The French Chambers met again on Saturday, after the month
of prorogation, when the Due de Broglie at once read in the Senate a message from the Marshal, stating that France, like him- self, desires to maintain " intact the institutions that govern us," and not to have them " disfigured by Radicalism ;" that " she does not desire that in 1880, the day when the Constitutional laws may be revised," she may find "everything prepared beforehand for the disorganisation of all the moral and material forces of the country." In other words, the Marshal admitted that what he asked for was a precautionary dissolution, not a dissolution forced on him by any immediate proposal to which he felt insurmountable objections. Or as M. Arago intimated at the time in the Senate —being called to order, by the way, for the intimation—the Government disorganises everything at once, by way of precau- tion against a possible disorganisation which the Assembly is suspected of contemplating in the future. I'Ire go to press before the discussion in the Senate has ended, but the dignified and caustic speech of M. Jules Simon, exposing the flimsy ex- cuses given out as accounting for the dismissal of his (M. Simon's) Government, produced an extraordinary effect, while the Due do Broglie was unequal to himself,—partly, no doubt, because the task of showing that the Marshal had been compelled to take the course he had taken, was too uphill an effort even for an orator. of his ability.
