The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1851-01-28 00:00:00

FOREIGN AND COLONIAL.

THE PAPAL STATES

The Osservatore Romano of the 15th instant, states
that the French court-martial at Rome, under the presi-
dency of Colonel Delamarne, has just tried five persons,
accused of having, on the 3rd of December, wounded
several French soldiers, so as to disable them for 20 days.
Two of the prisoners have been condeinned to a year's
imprisonment; the others have oeen acquitted.
A correspondent of the Bilancia of Milan writes, that
some agents of Mazzini have lately been landed at Fiumi-
cino, near Rome, by an English yacht, and that their
first act has been to spread a revolutionary pamphlet,
entitled " Rome and the Roman States,"

The number of galley slaves now at Terracina is so
considerable, says a letter from Rome, that the covern-
merit has opened an enrolment for men to increase the
body appointed to guard them.

The Nizam's Territory of Hyderabad, some hundred
thousands of square miles in extent, and centaining some
ten millions of inhabitants, is nearly the last portion of
the vast Mogul viceroyalty, known as the Deccan, which
has not been completely absorbed into the English terri-
tory in India, but will be in a short time--the sooner the
better. His dominions are wretchedly governed ; and he
owes the East India Company money which he cannot
pay.
Tits NEW FRENCH MINISTRY.—The Times of yes-
terday says :—The ministers selected by the French pre-
sidea, or, rather, the men who have consented to stand
by tie executive power in this crisis, are so little known
to fame that we can augur nothing from the list of them,
except that a man must have great courage or greater

weakness to have joined this forlorn hope. They are
known, ho ovever, as honourable men, conversant with
public business, in the rank of our own chairmen of reve-
nue boards or under-secretaries, though comparatively
strange to political warfare. Under the circumstances
through which France has passed in the last 3 years, it is
with such men that the traditions of government rest, and
the reason the machine is not stopped or upset is that it
still works by the same unseen hands. For practical pur-
poses, therefore, these ministers are very likely not much
inferior to many that have preceded them, although of
course the existence of such feeble and ephemeral admi-
nistrations is a virtual surrender of all the great objects
oP _ _ _ _ _

policy and legislation that such a nation as France

might pu-rsue and-accomplish

Her Majzsty and Prince Albert, accompanied by the
youthful Royal family, are expected to arrive at Mucking-
ham Palace on Monday next, to remain until after the
meeting of parliament.
Mr. David Bell, a retired Glasgow manufacturer and
merchant. and formerly a member of the town council of
that city, has announced himself a candidate for the re-
presentation of the Falkirk district of burghs. He states
that he has always been a consistent supporter of parlia-

mentary reform, public economy,
ANECDOTE OF GEORGE STP.Pf
Stowell, of 'Cliesbunt, late of Rotherhar

d reduced taxation.
SON.—The Rev. Di

in a speech

concerning'ti
and had diem

!orge Stephenson. - After•they had returned
T,:George Stephenson told them when he

was at Brussels, he was to be introduced to the King of
the Belgians. There was one dandy fellow, a very tine
gentleman, called upon him and said he wanted to consult
him in a matter of some importance. "Well," said Mr.
Stephenson, " what is it about -?" " Well, I understand
from Lord'So-and.so, I am to have the honour of a pre-
sentation to his majesty the king of the Belgians." " Very
well," said-George,—;"And, Mr. Stephenson," continued
the dandy, " Ilcnow you are a gentleman of very extensive
experience, and I wish to consult you. What do you
think is the most appropriate colour for gloves ?" " I tell
you what;" said-George, "my mother gave me tt pair of
gloves when was born ; and Hell you, moister, I donna
mean to put any gloves on, and if the king of the Bel-
gians won't have George Stephenson with the gloves his
mother gave him, clean washed, then good morning to
the king of the Belgians."

AFFRCTION AND CONFIDENCE. at? SINGING BIRDS.—

possess the most singular attractions, exhibit the most
romantic attachment. Not a movement of their master
or mistress escapes their observation. They may be
taught, easily tauzht, by affectionate care, to come out of
the cage when called for, or to sit on the finger and sing
when requested. A single movement of the bead, or
expression of the eye, will accomplish this; whilst the
reward -of -a bit of hard-boiled egg, or a morsel of loaf-

sugar, will speedily cement an intimacy terminable only
by death:: the attachment of birth •knows no other limit.
I have verified this, times out of number. I have rarely
found, during along experience of twenty-five years, any
great,difficultvint on m
aminga bird, or,
oor,cionadseioaeda, an animal
closelyimalof
any kind. Instinct,
bordering on reason, unerringly teaches the lower order
or
awohr who
are
dinar}, .familiarity, apart from all fear, which some birds
it:eatnhieni their lesnteomdi discriminate
Phis ei
swdheom9or demonstrable stthr rl
e friends,b y the
and other animals exhibit when in the presence of their
masters and mistresses, on whose 'finger I have known
birds 'to sit and sing with the most perfect confidence.—
William Kidd, in the Gardener'
NATIONAL ADVANTAGES Of
ItENCY.—The greatest and most momentous contest_
which have taken place among nations, have been in a
great degree determined by the discovery or use, by one
of the belligerents, of an expansive currency, to which the
other was for a time a stranger. The most memorable
strife in antiquity, that between Rome and Carthage, on
which depended whether Europe or. Africa was to become
the mistress of the civilised world, was in reality deter-
mined by a great extension of the circulating medium
during the second Punic war; and that dreadful contest
was less brought to a successful issue by the firmness of
the senate or the arms of Scipio, than by the wisdom an
decree which virtually, at the crisis of its fate, doubled
the currency of the Roman republic. The Transatlantic
revolution was brought to a successful issue the same way;
and the independence of the United States is less to be
ascribed to the imbecility of British counsels, or the wis-
dom of American generalship, than to the establishment
of a paper currency, which sustained the efforts of the in-
sureent states when they had no other resources where-
with to maintain the contest. It was the assignats, as all
the world knows, that set on foot those prodigious armies
which, amidst the destruction of all private fortunes,
enabled France, during the Reign of Terror, to repel the
assault of all the European powers ; and the coalition
which at last overturned the empire of Napoleon was
sustained by a vast system of paper currency, issued in
1813 in Germany, which, guaranteed by the four Allied
powers, passed as gold from the Atlantic Ocean to the
wall of China, and arrayed the armies of Europe in dense
and disciplined battalions on the banks of the Rhine. Of
what incalculable importance it was may be judged of by
the dreadful straits to which Wellington, for five previous
year,
had been reduced by its want. Great Britain
emerged victorious from the strife, chiefly from
the powerful influence of the same omnipotent ag, nt.
Vain would have been the constancy of Pitt, the genius
of Nelson, or the wisdom of Wellington, if the paper
currency, established in 1797, had not given her people
the sinews of war, and the means of illimitable industry,
when the Continent was shut to her commerce, and the
whole precious metals were drained away by the necessi-
ties of Continental warfare. Nor have the effects of the
opposite system, pursued since the peace, been less stri-
king and momentous ; for the contraction of British cur-
rency to one-half of its former dimensions, by the bills of
1819 and 1844, has brought about the dreadful panics of
1825, 1837. and 1847, induced by the decline of prices
and the sufferings it occasioned. The English revolution
of 1832 transferred power in the British islands exclu-
sively to the inhabitants of towns, and spread such mi-
sery through the rural population, that three hundri,d
thousand emigrants now annually leave the British islands
for Transatlantic or Australian shores.—Blackwood.

AN EXPANSIVE CUR-

NAPOLEON'S STYLE AND DlCTlON.—Napoleon, when
consul and emperor, seldom wrote, but he dictated much.
It was difficult to follow him, and he often objected to any
revision of what he had dictated. When a word bad es-
caped his amanuensis, and he was asked what it was, " Je
ne rep&erai pas le mot. Reflechissez, rappelez-vouz du
mot que j at dicte, et ecrivez-le, car pour moi je ne le
repeterai pas." Talleyrand, -interested possibly in dis-
crediting any posthumous writings, was very earnest soon
after the news of his death arrived in inculcating on me
and others the persuasion that Napoleon never did and
never could dictate. "Il disait, it ne dictait pas; on ne
pouvait &rim sous sa dictde. Il ne savait ni dieter ni
eerire." But excepting Talleyrand and Charles IV. of
Spain, I never heard any man express a doubt of his
powers of composition, or his habits of dictating. It
was, indeed, difficult to follow, and vet mope difficult to
satisfy him in the discharge of that. office; but M. Big-
non and others inured themselves to his manner. In
matters of importance he would look over and correct
what had been written from his dictation, and would after-
wards repeat word for word the. sentences be had com-
posed and revised. His style was clear. " Soyez clair,
tout le reste viendra," was a maxim of his: In matters
of business he very justly ridiculed and defied that absurd
canon of French criticism which forbids the recurrence
of a word twice in the same sentence or even page.
He had several volumes of his correspondence copied
out and bound in folio. There:is some mystery attending
the fate of those books. From them, however, the
" lettres inedites" were published. M. de Talleyrand
pretends that his copies sometimes varied, and that pur-
posely, from the originals, for according to him Nagoleon
would not scruple, even in transcribing treaties, to sub-
stitute one word for another. The notes on the life of
the Duke of Marlborough, which was printed at his
expense, and by his desire, were, it is said, composed by
him, and paragraphs of his writing. were occasionally
in the newspaper. He wrote and printed when a young
man, at Avignon, in 3 793 or 1794, a small political pam-
phlet, called " Dejeuner de trois Militaires," and I have
already mentioned that he sent a manuscript history of
Corsica, written before that period, to Able Raynal.
But whatever were his own writings, his criticism on the
works of others was generally just, and always striking
and acute. Le Mercier read him a play on the subject
of Peter the Cruel.. At. the moment of his fall, that dis-
comfited tyrant was made to say something like this :

"De tout mon caste empire, it me reate un rocker."

Napoleon observed, "It will never do. You mean to
rouse us to indignation against the man, •and you put in
his mouth a pathetic remark on the contrast between his
former elevation and present ruin that cannot fail to excite
the compassion of every well-regulated: mind." The
remark was subtle, and, considering subsequent events,
curious and singular. It is possible, however, that this
latter circumstance produced it, for the relater, though a
worthy man, was a dratr atic author. In .reading, Napo-
leon leaned to scepticism and p3radox.; for' instance,
he ridicUled as improbal le the rory of war's escape is
the boat, and his speech to the boatmen,? rigid was much
inclined to disparage the talents, and-more particularly
the military skill of that eittraordinbry- man,"-Lora
11olleid's Poreiril /Wri;nteceiteeB. •• ".