The Express.
London, England, 1863-12-28 00:00:00

EXPRESS FROM PARIS.

(now ova owx

PARIS, SUNDAY Eymaim.

The Dfbats is forced to publish a communicated
note from the Minister of the Interior, complain-
ing, at great length, of an article in which that
journal offered the opinion that M. Thiers' amend-
ment bad done some good, and bad of
weighed upon the government in extracting the
promise that the issue of Treasury bills should be
restricted at a future and no distant time. This,
the official communication says, is a "grave error,"
and one that misrepresents in the most "regret-
table" manner the true meaning of the vote of
the Corps Legislatif. In order to show that
there was not, as the Debate would have it,
any "moral victory of the minority," tbe com-
munique cites various peewee from M. Gouin's
report, the arguments of which it recapitulates, and
then comes to the conclusion that "everything use-
ful in the amendment had previously been provided
for by the committee, in concert with the govern-
ment," while everything "sterile and hurtful" had
been avoided by the committee, whose report the
Corps Legialatif adopted. The whole of this con-
troversy turns upon the question whether the com-
tr.ittee had any inkling of the amendment of the
opposition before it was actually presented. The
government note assumes that because M.
Gonin's report states that the committee
only received the amendment at the !eat
moment, and after they had finished their
labours, therefore the demonstration of K Thiele
and his frierds exercised no influence upon their
deliberations. But this is not conclusive, because
all the arguments of the amendment might have
been brought forward in speeches against the loan
bill, and nothing is more likely than that the
committee had some information touching the
opposition tactics. The small difference between
1/1. Gouin's views as explained by the government
commissary, M. Vnitry, and those of M. Thiers was
remarked upon the moment the report of the
debates was published. If the report was not framed
to take the wind out of M. Thiers' sails, the coinci-
dence is extraordinary that M. Gouin, a member
of the majority, should have been influenced by pre-
cisely a similar " order of ideas," and should have
set forth the necessity, at the time of consolidating
a large portion of the floating debt, of making con-
ditions restricting the issue of Treasury bills for the
future. Although the government thinks it expe-
dient to deny any moral victory of the minority,
and to vaunt the "imposing majority" of 242 to
14, which sanctioned the loan for 300 millions, it is
satisfactory to the country to find that the majority
itself is somehow or other imbued with the notions
of the minority, and now speaks a language widely
differing from that which it used some years ago.
The fact that M. Thien did not vote at all
(unless he was accidentally absent from the divi-
sion, which has not been suggested) shows that be
at least felt that the admissions and promises of
the government orator had given him a substantial
• I victory. Moreover, those opposition deputies
who, after signing the amendment, voted for the
I bill, were certainly under the same impression as
the writer of the article in the Debate which is
now censured.

The King of Portugal's letter to the Emperor,