NEWS OF THE WEEK.
TILLERS is again the centre of European interest, and this —1 1 the gallant old man well understands, and buckles himself to his task of ruling the waves of French political passion with even more than his old elasticity. He has reconstituted his Ministry so as to make it a, Ministry of the Left Centre, with M. Casimir- Perier for the Minister of the Interior (vice M. de Goulard, -of Right proclivities, dismissed), and M. Fourton, a Conserva- tively inclined Republican, for his Minister of Worship (vice M. Jules Simon, of Radical proclivities, dismissed). M. Dufaure, of course, remains as Minister of Justice, and an -Englishman (by birth and education), M. Waddington, becomes Minister of Public Instruction. With this sturdily Republican, but also sturdily Conservative Ministry, M. Thiers has met the Assembly, and produced before it certain organic projects of laws for the definitive organisation of the Republic which, as we lave elsewhere shown, are decidedly of a fancy type,—the only good proposal being the breaking-up of the departments as electoral districts which now elect a whole group of members, into arrondissements, and sometimes subdivisions of arrondissements, electing only one member each. For the rest, the proposals as to President, Senate, and House of Representatives are excessively Conservative ; indeed, M. Thiers has quite overdone his part in this respect, and made a serious mistake in fixing any minimum age for the President at all, even though it be an age which would 'have the merit, in the eyes of the Right, of excluding M. Gam- betta. In fact, the only strong part of the project of law is the preamble, in which it is argued, in favour of a definitive proclama- tion of the Republic, that to prolong the provisional order of things is to paralyse the arm of the Government.
