The inchoate civil war smouldering in France, under the hasty
institutions which have been ran up oh the uncooled ashes .of the past, excites increasing alarm as time goes on ; and the demeanour of ruling men affords no hope that they are equal to weather new storms. If there is hope, it is that the exhausted energies of France have not yet recovered their normal powers of storminess. State policy has sunk to miserable police intrigues and weak hurts of angry apprehension from Ministers. Last week we saw M. earlier instructing the Police as the depositories of doctrinal wisdom ; this week a great plot of state is got up to improve the aid afforded by a book from the pen of a disappointed rioter. M. Chenu, a man implicated in the intrigues of February 1/48, makes an onslaught on the heroes of that day, and especially upon that captain of constables Citizen Caussidiere ; and the work is hailed as an auxiliary to the friends of " order." Government is invited by the Left in the National Assembly to grant Government con- tracts to some of the associations of workmen in Paris, as a test of its own sincerity and the means of applying an effective test to that industrial experiment : but Miiusters cannot afford to make even a show of grace towards the Socialists, hated and feared. General d'Hautpoal echoes the admonitions of M. Carlier : the gallant officer speaks in terms of fear about the darkness of the present prospect, and breaks forth into an hysterical defiance of the Republicans ; whose pertinacity in a certain reserve and qui- escence seems to exasperate and alarm him beyond endtiranee. But Ministers still possess a majority in the Legislature ; and, after a complicated and heated squabble, tbe Assembly passed to " the order of the day pure mid sample low virtacius and " refresk- ing " sounds that resort to which &e Assembly so constantly tulm after its tumults ! As the Belisanims d YloKiast refreshes linise]!F, after an arduous day, with a frugal supper of pulse, so the Assem- bly of France ever comes back from its luxury of uproar to " the order of the day pure and simple."
