We should like exceedingly to know what Prince LObanolT really
intended by his speeches to M. de Blowitz, reported in the Times of Saturday. They have given such profound umbrage, either to St. Petersburg or Paris, that the Agence Busse has been instructed to declare the report of the inter- view a pure invention,—which is not true. The editor of the Temps has been shown the evidence, and reports that M. de Blowitz is telling the exact truth. We do not doubt it for a moment; but all the same, Prince Lobanoff must have been under some very strange impulse. We pointed out last week the unusualness of his remarks about the succession, and it appears that he also discussed the authority of the Czar. His Majesty, he said, does not express his own will, but the will of Russia, which has imposed itself on a certain select few, who then convince the Emperor, who again spreads it abroad among the people. That is not in the very least the true idea of the Czardom, and Nicholas I. would have dismissed any Minister for saying so in public. It is, we suspect, this opinion which has called out the angry " de»zenti," for the Prince's other contention that the provinces of France are devoted to peaceful industry, though Paris has "other ideas," could irritate no one, and is indeed in harmony with the peaceful professions of Russia and its wish for a new loan.
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