OUR PARIS LETTER.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2194, 31 July 1886, Page 3

OUR PARIS LETTER.

[from our own correspondent.] Paris, June 19. Money is the sinew of war and of canal making. Just now M. de Lesseps is experiencing that it is more difficult to obtain capital than to arrange the difference in level for his watery highway between tho two oceans or to conquer the freaks of the river Changres. M. de Fieycinet has at last made up his mind to cover the Lunnma, ' enterprise with the ongis of France. The Government has submitted a bill to tho Chamber authorising the Canal Company to issue a new capital on the lottery principle— redemption of bonds with the bait of prize drawings. This is not hopeful as an outlook. The introduction of the bill was welcomed with anything but remarks of favour ; nor is it at all certain /that the guarantee asked will be voted. 'That Banquo's ghost, Mexico, is ever before the eyes of the deputies. Mexican bonds, thanks to tho Due de Moray, who was in the swim, shot up like a rocket, but they fell fifty per cent.— that is, descended like the stick, when Uncle Sam put his foot down on the project of Napoleon 111 to occupy Mexico under the guise of prospecting, protecting, or Latin-race planting Central America. France is not at all in tho humour for investing her savings in foreign investments. Her people have been for the last three years living on their capital, so it is questionable if the country be now a« rich as formerly it was reputed to be. Millions upon millions have been sunk in housebuilding, in unhealthy commerce and in- - dustry— speculations as remunerative as -Spanish bonds. Trade is so persistently stagnant that there being little business there can be little profit, and concurrently establishments have to be kept up, and 'indispensable employe's retained through really, having got no work to do* as certain . Jiorses in the stable eating, each other's heads off*- The last fourth of, the Panama shares, which run up and down like mercury ' in a weather glass, must soon be called for. This will go, but not so much to defray the 'Current expenses of the works as to finance the new paper thrown on the market. Public opinion will likely not permit the Government clutching up any private enterprise, even indirectly, no matter what amount of trumpet-blowing may be indulged in, either in the way of patriotism or puffs. Gold may be bought too dear. Put in a tight place to pay contractors, who must have ready money, the shareholders, who also are the chief proprietors of the Suez Canal scrip, will be forced to place •uoh on the market to raise the wind, when England, if she likes, can buy them in, and bo become the Canal Company. Then the transit rates through tho Suez Canal would be largely reduced so as to encourage Indian and Australian products. This may be the way a popular prediction perhaps is to be realised, that the casting vote on the Suez Council Board will be ultimately held by the Australians. For the moment, however, Australians have to look nearer homo. The question of the New Hebrides is ugly, and can rapidly become grave. The expedition from New Caledonia, so secretly fitted out, setting sail with sealed orders, landing troops, unfurling the tricolor— all that smacks of business, and the making of one's self at home. Yet the treaty between England and France, debarring either power from occupying the islands, is so explicit, so recent, that even in this age of tearing-up of inconvenient treaties, of Russian finesse, of land-grabbing, of punishing natives for outrages, and then remaining to " protect " or annex them aftei 1 the castigalion, one can hardly believe France would deliberately provoke a serious misunderstanding with England. As yet, opinion here has not expressed itself on the new difficulty prepared for the republic ; and the most serious it could encounter would be the gratuitous offending of a first-class power. It is surmised that behind the cession of the New Hebrides, or the connivance at their annexation by France, England has a secret compensation : just as she winked at the " protection " of Tunisia to punish the Kroumirs, ara write off for her own occupation of Cyprus. M. de Freycinet too is " devilish sly, sir," but that game does not always succeed with him. He may play the New Hebrides card to stir the English out of Egypt, it may continue it so long as to involve the good relations between Australia and the mother country, and so induce a collapse in the Imperial Federation Crusade. There is still the not unlikely motive to force England into a kind of joint ownership of the New Hebrides, as Bismark compelled her to knuckle down in the ca«e of New Guinea. That accomplished, France would claim the right, like the Duke of Northumberland, to do what she liked with her own. On the continent so weak in the knees and backbone is England viewed, that if shu be only sufficiently bothered and bullied, it is believed you can obtain what you will from her — even to Home Rule, Russia too, only waits for thu moment of a com plication between France and England to revenge her defeat iv Bulgaria. The solution of the New Hebrides imbroglio laigely rests with Australia. If bhe divided on thecour.se to adopt it is better to let to lefe matters slide at once. If she remain united she has only to "c«rnor"the mother country into plain speaking and vigorous resolution in order to prevent tho question from becoming deplorable. France cannot exist in the Southern Pacific, with an uufrlendly or hostile Australia for neighbour,. Then Australians being modern business men, capable of seeing through milebtones as wel) a» any diplomatists, may resent the French flag being hoisted pver the New Hebrides, and may n«»t allow French ships to touch at any Auatraljan ports. Will the mother country back up the jjiant iofcwjt in her manifest destiny ? Onece in puwcftcuoß of the Islands, nothing could prevent France shipping her "best" recidivists from New Caladonia, as the pioneers for her " most " habitual criminals exported direct from the continent. People do not swallow anything ugly, without making wry faces as would secure the fortmia of a photographer, could he fix the grimace*. The Senate is in such a pohition respecting the b{\\ heut up to it from the Chamber of Deputies for fcho expulsion of the Princes. The fathers will consent to v«te it, after all their vowing they would ne'er consent. And public opinion will neither curse them nor bless them for so doing, being perfectly indifferent whether four, or forty Princes be sent out of the land. Any public opinion in France at the present moment is the product of professional politicians and the newspapers they influence or own, The real pulse of the country cannot be felt, as the institution of open air meetings, in addition to not being a fashion, is illegal; hence none exist. Thera w a kind of Brarnnh resignation abroad, a creeping comatose condition, provoked by chronic disappointment at the cloud of commercial and industrial depression not lifting. In the way of securing poets and pensions business is brisk. An onslaught is now being made on the Ministries of Finance and Foreign Affairs, to clear these offices of ail anti-republjcan.s. The game is not at all new, and is pommon to all parties. The exhibition project might move on more rapidly. The only two parts of the idea to be regarded ag official are the Babel Tower, copied, but never acknow. ledged, from the Philadelphia* rejected ornaments for the Centennial, and a model of the Bastille as it was in its halcyon days. The structure on the Champ de Mars, will likely have a horse-shoe form, and a low gallery will be introduced to double space. The interior of the building will be gridironed by electric tramways, that will also do duty as "lifts," to the gallery. The central alley will be a vast garden, demoted generally to attractions of the amusing and recreative kind." "Pleasure and business," wM b9 the jjresfding deities, The Jew* and Gentile butchers no longer agree, and it i.s a phase of the Semitic ques : tion, that neither Germany nor Russia has examined. As a class, the butchers are model citizens, they never belong to any political guild, and have never been known to bt) mixed up with revolutions, The Jews of late years have enormously increased and multiplied in Paris, and bo far as buying their meat, they are exclusive dealers. Formerly they patronised a Gentile butcher offering the necessary guarantees that what he «<>ld had be«n killed and prepared according to the rules and regulations of Moaes and the Prophets. Since 18G9, the Jews in Paris have their special abattoir, or slaughtering house. This establishment consists of a resident controller, the sacrifice™, overseers, and ambulatory inspectors for the retail shops. Only the sacrifices are authorised to kill animals, and such must have a licence from the Israelite consistory. To obtain this, the candidate has to suppjy proofs of his morality and stiictness in the performance of all his religious rites— these no Jew neglects. The sacrificer must possess a certificate' from a surgeon that he is sufficiently strong to fell an ox &c. He must be competent to cut the animal s throat, or tho head* with ft wpeoial sword-knife t

and at ;i single blow; after the animal is bled, the knife is examined, and if the edge be discovered to be blunt, or notched, from the operation, the carcass is rejected as unfit for Lsraelitish consumption. Gentile butchers are only too glad to snap at a bargain. The sacrifioer hands in every week an account of what ho has killed, for the inspection of the grand Rabbi, he is paid by the consistory, and must not commence slaughtering before six in the morning in summer, to finish by three in the afternoon. The controller is to see that nothing in the way of fraud occurs at the abattoir, and that the ceremony of slaughtering proceeds according te the prescribed rites. He imprints along with the s.icnficer the Consistory's seal on the animal; notes that the sacrificer's own seal is affixed, setting forth the date when he killed and bled the animal, and also that these two facts be cut with the sacriticer's knife on the breast and shoulder of the beast. No carcase is delivered for consumption without these precautions. The overseer inspects the body of the animal whon opened to be assured the lungs aro not adhei ing to the libs, and are free from disease ; he has also to purify certain portions of the flesh. The inspectors are told off to inspect the several butcher's shops in the city, mapped out into regions. The inspector has to see that each animal delivered in the shops has the marks and seals as affixed at the abattoir. Ho signs the butcher's book to this effect, if all be correct, which book is once a week sent to the Consistory. The inspector is also bound to see that the meat delivered to Jewish consumers is purified ; that is, the veins extracted from the principal morsels ; then he affixes the wax seal of the Consistory, and passes the meat to the purchaser. If a sacrih'cer or any official accepts "tips" from a butcher or client, they are instantly dismissed. Pity all the not-to-be-forgotten hordes in Paris are not in this respect like Jewish slaughterhouse officials ; there would be less slaughtering of purges. A gentile butcher can hire out the killing services of a sacrificer, but the latter must never practice his art on pigs, nor during his business hours go near where these animals are converted into pork. There is much sympathy felt for the poor King of Bavaria, not because he was a king, but because he was an ordinary mortal meeting with a tragic end.. That he. was rapidly drifting into insanity, of 4v gsriloua form none denied, but the suddenly treating him as a lunatic was keenly felt by the last glimmerings of his reason, and that he employed to commit suicide,- and possibly to drag his old physician into the water with him to satisfy his revenge. There is. no excuse for servants or guards not keeping a more vigorous, though concealed eye, on the two promenaders, nor feeling uneasy at their absence during a period of five hours. Politically, it is the case of the "king is dead, long live the king!" The change will not effeqfc the unity of Germany : the Unionists know too well what they have suffered from division and disruption. If not the satellites or vassals of fatherland they would become the vanquished of some foreign power. As ! for remaining independent, such would be less than a day dream. A partial result of the census, taken a fortnight ago, has appeared for several of the arrondissements of Paris. The population, at first glance, does not apparently seem to have augmented. The salient feature is that the population has deserted the regions where rents are high for the quarters where they are moderate, while numbers have fled to the suburbs to escape being crushed to death by taxes and duties. The underground railway will giveahtill greater impetus to this hegira ; then will arise the period for abolishing the aetrois or imposts, and levelling a kind of income tax. The latter will thus unearth those in dividuals who live in garrets on 100 francs a year, but dine in first-class restaurants, &c, in order to escape the city imposts. The trial of the strikers— ten in number — who murdered M. Watrin, the sub- manager of the Decazeville mine, still continues. It reveals an exceptionally cruel case of mob vengeance and brutality, and something like heartless abstention on the party of those who could have humanely interfered. The strike is now at an end, after t>ome fourteen weeks duration. Capital has not exactly won all along the line, the Socialists have scored some chalks, and naturally make a good thing of the drum market. Also, this strike is the forecast of what success is in store for future strikers when backed by Socialist deputies and the anarchial press. The society for tho preservation of antiquities has visited a curious department of the Palais de la Justice. It is a cellar, which formerly was the kitchen of St. Loviis. In this lumber room was stowed away, like the used up tombstones in the city cemeteries, busts of all tho. sovereigns in bronze, marble, tcira cotta, <fee, from Louis XVI downwards, If their desendants' partisans were only so united and peaceful what n happy btate of society th»re would be in France to-day. A concierge, and bleeding for his country's good ! Thi-> is a rare spectacle, yet it is a fact. TLe house porter of the Theatre Francais, one Pench, has just been decorated with fch.e Legion of Honour. Whenever the hospitals were in want of a volunteer to lend a vein to be tapped for operation** for the transfusion of blood, Pench was the man. He did so seven times, and was the means of Having three live*, of which one was a Prussian. He would never accept any remuneration.