NEWS OF THE WEEK.

NAPOLEON has been playing off the anarchical parties against the Liberals, and has very nearly gone too far. The wild lectures and meetings which lie recently permitted in Paris iu order to frighten the provinces have roused the smouldering fire, and Paris is quivering as if half inclined to spring. The Demos in all the districts has pronounced for the Reds as opposed to the Liberals, 011ivier, for example, being threatened by Bence], and Jules Fevre by Rochefort of Le La»terne, and the Parisian vote will be a unanimous protest against the Empire. It is the same in Marseilles,—where M. Gambetta, Barbarous over again, will be returned for denouncing Napoleon, defeating M. Marie,—aud indeed in all the great cities. The idea at the Tuileries was to divide the hostile forces, but the scheme does not work. By the law, a candidate cannot be elected unless half the electors of the district vote for him. The quarrel among the Liberals does not therefore seat the Napoleonic candidate, and at the second ballot the divided fractions unite upon the more popular of their number, usually in the cities the reddest, in the departments the moat moderate.

Inflamed by permitted lectures, eager about the elections, and in a chronic state of hostility to the police, the multitude in Paris, Bordeaux, Marseilles, and elsewhere is just in the humour which makes a Frenchman about as safe as a panther. As a relief, it parades, singing the Marseillaise ; the Marseillaise under this regime is revolutionary; consequently the police first order the crowd to disperse, and then charge. One man in every two of that crowd is a soldier, who considers that the police insult him, and turns almost instinctively at bay. Stones, sticks, and, above all, bottles, fly in showers, the cavalry are called in, there is a charge, a flight, and some half-dozen or so of citizens are sent to hospital. Riots of this kind have occurred in most of the cities, the most serious being in Paris, where a Superintendent of Police was killed by a crowd_ who had been cheering M. Raspail. Three collisions occurred in two days, and it was found necessary to keep the garrison under arms and threaten to disperse all crowds by the bayonet.

A serious movement was expected on Sunday, but the Liberal journals, the Liberal candidates, and the professors gave the word "Du calme, du calme!" the workmen accepted this as an order, and throughout the week Paris has been tranquil. The Liberal leaders wish to see the result of the elections, the Government is fully on the alert,—the Emperor driving everywhere unattended, as his wont is when he scents trouble,—and the populace, for all its daring, is aware that the garrison is too strong. The moderates dread revolution because they foresee the reaction in the provinces, and it is probable that order will be completely maintained in Paris unlem Lyons catches fire. The Reds, owing to the configuration of the city, always think they have a chance there, and if one barrel goes off, anything may happen in the magazine.

The Macs of Friday contained a long but somewhat enigmatical telegram from its correspondent at Madrid dated the 20th inst. According to this statement, Castelar adjured Serrano not to

accept a Regency, the Cortes applauded, and Serrano joined in the applause. Topete rose, and ackeowledging his preference for the Duke de Moutpensier, declared that a Republic, a Regency, and a Monarchy were becoming equally impossible. " Beware," he continued, " lest some insolent daring titan undertake to cut the knot you are unable to solve. You will not applaud me now, but you will understand me." That speech can only have been directed at Prim, and it means that the union of the triumvirate is dissolved. if this is correct, the Army is the only power left iu Spain, and the more quickly Prim decrees a dictatorship the better for his country. It must come to that, or anarchy for the present, for the Cortes clearly cannot avert bankruptcy.

Mr. Motley, Unitel States Minister ts Great Britaiu, will probably arrive in London on the :10th inat lie left New York on the 19th. It is sail that his instructions are to avoid the Alabama question, but if it is re-opened to press views resembling those expressed by Mr. Stunner. If that account is correct, which we doubt, the matter may rest for months, as the British Government has no motive to take the initiative. It has dune all it could, has concede I all it ought, and has found its offers contumeliously rejected. Besides, with whom is it to treat? Where is the proof that whets a mole of arrangement has ben discovered, when Mr. Motley has accepted it, and when Poseideut Grant has endorsed it, Mr. Samner may not induce the Senate to throw it out? lie says that an American Minister doss not necessarily represent America, and complains of our negotiating with Mr. Johnson when he was clearly out of accord with Ane.tricen soutiineut. How is a Government to know anything aboat Amneric in sentiment, except through the accredited representatives of the Union ?

Our readers will perceive from the letter of "A Yankee" that President Grant does not intend to allow Cuba to be invaded by filibusters. Our correspondent, who, we may add, cannot on this point be misinformed, states that the orders issued are most stringent, and supported by adequate physical force. Vessels which break them, in fact, will be sunk.

Mr. Forster has made three speeches this week, one at Bradford, in honour of Mr. Oastler and the Factory Act, in which ho soundly lectured the workmen for relying too much on that Act for education, to the neglect of their children ; another at Leeds, on the plan for reorganizing middle-class education ; and a third, to his own constituency, on general politics. In this last he took occasion, as an old awl staunch friend of America, to tell Americans a few truths which, though kindly and respectfully worded, are not the less plain. lie believed Mr. Sumner utterly in the wrong ; first, because the proclamation of neutrality, so far from being unfriendly, had been issued in the interest of the North, and advised by its friends, himself included ; and secondly, because the body of the English nation now at last iu power was never unfriendly to the Union, but, on the contiary, heartily desired its success iu the great struggle. If Mr. Sumner really intended to demand an apology, " he might say an abject apology," from Great Britain, "there was a point beyond which concession would be a crime, because it would be a sacrifice of our position among civilized nations." Americans iney learn from this declaration of one of her warmest friends,—a stout Radical, aud a resolute opponent of war,—how universal would be the resistaned if Mr. Sumner's demands were seriously pressed. We should add that at the time of writing only a summary of Mr. Forster's speech has been published in London.

In the course of his speech on Education, Mr. Forster made a statement which will be regretted by every true friend of enlightenment in the country. It has been decided to divide his great plan for middle-class education into two halves, to split the Bill into two Bills, one for the reform of endowed schools, and the other for the creation of an Educational Council. Tile former meets with leas opposition, and will doubtless be carried this year ; but the latter may be postponed. It is, however, by far the more important Bill of the two, giving the nation, as it does, the power, not indeed of dictating the subjects of instruction iu all middleclass schools, but of ensuring that the instruction is continuously good, that the schoo!masters are goui, that the school fulfils its function as a bridge between the elementary school and the University. Without such a Council the reformed schools will when reorganized recommence the old vicious circle of efficiency, stagnation, decay, rottenness, and the work will be all to be done again. Mr. Forster has, no doubt, sufficient reason for the decision at which he and the Select Committee have arrived ; but nevertheless we regret it. Next year there may be no such Liberal majority, or we may be at war, or, as we think exceedingly probable, public attention may be completely absorbed by a laud question.

Mr. Forster in the course of his speech on Education objected to the age which the Universities have fixed as the earliest for taking a degree. It is adapted, he says, only for the rich, for men who are not going into business after they leave the University. To this the Pall Mall Gazette objects that it is impossible to give the highest culture to lads of eighteen or nineteen. True enough, perhaps, as far as the average are concerned, though the Scotch and German Universities do give it, or think they do ; but is it not the essence of Mr. Forster's plan that University students, from among the people, at least, should not be the average, but the pick of the secondary schools, themselves the pick of the primary schools? Their brains would be at least two years in advance of the average. It is easy to attack the whole system of providing for the clever,— though we are basing all administration on it,—but surely this University reform is a necessary part of it. Competence is competence. Why fix an age?

The colonists of New Zealand are again in trouble. They seem unable to get their armed constabulary into working order. 'Tito Koomaru on the West Coast eludes Colonel Whitmore with his 500 men, Te Kooti, the insurgent reported dead, has reappeared on the East Coast, and another group of Europeans, eight in all, have been murdered in Taranaki, where Lieut. Gasgoyne, his wife and three children, two settlers, and a well-known and much respected missionary, the Rev. John Whiteley, have all been found dead. The murderers have escaped, and it has been found necessary to retain Her Majesty's 18th Regiment, who were under orders to quit the colony. These events have revived the old discussion as to the justice of withdrawing the garrison, but the insurgents, who seem so formidable, scarcely number hundreds, and the colonists are perfectly able to protect themselves. If they do not care to leave their farms for militia work, let them raise a regiment in England, paying both men and officers in grants of land. There are a hundred men in England who, the pay granted, would organize an efficient regiment in six weeks, half the men to be previously trained soldiers.

The efficiency of the Naval Reserve has been tested by a cruise, and so far with the greatest success. Two thousand men, more than were expected, presented themselves, and all accounts agree in affirming that finer fellows were never seen. They are prompt, obedient, and "respectful," like the work, and have nothing to learn except the use of the rifle and the working of the large guns. The man-of-war discipline does not annoy them, and the only charge brought against them is that they "do too much," are, we suppose, the least thing fussy. They will soon unlearn that, zeal being the easiest of all vices to subdue, and they will acquire a prejudice in favour of the Royal Service to replace the faint traditional prejudice against it. Mr. Childers sails with the fleet, and is, we heartily trust, not very seasick.

The Registrar-General publishes a remarkable illustration of the "infallibility" which seems to belong to some statistical calculations. It is calculated, from the experience of many years, that the number of persons who ought to be killed by horses in London iu the first 19 weeks of the year is 74. In the first 18 weeks of 1869 only 66 were killed, and it seemed as if science were for once at fault. In the nineteenth, however, 8 were killed, and the number made up as completely as if it were part of the law of nature that some four persons a week should be killed by horses. The puzzle in the matter is, that while the RegistrarGeneral can calculate the increase in the number of people, it has no data for the number of horses. How many hundred fresh horses would kill a fresh man ?

Dr. M'Neile, Dean of Ripon, has fired off a stupendous mortar

aainst Mr. Gladstone. In a letter to the Premier, which occupies two columns of the 'nines, he lays down the-thesis that religious equality is introsible in Ireland; that the alt.Prnative is between Itonautist and Protestant •ascendancy ; that the'Romanist system is the worst of the two ; that it teaches the restitution of land taken by force from Catholics as a religions duty ; that consequently it will insist upon enforcing the restitution of Irish estates. " For every step towards this consummation the Treasury of the Church is open, and if any of these steps require duplicity, falsehood, perjury, poison, pistol, or rifle, the ready produce of that Treasury is plenary indulgence." Further, when Rome has won the game, when the " dark and silent hour" arrives of Roman supremacy, then " the person of an heretical though gentle sovereign shall sink under the murderous arm of some modern Pyrrhus, some noble-minded Fenian." Let no one be deceived by Catholic moderation. "There may be the masking of the battery of the Tridentine Council ;" there may be " a modern Sinon, with bland sentences of meekness, opening entrance into a Protestant citadel for a wooden horse of Roman perfidy ;" there " may be the serpent-coil of spurious charity, and real envy, hatred, and malice encircling and enfeebling the bold and faithful Laocoon ;" but " no true and consistent subject of the Papal power can be true and loyal to the government of a Protestant State,"—consequently, in ceasing, as he alleges to be a Protestant State, the United Kingdom is sowing disloyalty ! We should have thought, on the Dean's own showing, it was diminishing it. Dr. M'Neile's logic is worthy of his rhetoric, and his rhetoric of his history, and all three are worthy of the Papal Allocutions they so exactly resemble.

The Times and its correspondents are calling attention to the frequency of attacks on the police. They are detested by the roughs, and not loved by a section of the honest labourers, and are constantly ill-used, kicked almost to death, and frightfully maimed. Our absurd lenity to attacks on the person as compared with attacks on property operates iu their case as a direct premium on violence. It is actually less dangerous to " spoil a Peeler," that is, maim.a policeman for life, than to steal his handkerchief. We never could see why policemen or a division of them should not be armed, and if that protection is refused, they are entitled to special protection from the law. Double every penalty if the victim is a policeman, and give swift redress for the citizen if oppressed by him, and we should triple the usefulness of the force.

The Canadian Parliament is, we fear, preparing trouble for.us all. Hitherto licences have been granted to Americans to fish within Canadian waters ; but the colonial fishermen complain that the Americans crowd them out, and no more licences will be granted. The result of that will be that the American fishermen will go without licences, and that there will be incessant sensation headings in the New York journals about Canadian outrages on citizens of the Union. Have we not enough to quarrel about without squabbling over the value of a few cod ?

The huge Blue-Book just issued upon local taxation in England and Wales shows that it now amounts to 16f per cent. upon the annual rateable value of the country, and 15 per cent. upon the gross estimated rental. The total now amounts to £16,660,459, or nearly double the cost of the civil administration of the United Kingdom. Of this enormous sum the poor-rate is £11,061,502, or nearly the cost of the Army, and even more entirely waste, for the Army does not, at all events, demoralize the national character. Financiers sometimes complain that nothing remains for them to do, but here is work for the strongest of them. Onehalf, at least, of all these rates are levied, not upon profits, but upon the machinery for producing profits, and a large portion of the remainder is spent in convincing Englishmen that it is needless to provide for old age.

Sir F. Head sends to the Times an account of his negotiations, as Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada in 1837, with Mr. Marcy, then Governor of the State of New York, about the M`Kenzie affair. M•Kenzie had threatened Toronto, robbed the mail, burned houses, killed people, and retreated into New York, whereupon Sir F. Head demanded his surrender. This was refused, on the ground that M'Kenzie was a rebel, and as such not within the Extradition Treaty. Sir F. Head argues that Mr. Marcy in thus acting acknowledged belligerency, and that if he was in the right, so are we in the Alabama case. The analogy, however, seems incomplete. Mr. Marcy merely pleaded the right of asylum, which the Americans have never denied to us. Had Jefferson Davis fled

to Canada, nobody would have expected us to give him up. The complaint that M'Kenzie levied forces in New York is more to the point ; but was this ever made to the American Government? Mr. Marcy was nobody in the eye of international law.

The Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland have adopted an address to the Queen, in which they travel once more over the old ground, declare that the maintenance of the Protestant religion is of the essence of the Constitution, that the disestablishment of the Irish Church violates solemn compacts, that disendowment is spoliation, plunder, and sacrilege, that it will sever the rulers of the kingdom from religion, that it will withdraw the pure worship of God from many parts of the country, that it will deprive many parishes of kindly counsel and sympathetic aid, that it will strengthen Rome, and that it may be viewed as a total disannulling of that national -compact the Union. All which means either nothing, or that Orangemen mean to go in for the Repeal of the Union. We wonder where Irish nobles, like the Earl who signs this address, would be the day afterwards.

A man named William Fitch, a provision dealer, was brought up at the Lambeth police-court on Thursday, charged with bigamy. It appeared on examination that everybody had been married to everybody else, and nobody's marriage was legal, so the accused was discharged, whereupon his first wife, who brought the action apparently because her alimony of 5s. a week was not paid, in a transport of wrath, cried out, " You are a very wicked man, and will die in your shoes!" The notion that it is proper to die in bed, so proper that to die dressed is shocking, seems to be universal in England. The angry wife only said what we all say in the Litany every Sunday, when we pray to be delivered from battle, murder, and sudden death. Is the wish merely the conventional one to die in the most respectable way, or is it a relic of the old notion that the Almighty cannot work a rule-of-three sum, that sudden death diminishes the spiritual chances a slow death would have allowed?

The Government of Ecuador has formally repudiated its debt, -on the plea of inability to pay the interest. " It is well known" writes the Minister of Finance, with a naiveté very amusing to those who do not hold bonds, "that a contract ceases to be binding from the time when there exists an absolute impossibility to fulfil its obligations, and much more so if this impossibility in increased by the onerous conditions of the stipulations. Therefore, my Government suspends the payment of this debt." The event is not of much importance, the amount lost by this country being trifling ; but we call attention to it, because the debt is one of those supposed to be specially secured by an assignment of customs' duties, one of the most illusory of all arrangements. The bondholders, under a composition effected in 1855, were entitled to a fourth of the customs' receipts ; but those receipts were still national revenue, and when the Government wanted money more than credit, it took them. The special assignment only created a false idea of security.

The Emperor of Austria closed the Reichsrath, in person, on the 15th inst., in a speech in which he congratulated the members on the compromise with Hungary ; on the improvement in the finances, —accomplished by taxing the public creditor ; and on the religious laws, which His Majesty trusts will afford foundation for " a peaceful and harmonious co-operation between Church and School " —not State, as Reuter puts it. He enumerates the reforms introduced, the laws which ensure trial by jury for Press offences, the gradual extinction of feudal tenures, the freedom of moneylending and the right of civil marriage, regrets the abstinence of the Czech deputies from the Reichsrath, declares that the Constitution is the ground upon which a common home can be built for all the nationalities of Austria, and believes that the new Army organization and the new order of things together will guarantee that peace "of which the Empire is so much in want for its internal development." The greatest present danger of Austria, the discontent of her German subjects with the ascendancy of Hungary in the councils of the Empire, is, of course, not mentioned.

The Government of India seems to have altered its system of raising money. Formerly, it followed the plan of open loans, any person with money sending it to any treasury and receiving bonds in exchange until the loan was full. It now asks tenders at a Price below par, like the Government of Great Britain. The advantage of this scheme is that it gets money cheaply, and the new loan does not disturb the old market much, the disadvantage is that the debt is greater than the money received, and the State will lose when the hour for payment arrives. For the present, however, the new plan succeeds, a request for £9,000,000 at four per cent. having produced offers of £5,000,000 at 90 and a fraction. This is little more than 41 per cent., and the credit of India therefore stands second among the great states of the world, being actually higher than that of France.

Archbishop Leahy has issued a pastoral to the laity of'lipperary strongly adjuring them to abstain from assassination, lie denies that there is any conspiracy in Tipperary, and attributes the sudden outburst of crime to the sympathy expressed for the tenantry who resisted Mr. Scully. He bids the people remember that if the land laws are unjust, assassination is no remedy, but a crime, the wickedness of which is only equal to its folly. He calls on them to trust in English legislation, in the efforts of Mr. Gladstone, " a statesman great in every sense of the word," and in a British opinion now proclaiming "through millions of voices that the days of ascendancy are numbered," and warns them that agrarian outrage may disgust that opinion, and then " theirs will be the guilt of having made shipwreck of their country's hopes." If the great Catholic clergy will steadily set their faces against terrorism, terrorism will cease, and with it one-half the prejudice which still prevents Protestants from doing justice to the rival faith. At present the vulgar notion is that the Catholic clergy, who in most parts of the world are hostile to the popular cause, and who are everywhere of necessity opposed to secret societies, are in Ireland in hidden league with the Ribbonmen, who tell them nothing, and the Fenians, who despise them. The link between the priesthood and the peasants is not their opinion about murder, but a community of caste. The Irish is a peasant priesthood.

It is stated in a Report just presented to Parliament that the fortifications of the Dockyards have cost .£6,860,000, and will cost another million ; that they are, on the whole, good works, and that they may be trusted to resist the latest improvements in artillery. It is all right, we suppose, and certainly the works had better be finished, but what has become of the Moncrieff guncarriage, which was to supersede the necessity for fortifications ? No wall engineers can build can be such a defence as the earth itself, and the idea was that a gun mounted on the Moncrieff system and placed in a pit would be as efficient and as well protected as if mounted on a mound of granite and iron. Pits are cheap. However, when the work is done, the Southern arsenals will be completely protected, an immense addition to the national strength, which will help, with the Volunteers and the Naval Reserve, to prevent costly panics.

Mr. Mansfield, sitting Magistrate at Marylebone, has removed, or done his best to remove, a cruel oppression. Under the existing law, a tradesman whose scales are false as against himself, is as liable to be fined as if they were against his customers. He is, in fact, liable to be ruined for being needlessly liberal. Mr. Edward W ard, greengrocer, of I Iampstead Road, was so fined,refused to pay, and was summoned before the magistrate. It was argued that no statute existed punishing a man for giving more than he promised, and Mr. Mansfield, declaring that was his view of the law, dismissed the complaint. If he is right, a good many tradesmen have been very much ill-used. Nothing has tended to make the Leet Juries so unpopular as this absurd confusion between swindling and liberality, which is always quoted by the tradesmen who oppose inspection.

The Peace Society must contain a good many very sanguine people. The drift of its last report, according to newspaper summaries of it, is that people all over the world arc becoming convinced of the needlessness and wickedness of war. Does the Society perchance include the Americans, who have saved their Republic by war ; or the North Germans, who have become through it a nation ; or the Italians, to whom it has given freedom ; or the Russians, on whom it bestowed access to the West ; or the British, who acquired by it their empire ; or the Turks, with whom it is a religious duty? That the nations are becoming eonvinced.of the expensiveness of war is perhaps true ; but as to its wickedness in Se, the drift of opinion is towards the idea that it is often the quickest solution of problems otherwise insoluble.