The Sun. — 1868-12-14 (London, England)

COBBES,  PARIS.  (FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)  PARIS, SUNDAY, December 13. The rumours of Ministerial changes which I have before mentioned gain strength aad consistency. There is really considerable evidence in favour of the supposition that M. Pinard will be offered up as a sacrifice, in order to persuade the public that he, and he only, is answerable for the fiasco of the 3rd December. The sacrifice will not be very useful in this respect. Amongst speculations as to his successor, that which points to M. de Forcade la Roquette, the Minister of Public Works, has the balance of evidence in its favour.  The Government is about to establish four permanent camps for military instruction. French justice is becoming more and more inexplicable. The Assize Court of the Pas de Calais has just condemned to death a young man, of the age of 22, who has been convicted of causing no less than fourteen incendiary fires, the total damage amounting to some £4,000. The crimes were committed between the 18th of June and the Bth of September of the present year. The jury would have nothing to do with the plea of extenuating circumstances invoked on behalf of the accused by the defence. After a verdict like this we can conlude only that the administration of the law in France is becoming a mere matter of chance, a sort of groping after justice which would be effected quite as well by a cast of the die. It is obvious enough that the 'author of fourteen incendiary fires deserves a severe punishment, and as the French Code assigns death to that eft nce the sentence is not in itself outr:geous. But when a wretch like Joye, the Marseilles herbalist, the murderer probably of more than fourteen persons, is sentenced only to perpetual imprisonment, it is impossible to account for the result of the trial in the Pas de Calais. Either imprisonment for life must be deemed a greater punishment than death, or burning fourteen houses and stack' is a worse offence than taking fourteen, or an unknown number of lives. But whilst the punishment of death is awarded with this inconsistency in France, the case is very different in Algeria. The repugnance of the French to executions seems to vanish when they h .ve natives to deal with. The sentences of death in Algeria are extremely numer u'. Twelve Arabs have received the capital sentence all at once. The offences of murder and cannibalism combined, of ordinary murder, and of highway robbery, are treated in precisely the same manner. 'i his severity produces no good effect, crime in AlLeri). becomes more and more common, and there is every re sin for believing that a relaxation of the stringent criminal tole of the colony would not be injurious to public order and security. At leas: if improvement off the face of the earth is still a sound principle of French jurisprudence, the poisoner Joye ought not to have escaped. Italy is, after all, to be the final resting-place for tne remains of her great musician. The body of Rossini is to be transferred to the land of his birth. His widow has given a promise to that effect to M. Nigra and to the Italian deputation which came to Paris for the funeral, on condition that after her death her mortal remains shall be placed near those of her husband. The Gaulois relates a story which seems to me to have been imported from English nurseries. The mistress of a Sunday school asked a little pupil " What the Israelites did after they came out of the Red Sea." "They dried themselves, Madame," was the reply. Victor Hugo is about to establish a journal in Belgium. It is to be called the Journal des Exiles, and is to number MM. Rogeard and Rochefort and the sons of Victor Hugo amongst its contributors. The great writer himself will be the guiding spirit of this new periodical.