NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE French Assembly has been trying all the week to show .1 how powerless a representative body can be when it has out- lived the confidence of the electors. On Tuesday it wanted very much to discuss a vote of censure on the Ministry for suspending the Union, the acknowledged organ of the Comte de Chambord, but was prevented, the Government insisting on occupying the day with the Municipal Bill. Then, on Wednesday, the vote of censure coming on, all fractions of the Chamber voted against it, except 80 belonging to the Extreme Right. This was sup- posed to be a vote in favour of the Ministry, but on M. Paris, a Bonapartist, proposing—out of the blue, as it were—a vote ap- proving the Septennate, the Minister of War formally accepted it as a Government Order. The Assembly thereupon rejected it by a vote of 368 to 330, but then growing frightened, accepted by 339 to 315 a vote of confidence in Government proposed by General Changarnier. This vacillation, as might have been expected, brought the President down upon its head. Marshal MacMahon refused to accept his Ministers' resignation, and in a Message of the most decisive kind affirmed that the Assembly, in electing him, had " fettered its sovereignty " and made him im- movable. As the Assembly had, the day before, voted the exact contrary, M. Raoul Duval demanded " urgency " for a proposal to dissolve ; but this was rejected by a three-fourths majority, the upshot being that the Assembly will not denounce the Septennate, will not affirm it, and will not dissolve. We have endeavoured to explain its action elsewhere, but we do not wonder that it stands, in the eyes of most Englishmen, self-condemned.
