The Paris correspondent of the Times—often informed before Parisians are—sketches
out a programme of the work which the French Ministry has, since the elections to the Senate, agreed to attempt. The Services, including the Diplomatic, will be gradually purged of all distinctively anti-Republican persons. The Ministry will submit a law restoring to the State the exclu- sive right of granting degrees, and will abolish the right which seminarists now possess of presenting their " letters of obedi- ence " as equivalent to certificates of education,—both of them direct blows at the Church idea of education. They will also propose to curtail the right of the Council of Public Instruction to interfere with the State Univer- sities. Measures will be prepared treating " in a liberal spirit " the questions of Trades' Unions, of municipal organisation, and of poor-relief,—the two latter very important measures indeed. The gendarmerie will be again reduced to a purely civil organisation without political functions, and will be subordinated to the Prefects, instead of the Generals com- manding districts. The Minister of Commerce will make fresh and distinct declaratiops in the Free-trade sense, and the Minister of Justice will promise to guide the magistracy into harmony with the present ideas of France. All these pro- jects, it is stated, will be revealed to the Chambers, and then a vote of confidence will be asked from both Houses.
