POSTSCRIPT.
SATURDAY NIGHT.
There is little to be called news today, but a good deal of gossip, which is by no means without interest. Much of this is supplied by the French papers and letters of Thursday.
Respecting Morocco, the reports in Paris were, that large reinforce- ments had been ordered for Marshal Bugeaud and the Prince De Joinville respectively ; that the Marshal, if he had not actually been beaten, was on the point of being attacked by an overwhelming Moorish army ; that the Prince had actually taken possession of Laroche, but Government withheld the accounts in order that they might be accompanied in the publication by an announcement of his withdrawal from that place; that the Duc De Glucksberg had been appointed before the news ar- rived of the open war, but that he had gone forward to see what effect the bombardment of Tangier would have in facilitating pacific nego- tiations.
About Tahiti there were two most opposite rumours,—first, that M. Guizot was firm in his purpose of refusing the British demand for sa- tisfaction; and a later rumour, that the affair had been referred by the two Governments to the arbitration of the King of Prussia.
Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte has written a letter from his prison in the fort of Ham to the Constitutionnel, in reply to passages of a bio- graphical memoir on Joseph Bonaparte. It is in the writer's usual vague style ; but this is the gist of its material part. King Joseph did not recognize the dynasty of 1830, but always desired the popular sove- reignty to be a reality, not a fiction. King Joseph did not maintain a difference of opinion with his nephew about the insurrection at Stras- bourg in 1836: at first he was greatly irritated by it; but when he learned the Prince's real objects, he declared that, in spite of his ad- vanced age, he would have joined it. Those objects are hinted in the closing paragraph, in which Prince Louis denies his "insane ambi- tion " and renounces "dynastic pretensions "— " It would be, in fact, the height of ridicule to presume to impose oneself on a great nation, and to claim as a right that which is a mere historical souvenir of another age: but, if I always rejected antiquated pretensions, I never re- nounced my rights as a French citizen ; and, as such, I considered myself at liberty to desire, as well as others, the reign of Democracy, the adoption of a more national system, and to risk my life tor the triumph of those principles."
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