NEWS OF THE WEEK.

THE Belgian affair is no nearer a solution. The French Govern' ment still insists that the contract for selling the Luxemburg Railway shall be carried out, and M. Frere-Orban refuses to concede more than a right of way over the line, to be exercised under strict Government supervision. It is stated that he has been asked to remain a week longer in Paris, in order to study some farther propositions ; but it is understood in Brussels that further concession is impossible, that the Premier's long stay in Paris is already irritating his supporters, and that M. de la Guerroniere is creating deep irritation by certain vapouring talk, the burden of which is, "When the cataclysm comes will Belgium be French or German?" The next intelligence, we believe, will be that M. Frere-Orban has returned, that nothing has been settled, and that the French Government will wait its opportunity.

The Berlin Correspondence, usually very accurate, states that General Changarnier has offered his sword to Napoleon in the event of war. The offer will scarcely be accepted, for we are told one of the reasons which disincline Napoleon to a great struggle is his difficulty in finding a General. His choice is extremely limited ; for the Army, on this ISoint, has an opinion, and will not put up with an inferior man, and of his beat soldiers he has a latent distrust. Even Pelissier grew too strong for him, and he has among his Marshals scarcely one who might not, after a grand victory, be a rival. Changarnier would be the most dangerous of all. The Hohenzollern, on the other hand, could employ Mars himself without being the less safe upon his throne.

The Italian Budget seems to us very bad. Count Cambray Dim, only promises an equilibrium in 1875, that is, six years hence. Till then he proposes to borrow on Church property, which is a very Micawberish style of finance, more especially as he wants that property to pay off some 230,000,000 of floating debt. The truth seems to be that the Count, able as he is, has been Unable to resist the pressure upon him, or to carry out those radical, harsh, oppressive reductions which are essential to Italian credit We all see how difficult it is to dismiss a clerk in England, but the Finance Minister in Italy has to dismiss whole bureaux, and ruin half the army before he can get things straight. No one bet the King could do this, and he is the main cause of the expenditure.

The Duke of Argyll made an important statement on Monday. It has always been believed that the Council of India possessed a veto on any expenditure ordered by the Secretary of State. The words of the Act of 1858 are, "No grant or appropriation of Indian revenues shall be made without the concurrence of a majority of "hes in a meeting of Council." That would seem clear, but the Duke has consulted the law officers, and they say that the word "grant" means gifts only, or at most, gifts and additions to salary, and that the word "appropriation" means nothing at all, being a British constitutional phrase inapplicable to India. Hm ? Of coarse the law officers' opinion must be accepted ; but was absolute authority ever secured in such a roundabout fashion before ? Lord 841Iehary, who very properly contends that the responsible Minister ought not to be fettered by an irresponsible Council,

should move the addition of a declaratory clause to the Bill, stating that the order of the Secretary is in all cases to be obeyed.

The Irish Church Bill got into Committee yesterday week, when Mr. Disraeli at once moved his amendment for the omission of the second clause, that is, for the diaendowed Church to have leave still to remain under the discipline of the Queen's Ecclesiastical Courts and under the supremacy of the Crown, and have its dignitaries appointed by the Government. He urged this on the plea, first, that it would be essential in order to maintain a true ecclesiastical union with the English Church ; and next, on the still more remarkable plea, which we have discussed at length elsewhere, that true ecclesiastical equality" between the Roman Catholic and Protestant Church in Ireland absolutely requires that either both or neither should have an external and, so to say, alien support, and as Irish Roman Catholics find such an external buttress in Rome, Irish Protestants should find it in England. This speech pressed the theory of the Queen's (i.e., we suppose Parliament's) supremacy over the discipline and doctrine of the Church both of England and Ireland to a point which has quite struck horror into the high Churchmen, and alienated them utterly from his standard,—Mr. Disraeli evidently considering this supremacy as the most valuable of influences. lie ended in a highly rhetorical sentence, in which he exhorted Mr. Gladstone to carry his policy into effect completely by disestablishing the English Church also, "or at least to postpone our fate till there is one verdict of general ruin, and an entire dissolution of the bonds of society," —a flight of imagination which was probably a form of suppressed gout, as it was immediately followed by a sharp attack, which kept Mr. Disraeli away from Monday's debate. The amendment was rejected by a majority of 123,-341 against 221.

On Monday and Thursday the debate ran into detail,—in which Mr. Disraeli is not great, and though he was present on the latter night, he has not again spoken since inviting the speedier consummation of the universal ruin. The first division on Monday was upon the postponement of the date of diseatablishment from January 1, 1871, to January 1, 1872, on which the majority was 107. There was then a sort of free skirmish on the motion that a clause as amended be added to the Bill, wherein the Conservatives generally maintained their right to set up as much detailed obstruction as they liked, and a Liberal (Sir H. Hoare) called them an obstructive and " miserable " minority, which injured their feelings very deeply ; the division, however, that was taken,—as much upon that phrase as any other,--showing them in a minority of 111, whether miserable or not may he a question. Then Sir Roundel' Palmer made a fight for the separate compensation of the "permanent curates," in which he reduced the minority as low as 98 (in a house of 562)—a result received by the Conservatives with quite pathetic joy,—.a minority of two less than 100 being, we suppose, at lead two under the standard of misery.

Another "permanent curate" division on Thursday brought down the majority (in a not very full house of 349) as low as 93, but on another amendment, proposed by Mr. Pim with a similar object, it rose again to 113. Another amendment by Mr. Charley as to the amount of compensation was rejected by a majority of 115, and a motion to report progress defeated by a majority of 113. Up to Thursday night the House had arrived at Clause 18,—by postponing, however, some half-dozen clauses,—so that some 12 out of 63 clauses had been got through in three nights' debate. The force applied must be a rapidly accelerating one, if three more weeks before Whitsuntide are to pass the bill through committee, as is confidently hoped. Still, the resisting medium is always heaviest when it is first entered.

There was an amusing scene in the House of Commons on Tuesday. Mr. Gregory took up his parable for the Embankment site of the proposed new Courts of Justice, and was answered by Sir Roundel' Palmer, who pleaded for the Carey-Street site and the present Commissioners' plan. The Chancellor of the Ex

chequer then found it too late for the little sensation he had in preparation for the House, since members were plodding off to dinner, so he reserved himself while various benighted men discussed the matter in absolute ignorance of the ambuscade Mr. Lowe had prepared for them ; then rising at the critical moment when the House began to refill, he fell upon the Commissioners and Sir Roundel]. Palmer with a terrible onslaught, slashed out right and left on behalf of the British taxpayer (of this year), entreated the House to refuse its assent to the plans of the Commissioners, asserted that in the opinion of the Commissioners "all mankind are made for the benefit of legal gentlemen,"—in a word, utterly forbade the proposals of the Commission. He was not much, if at all, more favourable to the advocates of the Embankment site, and ended by proposing to take the whole affair away from the Commissioners into the hands of the Government, and to appropriate Howard Street (running between Arundel Street and Surrey Street), buy and build there for not more than 1.1,600,000 in all, and take Inigo Jones's design for the palace of Charles I. for the river frontage. The building would not be open to the Strand, and so it would not be necessary to purchase any very extensive frontage. Mr. Lowe made very merry over the Commissioners' "frenzy for concentration," and in fact, threw a wet blanket over almost all the proposals of Committees and Commissions for ten years past. The Commissioners had conspired, he said, to build them a new Tower of Babel, but he was about to confound their designs.

It appears that Timour's Library has not, after all, been discovered in the India House. The officials themselves were deceived by statements made, as they believed, in good faith, by a competent Arabic scholar, who reported that at least twenty of the volumes bore the seal of the great conqueror, and must have belonged to his library, a statement which was in some sense borne out by a large offer from a Mohammedan gentleman for a few of the manuscripts. The manuscripts, however, have now been submitted to the learned Professor Ameuney, whose report settles the question. They were part of the library at Beejapoor, and fell to WI on the lapse of the Sattara State. They consist of 490 volumes, of which 25 are in Persian, and the rest in Arabic, 20 being poetry, 70 history, and most of the rest theology. Several of them are authors' copies of old Mohammedan works, the oldest bearing date 1133, and one, the Tahoih of Tqlhizani, dated 1356, is believed to be the author's manuscript. They are a valuable addition to the great India-Office Library, but of far less interest than was believed. Such is, we understand, the result of the researches hitherto made.

Mr. William Shipman, formerly manager of the Agra and Masterman's Bank, has been sent to prison for twelve months by the Commissioner in Bankruptcy. It appears the Bank had a customer, Mr. Maim, a broker, who was engaged in hazardous Stock Exchange speculations. With Maim Shipman engaged in secret partnership, and lent him £90,000 of the bank money, taking in return securities without sufficient margin. The total result was a loss of £32,000 to the bank, owing, said the Commissioner, to this partnership and the bankrupt's neglect of duty. It came out on the trial that the system of the bank was for the directors to look at the amount of loans, but leave the manager to see that the securities were sufficient, a delightful system, which would ruin any tradesman who adopted it in a year. He would look to the payments for himself, but take a servant's word as to the receipts in return.

Lord Houghton on Friday week "ventilated " a very important subject in the Lords. He wishes, in presence of the rapid growth of pauperism, that Government should aid emigration to the colonies, or at all events should appoint a Commission to inquire into the subject. His speech was an able resume' of the wellknown facts that while labour is redundant here, there are countries where it is scarce ; but he failed to anticipate the crushing objections instantly made to the scheme ; such as those of Lord Granville, who asked how aid could be granted to English emigrants and refused to Irish, whose friends now paid for them, but who would clutch at any Government money ; or how the Colonies were to be induced to take paupers of whom we want to be rid ? or that of Lord Carnarvon, that labour in England was rather locally congested than redundant ? or that of Lord Grey, that if Australia wanted labour, Australia would aid emigration much more effectually than we could ? The truth is, this scheme of aided emigration for paupers is like transportation, an effort to be rid at others' cost of our own responsibilities. We must extinguish pauperism, not export paupers, and the way to do it is to establish compulsory education throughout the kingdom. Till the people know something, they will neither emigrate nor save.

In the course of the debate Lord Oversbme made a hard little speech, the effect of which we think he scarcely perceived. Britain, he said, was accumulating capital at the rate of £150,000,000 a year, all wages were rising, and granting distres it was either local or caused by the folly of the Legislature in allowing Limited Liability Companies to do the work of espi. talists. Supposing all that to be true, which we should deny, it is also true that pauperism is increasing. Consequently, the rich are becoming richer and the poor poorer, and the deduction would be that laws regulating the accumulation, and particularly the descent, of wealth are urgently required. Does Lord Over. stonewish for them ?

S. Fignerola, Spanish Chancellor of the Exchequer, ha opened a loan for £10,000,000, and has therefore brought forward a budget which, as reported by Reuter, is hopelessly unintelligible. No hint even is given of the expenditure, and the revenue is estimated at £21,000,000, which in the face of Mr. Lytton's figures is simply ridiculous. It was made up to £21,000,000 in 1868 by a juggle about the land sales, which cost 75 per cent. of all they brought in ; by the Cuban revenue, which is gone ; and by the monopolies of salt and tobacco, which are so nearly gone that they are to be abolished in January, 1870. He further states, always according to Reuter, that the floating debt is never to exceed £6,000,000, a bold promise, when it exceeds that now, when Cuba is in full insurrection, when the Cortes has just voted a marine conscription, and when a Spanish captain of a war ship has actually seized an American vessel in British waters at Nassau. That man must have a real genius for scrapes. Nothing less could have enabled him to bring America and England on Serrano's shoulders at once.

ale ironworkers of Belgium have struck again, have tried to coerce substitutes, and have resisted the troops. Order seems to have been restored at the point of the bayonet in no less than four places. It is to be noted that we never hear the men's side of these emeutes, which are annual, and which, as we suspect, but do not accurately know, are in themselves breaches of law, and are, therefore, put down by force at once. That is always the result of laws against combination. The workmen, knowing that their position as strikers is in itself illegal, think they may as well go a step further, and be illegal to some purpose, by forbidding those who are willing to work, and thus come at once into collision with the police and the soldiery.

What have Mr. Austin Bruce and Mr. Childers done that there seems to be such a dead set upon them by Tory and also some " Liberal " papers? This week again it has been continued. First, there was the imputation that Mr. Austin Bruce had set free Sir Eardley Eardley (the bigamist) some six months before the expiration of his sentence simply because this disreputable young baronet is a relation of Mr. Childers's, who was supposed, of course, to have made direct or indirect intercession for him. Mr. Bruce explained On Tuesday night that Sir Eardley Eardley's release had been ordered by Mr. Gathorne Hardy before leaving office, on medical evidence of severe bronchitis with threatenings of consumption, and after a severe attack of angina pectoris, and that Mr. Childers had never, either directly or indirectly, made any sort of application on his behalf.

Then on Thursday night Sir G. Jenkinson, who asks as many, and usually as wise, questions in the House of Commons as a gossiping old lady in a Cheltenham. pump-room, insisted os Mr. Bruce's accounting for all the cases in which he had advised the Queen to remit a capital sentence since entering on office. Mr. Bruce,—quite needlessly,—did so, and showed that out of eleven capital sentences (excluding cases of infanticide, which are never now punished by death) since he entered office, he had reprieved five,—two almost eertainlY innocent, as the Judge himself believed, one insane, and the other two recommended by the Judge as proper objects for a commutation of sentence. Thereout nobody sucked any even small advantage, and the Tory papers are reduced to execrating Mr. Bruce for not respiting Sheward. If it had been mercy to commute his sentence to imprisonment for life, we should have thought it not unreasonable, as he was at least purely self-convicted and condemned. But we doubt whether it would have been mercy,—and the frightfully cold-blooded detail of the crime, —which to some morbid imaginations might be infectious,--seerned to render it more than usually desirable not to connect the conception of leniency of any kind with it.

Wednesday's debate on the Bill repealing the prohibition to marry a deceased wife's sister was chiefly remarkable for a fine speech of Mr. Bright's in its favour, and the very large majority (99 in a House of only 387,-243 voting for the Bill and 144 gain' st it), which affirmed its principle. Mr. Bright insisted that he had never heard an argument against the Bill, that the objection to it, like that to the admission of Jews to Parliament, was a mere objection of sentiment, to which it was hardly possible to give an answer. The prohibition was not supported by present facts, but by prophecies of future ills. The objection to the marriage was not nearly so tangible as that to the marriage of first cousins, which the English law permits. He asked if social feeling were really against these marriages, whether a man who went to another country to marry his wife's sister and than returned with his wife to England was regarded by his neighbours as a profligate man? "He durst say that the honourable Member for the University of Cambridge [Mr. Beresford Hope, who had denounced the Bill with his usual grotesque severity] had such a man for his bosom friend." No one would ever venture to call the children of such marriages bastards. The Society of Friends did not condemn such marriages, or regard them as breaches of their Church discipline. Men of the middle-class were not deterred by the law, for they could marry abroad and yet retain a respectable social position on their return to England ; but the poor, to whom the marriage seemed often the most natural in the world, could not afford this, and were obliged either to give up the design of making the mother's sister the stepmother to their children, or to ignore the marriage contract altogether, which could of course have none but evil results. He should vote for the personal liberty of the men and women of this country in the chief concern of their lives as against a law which had no pretence of foundation in nature, or of sanotiou from revelation. The Solicitor-General, Mr. Coleridge, was the only distinguished Liberal who opposed the Bill, but his speech was feeble.

The Italian Government has been very unlucky. On Sunday, 11th April, 1869, Pius IX. celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of his first mass, which he said at the age of 26. At the next drawing of the lottery at Florence, the numbers 11, 69, 9, 50 all turned out to be prizes, and as Italians are always thiu.king what numbers are of good omen, a great many people (hundreds, some say) had played on these numbers, and some on all of them, and great fortunes were won by the poorest of the poor. The Italians explain this extraordinary event by saying that Pio None has the evil eye, and that this evil eye brought bad luck on the Italian Government, by turning the wheel so as to give out prizes for all the numbers connected with his anniversary. But the evil eye was exercised, if at all, not so much on the Government, who lose at first, as on the people, who gain at first, or perhaps on both. The strange chance cannot but give an enormous stimulus to the rage for lotteries, and teach both government and people to rely on this worst of all honest means of gain.

Herr Twesten, on April 16, brought forward a motion in the North-German Parliament in favour of replacing the Chancellor, who, as Vice-President of all the Committees of the Bundesrath or Executive Council, and depositary of Prussia's seventeen votes, is virtually under the President-King sole Minister of the Confederation, by a responsible Cabinet. Count von Bismarck resisted the motion in a most remarkable speech, which we have analyzed elsewhere, but it was carried by a vote of 111 to 100. Before the vote was put, however, Herr Twesten made an effort to explain away some of the inevitable consequences of his measure, and since it has been taken, the Premier's journal informs us that, the majority being so small, no action will be taken. The Constitution being based upon treaties, it is a little difficult to see how it can be revised by a body which those treaties created, and at all events it is certain that no serious change will be made till the Prussian Premier is ready.

Lord Lyttelton, on Thursday, endeavoured to give form and ahaPe to the vague idea that "more Bishop" would be good for the Church of England. He proposed to enable the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to frame schemes for new Sees to be sanctioned by the Queen in Council. Each new bishop was to rise in his torn to the House of Lords, and to receive £2,500 a year, obtained by vcduntary contributions. The Peers did not like the notion of "subscription bishops," and the Bench generally rather snubbed the Bill, perhaps under the notion that if cheap bishoprics succeeded,

all bishoprics might be cheapened. Lord Granville, in his gentlest manner, offered what he called a "practical suggestion " to Lord Lyttelton, which was, to talk it over with the Bench and himself before he took a division ; but Lord Lyttelton held on, and was beaten by 43 to 20. Cornwall does want a bishop, and London a coadjutor, but an indefinite quantity of bishop would never do. No faith could survive fifty or sixty pastorals a year.

Sheward, the Norwich murderer, was executed on Tuesday. He made a full confession, stating that he quarrelled with his wife about a money matter, aud " ran a razor into her throat," and then during the following eight days cut up her body, disposing of it all over Norwich. During the whole time he went home and slept quietly every night, an astounding proof of callousness in a man who eighteen years afterwards felt remorse keenly enough to induce him to confess. Would he have felt such remorse had death been as nearly accidental as he implies?

The Poor Law Board wants Clerkenwell to join Holborn and St. Luke's, so as to bring down expenses all over the new Union. Clerkenwell won't ; and on Wednesday the guardians waited on Mr. Goschen to say so. They wanted to be left alone ; talked about "local self-government," and "centralization," and "the love of the parish where they were born," and all the rest of it, their meaning being that they wanted the control of their own expenditure. Mr. Goachen told the guardians quietly that they must obey orders, "pauperism was increasing at the rate of 15 per cent. in three years,"—a frightful statetueut,—that a Union governed itself just as much as a parish ; that there must be reform ; and that he intended, while he held his oflioo, to secure more economy. The guardians did not like it at all, but it is rather more than possible the ratepayers may. At all events, Clerkenwell, in its own despite, will have to save its money.

The New York Tribune of the 7th April is rather menacing in its line towards England. It points out calmly that the MUNN Of the English people always sympathized with the North, and not with their rulers,—that in spite of this their rulers did a great wrong to the United States in acknowledging the belligerency of the South,—that the masses of the English people regret this, and wish to make some reparation. It then remarks that such a reparation is now in our power. We can give them British America, and if we do, why then no doubt America will accept the magnificent compensation and forget all our past shortcomings for the future. If not, why then is it hinted we may be tormented with all sorts of evils,—a terrible strife in Ireland, and a hopeless war in Canada. General Grant's words, that "unsettled questions have no pity for the repose of nations," are menacingly quoted, and the general drift of the article is simply this,—that America will love the English masses very much if our people will expiate the blunders of their rulers by allowing a great section of our people to be made United States' citizens against their will, but if not, the Americans will thrash the English masses very thoroughly. The New York Tribune ought to have learned before this that threatening never answers with either Englishmen or Americans. No war would be more popular in this country than a purely defensive war against such a gross attempt at plunder as that.

Is Jecker in Tunis, or where is he ? The Imperial Government has sent the following communiqué to the Paris papers :—" Several journals announce that a convention was signed on the 18th inst., between the Government of Tunis, and a large banking-house of Paris, for the conversion of the Tunisian debts. It was added that the carrying-out of this convention had been placed under the collective protection of France, England, and Italy. The French Government has not received, up to the present, any official notification of this arrangement, and has not been able consequently, as far as it is concerned, to accept any engagement in reference to the matter in question." What can it all mean, or what can Lord Clarendon have to do with the Bey's debts ?

The University of Edinburgh conferred on Wednesday the degree of LL.D. on Mr. Matthew Arnold, so that England ham now once more a Dr. Arnold,—in genius as unlike his father as in some features of character he is like him. The great poetical critic and critical poet of his age,—sharing all its doubts, its tastes, its yearnings,—there is yet in Mr. Matthew Arnold a severity and almost austerity of didactic purpose which links him with the great teacher of the previous generation, without separating him in any sense from our own.