NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE French Assembly, after a short adjournment, reassembled on Thursday, 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 de- rived only from universal suffrage. He spoke with great tem- perance, the Right abstained from the division, and he carried 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, how- over, 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.
