NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE in extronis Ministry of Marshal MacMahon, as it has been called,—a Ministry not one member of which belongs to either Chamber,—'was gazetted yesterday week. The President of the Council, General de Rochebouet, was one of those who first rose to eminence through the energy which he displayed in the siege of Rome in 1849, when he won the Order of the Legion of Honour ; afterwards he became still more notable in the coup d'e'tat of 1851, when it fell to him to bombard the Maison Sallandrouze, and to rake the Boulevard Montmartre with grapeshot,—a duty for the discharge of which he was recommended, according to a grim re- port which is far from intrinsically probable, by his having him- self confided confided to ROM one in the entourage of Louis Napo- leon that in Rome he bad "acquired a taste for the blood of Radicals." No doubt this was said of him by his enemies, but hardly by himself. However, his actual achievements in 1849 and 1851 were not of the kind to augur very well for the part he would prefer to play in the crisis of 1877. The repute of the Minister of the Interior, M. Welche,—probably the most notable man in the new Cabinet, and one who has been chiefly known for supporting vigorously the regime of sup- pression and official interference,—is not one to qualify in any degree the effect of General de Rochebouet's political repute. Nevertheless, the new Cabinet has not been regarded as a Government of active menace, so much as a Government of dull resistance,—one which, from its non-political struc ure, rather deadens the force of political attack, and presents to the Re- publicans the same kind of fluffy resistance, which the cotton-bags covering the freeboard of the Confederate cruisers presented to the artillery of the Union.
