NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE Due de Broglie's Government has fallen, and great was the fall of it. It was by a majority of 64 (381 to 317) that on Saturday last, within a year of the much less overwhelming .defeat inflicted on M. Thiers, M. de Broglie was beaten on a trivial question of form, but one on which all parties agreed to stake the issue as to the existence of the Government. The nominal issue was as to the priority of the Municipal or the Parlia- mentary Electoral Bill,—the Government wishing to take the latter 'first,—but of course no one cared about the formal point. The real issue was whether the Government was to be permitted to go on 4, with its constitutional Bills for the organisation of the Septennat, and a coalition between the whole of the Left, the Bourbonists, and seventeen of the eighteen Imperialists declared that they could not be trusted to do so. A member of the Left Centre, Count Rampon, stated very clearly, after the division, why the Left Centre had voted against the Government. It was because it had always been essentially a "party Ministry," and never spoke in the name of the whole Assembly. Nevertheless, said Count Rampon, the Left Centre had no intention of opposing the Marshal President, and the Left would support any moderate 'Ministry that should be formed, in the discussion of the Constitu- tional Laws. Nevertheless it is said that Marshal MacMahon will not hear of a Ministry representing in any sense the party which opposed the Septennat. The resentment or the patriotic dis- approbation with which the Marshal regards them is still "laid up in his high mind," and he will hear of no reconciliation. Con- sequently, M. de Goulard, who has made every effort,—as yet fruitlessly,—to form a Ministry, had to try and solve this in- soluble problem,—Required a Ministry representing a majority Of the Assembly, but not containing any representative of either of two minorities which together make a majority. The Legiti- mists will not hear of the Constitutional Laws, and the Marshal -will not hear of the Republican Constitutionalists. Of course, -under those conditions, the solution turns out an impossible quantity.
