NOTES OF THE MONTH.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 283, 8 May 1875, Page 3

NOTES OF THE MONTH.

(From the Spectator?) Two elections to the French Assembly came off on February sth. In one, for the Department of the Seine-et-Oise, the Republican candidate, M Valentin, a rather pronounced Radical, was returned by 55,359 votes, against 41,077 given to the Bonapartist Due de Padoue and 4062 to the Comte de Keratry, who fought for his own hand. The Duke obtained fewer votes than he received at the last election. In the Cotes du Nord a moderate Legitimist has been returned, by 41,900 votes, against 37,510 given to a Republican, and 33,934 obtained by the Due de Feltre, the boldest Bonapartist who has yet appeared. He made his appeal solely on the ground of his sympathy with the heir of Napoleon 111. He has since retired, declining to face the second ballot, rendered necessary by the absence of a clear majority. The voting in the Seine-et-Oise is the more noteworthy, because the electors were thoroughly aware of all that is going on in the National Assembly, Versailles being within the Department.

The iron and coal-masters of South Wales have fulfilled their threat, and on Monday, the 2nd inst, 120,000 workmen were locked out, because half of thtm would not accept alO per cent reduction. It is calculated that 500,000 men, women, and children are thus thrown out of employ, besides their tradesmen, and all dependant upon those tradesmen's profits. The masters reject arbitration and interviews and any form of compromise, and threaten a further reduction if the lock-out lasts a fortnight. As the men have a week's wages in hand, actual distress has not made its appearance, but as we have tried to show elsewhere, they never were so ill-prepared, and had better go in at once 1 The Trades Union of Masters can wait any time at present prices, and however harsh the lock-out may be, the men, withont hoards, without a Union, and without the power of emigrating, must yield to the fortune of war. The Unions, as a whole, cannot find the money, £50.000 a week, necessary to keep them in health, and the general public holds them in the wrong. The popular notion that they could live on their accumulated furniture is wrong, for the same reason. The pawnbrokers have no such sum to lend.

The Hon and Rev W. H. Fremantle, rector of St Mary's, Bryanston square, had promised to preach in the Congregational Church on the Holborn Viaduct, known as the " City Temple," on February sth, but was prevented from doing so by the request of the Bishop of London, who told him that he believed it to be an illegal course for a minister of the Established Church to take, and requested him at all events to wait till the legality or illegality had been determined . Mr Fremantle did not preach, but made a speech instead, in which he explained why he could not, and stated that he had accepted the invitation, not knowing of any legal impediment, because he felt that " the greatest religious need of our time was more union and sympathy between the Protestant Christians of England, and that common acts of worship like that to which he had been invited would, if multiplied, be one great help to that union." That is a very good creed, and to our minds there can hardly be anything sillier than legal restriction on acts of communion between clergymen of the Established Church and those of other Churches, so far as they rest on common faiths and common sympathies. The only theological excuse for such restrictions is the idea which Roman Catholics, we believe, entertain, that to break the unity of the visible Church by communion with schismatics is an act of sacrilege. No doubt there may be Anglicans who share that view, whatever it means, — we must say we have never distinctly grasped the meaning at all, —but no one proposes to force them into communion with what they abhor. That those who recognise no superstitution of the kind shonld be legally restrained from joining formally in worship in which their heart is engaged, would be the most grotesque of ecclesiastical restraints. Mr Freemantle spoke, but did not preach. Is there anything of mystical significance in beginning what you have to say with a text, and interpolating "my brethren " now and then, and ending with "Amen"? The formalists are really too childish when they threaten to apply a law, supposing it to exist, of which all the moral significance must completely have vanished before any one could have forgotten it. The French Assembly, after a short adjournment, reassembled on February 11th, and the day's proceedings were marked by an unexpected and most important incident. M. Batbie proposed, in the name of the Commission of Thirty, that one-third of the Senate should be nominated by the President, and the remaining two-thirds be elected by the Councils-General of Departments. M. Pascal Duprat, however, moved as an amendment, that " the Senate is elective, the members of the Senate are elected by universal suffrage, and by the same electors as those who elect the Chamber of Deputies." His argument was that Upper Houses in France were always despised, that the Senate of the Empire had died of contempt, the men of the 4th of September not having even troubled themselves to close it, and that such bodies needed a force to be derived only from universal suffrage, lie spoke with great temperance, the Right abstained from the division, and ho carved his clause by 322 to 310. The Assembly was astounded, and it is said the vote may impede the establishment of the Republic, the Marshal resolving to secure a dissolution. The Marshal, however, has not intervened hitherto, and it is more probable that the Orleanists will propose some new form of check. The first one to be submitted to the Assembly is M. Dufaure's, which limits the classes from which Senators can be taken ; but. as we have shown elsewhere, this check is illusory, and the idea of a check must either be abandoned, or some other means devised.