The French Minister of the Interior, M. de Marcere, improved
the last day of the old year by delivering to the heads of his Department a moat useful and valuable lecture on the principles which ought to guide them in the discharge of their executive duties and in the interpretation of the political laws. With re- gard to the laws affecting the Press,—the sale of books and newspapers,—liberality was to be their rule. And in relation to politica generally, they were not to interpret the laws in the most rigid sense, but rather in the sense assuring the largest amount of liberty to the public. Addressing the stockbrokers, he remarked that it had been formerly asserted that politics injured business,—a statement made by M. de Fourtou,—but this he did not accept. Good business went on hand-in-hand with good politics. These are admirable views, and we hope they may be honestly applied to political foes and friends alike. Liberty is not liberty, unless it be liberty for those who decry liberty as well as for those who love it, just as toleration is not toleration, unless it be toleration even for the avowal of principles of religious intolerance, so long as the State takes care that that religious intolerance shall not be permitted to pass into acts of practical persecution.
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