The incident, which reveals great incapacity in the French Foreign
Office, may have important effects. It desperately annoys Paris and the Chamber, and on Thursday was con- demned by the Opposition as an "act of sanguinary repres- sion." M. Spuller, the new Foreign Minister, was at his wits' end to defend Admiral Olry, without offending the Russians ; and at last, after giving a history of the affair which shows that the Admiral exercised a just right with injudicious violence, suggested that the Chamber should express its unanimous esteem for the Russian people. This was done ; but the Patriotic League, which is Boulangist, issued a manifesto condemning the bombardment. M. Constans thereupon dissolved the League and arrested its chiefs, who will be prosecuted for provoking a con- flict with a foreign Power. Two of these chiefs, however, are Deputies, and they intend to ask why permission to arrest them also was not demanded, and equality before the law thus pre- served. The debating will be violent, and the occurrence places the armed youth of Paris in hostility to the Government.
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