The Sun.
London, England, 1868-04-08 00:00:00

UURRESFONDENOR FROM PARIS,

(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

PARIS, TIIESDA,Y, April 7.

The unfortunate subscribers to the Mexican loan have
just had a meeting to consider their position. Viscount
de la Guerronniere presided, and notwithstanding his inti-
mate relations with the Emperor, who for his services
made him a senator, he spoke out very plainly, and said
that all which the Government had promised to do for the
bondholders up to the present time was quite inadequate.
He was much applauded, and a committee was formed for
the purpose of endeavouring to obtain the repayment of
all the money subscribed. It is not likely that they will
be successful, but they may get about two millions sterling
more than is offered them at present.

The Government, finding that M. Horn's pampmet,
" Le Bilan de I'Empirc," was producing a very unfavour-
able effect, has prepared an answer to it. Another
pamphlet also is announced in defence of Imperial finance.
It is entitled " Qu' a fait la France," What has made
France ?

Great preparations are being made for the Prince Impe-
rial's first communion. It is fixed for the 20th, the
Emperor's 60th birthday. It is believed that all the
members of the Imperial Family, including Cardinal
Bonaparte, will be present. The " Book of Hours,"
which will be presented to the Prince, is a most
sumptuous work. It was ordered by the Empress
of M. la Roue, paleo-caligraphist, of Path. It
contains 125 pages, most gorgeously illuminated, and
entirely by hand. So laden are the leaves with gold and
colour, that it is difficult not to believe that they are not
solid gold. The prayers are written in a round band, easy
to read ; the general get-up of the book is Gothic. Such
a work as this would have occupied the lifetime of one of
the mediaeval monks. I should not be surprised if M. la
Roue were to make the almost-forgotten art of illumina-
tion quite the fashion.

The Situation, a journal founded a year ago in order to
oppose Prussia, has ceased to appear. It is stated that the
ex-King of Hanover started it, and that in consequence of
the recent confiscation of his property by Bismarck he
has thought it desirable to economise; and finding that
the Situation had actually no influence, and a circu-
lation of scarcely 100 copies, he determined to discontinue
this most ineffectual organ.
It is rumoured that M. de Kerveguen is so terribly
cut up by recent events, that he means to resign his post
as deputy for Toulon. The trial is adjourned till the
17th.

Some time ago the Minister of Education appointed a
commission to investigate the subject of agricultural
instruction in the rural schools. The commissioners have
made their report, and M. Duruy has based upon it cer-
tain recommendations which he has addressed to the
Emperor. As education is exciting much interest on your
side of the Channel, you may like to have a summary of
what M. Duruy says. He proposes that during the six
winter months, when there is little out-door work
going on, the school shall be opened for all children
morning and afternoon. During the other half
of the year the elder children will attend only one
class a day, and the rest of the day will be spent
in the fields. Hitherto agriculture has hardly been made
A branch of school education. A regular programme of
instruction is now to be drawn up, and will comprise a
knowledge of soils, manures, drainage, horticulture, the
management of woodlands, and the elements of botany,
physics, and chemistry as applied to hygiene. Once or
twice a week the teachers will give a lesson on agriculture,
and accompany their pupils to the field and the farm.
Thursday is to be set apart for this outdoor lesson, and
no doubt that will be the favourite day of all the week
to the pupils.

Visitors to some parts of France—for instance, the Puy
de Dome, La Vend6e, La Manche, and several other
departments—would have an opportunity of seeing a
strange sight. Ranged in the marketplace they would
see a number of young women and some young men, and,
passing up and down, a man armed with scissors, who
grasps the hair of those before him and calculates what it
weighs. These market-places are the sources from whence
Parisian chignon-makers draw their supplies of hair.
The peasants do not part with their hair because they are
poor, but because it is the custom to do so. Another
source of supply is found in the convents, but as the nuns
have usually had their hair confined in nets or caps, it is
not so valuable as that of the young folks who spend their
time in the open air with
" Hair loosely flowing, robes as free,"

as one of your poets has it. About 40,000 kilogrammes
of hair, i.e., 88,0001 b., are obtained from these sources.
But tills is not enough, and half as much more is obtained
from Italy, Germany, and Belgium. The hair in its
natural state is worth from 16s. to 325. per lb. The home
supply alone is worth about £336,000.

Some interesting statistics have been given of the popu-
lation of France. It numbers 37,586,815. The number of
proprietors is 9,981,935 ; the number of houses, 7,507,047 ;
of manufactories, 141,706 ; of chateaux, 418,055. The
soldiers are put down at 476,678, and the sailors of the
Royal navy at only 15,574. There are nearly three
million persons without any profession ; a little over
50,000 are in gaol, nearly 30,000 are insane, nearly 42,000
idiots, and nearly 13,000 women live in houses of ill-fame.
18,782 magistrates judge, and 11,179 defend the nation.
It takes nearly 33,000 doctors to kill the sick, but only
about 2,000 to bury them when they are killed. There
are more spinsters than bachelors, and the two together
are 8,379,016. Franco contains 3,000,000 horses, 400,000
asses, 330,000 mules, 330,000 bulls, 2,000,000 oxen,
5,000,000 cows, 4,000,000 calves, 1,400,000 goats, and
4,000,000 pigs.

The Nova Scotians are intensely dissatisfied with the
Confederation scheme which was carried out last year.
Four prominent members of the local Legislature are now
in this country endeavouring to obtain a repeal of the
union, so far as their country is concerned. In order to
counteract their influence;, Dr. Tupper, who was one of
the chief promoters of the union, has come to England,
and this fact renders the repealers more bitter than ever.
Their four representatives have drawn up a statement in
behalf of their party, which is certainly very strong,
though, of course, it is ex parte. They state that last year a
memorial, signed by 31,000 persons, was sent to England,
urging that the Confederation might not be carried out
until the people had had an opportunity of expressing their
opinions in the then approaching elections. Their prayer
was unheeded, the Unionists urging that delay would
discredit the Confederation. Since then only three of the
Nova Scotian delegates who were in this country last year
in order to promote the scheme have ventured to appeal to
the constituencies : two of them were ignominiously de.
feated, and the third—the late leader of the Government—
was returned by a small majority, at a ruinous cost, and
under protest on the ground of bribery and corrup-
tion. The result of the returns for the Confederate
Parliament was, that 18 members opposed to confederation
were elected, and only one in favour. For the local
Legislature the numbers were 3G and 2. The members
of the first-mentioned body took their seats under protest,
and for forty days fairly tested the new system, the results
of which far exceeded their worst anticipations. The
Canadians protected their own manufactures against those
of the mother country by increasing the ad valorem duties
from 10 to 15 per cent. They protected their breadstuffs
against those of the United States, largely used in the
maritime provinces, by duties on flour, corn, and corn-
meal. They laid on stamp and newspaper taxes,
which were unknown in Nova Scotia. They also taxed
the bank circulation, which at once raised the rate of
discount from 6 to 7 per cent.

Nor is this the whole of the grievance. The Confedera-
tion subjects the colonists to enormous cost and great
inconvenience, compelling them to transact, in a city
eight hundred miles away, a vast amount of public busi-
ness formerly despatched in their own capital, within
easy reach of the whole population. It tranfers to the
Government at Ottawa powers more extensive than the
Queen and the Imperial Parliament in practice ever exer-
cised ; and vests in that Government, which the people
of Nova Scotia can rarely hope to influence, the entire
patronage of the Post Office and Revenue depart-
ments, and of the lighthouses and public works, con-
stmcted at great expense by the people of Nova Scotia.
It transfers the ownership of the provincial railways,
built at a cost of a million and a half of pounds currency,
to the Dominion, without equivalent or compensation. It
takes from Nova Scotia the regulation of her trade, of her
banking system and savings banks, of her sea-coast and
inland fisheries, of her militia, of her courts and criminal
law. The protest seems to intimate that motives
not entirely pure or unselfish induced the dele-
gates to hurry on the confederation. One fact
is sufficient to show the utter recklessness and
haste with which tha British North America Act and
the Intercolonial Railway Guarantee Act, which accom-
panied it, were passed, when it is stated that Nova Scotia
had at that very time, ripen her own credit, provided for
all that part of the road which crossed her territory, that
s►he is now under contract to build it, and is anxious to
complete her fair and full share of the Intercolonial Rail-
way without any guarantee or aid from the Imperial
Govern►inent, Finally, the colonists ask only that they
may be allowed to regulate their own affairs, promising to
roltsee inetcail of increasing, Al the new Parliament has
Ems, the thitioa on British manufactures, and also to con-
stead tlAir public workg wlthogt any guaranko from the
Impai-k 1 Exagfriff,

SUFFERINGS OF A SHIPWRECKED CREW.

The journals of the Mauritius contain accounts of the
rescue, by the French brig Pionnier, of the passengers and
crew of the Atieth Bahaman, in all fifty-seven persons,
who had been wrecked on a reef off Sandy Irsland, on the
26th of November last. All got safely ashore, and the
second mate with several men immediately started in
a boat for the Mauritius for assistance, and arrived
there after a difficult voyage of twelve days. A steamer
was at once despatched, but, having met with bad weather
at sea, was forced four days after to put back. The Pion-
nier was at that moment about to sail for Madagascar, but
the captain, narked Delaselle, determined to endeavour to
reach .the sufferers; he arrived off the island in two
days, but the currents in those waters are dangerous
and require such great precautions that two days
more were occupied in getting the shipwrecked
persons on board. They had then passed twenty-five days
in a state of horrible anxiety, and at the moment of their
rescue their provisions were almost exhausted, as three
bags of rice only remained. Providentially for them,
their supply of food had been made to hold out by
the circumstance of large flocks of birds having
alighted on the island, probably attracted by the un-
usual sight of living creatures in that desolate spot,
and being so tame that they allowed themselves to be
caught by the hand. The island, about two miles long, is
almost destitute of vegetation. The only drink it fur-
nished was brackish water which rose through the sand
on holes being dug. The sufferings of the shipwrecked
people were increased by a violent tempest on the 15th
December, which carried away the sort of tent they had
erected for their shelter ; the wind was, in fact, so violent
that they were forced to cling to each other to resist it.

The approaching Royal visit to Ireland promises to
throw the Church agitation into the shade ; still, so far, it
has been the principal topic of discussion in political
circles. While some regard the vote as decisive of the
downfall of the Church Establishment, the Conservatives
assert that all is not yet lost. The Orangemen of the
North have not yet had time to speak out fully, but some
of their organs take rather high ground and assume an air
of confidence as to the ultimate result. Both the Queen
and the House of Lords are appealed to with a view of
checking Mr. Gladstone in his "unconstitutional" course.
The Jesuits are denounced as the real wire-pullers, and
when this is known, argue the Protestant journals, the
reaction will come. The moderate Roman Catholic party
look upon the vote with different feelings. They contend
that the maintenance of the Church Establishment is
the only international question between England and
Ireland. All other matters of debate exist for the two
countries in common.

A great deal of interest has been manifested as to the
view which the Wesleyans would take of Mr. Gladstone's
endeavour to disestablish the Irish Church. The
Wesleyan Magazine, which is looked upon as an organ
of the Conference, goes in for a regular argu-
ment in favour of the threatened establishment, in
which it maintains that if the Church in Ireland
is an alien institution, so also are the Crown, the Lord-
Lieutenant, trial by jury, the Habeas Corpus Act, and
the whole system of British law in the sister island. The
Protestant minority in Ireland, it is argued, have been
persevering in their layalty to the Throne, and have bene-
fited their native land by their industry and enterprise.
Why, then, should the State now repudiate them "for
the gratification of the disloyal?"
Mr. Hare's electoral scheme is being hardly criti-
cised just now. Those who recognise the objects of
the plan, who desire what is called personal representation
and representation of minorities, who see no danger to the
country from equal electoral districts, even these admit
the machinery proposed by Mr. Hare to be impracticable.
Mr. Boyd Kinnear, w ri ting to the Daily News, has machinery
of his own to substitute. He would divide the country
into electoral districts—whether equal or not does not
matter—each district to return one member, and each
elector to possess one vote, and to be allowed to tender it
for any candidate he chooses, whether standing for his
district or not. Then the 658 candidates who have polled
most votes should be declared elected. In order that there
might be no votes thrown away, Mr. Kinnear proposes
party organisation, to be headed by a central committee,
London, in communication with the party in each dis-
trict. A close canvass would determine those districts in
which votes were needed, or might be dispensed with. if
any district had a superfluity of party votes they might
give them to a local candidate, or tender them to the one
indicated by the committee in London, who would know
who was most in need of the votes. To the objection that
the elections would thus be worked by party committees
Mr. Kinnear answers, that arrangements of this kind are
inseparable from every system of voting that is not clearly
local, and perhaps, he adds, not entirely from that.

Vested interests are beginning to cry out against the
proposition of the Government to purchase and work the
electric telegraph system of the country. Mr. Robert
Grimston, chairman of the Electric and International
Company, declares in the Times that the provisions
of the bill which is to effect the transfer of the tele-
graphs to the State are in the highest degree unjust.
lle points out that if the Postmaster-General choose
to exercise the powers sought in the bill, he may
buy any one of the smaller companies whose shares stand
at merely a nominal value in the market, and, with the
resources of the nation at his command, lower the tariff to
such a figure as would coerce the larger and snore pros
porous companies into selling their property at a price
wholly inconsistent with its value. As to arbitration,
the arbitrator is to be appointed by the Board of
Trade, or, in other words, by the Government
itself. " Will," exclaims Mr. Grimston, " the com-
mercial classes of this country, represented by their
members of Parliament, sit quietly by and allow the pro-
perty of private trading companies to be confiscated in
such a manner ?" The company represented by the writer
is unwilling to sell its property. It is earning a very
handsome dividend. The lowness of tariff in Belgium
and Switzerland is carried on, as far as inland messages
are concerned, at a loss to the respective Governments.
All the inconvenience of a Government having the sur-
veillance of every message passing along the wires is
pointed out, and the writer concludes by saying that he
does not believe Parliament will pass the bill.

BANQUET TO SIR W. JENNER.—The colleagues
and friends of Sir William Jenner, Bart., M.D., F.R.S.,
intend to expreis their gratification at the honour recently
conferred upon him by the Queen by inviting
him to a
dinner in the library of University College, London, on
Friday, the 24th instant. Professor Parkes, of the Army
Medical School, Netley, will preside.
THE HON. COLIN LINDSAY.—The Church Review
regrets to announce that a recurrence of illness in a more
severe form has compelled Mr. Colin Lindsay to resign
immediately his position as president of the English
Church Union, and to throw upon the council the duty of
appointing a successor for the remainder of the present
official year.

THE IRISH CHURCH.—At a meeting of the
Metropolitan Working Men's Conservative Association,
held at the offices, 11, Parliament-street, Westminster,
the following resolution was unanimously passed : " That
this association looks forward with confidence to the ulti-
mate triumph of the Protestant Church, and calls upon
Protestants of all classes to support her Majesty's Govern-
ment in their noble defence of the Irish branch of the
Established Church."

MURDER AT MANCHESTER.—A woman named
Ann Jackson has died at the workhouse, Manchester,
from injuries sustained at the hands of Martin Nolan, a
man living with her as her husband in Wood-street,
Deansgate, close to the back of the City Police-court. On
Tuesday night they had a quarrel, the resWt of which was
that the woman was put out of doors. She then broke
the windows, and made a great disturbance in the street.
Nolan, incensed at this, rushed out, knocked her down, and
brutally kicked her, breaking several of her ribs. She was
taken up by the neighbours in a state of insensibility, and
carried to the Royal Infirmary, whence, after a slight
examination, she was for some reason removed to the
workhouse, where she died on Tuesday morning. In addi-
tion to her ribs being broken, it has since been discovered
that she had received a stab. Nolan is in custody on a
charge of murder.

THE DISMISSAL OF INSPECTOR MILLER.—The
Easter General Quarter Sessions were held at Reigate on
Tuesday. Lord Hylton presided, and there was a large
attendance of magistrates. The chief constable (Captain
Hastings), in presenting his report, referred to the dis-
missal of Inspector Miller, for taking in and distributing
copies of the Police Service Advertiser. He said that a
large amount of public obloquy had been cast upon him
for dismissing this officer, and he had consequently placed
the whole of the facts before the Constabulary Commit
tee. The report of the committee was brought up, and
it stated that the chief constable had full power to dis-
miss any man from the force ; and that, after inquiry, it
had ascertained that, contrary to the express injunction of
the chief oonstable, the officer in question had not only
subscribed to, but distributed to his men, the Police Service
Advertiser. As the chief constable deemed that an objec-
tionable newspaper, the committee were of opinion that
he had acted rightly in dismissing the officer, who had
improperly, after caution, persisted in reading it. Mr.
Charles Buxton, M.P., denounced the dismissal as an
arbitrary act, and regretted that the law gave the magis-
trates no power to interfere. Lord Monson justified the
course pursued by the chief constable, as did other magis.
trato3, hud the subject dropped.