the Constituent Assembly. This bill regulated | sooner; that Venice and the Milanese might the taxes for 1850, and was passed by a large majority. On the day after this followed a discussion on the Papal question, and the intervention at Rome. M. Arnaud spoke against the intervention, and in favor of the revolution in Rome; while, at the same time, he defended Catholicism, and the spiritual Papacy, in the name of Democracy. M. De Tocqueville, who is Minister of Foreign have been rescued from Austria. The debate ended in mutual accusations. Among the names of Representatives to be brought to trial for the affair of June 13th, are those of Ledru Rollin, Considerant, Boichet. and Felix Pyat. True bills have been found against fourteen persons implicated in the affairs of the Haut Rhin. Prosecutions are sustained, and everywhere go on briskly. Lyons being in a state of siege, General Affairs, regretted the discussion, but defended | Gemeau has closed five shops opened by asso the intervention; he explained his instructions given to Messrs. Raynaval and d'Harcourt, the ambassadors; he had told them to maintain the legitimate influence of France in Italy, to establish the freedom of the Pope, and finally to guard against the return of Papal abuse; he had written to the French diplomatist at Rome, that Rome should not be treated as a conquered city, the object of the intervention having been to relieve it from the oppression of foreigners; he had directed him to consult the wishes and the wants of the population, to establish muni. cipal administrations, to prevent violent reactions, to secure to the Roman people liberal institutions, and to occupy Rome until further orders. He added, that France notified all the great powers of Europe, that she was not actuated by a spirit of conquest, but that it was necessary for her to secure her due preponderance in Italy; that had she allowed Austria to adjust, alone, the Italian question, those very men who reviled the Cabinet, would be the first to denounce its indolence; he refuted the calumnies directed against the French army; he could not find, in history, a more extraordinary spectacle than that afforded by the mode■ration of that army after it had captured Rome. M. De Tocqueville, whose Republican sentiments are well known, contended that the Roman Republic was a Reign of Terror, and that in destroying it, the French had vindicated liberty itself; that the temporal power of the Pope was essential to his independence, modified, indeed, by liberal institutions, which he could pledge himself His Holiness would grant. In the course of the debate, M. Jules Fabre attacked the Government, and hotly condemned the intervention; he insisted that the Roman people had not called for it. ciations of united operatives for the sale of food. Incendiary newspapers are uniformly suppressed. At The President, Louis Napoleon, is making the tour of the provinces; is well received by the people, and speaks to them with confidence. He said to the people of Tours, that there is no opportunity for insurrections; that they will be repressed as soon as they commence. Saumur he was well received, and when the Mayor proposed his health as Louis Napoleon, there were loud calls for the addition of the name of Bonaparte. The President has not been yet nine months in office, but in that short time has gained wonderfully in power and popularity. M. Girardin, the editor of "La Presse," has published a draft of a Constitution to be brought forward in 1852. This Constitution is as follows:-" It announces the Republic; it establishes all rights admitted by the previous Constitution; it proposes an annual election, by direct and universal suffrage, of an Assembly, to meet on the first of May, every year; the entire administrative and executive power to be in a President; he is to choose his own ministry, and to remain in office as long as he retains the confidence of the majority, that confidence to be expressed by a special vote of the majority, and by the annual vote of supplies; all taxes to be levied by the National Assembly; usurpation to be checked by the refusal of the taxes." M. Girardin's plan would end, of course, in a perpetual Presidency, a dictatorship, and an empire. The problem to be solved by French statesmen is to defend the liberties of the provinces against the aggressions of the central power; and this can, perhaps, be done in no other way than by the interposition of a senatorial body elected by the Legislative Assemblies of the provinces, to act as a mediatorial and conservative power between the Assembly of popular representatives and the President himself. That such a body will ever be established, is, at least, doubtful; but there seems to be no alternative between that and a monarchy. The Minister of Public Instruction read despatches showing that three thousand strangers (Lombards and others) had entered Rome under the order of Mazzini; that the prisoners made by the French were Lombards from Genoa; that the resistance was not only from the degraded population of Rome in part, but from the debris of the revolutions. He said that it was Rome and Catholicism which dispelled the darkness of the middle ages-a remark certainly in an unfortunate juxtaposition with his last. M. De Falloux contended that the fault committed by the Government was in not acting | President whom the nation has placed at the In the last number of the Consilleur du Peuple, M. de Lamartine publishes the following comments on the President of the Republic:-" I had no personal acquaintance with the 436 and its diminution at another. Hungary. Lord Palmerston, head of the executive power. I fancied him | set at rest any inquiry as to the causes producsuch as my republican prejudices, and the | ing the increase of the slave trade at one time, faults of youth, which he himself nobly avowed and condemned the other day in sight of his ancient prison of Ham, made me fear him on account of my country-namely, unsteady, agitating, ambitious, impatient to reign. once more deceived; years had matured him; I was reflection had enlightened him; purified him. The walls of a prison are, as it adversity had were, the hot-houses of a soul; they dry up the flowers, they ripen the fruits. I have seen, I have read, I have listened to, I have observed, I have since known the President of the Republic, and I owe it to truth to declare, that I have seen in him a man equal to his duty towards the country, a statesman possessed of a coup d'œil just and calm, of a good heart, great good sense, a sincere honesty of intention, and a modesty which shrouds the glare, but not the light. I say this because I think it. I have no motive to flatter him. I have nothing to expect from him. I have, during my career, often refused-I have never asked for anything. But I believe that the Republic is fortunate, and that it has found a man when it only sought for a name. Providence has certainly interfered in the ballot which decided in his election." England.--The Slave Trade. It is now proved, beyond a doubt, that either the slave trade cannot be suppressed by the naval power of England, or that that power has not been sufficiently active in the performance of its duty. From statistics taken from the Foreign Office by the Times newspaper, and quoted from the Times by the New York Tribune, it appears that the number of slaves exported has increased pretty regularly since 1840, from more than 64,000 in that year, to more than 84,000 in the year 1847. The number captured by cruisers varying, through all these years, between about 6000 and 3000 a year. It is computed that the number exported from the African coast in 1848 will not fall far short of a hundred thousand, and between 6000 and 7000, only six and a half per cent. have been captured by the squadrons. The fluctuations of the slave trade depend upon fluctuations in the price of sugar, as the following table will show : Average price of Rise or fall. Sugar per cwt. 1825 to 1830....34s 6d 9 per cent rise 1830 to 1835.... 24s 3d 29 per cent fall 1835 to 1840....29s 3d 19 per cent rise 1840 ....25s 4d 13 per cent fall 1841 to 1844.... 21s 1d 1845 το 1847.... 25s 7d 18 per cent rise 17 per cent fall Increase or decrease in Slave Trade. 37 per cent decrease 21 per cent increase 73 per cent increase 53 per cent decrease 29 per cent decrease 44 per cent increase Very little doubt can exist as to the commercial character of the whole proceeding. The numbers would doubtless have differed had the squadron not been there, but the proportions would have remained the same, and may well Lord Palmerston's interference has drawn from Austria an apology for the war against Hungary. tegrity of Austria was an European, and espeted that the maintenance it appears, admitcially an English interest, and that there the of the power and inHungarian question was of vital importance, for the preservation of the balance of power in Europe. This doctrine of the balance of powEngland, since to preserve her own immense er, it might seem, should be a favorite one with and overwhelming interest, by which she affects the destiny of two-thirds of the habitable globe, it is politic for her to allow no single power to gather force upon the Continent, but to maintain among them all an equilibrium of weakness. But let us hear the Austrian official. He says, turbed this balance, and the only object of Rus"The separation of Hungary must have dissia is to redress it." It seems then that Russia too, the third power in importance, after ested in the Balance of Power. This is a England and the United States, is deeply intercomedy upon a vast scale, with tragic consequences. Russia, to preserve the Balance of Circassia, absorbs the large part of Northern Power, annihilates Poland, pours armies into Asia, grasps at Turkey, and invades Hungary. England, on her side, to preserve the Balance of Power, usurps the freedom of her colonies, unsuccessfully, indeed, grasps at the entire West Indies, wishes to be the sole sovereign of the South Seas, and founds a despotism in Asia. The United States of America, who, though they have not yet learned the phrase practice upon the principle-aim at the posses"Balance of Power," yet are beginning to sion of the entire continent, and declare that the Balance of Power shall be preserved in the Anglo-Saxon race. New World by the enterprise and valor of the dent than that it is the true policy of constituBut, to be serious, what can be more evigary between herself and Russia? Had not tional England to raise up constitutional HunHungary been destroyed, she might have become the friend and ally of England, and perhaps of France, against the Eastern despotisms, -against Prussia, Austria and Russia! and we make bold to say that the Envoy of a Lord Chatham or of a Cromwell would not have been allowed to make such concessions to the infamous pretexts of Austria and Russia, as Lord Palmerston has made. It appears that Lord Magyar races of Hungary had united with Palmerston expressed the opinion that the nonthe Magyars in a national feeling, to which the Austrian official replies, we think, correctly, that it was a Magyar enthusiasm which carried on the war. The Jews and Germans in the The two words "Balance of Power" and "preservation of order" on the one side, and the equally potent "democracy and rights of the people," are the watch-words of contending parties throughout Europe. It is very clear that the Balance of Power would then be perfectly established when all Europe should be reduced under a single despotism, and it is equally clear that under such a system, well carried out, order would be thoroughly preserved; and so it would be if the people of Europe were hung by the neck in rows. no provision for the development of the central principle of human nature, the liberty of the individual, nor for its higher development in the liberty of the state. The idea of a combination of free states, managing each its own domestic affairs in its own way, the affairs of the whole, as a whole, being committed to a central power, has not yet become a powerful idea in Europe; nor is it, perhaps, possible to construct such a system of states until the people of each separate state are ready to peril their lives for their state liberties and state rights. Political systems take their rise from the spirit of the people. According to the demand for liberty in the individuals, taken man by man, will be the degree of liberty granted by the constitution. The unconditional surrender of Görgey to the Russian General Paskiewitch, has at length sealed the fate of Hungary. General Görgey, according to the Vienna papers, issued a proclamation, declaring the reservation of the Provisional Government, of which Kossuth was President, and the appointment of himself dictator. Hungary is now in process of being overrun, and finally conquered by the armies of Russia and Austria; and so have sunk, for the present, the hopes of Republicanism in Europe. We have, doubtless, in future, to look forward to a closer and still closer union of the despotic powers, and to an increasing jealousy on their part of Republicanism, and of the people who give it power by their example. Germany. The democracy of Germany look to the ill success of the Hungarians as a fatal omen for themselves. A correspondent of the London Daily News writes from Berlin an account of the opening of the Prussian Chambers; Count Brandenburgh, the Prime Minister, read the King's speech. The electors have sent in a great number of new members, and the character of the Assembly is not yet tried. It is nothing against the design of the Hungarians that they, an integral people, a thoroughly nationalized people, have yet among them a large intermixture of foreigners, and are surrounded by nations whose love of liberty is inferior to their own. They are still a compact body of 5,000,000, able to constitute a powerful government, and able to give free institutions and legal protection to as many of other races as may choose to live amongst them. The Czar of Russia declares that he interferes for the love of order and the safety of his Polish provinces. Austria admits that it is for the possession of Hungary that she fights, as a portion of her Empire. Against these arguments are set off the constitutional rights of Hungary itself, violated by attempts on the part of Austria to incorporate her as a province of the Empire, when she is, properly, a free kingdom; and, what is of still more importance, under our view, the necessity of allowing every nation, that is truly a nation, a free development of its own energies; by its own methods of progress and civilization. The theory of Count Stadion of a universal German Empire, the reduction of all the nations of Germany under a single inflexible system of domination, for the purpose professed of an equal and universal amelioration of the entire people, as the central power may choose to conduct it; - this theory, perfectly despotic in its spirit, while it is apparently constitutional and humane, makes | much of our space, at present, to enter upon a The King's speech dwelt much upon the necessity of order and tra tranquillity, and on the importance of the erection of a Federal German State: it regrets the failure to arrive at an understanding with the government at Frankfort: it declares that the unity of Germany, with a single executive power at its head, and the freedom of the German people, secured by a popular representation, continues to be the aim of all its endeavors. Cuba. The Government of the United States, pursuing the policy of Washington, and in obedience to the laws of nations, have effectually put a stop to the fitting out of armed vessels in ports of the United States against the existing Government of Cuba. It would occupy too detailed account of the measures taken to that end. Suffice it to say, that a United States squadron are at present engaged in blockading the private armed expedition against Cuba, collected on Round Island, Mississippi, and have prevented the fitting out and departure of armed vessels from New York. The papers give full accounts of a revolution going on in Cuba. A considerable party there are in favor of establishing a Republican Government, and of annexing Cuba to the United States. The fate of St. Domingo is at length sealed. President Soloque has been declared Emperor by a faction, and formally crowned. Canada. By some extracts from a British correspon dent, we learn that the great majority of newspapers in the Canadas are, at length, openly in favor of annexation. The condition of Canada is represented to be deplorable in the extreme. Business is at a stand, enterprises paralyzed, civil war constantly impending, and the whole attributed to the form and clumsy working of the Colonial Government. Should the event predicted by good observers in Europe and this country come to pass, viz., a war of the combined European powers upon the United States, we may look, with certainty, at the conclusion of such a war, to very large acquisitions of territory in the North, as well as in the South. The first invasive act on our part, on the breaking out of such a war, would, doubtless, be the conquest of Cuba. CRITICAL NOTICES. The Plough, the Loom, and the Anvil, edited | the August number are divided into thirty arti by J. S. SKINNER. (A monthly Magazine, devoted to the interests of Agriculture and of Home Industry.) Philadelphia: J. S. Skinner, 81 Dock street. We have received a copy of this valuable publication, for the first time, this month, or we should long ago have taken occasion to notice it, notwithstanding that it is, in a certain sense, a rival. Many years ago we were in the habit of reading English periodicals devoted to arts, science, and industry, and we can testify, from extensive observation, to the exceedingly skillful editorial management of this work of Mr. Skinner's. First, as to the mechanical execution of the work: we find it clearly and handsomely printed, with a page not divided into columns, on paper of very good quality. The number before us, for August, 1849, has a green vignette cover, representing the industry of the plough, the loom, and the anvil, in very tasteful wood-cuts, which are pleasing to the eye and the fancy. The number contains 64 pages of printed matter, which is rather more than one half the quantity given in a monthly number of the American Review. The subscription is three dollars per annum, which brings it nearly to an equality of price with ourselves, if the engravings which we give are thrown out of the question. We take occasion to say in this connection, that it is a false opinion, industriously circulated by our enemies, that the subscription price of the American Review is much larger than it should be. We beg our subscribers to remember that a newspaper is supported chiefly by its advertisements, and that but a very small part of the matter in a newspaper is paid for by the publishers; besides which, the different style, and superior execution of a journal with style, engraved illustrations and original matter, brings it to cost nearly three times as much as a daily newspaper of equal circulation. If it were possible to sustain the Review, in its present size and shape, on a three dollar subscription list, the price would be $3; but as prices are at present, $5 per annum does not cover losses and expenses, unless by a very large subscription list. To return to Mr. Skinner's book, "The Plough, Loom, and Anvil." The 64 pages of cles, of which a large proportion are from the pen of the accomplished editor himself, the most agreeable and judicious periodical writer upon agriculture and topics of economy with whose productions we are acquainted. The first article in the number is a letter to Col. C. M. Thurston, from J. S. Skinner, editor of "The Plough, Loom, and Anvil," on the best means of bringing into activity the resources of Cumberland, a region of coal mines in Maryland. It is a powerful argument, demonstrating the necessity for the land-owners of Cumberland to bring the artisan-the ironworker, the coal-miner, and the manufacturer -upon their land, if the they wish to ensure the prosperity of the farmer; that for this purpose legal protection is necessary to them, against the over-production and pauper production of Europe. The third article is a lecture on agricultural chemistry, entitled "Who is the Practical Man?" by J. C. Nesbit, Esq. An article on Georgia Railroads and Manufactures; a very interesting article on Dairy Husbandry, and an account of Mr. John Holburt's splendid farm. It would occupy too much room to attempt even a descriptive list of the valuable and interesting matter of this number. The work generally avoids technicalities, and omits everything dry and heavy in its descriptions of farming operations. On page 119, there is a really elegant engraving on wood of the magnificent horned pheasant, with a description of the pheasant family. We wish every success to this work; we believe it to be the most valuable of its class. Two Lectures on the Connection between the Biblical and Physical History of Man. Delivered, by invitation, from the chair of Political Economy, etc., of the Louisiana University, in December, 1848. By JOSIAH C. NOTT, M.D., of Mobile, Alabama. New York: Bartlett and Wetford, No. 7, Astor House. 1849. The work is prefaced with a very curious and instructive map of the world, exhibiting the extent of countries known to the writers of the Old and New Testaments, compared with those known to the moderns. |