The Sun.
London, England, 1863-06-24 00:00:00

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 24, 1863.

A change has at length come over the spirit of
the dream of the French—Ministry. Not of the
French EMPEROR. Hie Imperial Majesty remain-
ing, as ever, impassive and inscrutable. Through
all the fluctuations of ()pinion, of administrators, of
representatives—the Ruler of France continuing to
the last profoundly silent and absolutely imper
turbable. The Cabinet at Paris, it appears, has at
length been quietlybut comprehensively transformed•
M. WALEWSKI disappears from the select group as
Minister of State without Portfolio. His place at
the council board in that capacity being occupied
now by M. BILLAULT. Another, and a still
more noticeable change in the Imperial Go-

vernment is—that particular one that almost every
observer of late events has been confidently look-
ing forward to, ever since the Opposition candidates
were returned en masse for the city of Paris at the
late elections—that involved in the apparent dis-
appearance also from thepolitical scene of almost the
foremost of the imperial administrators, or rather
maladministrators, that is to say of M. DE PERSIGNY !
The Ministry of the Interior having now, as the
telegram of this afternoon informs us. been confided
to M. BOUDET, instead of, as heretofore, to M. DE
PERSIGNY. What may become of the latter remains
doubtful. Rumour, meanwhile, however, ac-
cords to M. WALEWSKI a return to his old
post of honour and trust, the Embassy to the
Court of St. James's, in succession to the
present ambassador the Baron GRos. No changes
whatever are announced in regard to the
Ministry either of Finance or of Foreign Affairs
so that M. FOULD, we may presume, still retains the
portfolio of the former, and M. DROUYN DE L'HUYS
of the latter, vitally important department, of the
administration. Together, however, with the nomi-
nation of M. BILLAULT as Minister of State in lien
of M. WALEWSKI, and with that of M. BOUDET as
Minister of the Interior in place of M. DE PERSIGNY,
we receive tidings, now, of other new appointments
in regard to three other departments of Adminis-
tration. M. BAROCHE being named Minister of
Justice, M. DURNY Minister of Education, and M.
BEHIC Minister of the triple department of Public
Works, Commerce, and Agriculture. Supple-
mentary announcements appearing also as to the
nomination of M. ROUHER as Ministerial Presi-
dent of the Council of State, and of the Duo DE
MORNY as President of the Corps Legislatif.
Altogether these last Ministerial changes at Paris
imply much more than the shaking up
into a new combination of the same vari-
ously coloured bits of glass in the Imperial
kaleidoscope. It is a transformation far more than
a mere transposition. The excellent Foreign
Minister and the inestimable Finance Minister are
still retained, 7eisely enough, in the Imperial Go-
vernment. The Emperor still confides those all-
important departments of his Administration to the
skill, respectively, of M. FOULD and M. DROUYN DE
L'auys. But, othery ise, the Cabinet is root and
branch trandomed. The sum when worked out,
whether from faulty calculations, or from whatever
other cause, it matters little enough, now, appeared
to be yielding of late %very unsatisfactory quotient.
The wet sponge hasbeen applied. The two top figures
upon the slate have
been alone left untouched—
others have been entered beneath, and a new and a
happier result may be looked for at the hands of
that subtle political arithmetician, who combines
in
himself the readiness of the famous Calculating Boy
with the impassability of BABBAGE's Calculating
Machine. It is significant in regard to the situa-
tion just now of the Polish Question, that while
these Ministerial changes are transpiring at Paris,
there is this talk of the ex-Minister of State, M.
WALEWSKI (by birth a Pole, though by lifelong asso-
ciation a Frenchman) returning to London as, again,
his Excellency the Ambassador. And more signifi-
cant still, in reference to the situation just now of
the Mexican Question, to read the particulars given
elsewhere, on this same page of our impression of
this evening, of the remarkable interview which
took place the other day between Mr. ROEBUCK
and the Emperor NAPOLEON, in the Palace at Fon-
tainbleau. Remembering the scurrility of the remarks
which not so very long since fell from the not over-
nice lips of Mr. ROEBUCK, in the British House of
Commons, in reference personally (very personally)