6 FEBRUARY 1858, Page 7

forrigu ant( Collluial.

cfraarf.—The feverish excitement that followed the attempt at as- sassination has been rather inoreased by the repressive measures of the Government and the minatory addresses of the Army. The mercantile classes have taken alarm, somewhat to the detriment of trade; and a kind of panic fear seems from all accounts to have seized for the moment on the French mind.

The Government has assiduously devoted itself to the production of a bill of pains and penalties. Its production in the Council of State was preceded by a long memorandum signed by the great law-officers, ex- pounding the reasons that led to its introduction. As it passed the Coun- cil it consiated of eight articles. Any one who "in any manner whatever" "publicly" uses language provocative of attempts on the life of the sove- reign, or of changes in the form of government, even when the'provocation is not followed by results, shall be imprisoned from two to five years and fined from 500 to 10,000 francs. Every one who with a view to dis- turb the public peace, or to excite others to hatred and contempt for the Government, " practises iitanceuvres or carries on intelli- gences," either at home or abroad, is made liable to imprisonment from one month to two years. Any one who, without legal authority, fabricates, sells, or diatributes—" 1st, murderous machines acting by ex- plosion or otherwise; 2d, fulminating powder, whatever its composition may be, shall be punished with imprisonment from six months to five years, and a fine of 50 francs to 3000 francs." Other punishments are pro- vided for various offences specified in the Penal Code; and any person found guilty of any of these offences may be removed to one of the de- partments, or to Algeria, or may be sent out of the country. The last two articles are as follows- " Art. 7. May be removed to the interior of the departments of the Em- pire or of Algeria, or expelled from the territorye every individual who has been either condemned, or removed to the interior (interne), expelled, or transported, as a measure of general security, on account of the events of May or June 1848, of June 1849, or of December 1851, and whom serious facts again point out as dangerous to the public security. "Art. 8. Every individual sent to the interior of Algeria, or expelled from the territory, who enters France without permission, may be placed in a penitentiary colony, either in Algeria or some other French posses- 'ion.'

it is stated that the greatest efforts were made to secure a majority in favour of this bill, which is everywhere called a- " loi des suspects." As originally drawn, the bill inflicted penalties upon any one who spoke against the Government anywhere. But this was too much for the beat of the French lawyers in the Council of State, and it was at the instance of M. Chain d'Est Ange and others that the word "publicly" was introduced. Even now the measure encounters general dissatis- faction, and "the men of 1848" in the faubourgs are in great alarm.

The Hon:tear of Tuesday gave an account of the proceedings in the Senate on Monday, attending the establishment of a Regent and Council ef Regency in France. M. Fould read the following message from the Emperor. "Messieurs lea Senateurs—The Senatus-Consultum of the 17th of July 1856 leaves a doubt which I now think it advisable to put an end to. In fact, it only confers the Regency on the Empress, or, she failing, on French Princes, provided the Emperor has not by some public or secret act willed it otherwise. "I believe I am responding to the public wish at the i same time that I

follow my own feelings of the highest confidence in the Empress by de- signating her as Regent. Actuated by the same feeling, I designate, she fading, as her successors in es the Regency, the French Princes in order of hereditary succession to the crown. "I have also wished to provide for any doubts which might arise as re- gards the Council of Regency from the alternatives left open by the 18th article of the Senatus-Consultum of the 17th of Jul'. Consequently, I have established a Privy Council, which, with the addition of two French Princes nearest in the hue of hereditary succession will become the Coun- cil of Regency from the sole fact of the accession of Emperor a minor if at that moment I should not have established another by public act. Tins Privy Council, formed of men who enjoy my confidence, will be consulted on the great affairs of the state, and will prepare itself by the study of the duties and necessities of a government for the important teak which the fu- ture may have in reserve for it. "Whereupon, I pray God to have you in His holy keeping.'

" NAPOLEON.

"Palace of the Tuileries, February 1, 1868."

M. Fould next read the letters patent establishing the Regency. "Napoleon, by the grace of God and the national will, Emperor of the French, to all present, greeting. "Being desirous of putting a stop at once to any doubts which may re- sult from the Senatus-Consultum of the 17th. of July 1856, and of giving to Our well-beloved spouse Eugenie marks of the high confidence we repose in her, we have resolved to confer upon her, and do confer upon her by these

presents, the title of Regent, to bear the said title and to exercise the func- tions thereof from the day of the accession of the Emperor as minor, in con- formity to the regulations of the Senatus-Conaultunt on the Regency.

" We charge our Minister of State to communicate the present letters to our Keeper of the Seals, to be inserted in the Bulletin des Lois, and also to the Presidents of the Senate, of the Legislative Corps, and of the Council of State. " Done et our Palace of the Tuileries, the 1st of February. 1858.

" NAPOLEON. " Countersigned, Amax:1 Fourn."

The decree establishing the Privy Council states that this body will become, " with the addition of the two French Princes nearest in line of succession, a Council of Regency, in case the Emperor should not have designated another by public act." The members of the Council are Cardinal Morlot, Marshal Duke of Malakhoff, M. Achille Fould, M. Trop- long, Count de liforny, M. Baroche, and Count de Persigny.

The Emperor, " desirous of giving our well-beloved uncle Prince je- rome Bonaparte a mark of our high confidence" has granted to him the right of attending the sittings of the Privy Council, and has expressed a vials. that he should "preside thereat during our absence." It is stated that Marshal Barag-uay d'Hilliers will be appointed to the supreme command at Nancy, Canrobert to Tours, and Bosquet to Tou- louse. The remaining two great military divisions—Paris and Lyons— will remain as at present, in the hands of Marshals Magnan and Castel- lano. Marshal Pelissier is to be Marshal-General, an old title raked up from the times of the Grand Monarque.

Stall; .—The trial of the English engineers, the crew of the Cagliari, and Pisacane's comrades, began at Salerno on the 29th January. The court was crowded with soldiers. The presiding Judge made a fair statement of the facts, but the Procurator-General gave a distorted view. Some of the prisoners looked cheerful and healthy, but the ma- jority looked pallid and emaciated.

A grand banquet has been given to the Sardinian Envoy at Rome, Count della Minerva, by the opulent Duke Sforza Cesarim ; at whose table Prince Chigi, Prince Rospigliosi, Due de Grammont, Prince and Princess Bonaparte, met to do him honour. The latter Prince is son of the late Speaker of the Roman Parliament, and the two others are known for their liberal views.

mititrlanit.—The Swiss seem disposed to place their army on a level with others in point of instruction and discipline. The Federal Council has just resolved that a uniform system of military education shall be established throughout the Cantons • that the artillery, sappers, and pontoonors, shall be numerically increased; and that the time de- voted for the instruction of rifle companies shall be extended to thirty- five days annually

Sniria.—The overland mail from Bombay, with advices to the 9th January, arrived in London on Tuesday night. The news it contains does little more than confirm the advicee re- ceived by the preceding mail. Brigadier Walpole had reached Akber- pore with a column of Europeans and Sikhs, on his way to Etowah. Sir Colin Campbell was to lead a strong force to Futteyghur. These two columns were to unite at Agra. Colonel Seaton was to escort his convoy to Cavrnpore, and reinforce the garrison there. A rebel force, much dispirited, was at Calpee ; but the rebels had broken cloirn the bridge of boats over the Sumna. Sir James Ontram had attacked the rebels near his strong post at Alumbagh, and had taken four guns.

In Central India, Sir Hugh Rose had moved from Indere, his destine- ,fien being Saugor. General Whitelock, at the head of a column col- lected at Nagpore, was about to proceed to Jubbulpore. General Ro- berts was on his way from Deese to Awa and Rotel. A brigade was to move from Hyderabad in Scinde In Odeypore.

The Nawab of Jhujhur was hanged at Delhi, in the presence of a great crowd, on the 22d December. Three other rebels shared his fate on the 24th. The Bombay correspondent of the Daily News, in a postscript to his letter, says- " ihe news from the Ptuajaub is unfavourable. Sir John Lawrence had other reasons when he asked for reinforcements than that of a campaign in Itohilcund. The Sikhs are not safe; and besides this the Affghans threaten on the Northern frontier. With such an old man at the head of Afghanis- tan as Dost Mahomed, no reliance can be placed on the maintenance of order there. It may be necessary in consequence to reinforce the garrison of Peshawur." In the letters from Alumbagh it is stated that heavy firing had been heard at Lucknow, and it was supposed that the rebels were fighting among themselves.

Scindia had arrived at Agra. It is not stated why he quitted Gwalior.

The Daily News Bombay correspondent furnishes an account of Lord Elphinstone's speech at a dinner given by the wealthy Natives of Bombay to the European soldiers recently arrived from England.

"Lord Elphinstone took the opportunity of reading something in the shape of a lesson to those who confound in one common dislike all classes of Indians. _He affirmed that with very few exceptions the revolt had been purely military, and that the great body of the people had nothing to do with it ' ; that in Oude only had there been anything like a popular ad- hesion to their cause, while in Rohilcund the feeling had been decidedly in our favour. He added, that in Scinde, where there were those who owed us no good-will, whose greatness had been extinguished by us, and whose power had been reduced or nullified by our successes, the conduct of the mutineers and their associates had been viewed with disgust and indignation ; and he quoted words spoken by Share Mahomed, one of the ex-Ameere of Scinde,to the effect that this was not like meeting the English in the field, and that the fiends who murdered women and children deserved the punishment of Sodom andRomorrah.' These expressions Lord Elphinstone dwelt on with pleasure, because he said he had beard that the professions now made by the Natives of Bombay were considered insincere and hollow by some who behoved that they should have been publicly made at an earlier period, when the symptoms of the reestablishment of our rule were less decided than they had since become: Against such sentiments Lord Elphinstone considered it his duty to protest; reminding his hearers that the wealthy Natives of Bombay had been among the first to come forward with subscriptions in aid of the sufferers in the mutinies and expressions of indignation at the cruelties per- petrated in various parts of the country s that Bombay was the oldest posses- sion of the English in India; and that during two hundred years no attempt had ever been made to subvert our rule. All this, and more to the FLIMP effect, Lord Elphinstono urged on his listeners; whom, let us hope, he con- vinced of the truth of his views."

General Windham has been sent by the Commander-in-chief to com- mand a division at Umballa. It may be remembered that he was originally appointed to the Sirhind division.

Dr. Wilson, Bishop of Calcutta, who died on the 3d January, was the son of a London silk-manufacturer. In early life he was the friend of Wilberforce and Simeon. Educated at Oxford, he became Vice-Princi- pal and Tutor of St. Edmund's Hall, Vicar of St. Mary's, Islington—the vicarage now held by his son' and in 1832, mainly through the influ- ence of Lord Glenelg and Sir Robert Grant, he was appointed Bishop of Calcutta. At his death he was in his eightieth year.

thins .—Ile special correspondent of the Times in China seems to prefer Chinese to English cookery. He gives an amusing account of a Chinese dinner served for the behoof of a select party of Europeans.

"In cookery the Chinese hold a middle position, below the French and above the English. There is a certain degree of philosophy in a Chinaman's smallest act—he never does anything for which he cadnot give a reason. He sees an especial connexion between cookery and civilization--wherein he agrees with sonic great names among ourselves—and he conceives that the • English must be very low in the intellectual scale, and must hold their high rank only by brute force. An Englishman's mode of feeding is, says John Chivaman, the nearest approach to that of the savages of Formosa. He does

the chief work of the slaughterhouse upon his dinner-table, and he remits the principal work of the kitchen to his stomach. 'In remote ages, before

we became civilized,' a polite Chinaman once informed me, we used knives and forks, as you do, and had no chopsticks. We still carry a knife in our chopstick-case; but it is a remnant of barbarism; we never use it. We sit down to table to eat, not to cut up carcasses.'" The correspondent himself gave the dinner, at the sign of "the Gallery of the Imperial Academician" in Ningpo. The party consisted of him- self, a Chinese master of ceremonies, and four Englishmen and their wives. The diningroom was open on one side to the street, and crowds of Chinese had collected to see the barbarians dine. They ate by the aid of chopsticks and porcelain spoons.

"The table was laid with the preliminary trifles provocatives to the coming repast. There was a small square tower built up of slices from the breast of a goose, a tumulus of thin square pieces of tripe, hard-boiled eggs of a dark speckled colour, which had been preserved in lime, and whose delicacy is supposed to be proportioned to thew antiquity ; berries and other vegetable substances preserved in vinegar, a curious pile of some shell-fish, to me unknown, which had been taken from its shell and cut in thin slices, prawns in their natural, or rather in their artificial red state, ground-nuts, ginger, and candied fruits."

Then came the serious business. "The first dish was, in accordance with all proper precedent, the birds-nest soup. I believe some of us were rather surprised not to see the birds-nests bobbing about in the bowl, and to detect no flavour of sticks or feathers or moss Their existence at table is apparent in a thick mucilage at the surface of the soup. Below this you come to a white liquid and chickens' flesh. It was objected that this was a fade and tasteless delicacy." Sauces were handed round to flavour the mess. -

"The next course was expected with a very nervous excitement. It was a stew of sea slugs. As I have seen them at Macao they are white, but as served at Ningpo they are green. During the discussion of this dish our Chinese master of the ceremonies solemnly interposed. We were neglect- ing the rudiments of politeness. No one had yet offered to intrude one of . tale sleek and savoury delicacies, deeply rolled in sauce, into the mouth of his neighbour. Efforts were made to retrieve the barbarian honour, but with no great success ; for the slugs were evasive, and the proffered mouth- fuls were not always welcome.

"The next dish was sturgeon skull-cap--rare and gelatinous, but I think not so peculiar in its flavour as to excuse the death of several royal fish. This dish being taken from its brazen, lamp-heated stand, was succeeded by a stew of shark fins and pork. The shark fins were boiled to so soft a con- • sistency that they might have been turbot fins. Next in order came a soup composed of balls of crab. "Meanwhile, the ministering boys flew and fluttered round the table ; for ever filling the little wine-glasses with hot wine from the metal pets. There were three kinds, the strong samshu for very occasional 'spike'; the medi- cated wine" ; and something like sherry negus. The guests asked for "bread," but " bread at a Chinese feast is contrary to the ' rites.' "

"The next dish named was The Rice of the Genii,' meaning, I suppose, the food of the genii,' for there was no rice in the composition. It was a stew of 'gums and preserved fruits, whose sweets and acids were an agree- able counterpoise to the fish and meat dishes already taken. Then we had a dish of a boiled hairy vegetable, very like that stringy endive which they call in France Barbe de Capuchin '—then stewed mushrooms from Man- churia. Then we relapsed mto another series of fish and meat entrees, wherein vegetables of the vegetable marrow species and a root somewhat between a horseradish and a turnip were largely used. There was a bowl of ducks' tongues, which are esteemed an exquisite Chinese dainty."

So they continued until "nature could no more" ; the first untested dish being the signal for the close of the feast. There were twenty more courses in reserve.

Then followed a curious part of the "rites." " The master of the cere- monies now looked round him with a swollen and satisfied air, and—eruscit mons ; from his mouth came forth a loud sonorous noise, which. a certain dramatist has not scrupled to bedeck with knighthood, and to christen Sir Toby. Ile, the Chinaman, seemed proud of his performance. We sat un- comfortable on our chairs, did not know which way to look, and some of us would have run away had there been anywhere to run to. Some one who could speak his language gave him a hint which made him declare empha- tically that it would be an insult to the founder of the feast if this testi- mony was not loudly given to the sufficiency of the entertainment and the pletion of the guests. It was with some difficulty that he was prevailed upon to turn over this chapter of the book of rites. And thus ended our Chinese dinner.

"Of course, I do not affirm that this dinner was to our tastes, but it was one to which education and habit might very reasonably incline a people. It was eminently light and digestible, and, like the Chinese themselves, very reasonable and defensible upon philosophic grounds, but somewhat monotonous, tedious, and insipid."

1 itstralia.—Advices have been received from Melbourne to the 15th December. The Victorian Parliament was opened by Sir Henry Barkly on the 8th December. Several measures of Parliamentary reform were promised : one to extend the franchise, and to give minorities a share in the representation ; a second to make the Parliament triennial ; a third to exclude from Parliament all salaried officers except Ministers; a fourth to consolidate the bribery laws.

The advices from Sydney come down to • December 10. The Puha- liament of New South Wales does not seem to be making much progress in legisletion. The chief measure of the session, a Crown Lands Bill,

excites great disapprobation. It proposed to sell land at the fixed price of 11. an acre ; but the squatting interest was for auction at the upset price of 5s., and against cash payments; and failing of success, the Mi- nister withdrew the bill.

Itift.—The Africa arrived at Liverpool from New York on Saturday, with advices to the 20th January. In the House of Representatives on the 18th, Mr. Campbell asked leave to offer a joint resolution authorizing the President to negotiate, through the State Department, for the acquisition of Canada, Nova Scotia, and other parts in British North America, and Cuba and the other islands adjacent thereto, and annexing them to the United States. In the event of any acquisition, no portion should be admitted in the Union until possessed of sufficient population to send one member to the House of Representatives, or until the bona fide residents should have an oppor- tunity of voting on the constitution, and regulating their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the constitution of the United States. The motion did not meet with approval. The New York papers ridicule it, and ask why Mr. Campbell did not include the entire continent of America.

The Mormons have stirred up the Indian tribes to harass the United States troops. The steamer Fashion, which conveyed Walker to Nicaragua, had arrived at New Orleans, and been seized by the authorities.