the Finance Department, that their colleagues should jointly undertake to maintain the present state of things, without favouring any pretensions inconsistent with it.

While the Ministerial Crisis still lasted, a debate took place on an Interpellation long threatened by M. Léon Say, but postponed at the request of Ministers till such time as the Prolongation of Powers question should have been decided.

The

The object of this Interpellation was to make Government give a reason for having delayed ordinary elections to the vacant seats in the Assembly. M. Beulé brought forward many excuses. sittings of the Councils General, the final evacuation of the territory, the anniversary of the 4th of September, the agricultural banquets, the licence of the press, the excitement of parties were all in turn, or conjointly, alleged as reasons for not causing agitation in the country by partial elections. Moreover, the Government of M Thiers, he asserted, had favoured similar delays on special occasions. The debate had lost much of its interest by the vote of the 19th, when the language of the majority in favour of MacMahon seemed to confute the argument which might have been drawn from Republican feeling in the country. The Government, accordingly, did not think it necessary to ask for a vote of confidence, but accepted the Order of the Day, pur et simple, and on this issue obtained a majority of forty-nine, nearly double of what had been anticipated.

At the close of November the Assembly proceeded to elect the Committee of Thirty appointed to take the Constitutional Laws under consideration. The balloting was protracted during several days, and gave rise to much party skirmishing. Finally an effective majority was returned in favour of Government, and M. de Batbie was chosen President of the Committee. Soon afterwards it agreed on the appointment of Sub-Committees to facilitate the progress of business.

The Duc de Broglie lost no time in marking the character of the policy he was resolved to pursue in his new term of office. On the 28th of November he introduced a Bill having for its object to confer on Government the right of appointing the mayors and adjoints, or deputy-mayors, of all the communes of France till such time as an Organic Municipal Law should have been voted by the Assembly. By the terms of this reactionary law-the first attack of the Ministry upon the principle of local self-government—all mayors and adjoints were to be appointed by the Ministers or prefects from the elected members of the municipal councils, the Executive authorities reserving, however, the right of removing their nominees at pleasure, and of choosing their successors outside the municipalities if necessary. The police administration was, moreover, to be transferred to the prefects, the municipal authorities being, nevertheless, forced to provide funds for its maintenance. A Committee was appointed to examine this measure, consisting of nine Ministerialists and six Republicans. The Report given in on the 17th was in favour of the Government proposal.

The Act passed under M. Thiers had provided that the mayors of communes with a population of less than 6000 were to be elected by the municipal councils, and in the large communes they were to be chosen by Government from a list of three names drawn up by the municipal councils. The new Bill provides that Government shall select the mayors in the first instance from among members of the councils, but that in the event of a mayor being dismissed the Home Minister may appoint any tax-paying resident of the commune, whether he be a municipal councillor or not. This is simply a return to the custom of the Second Empire-a custom bitterly inveighed against by M. de Broglie and his friends in former times.

The 4th of December was marked by a debate on an Interpellation brought forward by M. Lamy, a member of the Left, on the maintenance of the State of Siege in Paris. M. Lamy denied that there was any necessity for continuing this exceptional state of affairs, and spoke in high praise of the wisdom and tranquillity displayed by the country. In the course of his speech he attacked the Government of the 24th of May in a manner which necessitated the intervention of the President. The Duc de Broglie justified the conduct of the Government in demanding that the state of siege should be prolonged until after the law on the press and that on the municipal councils had been voted. To show that military law. was necessary for the present, he referred to certain social disturbances and to a collection of newspaper articles, some plainly exciting the people to revolt, and others vague, speculative, and harmless enough. Where can be the harm, he remarked, of saying that society is answerable for robbers and assassins because people are not properly educated? The extracts read by the Duke were from papers prohibited by the military authorities. A Deputy on the Left jumped up, and said that there were ninety-five sufferers. "You are wrong," retorted the Duke; "only five papers have been suspended and fourteen prohibited under the present Government, while under the previous Administration the number was thirtytwo." But he omitted to remark that M. Thiers had been in power for three years. He concluded, amid cheers from the Right, by saying, "We shall do our duty and make the Government of the country respected."

M. Ferry then delivered a long speech, specially directed against the Duc de Broglie, whom he accused of calumniating the country, which had remained calm in spite of the irritation it had felt on witnessing the late attempts to restore the Monarchy. He accused the present Government of preparing to introduce laws of a dictatorial character. This speech was loudly cheered by the Left, and occasioned numerous and violent interruptions from the Right. After some remarks from M. Lockroy, the Duc Decazes, and M. Victor Lefranc, the House declared the discussion closed. MM. Lamy and Ferry moved an Order of the Day blaming the maintenance of the State of Siege, but the Assembly rejected this

motion by adopting the Order of the Day, pure and simple, by 407 votes against 273.

While so far the Ministers were proceeding prosperously with their reactionary schemes, they received a severe check in the result of the elections which took place on the 14th of December for the purpose of filling the still vacant seats in the Assembly. The adherents of the Republic proved equally strong in town and country, and returned their four candidates triumphantly. Even Brittany, the supposed land of Catholic and Legitimist predilections, sent up by a large majority a Radical Deputy for the Finistère. On their next appearance in the Assembly the Ministers were surrounded by anxious members of the Right, who implored them to make a complete purification of the Provincial Administration as the only means of turning the tide of success. Such pressure was hardly needed, as the Duc de Broglie was already working with the Commission of Thirty to obtain as much power for the Central Government under the new laws as possible. Moreover, it was well known that a large disfranchisement of voters was in contemplation under the impending revision of the Electoral Law.

Our last notice of political events for the year must be directed to the Budget of M. Magne. When the MacMahon Government came into office it found itself in presence of a deficit of 149,000,000 francs for the coming year. M. Magne set to work and proposed a series of new taxes destined to balance the Budget for 1874. A Committee appointed to report on M. Magne's proposals accepted all but 28,000,000 francs demanded by the Minister of Finance, but rejected a proportional stamp duty, charge for redirecting and forwarding letters, and tax on goods sent by train proposed by him. The Committee, it is said, desires to terminate its work here, and, instead of proposing new taxes itself for 28,000,000 francs, to let M. Magne submit a fresh plan for raising that amount. It is said also that M. Magne intends to support his views before the Chamber, but that he will not refuse a compromise, his chief desire being to see the Budget balanced and the credit of France maintained.

Meanwhile, by a large majority, the Assembly agreed to give the President an increase of salary to enable him to hold receptions and entertainments at the Elysée during the ensuing season, befitting the acknowledged head of the French nation in its social as well as political aspects.

The Presidential crisis and the Ministerial crisis having thus come to an end, there was a comparative lull in political excitement, and public attention gave itself eagerly to the close of the remarkable and dramatic trial which had been in progress at the Trianon since the 6th of October. On that day Marshal Bazaine had been brought from his house of temporary confinement at Versailles to face the tribunal of military officers, presided over by the Duc d'Aumale, and render an account of his stewardship when, having under his command the "Army of the Rhine," the grandest of all

the French forces when the late Emperor made his fatal war against Germany, he allowed himself to be hemmed up in Metz for two months by the enemy, and finally, without having attempted any effective sortie, surrendered men, guns, colours at a blow, and destroyed the only chance that might possibly have remained to France. For then the Army of the Loire was doing its best to relieve Paris, and the German beleaguering forces were hard strained to cover the enceinte; but as soon as Prince Frederick Charles had despatched Bazaine and his 170,000 men as prisoners to Germany, he was able to turn his victorious forces on the raw recruits of Gambetta, and the result was inevitable. The French correspondent of one of our English journals thus describes the opening of the Bazaine trial:

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"The drums beat and the Council opens its first sitting. The Duc d'Aumale wears the uniform of a General of Division, with the grand cordon of the Legion of Honour en sautoir. On his left, and in the same uniform, sit General de Chabaud-Latour, Generals de la Motterouge, Tripier, Guiod, Martimprey, Princeteau, and Martinez-Deschenez; on his right, General Pourcet and his substitutes; below, two clerks; in front, the Marshal's counsel, M. Lachaud, assisted by his son. The Duke orders the accused' to be brought in. Marshal Bazaine enters in full costume. He wears the red cordon of the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, and the Star. His head is grey, large, very bald, and his face pale; the moustache is black, the eye feverish. On a sign from the presiding judge he sits down. The sun floods the hall with light. Out of doors the weather is magnificent. We can hear the rattle of the carriages arriving, and see the increasing excitement of the public outside.

A clerk reads certain documents of form. The President tells the Marshal to stand up. Your name and surname?'-' François Achille Bazaine.' Your age?'-Sixty-two years.' 'Your birthplace?'-Versailles.' 'Your profession?'-Marshal of France.' The strange impressions produced by these answers may be imagined. We remember we are in the presence of a man accused of having betrayed the army of which he was one of the greatest chiefs; that he was born at Versailles, that he left that town a private soldier, and that it is in that same Versailles that in his face, as Marshal of France, with honours and distinctions heaped upon him, favoured by fortune and glory, that horrible word 6 treason' is about to be cast."

The acte d'accusation was contained in a Report drawn up by General Rivière, the reading of which occupied seven days. Then followed the personal examination of Marshal Bazaine, which also continued for a week. The Marshal defended himself for not having destroyed the ramparts of Metz and the war material in the fortress before he surrendered, by this dilemma; that if the negotiations for a capitulation had been broken off he would have remained disarmed, and that once the capitulation signed, it would have been a breach of faith to mutilate anything. When asked by

the Duc d'Aumale what more rigorous conditions could possibly have been inflicted upon him than those he finally accepted, he replied instantly that Metz might have been treated as a town taken by assault, and pillaged. The Duke, when he came to the question of the flags "confided to the honour of a Marshal of France," asked in a solemn voice, tremulous with emotion, why they had not been burnt. The prisoner's answer was that, if his orders had been acted upon with sufficient promptitude they would have been. But the Duke remarked that the orders relied upon were verbal, and that the General to whom they were alleged to have been given denied them. On this point he ordered the reading of passages from General Rivière's Report, tending to show that Marshal Bazaine had all along intended to give up the flags to the enemy.

The examination of witnesses next commenced. Most curious was the assemblage of persons who were brought forward to give their evidence as to the Marshal's treachery, negligence, or incapacity. There were the Generals of historic fame, Canrobert, Palikao, Changarnier, Bourbaki, Leboeuf among them; politicians not less noted, as Jules Favre, Gambetta, Rouher; Schneider, the great ironmaster, and President of the Assembly under the Empire; there was Regnier, the mysterious intriguer; Stoffel, the treacherous aide-de-camp; there were the brave foresters and woodmen who carried despatches to and fro at the peril of their lives; and mayors, lawyers, functionaries of all sorts, whose lives had touched at some point or other on the incidents of that memorable siege.

The speech in defence of the Marshal was delivered by Maître Lachaud, an advocate popular at the Paris Bar. It lasted for three sittings, closing on the 10th of December. We quote a contemporary account ::

"At half-past four o'clock Maître Lachaud concluded his speech. The Duc d'Aumale then rose and asked the Marshal if he had anything more to add. In the midst of profound silence, the Marshal rose. He said: 'I bear on my breast two words, "Honour" and "Country." They have been my motto for the forty years during which I have served France, alike at Metz and elsewhere. I swear it before Christ.' The Marshal was pale, and he appeared deeply moved. His voice was clear and sonorous.

"The President rose to state that the sitting was suspended for an indefinite time. Immediately afterwards the Court retired, and a detachment of gendarmerie mobile was brought into the hall, which cleared a part of the body of the room. The Marshal retired, as he did so taking a last look at the crowd. In conformity with the custom of courts-martial, the accused was not present while the sentence was read, and this, in consequence, was the last time that the Marshal appeared in the hall. During the absence of the Council the officer in attendance reminded those present of the penalties to which those expressing approbation or disapprobation would expose themselves. The crowd awaited with marked impatience the return of the Council, and the most varied opinions were

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