20 DECEMBER 1879, Page 2

The air has been full this week of rumours from

Russia, apparently started by the Lloyd, a Pesth journal of some standing, but repeated and amplified by Continental journals and correspondents. It was affirmed that the Czar had demanded of his son a pledge that no Constitution should be granted in his time, and on his refusal, had ordered him into arrest ; that the Senate was about to demand reforms, and that the Generals had reported the existence of disaffection in one-fourth of the Russian Army. Much of all this must be exaggeration, and much more invention, due probably to the extreme wish of the Jewish journalists, so numerous on the Continent, that the existing regime in Russia should bo overthrown. The mass of Jews in the world are Russians and Poles, and live under disabilities. It is not improbable that a Sovereign in hourly danger of his life may dislike his son's popularity, but any open quarrel is explicitly denied. The desire of the Senate for reform is probably true, and the suspicion of disaffection in

the Army is supported by the strange order stated by the Times' correspondent in St. Petersburg to have been issued by the Grand Quarter Staff of the Army, on the 13th inst. By this order, recruits are made transferable from one past of the Army to another, " especially in view of preventing them serving in companies recruited at or near their homes." That order is the most significant yet reported from Russia.