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The Provisional Government has issued two considerable decrees, one dissolving

all monasteries established since 1837, and another emancipating all children of slaves born after the 17th September, 1868. In neither case is any compensation proposed. It is argued that both measures should have been left to the Cortes, and this may be true of the first ; but as to the second, if the Government has any rights at all, it has a right to say that a crime like child-stealing shall stop. By other decrees of a much more questionable kind, all officers, commissioned and non-commis- sioned, in the Army have been promoted, Print even giving him- self a Marshal's baton,—a fatal example ; while General Duke, who, it is said, found the funds for the movement, has been created a Duke and Captain-General of Cuba.

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