The news from the French provinces is very alarming, for
it seems to show that the rural population are really breaking out into that hysterical state of suspicion and alarm which, as we believe, quite as much as the oppression of the old feudal laws, caused the Reign of Terror in the great Revolution. The Government has officially confirmed the horrible story, utterly dis- credited at first, of the burning alive of a respectable young French- man, M. De Monneys (in the arrondissement of Monton, Puy de Dame, quite the centre of France, and far from any hostile army), 'for not being sufficiently Imperialist, and for having bought a sub- -stitute instead of having personally entered the Army. Disturb- ances of the same kind, due to an ignorant peasantry, who attri- bute the misfortunes of France to their rich men and nobles having received Prussian bribes, seem to have occurred in all parts of France,—in Touraine (Indres-et-Loire), in Ille-et-Vilaine, at Montfort, at Houdain (Pas-de-Calais), and in Brittany. In Alsace and in the South of France, Protestants are accused of -siding with the Prussians on account of their religion. It is evi- dent that the ignorant people of the rural districts regard the Emperor as on their side, and the middle and richer classes as hostile to them. If such a feeling spreads, the bonds of society will be dissolved, and the Germans will have secured a stronger (though we may hope a much less welcome) alliance, than either Austria or Italy could have offered.
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