The political horizon in France is gloomy enough. Everything looks
unsettled, without any definite purpose to animate the peo- ple, control their turbulence, or open the view of beneficial re- sults. The spectacle presented by the Court of Peers sentencing two Peers and ex-Ministers, with two gentlemen of respectable station to penalties for degrading and mercenary offences, is melancholy. Not that it is without elements of consolatory re- flection: if corruption has reached such high places among our neighbours, we also note a vigour of justice which could scarcely be enforced in this country ; there is a completeness, a thorough- going firmness, a neatness, in the criminal procedure against the offenders which such a case in England would hardly display. That such a scandal should happen among Ministers and Peers in this country, may be less probable than we find it to be in France ; but if it were to happen, most certainly it would be "hushed up."
We need not crow, then, while we deplore the extent of the corruption among our neighbonrs. For these trials have not laid the whole bare. The assertions of M. Emile Girardin remain unanswered. And the Courrier Frangais professes to be in pos- session of a new set of charges similar to those about the Gouhe- nans mines.
Coincidentally with this corruption we observe the spread of a revolutionary spirit. Our remarks last week are confirmed by the tone of the Paris journals this week : the spirit has become so manifest that it is openly discussed. Whether they are tree, or are mere signs of this hostile spirit, the scandalous stories afloat are a formidable 'sign. When distinguished persons, for whom the nation is asked to contribute princely incomes, are de- scribed as being ignobly cudgelled for detected profligacy, society must be in a very turbid and 'turbulent state, be thetales true or false.
The rumoured accession of Marshal Bugeaud to the Ministry is regarded as another portent of evil. Marshal Soult, it is will retire ; M. Guizot will be President of the Council; end Marshal Bugeaud will be Minister of War; and it is „presumed that the Marshal's special vocation will be to arm the detached forts round Paris. France becoming rebellions, Marshal Bugeaud is sent for, to turn it into an Algeria.
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