A week's proceedings in the National Assembly of France is
now before us ; and upon the whole it may be said that orderly organization has advanced with reasonable smoothness. The As- sembly has received the government surrendered to it by the Provisional Ministers, with an account from each of the manner in which he had fulfilled his charge ; and it has reappointed five of those Ministers to be an Executive Council ad interim, until the Assembly shall have shaped the permanent constitution. M. Arago stands highest on the list ; but M. de Lamartine will probably be the real head of the new Provisional Government. M. Ledru-Rollin is admitted ; his appointment apparently being intended as a concession to the moderately extravagant party. An extreme section, headed by M. Barbes have tried to intro- duce a violent policy, but without success. k. Barbes wished to make every Representative openly and individually amenable to some dangerous responsibility : for instance, he proposed that the Assembly should retain the Executive power and appoint the Ministers of the departments, and that all who voted on the question should do so separately and aloud ; his object evidently being, to force a vote in favour of his proposal by insinuating that every hostile voter would incur the vengeance of the clubs. But he was overwhelmingly outnumbered in the Assembly. In these preliminaries, therefore, the Assembly has firmly discoun- tenanced violence.
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