NOTES OF THE MONTH.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 323, 25 June 1875, Page 3

NOTES OF THE MONTH.

(From the Spectator.) A curious incident is reported from Paris. M. Dufaure, the new Minister of Justice, issued on the 30th March a circular to his Public Prosecutors, informing them that the Assembly had established a Republic as the definitive Government of France. He directed them, therefore, to report to him whether the Jury Act of 1872 had worked well, whether it could be extended to Press offences, and how many and what Press offences had been punished by suppressions, suspensions, or prohibitions to sell in the streets. He directed them also to take note of attacks by associations on the constitutional system, ard of the immense colportage of Bonapartist photographs and pamphlets. The wording of the circular was most moderate, but its meaning of course was that the Republic was now the established Government of France. Marshal MacMahon was most irritated, and the Cabinet required the withdrawal of the circular. This M. Dufaure refused, though he consented to telegraph that the phrase, " the Republic," must be altered into " the Republican Government in France, presided over for six years by Marshal ("not President] MacMahon." The Cabinet then threatened to refuse official publication to the circular, but at last it was published, with the sentences about the Press struck out. Of course there are tae usual denials that differences exist in the Cabinet, but as it happened, an early copy, with the expurgated sentences, had been forwarded to the Times.

The importance of this incident is twofold, In the first place it shows that M. Buffet's Government, so far from concealing Liberalism under moderation, is even more Tory than was suspected ; and, in the second place, it taxes the patience of the Left to the utmost. If M. Gambetta withdraws, the combination which carried the Constitutional Laws is broken up, and even his Italian genius for patience must be sorely tried. To be told that even M. Dufaure is too Radical for a Republican Government, that a circular mentioning the Republic is a dangerous document, that allusions to possible oppressions of the Press are not permissible, is almost too much. We can only hope that M. Gambetta, always wiser than his party, may still hold them in haud till the dissolution reveals the true judgment of FranceJ; but even English Liberals could scarcely be trusted to keep their tempers under such a Ministry. If the Left can keep rank under such provocation, they have learnt the secret of government, and will yet hold power. Mr Elwes, the Suffolk miser, would have a hard time of it if he were alive now. He is said to have visited a clergyman once in the vestry after a charity sermon, and complimented him most highly on his eloquence. " In fact," he said, " Mr Blank, so deeply have you convinced me of the virtue of charity, that I feel almost inclined to turn beggar myself." James Blanchard, of Alton, Hants, is of Mr Elwes's opinions, but in the present day they are considered dangerous. He owns land and houses, keeps an account at the savings bank, saves everything he can to swell his store, and in fact believes in the gospel of the nineteenth century. Unfortunately, he thinks so highly of charity t v at he goes about begging, and the Aldershot magistrates have sentenced him to twelve months' hard labour. The police suspected him, apparently, of intending to steal, and he had been seven times convicted of larceny, but he was punished this time for begging. If he had cheated shareholders in a civilised manner, he would have been punished only by a rebuke from the Judges, who would at the same time have doubted if a man with capital could intend a fraud. The Bien Puhlic publishes a rumour, as yet, however, unconfirmed, that Pedro 11, the savan Emperor of Brazil, is about to abdicate in favour of his daughter, the Comtesse d'Eu, whose husband, one of the Orleans Princes, is a soldier, and said to be an able man. He commanded in the war with Paraguay. The Emperor's decision is said to be owing to inability to agree with his Parliament on ecclesiastical questions, which in Brazil, as everywhere else, are beginning to override all others. Is is stated that the Emperer, after his resignation, will make a tour of Europe, and finally settle in the United States. The story may be true, but it is just as likely put in circulation in order to influence either the Brazilian Parliament or the Emperor. Kings out of Spain generally die Kings. The Lord Chief Justice took advantage of a dinner given by the Southampton Chamber of Commerce to complain of the calumnies and abuse to which he has recently been subjected: —" Gentlemen, the viper-tooth of calumny is sharp and its poison is deadly, and the fable tells us that the viper does not fix its fangs in you with the less deadly hostility because you have cherished it in your bosom, and the fable tells us also that there are things upon which the teeth of the viper are spent in vain. One of these is the confidence, however it may be wanting in deluded, infatuated, ignorant multitudes —the confidence which, in this country, all classes of thinking and educated men entertain in the integrity of the Judicial Bench." All that is perfectly true, but we would rather it were said by the educated and thinking than by the Lord Chief Justice, who, human nature notwithstanding, ought to be above the possibility of even knowing that he is calumniated. Our Judges are as good as ever, but they seem to be losing something of their impassiveness. Mr Justice Denman fell into an error the other day from at crime, and Lord Coleridge, while inflicting a deserved sentence of penal servitude for life, tried to strengthen it by saying, " I sentence you to slavery." It is the silent Law which awes criminals, not the eloquent Judge*

John Martin, member for Meath, the brother-in-law of John Mitchell, and his only genuine disciple, has died at Newry. He

was a small landowner of County Down, was educated for the medical profession, and but for John Mitchell would probably have lived and died a benevolent squire, practising medicine among the poor without charge. Mr Mitchell, however, fascinated him, he made him believe that Ireland would never be righted till she was independent, and turned a quiet, gentle person of no political [lowers into a furious agitator, who used, it is said, to get horribly puzzled where to find the necessary supply of abuse for the English. He had no venom in him, and had, as it were, to learn hissing. His opinions once imbibed, he never afterwards changed them, and after undergoing ten years' transportation for treason committed in his newspaper the Irish Felon, returned to Ireland unchanged, and being sent up to Parliament, used every now and then to say in the pleasantest manner the most outrageous things. The man, however, was so much better than his political creed, he was so transparently honest, and he had such real regard for Ireland, that English members bore almost anything at his hands, and he died the object of all but political respect. If he had succeeded in his design, and had separated Ireland from England, he would have been trodden down by rougher and less scrupulous men within two years. Mr E. A. Leatham, the Member for Huddersfield, who is a Quaker, laid the foundation of a Baptist chapel, and gave an address on the occasion. As Quakers do not baptise, he thought it necessary to defend himself from achargeof inconsistency which nobody would have brought; but the main object of his speech was, as usual, Disestablishment. In ten years everybody, he believed, would have to declare whether he was for the Bond Church or the Free. Religion was allying herself more and more with politics. He accepted with pride the title of "Political Dissenter." He thought politics and religion should go hand-in-hand ; for "if their dissent was to rise to its full height, it must be political; and. if their politics were not to fall beneath their true level, they must be religious." That is manly enough, and true besides; but then, if the Churchmen, or still more, the Roman Catholic, says the same thing, Mr Leatham is very angry. A Dissenter who votes down denominational education is a religious politician, but a Churchman who votes it up is a bigot, or if he has been a Quaker, a renegade, while a Roman Catholic who does so is a superstitious fool

The Master of Balliol, Professor Jowett, has quite a remarkable faculty of preaching what one may fairly call suspensive Christianity. That is, he combines a curiously profound vein of Christian sentiment with a somewhat morbid respect for the achievements of modern criticism in the way of throwing an atmosphere of doubt over the authenticity of the Christian story. In a sermon preached in London last Sunday, at the Church of St Lawrence in Gresham street, he took his subject from the story of the Passion, —the prayer of Christ that if it were possible the cup might pass from him, —but even so, he was absolutely unable to get into his subject without enlarging anxiously upon the discrepancies between the various Gospels, the comparatively late date at which they were all recognised in their present forms in the Church, and tbe obstruction this causes to any unhesitating belief in the supernatural facts of the Gospel story. Still, said Professor Jowett, we cannot suspend the great duties of life, while we suspend our judgment on the questions thus raised; and in the meantime, we may actually accept as certain that Christ went about doing good, and suffered both "mental and bodily anguish for men's sake. And so, at last, he reached his subject, though not, we suspect, without a doubt in his own mind as to the probably baneful results, even upon Christian sentiment and practice, of any judicial decision which may ultimately be passed on the theological demurrer the scope of which he had thus indicated.