A scratch French Government has been got together, a Government
which M. Clomenceau calls a holiday Government, a Government that will rule as long as the Chamber is taking its holidays, and probably not very much longer. Its chief is M. Duclerc, a man seventy years of age, who was Minister of Finance under the Republic of 1848. M. Duclerc now takes the Foreign Office, and it is said that he has conditioned with M. GI-6v that if the Assembly outvotes him on its reassem- bling, the President shall use his influence with the Senate to obtain a dissolution. M. Duclerc has been joined by a few Gambettists. General Billet is his Ministet of War, Admiral Jaurkuiberry his Minister of Marine, and M. Tirard his Minister of Finance. Many of the Ministers are very little known, and the programme of the new Government is modest. M. Duclerc only says that the vote refusing the credit for the Suez Canal is to be regarded as a measure of prudence, :not as declaring that, if her interests are deeply concerned, France will not intervene. In that case, the Government will at once convene the Chambers, and propose to them what it deems necessary for the honour of France. In fact, the new Government is for the present a Government of observation, and not a Government of action.
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