Another attempt has been made, with a good degree of success, to establish telegraphic communication across the Straits of Dover. A large cable has been prepared and sunk in the Channel from one shore to the other, and so far as could be perceived, it promised to answer the purpose. This will bring London into immediate connection with every part of the Continent.
FRANCE.
The government is pushing to the extreme its measures of severity against the press. Upon the merest rumor about two hundred foreigners were suddenly arrested by the authorities, on charge of conspiracy, though investigation proved the charge to be utterly groundless, and led to the immediate discharge of most of them. The Constitutionnel lavished the most extravagant eulogiums upon the government for its action in this case. One of the sons of Victor Hugo in a newspaper article ventured to protest against these eulogiums, for which he was condemned to an imprisonment of nine months, and a fine of 2200 francs; and M. Meurice, the proprietor of the Evenement, the paper in which the article appeared, to imprisonment for nine months, and a fine of 3000 francs. The Presse was condemned in a similar penalty for a like offense, and several papers in the country districts have been visited with the utmost severity for reflecting upon the government. Meantime the official journals are allowed to indulge in the most direct and emphatic denunciations of the Republic.
The whole tendency of the government is toward an unbridled despotism. Arrests are made on the slightest suspicion. Police agents are quartered in cafés. Houses are entered and papers searched, in a style befitting the worst despotism in the world rather than a nominal Republic. There have been various rumors of conspiracies and intended insurrection, but they seem to have been groundless.
The President laid the foundation stone of the great central market hall, which the city is erecting at a cost of over five million dollars, near St. Eustache. The ceremony was witnessed by an immense concourse. The President in his speech took occasion to express the hope that he might be able to "lay upon the soil of France some foundations whereupon will be erected a social edifice, sufficiently solid to afford a shelter against the violence and mobility of human passions."
EASTERN AND SOUTHERN EUROPE.
An important commercial treaty has been concluded in Germany. Hanover has joined the Prussian Zollverein, having heretofore been the head of a separate association, called the Steuerverein, which has been by this movement dissolved. The custom-duties of the Zollverein have been levied on a protective scale; by this new arrangement, the rates will be lowered. The conclusion of this treaty has created a marked sensation in Vienna, as the journals there were loudly predicting the dissolution of the Zollverein.
The Emperor of Austria has written to Prince Schwartzenberg, urging the necessity of increased economy in public affairs. The King of Prussia is about to abolish the Landwehr, and have none but regular troops in his service.
The Austrian government has exercised its severity upon the humorist, Saphir, who edited a small paper in Vienna. He has been sentenced to three months' imprisonment and the suppression of his journal for a similar period, for having printed a humorous article on the recent ordinances, which the court-martial declared to be an attempt to excite popular ill-feeling toward the government. He is over sixty years old, and quite infirm from disease. The authorities, as if to make their acts as ridiculous as possible, lately punished a printer and a hatter, the former for wearing, and the latter for making a Klapka hat. The whole system of government is oppressive and tyrannical in the extreme. A writer from Vienna to the London Daily News, says that it hampers, impedes, nay, crushes, every kind of superior talent not of a military cast. Lawyers of all kinds are suspected of treason, even those whom the government itself employs; they are watched; their practice is taken away from them; they are not permitted to plead before the courts-martial sitting every where; the universities are all placed under martial law, that of Vienna is entirely suppressed; the professors and teachers of all kinds are left to their own resources; literature is closed to them; no one writes books, for a publisher will not publish any thing but of the lightest character; newspapers can not employ men of talent; in fine, nothing but soldiering or police spying seems left to the majority of the educated classes.
The Austrian government have found it necessary to resort to a loan, of some ten or twelve millions of dollars, of which, at the latest advices, over half had been taken, mainly on the Continent.