surprised that the efforts of the Italians, utterly deficient as they are in that power of combination However, there is a sort of "appeal to the coun- only to be acquired in the long enjoyment of civil try." These hastily-cobbled governments, if they and political freedom, should not at once have been do not fit the notion of the people and receive a tol- crowned with success; that the undisciplined levies erably wide sanction, do not stand. M Chenu's which constituted the great body of Charles Algovernment, though a clever performance for a bert's forces should have been scattered before the shoemaker, did not last so long as a pair of shoes. skilful movements and superior numbers of RaA slower but a stronger and broader influence ex-detzki; or that the gallant, if perhaps somewhat ercised a creative power; by various changes, the interested, championship of the Sardinian monarch more steady and potent government of General should be temporarily rewarded with popular in Cavaignac was shaped. It is much threatened and gratitude. Certainly we are not inclined to believe harassed by the fractions that call themselves "the that Italian nationality has received its death-blow people;" it does not itself profess to be "the peo-in the capitulation of Milan. ple; nay, the general has gone so far as to avow that he would resist even the whole people if he thought that august but not infallible body in error. But somehow this new government has managed to attain more stability than its predecessors, by favor of its own inherent strength, its show of honesty, the seeming reality of its purposes, and the wide sanction which those qualities earn for it. When General Cavaignac declared that he should stick to his conviction and his purpose even in spite of the people, the representatives of the people cheered, the funds rose, the citizens heaved the pleasant sigh of anxiety discharged. The present government appears to be the best attained since the revolution, not because it issues decrees, as M. Chenu's nominees did, in the name of the people," but because it is created by the greatest and most intelligent power within the nation.

From the Examiner, 26th August.
ITALY.

IN endeavoring, on the 15th July, to analyze and define the twofold struggle now stirring the depths of European society, and in calling the attention of our readers more particularly to that question which has more lately assumed such a prominent and vital importance, (the Italian question,) we ex

We hold that the laws of the creation are against Austrian dominion in Italy, and we adopt, if we give a somewhat different reading to the phrase attributed to the political cynicism of the superannuated statesman, to whose attempts to dam in with his effete system the tide of human progress we owe most of the fury of its present flood. "Italy is a geographical expression." Yes, as in endowing it with a brighter sky, a balmier air, and a richer soil, nature has evidently intended that it should supply certain varieties of the wants of man; so, in endowing the race which peoples it with certain qualities of mind and temperament, analagous to and perchance mainly produced by the physical causes by which they are surrounded, has she as evidently intended that that race should furnish its distinct contingent to the sum of human civilization; and, in decreeing that the fig-tree and the olive shall not flourish on the banks of the Inn and of the Danube, so seems she as clearly to indicate that the dwellers by the banks of the Danube shall not cultivate the fig and the olive on the banks of the Tiber or the Po. Nor can they when right shall have outbalanced might-the power of mind that of brute force. In Italy that balance wavers.

We can imagine the scornful smile with which the fiery old marshal, who doubtless thinks with

LIST OF JOURNALS WHICH APPEARED, IN THREE MONTHS AFTER FEB. 24, IN PARIS.

119. Les Bêtises de la Semaine.

64. Le Drapeau de la Répub- 120. Le Travail.