It is stated that a somewhat bitter contest is raging
in the French Cabinet as to the removal of the seat of Government. The Imperialists, aware that Parisians may insist on surrender, as the citizens are said to have done in Strasburg, wish to remove the seat of Government either to Bourges, or Tours, or Lyons. The Liberals, of course, oppose, and so do the citizens, and the diffi- culties in the way are enormous. The people might obey the Emperor wherever he was, but failing him they would look to Paris ; and the mere removal of the Departments, with their thousands of clerks, of the Treasury, of the Bank of France, with its masses of treasure,—nearly £40,000,000 in gold and silver,— of the Mint with its machinery, of the Telegraph, and of the Railway administration, would be impossible, yet in abandoning any one of these Government would abandon a strength. More- over, if the Germans win they will have a voice in the matter, and it is their interest to decline to treat with any Government not settled in Paris.
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