forrigu autt tainutal.

FRANCE.—In one more week the position of French political, parties is entirely changed. On Monday the 17th instant, the partisans of the Elysee were in ecstasies at a defeat of the Conservative Majority, and the organ.of that majority despairingly admitted that it was disbanded i and dead. On Monday the 24th, new intrigues had brought about such new combinations and changes to -the -party of the Executive, that its chief organ resorted to an unprecedented violence of denunciation, as the best means of averting the unprecedented perils.

Some two years and a half ago, the Government obeyed the sixty- eighth:paragraph of the Constitution, and ordered the Council of State to preparo,an organic law " to determine the other cases of responsibility," beyond thox which the Constitution itself :prescribes, of the President and his Ministers. The Council obeyed, but with its characteristic slow- ness of lietion. In 1850, the National Assembly stimulated the Council in its labours, by referring to it a• proposition on the subject, made by M. Pradie. -In June and July of the present year, the Council had arrived at the stage of deliberating on - the second reading of a scheme which it had at last embodied ; further stages of the deliberation were accomplished in last August and October. ; and copies of a perfected Mea- sure were, sent to the President of the Republic, and the President of ,the 'tssemblYeAn the 6th of November. In OnriEoetseript last week,:we,etatect how the party-ofghe7E1Yee° had genereilr,adoTted the-agompeliey.with-that..of Aboliellatain, LANUS

the discussion of the municipal corporation bill wholly to the Conser- vative Majority. This manteuvre was not understood, at the time, to be the result of any continuing league between the two parties taking the same course, but merely•that of a common object—increased odium to the law, from the strict severity against the franchise which the Conservative Ma- jority would be sure to give the measure if they were left unrestrained. This policy was apparently quite successful—the municipal law was made as restrictive, in every point but one, as the electoral law of the 31st May, whose amendment the Conservative Majority had re- jected : the one point excepted was that reduction of the domicile qualification, from three years to two years, 'which we mentioned last week. Towards the end of last week, the discussion became so lan- guid that a trivial amendment, most repugnant to the Majority, was carried by accident ; and, after a scene in which M. Dupin apostrophized the amused and unruly Assembly for playing an unhappy part before their country, it was revoked by the Representatives, amidst laughter at their own expense.

But on Friday evening, it became generally understood that an under- current of intrigue had been setting in towards a new point. The As- sembly was to meet in its Bureaux on Saturday, to nominate a Committee on the bill of the Council of State for defining the responsibility of the President and Ministers ; and it was whispered that that measure was to be the basis of a new league between the Monarchy and the Mountain against the Empire. Curiosity was concentrated on a measure which till then had attracted scarcely any notice ; and it was collected that though the project of the Council was signed by M. Boulay the Vice-President of the Republic, Louis Napoleon's personal adherent, yet that the Council of State itself is a body of Orleanist complexion and sympathies. The project of law consists of thirty-six articles, grouped into eight chapters, under various distinctive heads. Chapter I, " Of the Responsibility of the President of the Republic," contains, in article 1, these three para- graphs; among others, defining the circumstances which warrant im- peachment. "1. If ho be guilty of an attack on or a plot against the safety of the state, of which the object may be to destroy or change the form of govern- ment, or to suspend the empire of the Constitution and the laws ; 2. If he be guilty of exciting to the violation of article 45 of the Constitution [which forbids the reelection of an existing President] ; 3. If he be guilty of vio- lation of the Constitution, by taking in person the command of the armed force."

Chapter II, " Of the Responsibility of the Ministers," contains, in article 5, these paragraphs of impeachment- " 1. If they be guilty as accomplices of the crime of high treason punished by article 68 of the Constitution ; 2. If they be guilty as authors or accom- plices of one of the crimes foreseen by paragraph 1 of article 1; 3. If they be guilty of a crime against the internal or external safety of the state, foreseen by the Penal Code ; 4. If they be guilty as authors or accomplices of one of the crimes foreseen by paragraphs 2 and 3 of article 1 ; 5. If they make a criminal use of the power confided to them ; 6. If they knowingly compromise the interests of the state by the violation or non-execution of the laws."

Chapter III defines the process of impeaching the President or Minis- ters. That process consists wholly of deliberative formalities, precise and tedious, to be gone through by the Assembly. When these have been completed, the actual trial of the accused is regulated by article 16, as follows-

" If the accusation be admitted, the National Assembly issues a decree which convokes the High Court of Justice, and designates the town in which it will hold its sittings. It nominates, by the absolute majority, the com- missaries, who may belong to the Assembly or not, charged to conduct the prosecution before the High Court of Justice. They enter immediately on the exercise of their duties. The accused immediately ceases his functions."

It is seen that the definitions of treason are wide and vague ; and that on the accusation of the President by the Assembly, the whole executive power of the state is taken away from him. In the case of an accusation against the President, his power would devolve on the Vice-President : but in the conceivable case of the accusation comprehending both of those officers, the power of the Executive, left undisposed of, would doubtless be assumed by the Legislative body. But this was not enough. On Fri- day afternoon, M. Pradie gave notice of amendments on the project of the Council of State, with the direct object of giving to the Questors of the Assembly that power over the army, during the time of any impeachment ottlie President of the Republic, 'which the Assembly lately refused to give to those Questors against the President unaccused. The proposal was so at- tractive to the Mountain that they instantly accepted it. In the nomination of the Committee on the bill by the Bureaux, the Monarchists voted against the Bonapartists, and the Bonapartists against the Monarchists; and the consequence was the choice of no fewer than six members of the Moun- tain, with M. Michel of Bourges at their head. It is said that only one member of the Committee is decidedly against the bill. This combina- tion of the Mountain with the Monarchists, to grasp a weapon so threat- ening to the Bonapartists, spread a sort of consternation through Louis Napoleon's camp. The cry was raised by M. Granier de Cassagnac in the Constitutionnel of Monday, in an article denouncing the leaders of the Conservative Majority as actual conspirators to carry off President Na- poleon to the fortress of Vincennes, and proclaim a dictatorship, White or Red.

" We were within a hair's-breadth of civil war, on Monday," *laid the Constitutionnel ; " the conspirators had already prepared their coup-de- main," when, just before the division on the proposition of the Questors, some impatient conspirators exclaimed, from behind the Ministerial benches, " Arrest them all ! all of them ! whilst they are here." The Mountain smelt a rat. They voted in a body against the vote which would have been the 'first step in the enterprise, because they discovered that under General Chan- gamier the dictatorship would be exclusively White. [Legitimist.] "But," continued the article, " re same men who last week would have thrown the destinies of France on the hazard of 'Waite dictatorship with General thangarnier, are going to run the UM hazard this week with a Red dic- tatorship and General arvaignac." The public need not fear the conspiracies of either White or Red ; for the Government knew the plots brewing, and Was, at every moment of the recent past, holding the firm and determined hand of justice constantly suspended within an inchof the collar of each con- "pirates : and the best proof that the conspirators are not dangerous is that they are not at this moment "shipped off."

Such circumstantial indications created an immense ferment. In the Assembly, M. Croton demanded explanations ; douching his demand is terms of assumed contempt to M. Cttssagnao, whom, though one of the most eminent of French journalists, he designated as a "miserable folli- oulaire." M. David, theMinister addressed, eras-so evasive in reify, that

Berryer attacked him : the article in question Was contemptible, 'butt the interpellations, if answered at all, should be answered with sinterity and frankness by Ministers. M. Thorigny, the Minister of the Interior, now declared categorically—"We do not believe in the existence of any conspiracy. Had we obtained proofs, then, whoever were the men, hoer- ever high their rank, we would have done our duty." With this expla- nation the matter dropped for that day. But the next day, M. Raze showed that the Moulton- had significantly altered the expressions used by M. Thorigny ; had altered his declaration that "no conspiracy ex- isted," 'into one that " there were no proofs of a conspiracy." The expo- sure was much cheered, and an erratum in the M'oniteur was ordered.

But on the following day the discredited article was to be newly accre- dited by no less a person than the President of the Republic himself. The Government had determined to distinguish the French prizemen and medallists at the Great Exhibition of Industry in London, by a public distribution of their medals ; and they had resolved to endorse the opinion of the French Commissioners that the enormous superiority of French- men over the world had not been duly acknowledged in the awards of the Executive Committee, by a rectifying distribution of the insignia of the Legion of Honour to fifty-three most distinguished French prizemen and medallists. The ceremony of the distribution was to have taken place in the Louvre on Sunday : but there was so disastrous a failure of all the arrangements for the convenience of the public, that, after an extraordi- nary scene of crushing, door-breaking, and almost fatal tumult on the waxed floors of that sumptuous building, the President had to declare an adjournment. The postponed event passed off with great success, in the Circus of the Champs Elysee, before an immense and yet most respectable assemblage, on Tuesday. Several Ministers were present and assistant ; and the Corps Diplomatique was there in great force. M. Charles Dupin recapitulated the labours of the French Committee in London; dwelt on the imagined partialities at the expense of Frenchmen ; and landed the President's idea of repairing the injustice by a distribution of the order of the Legion of Honour.

President Louis Napoleon then delivered the following speech.

"Gentlemen—There are certain ceremonies which, from the sentiments they inspire and the thoughts they sugsest, are not a vain spectacle. I can- not deny that I feel affected, and proud as a Frenchman, at seeing around me the honourable men who, at the cost of so many efforts and so many sacrifices, have maintained with distinction in'a foreign land the reputation of our manufactures, of our arts, and our science. This is not the first time I have rendered just homage to the grand idea which originated the universal Exhibition of London. But at the moment of crowning your success with a national recompense, can I forget that so many marvels of industry and of art were commenced amidst the din of insurrection, and completed while society is still incessantly agitated by the fear of the pre- sent, and by the menaces of the future ? And, when pondering over the ob- stacles you have had to overcome, I said to myself, 'How great this nation would become, if she were allowed to breathe at ease and to lire with the life that is in her !' Yes! It was when public credit began to reappear— it was when infernal ideas incessantly urged the working classes to destroy the sources of industry itself—it was when madness, clothing itself with the mantle of philanthropy, was turning away men's minds from regular occu- pations into Utopian speculations—it was at such a time that you exhibited to the world those productions which seemed only possible in a condition of durable tranquillity. With such unhoped-for results I am justified in re- peating how great the French Republic would become if she were allowed to follow her-real interests, and to reform her institutions, instead of beingsin- cessantly troubled, on one side by demagogism, and on the other by monar- chical hallucinations. (Tremendous applause followed these words.) Do those demagogic ideas proclaim a truth ? No ! They circulate on every side error and falsehood. Disquietude precedes, deception follows them ; and the means employed for repression are but so much lost to the pressing he- eessity of improvement and the alleviation of misery. With respect to mo- narchical hallucinations, though not productive of the same dangers, they also impede all progress and all kinds of serious industry. In place of advancing, there is only a struggle. Men are seen who, heretofore the most ardent supporters of the prerogatives and the authority of Royalty, become partisans of a Convention for the purpose of weakening that authority which is the issue of popular suffrage. We see those who have suffered the most from, and who have deplored revolution the most, provoke a new one, and that for the sole object of baffling the will of the nation, and impeding in its peaceful course the movement which changes society. Yet those efforts are vain. All that time renders necessary must be accomplished. That only which is useless cannot be restored. The present ceremony is en additional proof that if certain institutions disappear without return, those, on the contrary, that are in conformity with she manners, the ideas, the wants of the epoch, may brave the attacks of envy or of Puritanism. You all, children of the regenerated society that abolished ancient privileges, and that proclaimed as its fundamental principle civil and political equal- ity, you, I repeat, yet feel a just pride in being named members of the order of the Legion of Honour. It is because that institution, as well as all others created at that period, was in harmony with the spirit of the age and the ideas of the nation. Far from serving, like others, to make distinctions more marked and deeper, it effaces all such, and places on the same line merit of all kinds, to whatsoever profession, to whatsoever rank of society it belongs. Accept, then, these crosses of the Legion of Honour, which, in conformity with the grand idea of its founder, are intended to con- fer equal honour on industry as on bravery, and on bravery as on scientific excellence. Before we separate, gentlemen, permit me to encourage you to renewed efforts. Undertake new labours without fear ; they will prevent idleness during the present winter. Have no fears for the future. Tran- quillity shall be maintained whatever may happen. A Government that re- lies for its support on the entire mass of the nation, that has no other motive than the public good, and that is animated by the ardent faith that guides

i you safely even over the space where no path is traced—the Government, I repeat, will know how to fulfil its mission, because it has for it the right that proceeds from the people, and the strength that comes from God." The speech was repeatedly interrupted by emphatic applause. Onte the President had to stop some moments before the approving shouts subsided.

The distribution passed off the more delightfully to Frenchmen 'frobh the interspersion of some sentimental effects. Theodore Montval, the pianoforte-maker, was led forward to take his cross of the Legion hy'a a little boy who carefully guided his dark steps; and the President's ten- der sympathy with his blindness was gracefully shown. At about theee 'o'clock the President Withdrew, and the people dispersed ; irightsseers 'de- lighted-With the 'spectacle, and politicians full of thoughts on the Bch which had reprodeeed seine of the most striking accusations of M. Gest- nier Cassagnaess article in 'the Constitutionnee In the evening 'of Tuesday, it 'became generally.lineeen 'that 'thief thousand copies of the Constiteitionne/ of Monday, containing M. Cassag- nac's article, were printed off at the expense of the Government, and dis- tributed gratis in all parts of Paris. The scurrility of M. Croton in the Assembly produced a hostile mes- sage from M. Cassagnac. But M. Croton refused the reparation demanded, on the ground that he had only spoken in his representative and public character, which should be his shield. M. Cassagnac revenged himself

by a letter in the C'onstitationnel, i onstitationnel, in which he said—" M. Croton is one of those men who neither understand honour nor shame ; and he is much less inviolable from his character of representative than from his cowardice." It was said in Paris that a jury of honour, composed of journalists of all opinions, would assemble and consider the whole matter.

Marshal Soult has been dangerously ill, but had so far rallied on the 44th instant as to be able to leave his bed.

M. Alphonse Gent, a member of the Constituent Assembly, M. Albert Ode, and M. Langomazino, the prisoners tried at Lyons by court-martial, found guilty of treason, and sentenced to transportation, have been for- warded to Brest on their way to Noukahiva, in the Marqmsas Islands. They are the first prisoners who have been sent to the penal settlement of Noukahiva.

SPAIN.—The struggles of party in Madrid are acquiring interest again. The news extends to the 22d instant. The Opposition, led by Senor Olo- zags, was acquiring increased compactness and weight. For several days i

there had been a great debate on the conduct of the Ministers in ap- proving of the Governor of Valencia's mode of suppressing some local disturbances between the people of Sueca and the people of Cullers, about their water rights, in a time of extreme drought. The Opposition orators pressed the Ministry so heavily, that when the last and greatest of them, Olozaga, alone remained to speak, it was fully expected that his eloquence would put the Ministry in a minority : but, to the surprise of all, he in a manner abandoned the case, and allowed them to effect a triumphant division. A great outcry was raised against him by the Opposition press; but it turned out that he had acted with good policy, for it seemed pro- bable that if the Ministry had been defeated they would either have re- signed or have executed some coup d'etat against the Cortes. In a sub- sequent debate, he exerted himself so effectively as to have retrieved his ground, and made the Cabinet feel more insecure than ever. This insecurity of the Cabinet was increased to the highest degree by the sud- den and unexpected return of Narvaez to Madrid from Paris, on the 20th instant ; either invited by the Queen, as his friends asserted, or uninvited, and in confidence in his own reassured position, as his opponents admitted. On the 21st, Marshal Narvaez was received at a private audience by the Queen, and to a long confabulation with the Queen Mother ; and on the 22d he gave the Assembly an explanation of his late withdrawal from the Cabinet and from Madrid, which was received with general applause. He declared he had made all sacrifices to his loyalty to her Majesty Isabella the Second ; " for soon, perhaps, Spain may have to pass through evil and terrible days."

11.kxovEn.—The impression created by the first decree of King George the Fifth of Hanover, that the existing Ministry would remain in power, and its policy be maintained, has proved erroneous. On the 23d instant, the people of the capital were thunderstruck by the appearance of a de- cree accepting the resignation, or as it would seem dismissing, the Milne- hausen Ministry, and nominating a new Ministry under Baron Scheele ; who has, in the words of the moderate Cologne Gazette, " these many years, been an object of fear and suspicion to the Hanoverians." Baron Scheele is President of the Council and Minister of Foreign Affairs ; General Major Bachmeister, an upright man, but a high Conservative, is Minister of War ; Dr. Windhoorst, an rltramontane, is the Minister of Justice ; M. de Berries, one of the Ritterschaft, whose desire for the re- peal of their abrogated privileges lately gave Austria a handle for inter- fering with Hanover through the Frankfort Diet, is Minister of the In- terior. In addition, it is said that the Ministry of Fivance has been re- fused by M. De Bahr, who was decorated on the conclusion of the treaty with Prussia for the blending of the Steuerverein with the Zollverein ; a circumstance thought to indicate still further the Austrian complexion of the new Cabinet. The Gazette speaks of the "resignation " of the late Ministry, but the Royal decree accepting their resignation omits the usual words " at their request." Letters of the 24th instant from Berlin— where the news "fell like a thunderbolt" on politicians—state that the new Ministry had already called on the King and taken the oaths be- fore the old Ministry knew they were dismissed ; an incredible statement, but one which probably only exaggerated the suddenness and unexpected- ness of the change.

The will of the late King contains the following instructions with reference to his remains—

"I have no objection to my body being exposed to the view of my faith-

ful subjects, in order that they may have a last opportunity of looking at me. I have never bad any other wish or any other object than that of contributing to their welfare. I have never acted from interested motives. I have only wished to correct the abuses which have been introduced into the admin- istration during a period of a hundred and fifty years in the absence of the Sovereign; abuses which, in consequence, could create no surprise."

Accordingly, the reigning King ordered that the body of his father should lie in state, before the throne in the palace, on the 22d and 23d instant ; and that " everybody should be admitted."

PRUSSIA.—The Prussian Chambers were opened on Thursday. The King was to have performed the ceremony himself, but the death of his relative the King of Hanover had called him away. He had left Berlin ostensibly for the sole purpose of being present at the interment of his re- lative, but had really gone to Hanover, the surmise was, to exercise some personal influence against Austria in the political struggle which was re- opened by the removal of King Ernest.

M. Manteuffel delivered an address to the Chambers. He omitted all reference to foreign topics. He declared that the convocation of the old provincial Diets is designed as " an interim provincial representation," and termed their decrees only "propositions " ; that the augmentation of the army is indispensable ; and that the finances are satisfactory. He also stated that the Ministry hopes the treaty with Hanover will stand firm ; and promised that "commerce should be unrestrained."

AysvitiA.—The news from Vienna is very scanty, through the inter- ruption of communications by immense and wide-spread falls of snow : it is averred that the telegraph has also been hindered, and even stopped in its workings, by the weather. From the latest accounts, which reach to the end of last week, it appears that the war on the Exchange against

merchants and capitalists continued. Some hundreds had been banished from the city and from the empire. The Daily News of yesterday com- municates that the Vienna correspondent of that journal has been escorted by police to the frontier of Saxony ; and that he continues, at Dresden, to be as much under the watching of the Austrian police as in Vienna.

A Hamburg letter of the 23d states that the Hungarian regiment of Schwgrzenberg, there holding military occupation for Austria, had been on the point of an outbreak, caused by the news of the reception of Kos- suth in England. Count Potocki, and another Hungarian emissary of Kossuth, had been arrested.

SARDINIA.—The Piedmontese Parliament reassembled at Turin on the 21st instant. Signor Brofferio questioned the Ministers as to their con- duct in repelling the "pretensions of Rome." About those pretensions, he declared, there is "no one question on which the opinions of the country are more unmistakeable." "If men are to be found guilty by wholesale at Naples, crammed into dungeons at Rome, pro- scribed in Tuscany, and publicly murdered in Lombardy, we are not to be humbugged in Turin." " What has been done in the matter of our Univer- sity Professor, whose defence of civil government has been stigmatized in a brief from Rome ?"

M. Cavour, the Minister of Justice, repelled any imputation that the Cabinet has swerved one jot from the principles of the Siccardi law. "As to the attack on Signor Parini, it suffices for the public opinion of this country to know that he has written a work truly Italian in its spirit, which has had the good fortune to find an English translator in Mr. Glad- stone, a name dear to the whole Italian peninsula. lie is true to the cause of his country."