hended the responsibilities of a constitutional sovereign. The moderately Liberal ministry of Jules Simon was forced upon him by the vote of the Legislative Body, and he has chafed under the necessity of acting with the Left, while sympathizing with the Right. The ministerial declaration against the Ultramontane party and its agitations has been especially offensive to the real advisers of the President, coming as it did upon the Ultramontane triumph in the Italian Senate, and indefinitely postponing the prospect of a general rally of the Catholic nations against Bismarck and Victor Emmanuel; and then the approach of the elections to the French Senate seemed to threaten the last stronghold of Conservative influence in France, if these were to be conducted under the auspices of a Republican ministry. In short it was “neck or nothing" with the party of the Right, and they were certain to induce the President to avail himself of the first opportunity to get rid of the Liberal ministry.

There was a certain clumsy ingenuity shown in the way in which an opportunity was found. The Press Law of 1875 was under discussion, and the President alleges that M. Simon took ground in the cabinet discussion which was not reached by the votes in the lower House. This he chose to regard as showing that the Simon. ministry no longer commanded a legislative majority, and had therefore forfeited their constitutional claim to existence as a ministry. But, to forestall all explanations which might weaken this pretence, the President addressed the Premier in a letter such as the Czar or the Sultan might have written to an undesirable or refractory counsellor, and thus forced the resignation of the whole cabinet. Its tone of official insolence is so military, and corresponds so well with the character of its professed author, that there seems to be no reason for ascribing it to any other pen.

In the Legislative Body, especially in the Chamber of Deputies, the effect was a sensation bordering on consternation. The Left resolved, first in caucus, then in the Chamber itself, that they would sustain no ministry unless it was honestly attached to the Republic. The new Cabinet, with the Duc de Broglie at its head, is certainly not the one described in that resolution. The Legislative body was thereupon prorogued for a month. It is just to say that the Left have displayed great self-control, and that Gambetta in particular has been at once the eloquent mouthpiece of the popular indignation, and a calming and pacifying influence in the councils of

his friends. It is of good omen for the future of France if Gambetta can prevent the Left from throwing away their opportunity by violent and inconsiderate action. For even if the impending general election to the Legislative body should be managed to the utmost by the Marshal's Prefects, the Left will have such a majority in the House of Deputies at least as will give them control of the situation.

The public opinion of Europe is for once decidedly with the Left. All its great organs in England, Germany and Italy, have spoken out in condemnation of the President's action, and the entire diplomatic corps at Paris have conveyed to the President's representatives their disapproval of his conduct. The French Right have adopted a most perilous line of action; they are threatened with domestic dissension and insurrection, which they have most needlessly provoked; they have not a friend in Europe, outside of the Vatican and the minorities who hold by the Vatican. And whether even these will extend their sympathy to the half-hearted Orleanists of the Right Centre, who compose the new ministry, is altogether uncertain.

THE rejection by the German Parliament of the bill to restore the Protective duties on iron seems to have exactly the opposite significance to that first ascribed to it. It is, as the Berlin correspondent of the London Times declares, the forerunner of a return to a general Protective system. The junckers refused to vote Protection to manufactures alone, but they are about to agree to a compromise by which agriculture and manufactures will share in the benefits of a policy looking to their coördinate development. If this be true, then the future of the Protective policy in Germany seems assured. The Zollverein, with all its merits, was always a one-sided sort of arrangement, which had no direct claim to the support of the agricultural classes and districts in the East of Germany. But the new arrangement rallies to the Protective policy all classes except the traders. What these latter feel may be seen from the action taken by the voters of the seaport of Memel, denouncing Von Moltke, their representative, for voting to reimpose duties upon iron. We trust that the old hero is not scared.

THE month has been rather uneventful at home, the chief event in politics being the postponement of the contemplated extra session

of Congress until October. The talk of a union of Southern Democrats and Republicans has ceased; and the Democratic organization of the House is accepted as certain. Of the various candidates for the Speakership, Mr. Randall is possessed of decidedly the best prospect, for his chief rival, Mr. Cox, of New York, has quite ruined his own chances by recommending the worst appointment made by the present Administration. There is every prospect of amicable relations between the House and the Administration, as the Southern Democrats hold the balance of power in their own hands, and can defeat any attempt to embarrass the President, and this, far rather than a base desertion of their party ranks after an election, is what the country expects of them.

All parties are casting the political horoscope of the South with some anxiety, and the coming session will be closely watched, in order to find some indications of its policy in the votes and speeches of its representatives. The chief question on which they are likely to feel very special interest, not shared by other sections of the nation, is that of internal improvements in the South. Not only in the years during and since the Rebellion, but during the preceding regime of slavery, things were generally allowed to run to loose ends throughout the South; and it is a sign of the awakening of a new industrial life in the South, that her people begin to be in earnest in asking the help of the government. Of course they will be resisted by all the "penny-wise and pound-foolish" whose one watchword is economy; and also by some easily alarmed people who will look upon such aid as an indirect way of recouping the South for the losses of the war. But we hope that a generous and wise policy will be pursued towards the South. It is of the first importance that no great district of our country should lag behind the rest in economic and industrial development, and should thus become the Ireland of the new world. It is true that the South's backwardness is chiefly the penalty of her maintenance of slavery, while that of Ireland is the product of wicked and selfish legislation on the part of England. But we cannot afford to leave her people poor and therefore discontented, whatever the origin of their poverty and discontent. We are bound to them too closely to make anything but their full prosperity desirable to us. If Ireland were really prosperous, if she were raised to the industrial level of England, Fenianism would soon be a thing of the past. But her Fenianism, like her typhus,

is nourished by hunger and nakedness. And if the sectional line in
our own country is to be wiped out, it will be by obliterating this
last line of division, that between the wealth produced by freedom
and the poverty which resulted from slavery and from the war
for its preservation.

Of course the laissez faire theorists, with whom the South has
been chiefly in political sympathy, will oppose such measures of
assistance with all their might. But the party which believes that
it is the duty and the purpose of the government "to promote the
general welfare," cannot consistently refuse their support to them;
and just here we see the most desirable and favorable opening for
such a reconstruction of parties, as will secure both the obliteration
of all sectional lines, and the best interests of the country at large.
"A tariff and internal improvements" is still a good sound platform,
whether the men who stand on it call themselves Whigs or not.

MR. HAYES grows steadily in popular favor. Both at home, in Washington, and in his visits to New York and Philadelphia, he has impressed every one as a plain, earnest, straightforward sort of man, fully determined on doing his duty, and possessed of sufficient insight to discern the signs of the times. Even the Democracy have been conquered by his frank, broad-minded and unpartisan style of acting and speaking; and the very few exacerbated politicians who cannot forget "how near and yet how far," and who decline to recognize him as President, excite only the ridicule of the organs of their own party. An old Puritan would have likened him to Zerubbabel, the simple, duty-loving Jewish prince who in Zechariah's days rebuilt the Temple, and before whose steady patience mountains of difficulties became as plains.

As to Republican opposition to his policy, it is confined to a few irreconcilables, who seem to believe that Grant is still before Richmond. For a few weeks we heard of this discontent as one hears of the ague in the West; "No, there isn't any to speak of just here, stranger, but there is a power of it just across that creek bottom in the next prairie. Most shakes the weatherboarding off the house, I've heerd say." It was mighty in Ohio, prodigious in Iowa, stupendous in Massachusetts. But on a closer inspection it was found to be of the most sporadic and insignificant type everywhere, and that not a single State Convention of the party was expected to refuse to give its hearty approval to the President's measures.

And Mr. Benjamin Wade, of Ohio, who once came near to being President himself for a fortnight, found himself standing in solitary dignity, when he exploded in fierce wrath against Mr. Hayes.

It is somewhat curious that the first thoroughly bad blunder of the new Administration should be made by the Southern Democrat in the Cabinet in appointing a Northern Republican on the recommendation of two Democratic Congressmen. The notorious Consul-General Butler of Egypt, whose retention in that post was one of the worst and weakest acts of General Grant's Administration, might fairly have been expected to retire to private life on his removal from that post. But he is "the nephew of his uncle," and life without office is to him (it appears) no life. As ConsulGeneral of a Christian power to a Moslem country, he had held a position of no ordinary responsibility, as he was vested with judicial jurisdiction over American citizens resident within that country. So well did he exercise that jurisdiction, that the American missionaries in Egypt, after repeated complaints to the Department of State at Washington, found that they must renounce their citizenship, and obtain naturalization as British subjects, if they would secure ordinary protection for their persons and their property. And this they did in a body, after publishing to the world the acts of this legal representative of the American government which constrained.

them to do so.

From Consul-General in Egypt to mail agent in the Black Hills is something of a descent; but Mr. Geo. H. Butler was willing. And two Congressmen were willing to help him into the new berth, one of them a Democratic candidate for the Speakership of the House. Mr. Key evidently knew nothing of the man's past misconduct, and was victimized by those who recommended him, as he very promptly took occasion, from Butler's subsequent misbehavior in a railroad train, to cancel the appointment.

THE Permanent Exhibition was opened May 10th, in the presence of a vast concourse of people, by President Hayes. The preparations were not quite complete, but the anniversary of the former opening was too auspicious an occasion to be lost. The display of articles is of course nothing like so rich and varied as in the Centennial Exhibition, but the monstrous extent of that made the quieter and closer study of single objects impossible to most peo