Public attention in England has been to a very considerable extent engrossed by the approaching elections. The Ministry maintain rigid silence as to the policy they intend to pursue though it is of course impossible to avoid incidental indications of their sentiments and purposes. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Disraeli, has issued an address to his constituents, which shows even more distinctly than his financial exposé, of which we gave a summary last month, that the cause of Protection is, in his judgment, well-nigh obsolete. In that address he states that the time has gone by when the injuries which the great producing interests have sustained from the Free Trade policy of 1846, can be alleviated or removed by a recurrence to laws which existed before that time:—"The spirit of the age," he says, "tends to free intercourse, and no statesman can disregard with impunity the genius of the epoch in which he lives." It is, however, the intention of the Ministry to recommend such measures as shall tend to relieve the producer from the unequal competition he is now compelled to wage, and the possibility of doing this by a revision and reduction of taxation, seems to loom in the future. Still, the Chancellor urges, nothing useful can be done in this direction, unless the Ministry is sustained by a powerful majority in Parliament; and he accordingly presses the importance of electing members of the Ministerial party.——A declaration of at least equal importance was drawn from the Premier, the Earl of Derby, in the House of Lords, on the 24th of May, by Earl Granville, who incidentally quoted a remark ascribed to Lord Derby that a recurrence to the duty on corn would be found necessary for purposes of revenue and protection. Lord Derby rose to correct him. He had not represented it as necessary, but only as desirable,—and whether it should be done or not, depended entirely on the elections. But he added, that in his opinion, from what he had since heard and learned, there certainly would not be in favor of the imposition of a duty on foreign corn, that extensive majority in the country without which it would not be desirable to impose it.——Lord John Russell has issued an address to his constituents, for a re-election, rehearsing the policy of the government while it was under his direction, sketching the proceedings of the new Ministry, and declaring his purpose to contend that no duty should be imposed on the import of corn, either for revenue or protection; and that the commercial policy of the last ten years is not an evil to be mitigated, but a good to be extended—not an unwise or disastrous policy which ought to be reversed, altered, or modified, but a just and beneficial system which should be supported, strengthened, and upheld.——The course of the Earl of Malmesbury, the Foreign Secretary, in regard to the case of Mr. Mather, an English subject, who had been treated with gross indignities and serious personal injuries by officers of the Tuscan government, has excited a good deal of attention. He had first demanded compensation from the government as a matter of right, and, after consulting Mr. Mather's father, had named £5000 as the sum to be paid. It seems, however, from the official documents since published, that he accompanied this demand with an opinion that it was exorbitant, and named £500 as a minimum. The negotiation ended by Mr. Scarlett, the British agent at Florence, accepting £222 as a compensation and that as a donation from the Tuscan government—waiving the principle of its responsibility. The matter had been brought up in Parliament, and the Earl had felt constrained to disavow wholly Mr. Scarlett's action.——The current debates in Parliament have been devoid of special interest. On the 8th of June, in reply to a strong speech from Sir James Graham, Mr. Disraeli vindicated himself from the charge of having brought the public business into an unsatisfactory and disgraceful condition, and made a general statement of the bills which the government thought it necessary to press upon the attention of Parliament. On the 7th the Militia Bill was read a third time and passed, by 220 votes to 184.——A bill was pressed upon the House of Lords by the Earl of Malmesbury, proposing a Convention with France for the mutual surrender of criminals, which was found upon examination to give to the French government very extraordinary powers over any of its subjects in England. The list of crimes embraced was very greatly extended—and alleged offenders were to be surrendered upon the mere proof of their identity. All the leading Peers spoke very strongly of the objectionable features of the measure, and it was sent to the committee for the purpose of receiving the material alterations required.——Fergus O'Connor has been consigned to a lunatic asylum—his insane eccentricities having reached a point at which it was no longer considered safe to leave him at liberty.——Professor McDougall has been elected to fill the chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, vacated by the resignation of Professor Wilson.——The Irish Exhibition of Industry was opened at Cork, with public ceremonies, in which the Lord Lieutenant participated, on the 10th of June.——The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, and that of the Free Church both commenced their sittings on the 20th of May.——The electric telegraph has been carried across the Irish Channel, from Holyhead to the Hill of Howth, a distance of sixty-five miles;—the mode of accomplishing this result was by sinking a cable, as had previously been done across the Straits of Dover.——The Queen has issued a proclamation forbidding all Roman Catholic ceremonies, and all appearance in Catholic vestments, except in Catholic churches or in private houses.
FRANCE.
The month has not been marked by any event of special importance in France. The government has continued in its usual course, though indications are apparent of impending difficulties in the near future. The number of prominent men who refuse to take the oath of allegiance is daily increasing, and many who have hitherto filled places in the councils of the Departments and of the Municipalities, have resigned them to avoid the oath. General Bedeau has sent a tart letter to the Minister of War, conveying his refusal; and a public subscription has been set on foot, with success, in Paris, for the relief of General Changarnier, who has been reduced to poverty by his firm refusal to yield to the usurpation.——The President continues relentlessly his restriction of the press, and has involved himself in considerable embarrassment by the extent to which he carries it. The organs of the Legitimist party in all the great towns have received the warnings which empower the President, as the next step, to suppress them entirely. The Paris Débats has lately received a warning for its silence upon political subjects. But a very singular quarrel has arisen between the President and the Constitutionnel, which has been from the beginning the least scrupulous of all his defenders. That paper contained an article intended to influence the Belgian elections then pending, and distinctly menacing that country with a retaliatory tariff, if its hostility to Louis Napoleon were not abandoned, or at least modified. The effect of the publication of this article was such, that the Belgian Minister demanded an explanation, and was assured that the article did not meet the approbation of the Government. This quasi disavowal was published by the Belgian press, and in reply M. Granier de Cassagnac, the writer of the article, declared that he had not spoken in his own name, but at the direct instance and with the full approval of the President. The Paris Moniteur then contained an official announcement, disavowing M. de Cassagnac's articles, and stating that "no organ can engage the responsibility of the Government but the Moniteur." The Constitutionnel replied by a declaration signed by its owner, Dr. Veron, that he still believed the original article to have been sanctioned by the President. This brought down upon it an official warning. Dr. Veron rejoined by expressing his regret, but adding that the Cabinet had ordered several hundred copies of the paper containing the articles disavowed; and this he considered prima facie evidence that they met with the approbation of the Government. This brought upon the paper a second warning: the next step, of course, is suppression.——The Paris Correspondents of three of the London papers have been summoned to the department of Police, and assured by the Director that they are hereafter to be held personally responsible, not only for the contents of their own letters, but for whatever the journals with which they are connected may say, in leading articles or otherwise, concerning French affairs. A strong effort was made by them to change this determination, but without effect.——Girardin, in the Presse, states that General Changarnier, in 1848, proposed to the Provisional Government the military invasion of England. The General himself has authorized the Times to give the statement an explicit contradiction.——M. Heckeren, who was sent by the French Government to Vienna and Berlin, to ascertain more definitely the disposition of the Northern Powers toward Louis Napoleon, had returned from his mission, but its results had not been authoritatively made known. The London Times has, however, given what purports to be a synopsis of the documents relating to it. From this it appears that the allied sovereigns will connive at Louis Napoleon's usurpation of sovereignty in France for life; but so long as one Bourbon exists they can recognize no other person as hereditary sovereign of that country; and they hold themselves bound and justified by the treaties of 1815 to oppose the establishment of a Bonapartist dynasty. The three Great Northern Powers, it would seem, are combining to resuscitate the principles of the Holy Alliance, and to impose them upon the European system of States as the international law, notwithstanding the events of the last two-and-twenty years have rendered them practically obsolete.
From the other European countries there is little intelligence worthy of record.——In Belgium the elections have resulted in the increase of the liberal members of the Chamber. An editor, prosecuted for having libeled Louis Napoleon, has been acquitted by a jury.——In Austria a new law has been enacted imposing rigorous restrictions upon the press.
Editor's Table.
The Moral Influences of the Stage is a subject which, although earnestly discussed for centuries, still maintains all its theoretical and practical importance. The weight of argument, we think, has ever been with the assailants, and yet candor requires the concession, that there have been, at times, thinking men, serious men, may we not also say, Christian men, to be found among the defenders of theatrical representations? On a fair statement of the case, however, it will plainly appear, that these have ever been the defenders of an imaginary, or hypothetical, instead of a really existing stage.
Never—we think we may safely say it—never has any true friend of religion and morality been found upholding the theatre as it actually is, or was, at any particular period. Indeed, this may also be said of its most partial advocates. Their warmest defense is ever coupled with the admission, that, as at present managed, it needs some thorough and decided reform to make it, in all respects, what it ought to be. We do not think that we ever read any thing in advocacy of the stage without some proviso of this kind. It never is—it never was—what it ought to be, and might be. But then the idea is ever held forth of some future reform. We are told, for example, what the theatre might become, if, instead of being condemned by the more moral and religious part of the community, it received the support of their presence, and could have the benefit of their regulation.
So plausible have these arguments appeared, that the experiment has again and again been tried. Reforms have been attempted in the characters of the plays, of the actors, and of the audiences. Good men and good women have written expressly for the stage. Johnson and Hannah Moore, and Young—to say nothing of Buchanan and Addison—have contributed their services in these efforts at expurgation, but all alike in vain. Some of these have afterward confessed the hopelessness of the undertaking, and lamented that by taking part in it they had given a seeming encouragement to what they really meant to condemn. The expected reform has never appeared. If, through great exertion, some improvement may have manifested itself for a time, yet, sooner or later, the relapse comes on. Nature—our human nature—will have its way. The evil elements predominate; and the stage sinks again, until its visible degradation once more arouses attention, and calls for some other spasmodic effort, only to meet the same failure, and to furnish another proof of some radical inherent vitiosity.