NEWS OF THE WEEK
THE financial crisis was brought up in the French Chamber on Thursday in a rather curious way. No impartial man can doubt that the Government, in persuading the Bank of France to advance £5,600,000 in all to the Comptoir d'EScompte, was anxious to protect the Copper Ring, or rather, to avert the political consequences of the ruin which might have followed its collapse. It is evident, too, that the securities deposited for the loan are inadequate, for M. Rouvier insisted on an additional guarantee of £800,000 from the financial houses. The workmen of Paris, who hate the Copper Ring, are very angry that it should be assisted, and M. Lain., as their spokesman, asked indignantly why Government had not prosecuted the Ring under the clause of the Code directed against monopolists. He had law on his side, as M. Thevenet, Minister of Justice, fully admitted, and might have made out a formidable case ; but he was carried away by that hatred for the Rothschilds, as typical capitalists, which is so often expressed by Parisian workmen, and broke into a raving attack on them. He actually accused the House of plotting the ruin of French credit in order to prevent war. M. Rouvier had no difficulty in exposing. this nonsense, and argued that in preventing a crash, the Govern- ment had played a patriotic part. The Minister of Justice, again, gave "an explicit promise" to prosecute the Copper Ring ; and the House, though obviously dissatisfied, passed an Order of the Day expressing its " conviction that Government will take the measures necessary to ascertain on whom the responsibility rests," by 339 to 217.
