LATE ENGLISH NEWS. {From the Home News, January 25.) France.—The Assembly.

New Zealander, Volume 6, Issue 435, 15 June 1850, Page 3

LATE ENGLISH NEWS. {From the Home News, January 25.) France. — The Assembly.

The debate on the bill for regulating public instruction was very animated on Tuesday week, (the 15th,) when Victor Hugo took the parole, and inveighed with eloquent bitterness and fierce gesticulation against the patip&he, one of whose instalments he proclaimed this bill to be. He demanded the right of obligatoiy instruction for all. He wished that its staitin^ point should bo the village school, and that it should rise as lar as the institute ; he would have the gates of science set wide open to eveiy capacity. He w ould not have a commune without a school, not a town without a ! college, not a chief town without a faculty.—(lnterruption.) He wislud that France should piesent a vast whole, a sort of netwoik of intellectual workshops, a Rioup of gymnasiums, of colleges, and of libraiies, without any solution of continuity. He wished that the heart of the people should be placed in constant communication with the bi am of France — (Intennption and whispering.) He was aware that the solution oltheproblcm contained an important financial question but if the hour had not been so advanced, he could have shown, by entering into details, that he perfectly understood it, and those who inlennpted him would have been compelled to he silent. He wished for the complete separation of Church and State, for that would tend to the interest of both. The present bill would be nothing but one weapon moie given to the clergy. The tendency of the bill was to place the countiy in their hands. He would not have the pioi fessoi's chair invade the altar, nor would he have the piiest inteifere with the professor. lie would open the eye ot the Senate to the seminaiies, and, until the day when education should be completely fiee, would not have it watched over by the eletgy. *ihe bill proposed, he regarded as a strategic one ; it was the chef d'eeuvre of the clerical party. In the remarks that he had made, he did not mean (o confound the Church with the clencil party, for the lalter was the disease of the former. Fiee leligious instruction was the Sisters of Charity by the bedbide of the dying, the Brother of Meicy releasing a slave, Vincent tie Paule shekel ing the oinhan, the Bishop of Marseille-, in the midst ol those afiected by the plague, the Archln&hop ol Paris facing, with sublime smile, the juries ol the Faubourg St. Antione, raising the crucifix over the heads of Civil war, caring little about meeting death, ;>o that he might secure peace, A Voice— He would not have been killed if civil war had not been raised in the streets of Paris. M. Victor Hugo — The clencal party was an ancient ; it'had a " past" ol seveial centimes ; that party it was which discovered that truth was but ignorance and error. The clerical party wished to instiucl, and it would be, Iherefore, well to look at what it had done for centuries when Italy and Spain were in its hands. Thanks to it, Italy, that mother of nations, of poets, of genius, and of the arts, now knew not how to lead. Spain had lost her mnk among nations, bnt it was true t>hc had gained the Inquisition — an establishment which some in that assembly had wished to re-estublish. The President.— You cannot be allowed to impute such on intention to any one in the assembly. On the Right.— Let him go on. It is meant for effect— a tirade on the Inquisition. M. Victor Hugo said he addiessed himself to the whole clerical party, because he considered it a public danger. He repeated that certain persons had wished to establish the Inquisition in their wii tings, — that inquisition which had caused 5,000,000 persons to peiish in the flames. On the Right. — "With pointed cap.s— (Laughter ) M- Victor Hugo.— He was one ot those who felt the blood mount to his forehead whenever France experienced a diminution ol territory, as in 1815, oi a dimi« nulion of intellect, as it was now wished to impose on lid". He Would give the clerical party a little seiious. advice; let it beware ot the darkness caused in men's minds by the shade of the i ossack. On ihe Right. — It is insulting to the Catholic f,iith. On the Left. — He is right in what ho says. M. Leo Laborde. — It is infamous. On the Left. — He does not fapeak of priests. On the Right.— Whom does he allude to then when he talks of the coasack ? M. Victor Hugo. — The clerical party was alarmed at Socialism ; it saw the waves rising, and it imagines that it will have saved society when it shall h.ive combined material resistance with social hypocrisy, and placed a Jesuit wherever there is not a gendaime. (Explosion of murmers, and prolonged biavoes on the left.) Let it, bov7cver, listen to advice. The 19th century was opposed to it, and if it continued its cotuse, it would raise formidable eventualities. (Confusion.) The Piesident — You have indulged too long in a tissue of personalities, and you have done so with veiy insulting expressions. But you have been treated in your turn so severely that I have felt dispensed from acting as I might have otherwise done. M. Victor Hugo.*-Was this the kind of bills that wet e to be produced? Was France to be anestcd in her onward course ? The intention was to petrify human thought. (Laughter ) In this age of discoveries •—said the honorable member in conclu ion,— you proclaim immoveability ; you pause on the load like men fatigued — fatigued wuh glory, genius, science and knowledge! Do you not see that eveiy thing is in movement around you and advances— you want to stop short ! (No INo !) I declare to you, that if you repel progress, you will have fresh revolutions ; and to hiich men as deny the truth of that assertion, I reply by the declaration that the earth turns round. I shall vote against the bill. (This speech, delivered with great Violence of gesture, was loudly applauded on the left.) The sitting was brought to a close at a quarter to seven o'clock. On Wednesday, M. Ponjoulat said, he could not admit the distinction made by M. Hugo between the church and the clerical party. It was the former he really attacked when he spoke of the government of the confessional box and the sovereignty of the soutane. His arguments were a mere repetition of the old and wietehed aspersions of philosophy against the Catholic religion. He would tell him, what the cleiical parly, otherwise the church, had done. It had found Fiance | barbarous, and elevated her to the highest stite of civilization, it had cleared the hinds of one half of Europe, founded all the Universities in the West, saved | the monuments of Gtrcebe and Italy fiom total destruction, and pieseived the sciences, aits, and letters, without which M. Hugo could not to-d<iy give utterance to his calumnies against the church, lie then examined

what religion had achieved in Italy and Span. Nobody nbhouedmoie than he did the Inquisition. IMigion was not responsible for crimes inheient to human passions. The institution of that tribunal was the crime of governments, which used religion to arrive at their ends. M. Victor Hugo had asserted that the manuscripts of Galileo were sealed up in the library of the Vatican. "Whence did he piocuie that information ? Wa-.be ever at Kome ? If so, he would hive been admitted, as he himself was, to see all the manuscripts. He would have ascertained that the manuscripts of Galileo were not deposited in the Vatican, but in the Lauren tidn library 01 Florence, whcie he (M. Ponjoulat) had perused them, M. Pascal Dubiat, who followed, contended that the State had no more right to claim the moi.opoly ot public education than that of trade and industry, and went on to deve'ope a system for the free organization of education. _ M. Montalembeit praised the frankness of M. Soubier, and piomised to follow his example. The University, in his opinion, had betrayed French youth into llic hands of the enemy who besieged society. Under the Restoratiou the Univeisity had formed Liberals ; under the Monarchy of July, Republicans; and to-day, under the Republic, it pioduccs Socialists. By Socialists, he meant those who, after 24th Februaiy, wished to substitute the red flag for the tri-colouivd banner,— who, on the 15th May, invaded the Hall of the national representation, and voted a contribution of 1,0U0,000,000f. on the rich— who, in June, 1848, killed more Generals than fell at the passage of Bcrcsina, who, on ihe 13th June, outlawed the Assembly — whose lanks have swelled with men of wounded vanity, and ruined fortunes— and who hoped to cairy society by a coup de main. Their triumph would be the dissolution of all society. Socialism was called a spirit of piogicss; he called it the spirit of ruin and death. The majority had been named for the purpose of combating revolution, and religious instruction was the only soveieign remedy. Who defended order throughout the country ? Was it the primary schoolmasters 1 No, it was the parish priest who instinctively defended political, moral, and material oider, even in the eyes of disbelievers. Some he knew weie infected wiih demo* cratic and socialist doctiincs, which weie far worse than those professed by the democratic and sociulist scculur party, but on the whole, they were the real bulwark of bociety. The Bourgeoise ("The Royalists, the Jesuits !" cried members on the left,) hud been instrumental in producing the evil by 'heir example ; but, by aspacial grace from above, they might btill lemedy it, on the condition of cuiing themselves, and considering the extent of that evil.