NEWS OF THE WEEK.

-THE week has been full of signs of a coming change in public opinion. The civil war in America has become .an anti-slavery struggle, and slowly but certainly English opinion is swinging round to its true position—a passive but unqualified dislike of all who contend for human bondage. Last week a public meeting in Liverpool, the stronghold of slavish principles and slaveowning prejudices, endorsed Mr. Lincoln's proclamation. This week Bristol, where the slave- trade lasted longer than in any port in Great Britain, has affirmed the right of emancipation ; in Bradford, a meeting, larger than any held for years, unanimously passed resolutions pledging those present to the extermination of slavery ; and in London, Exeter Hall has been crowded with scholars and working-men. The smug bourgeoisie, who take the Times' exposition of Christianity for gospel, are beginning to doubt whether, after all, they would like to be slaves, and all things portend that in another month we shall be rid of the sickly South wind, which for the last twelve months has paralyzed English energies.

The crowded and enthusiastic meeting at Exeter Hall on Thursday night sufficiently proves this,—the more so, that the speakers, though able and eloquent men, were not exactly masters in Israel. The great room was crowded to excess, the lower room filled with an offshoot of the meeting, while the "balance" adjourned to the streets, where, beneath the glimpses of the moon and the gas-lamps of Exeter-street, the grateful oratory of Rev. W. D. Haley, one of General Burn- side's chaplains, interrupted the modest labours of our neigh- bouring printers. The mention of President Lincoln's name in the body of the Hall was received with a burst of enthu- siasm which lasted some minutes; while Mr. Jefferson Davis, whose career was ably sketched by Mr. Thomas Hughes, received the meed of reiterated dislike. The honest blunderer, who has proclaimed emancipation at last, lives in the hearth of the English working class ; while the striking and restrained ability of his rival—the will and mind of the Slave States— .excites simple hatred. Mr. Baptist Noel well said that those assembled at Exeter Hall, though they might be, as the Times taunted them with being, inconsiderable men, were but the " pickets of the great emancipationist army " in this country. 'There may, be many in that army who, like our respected correspondent, the Rev. F. D. Maurice, still think that the anti-slavery cause is not to be hastily identified with the Northern cause. Butgien of these the number is diminishing, and at Exeter Hall aMthe meetings, both upstairs and down- stairs, within doors and without, gave a very decisive answer indeed to the question addressed to John Bull in Mr-Hughes's .quotation from the Bigelow papers:— "The South cries poor man down, John;

And all men up, cry we ; Black, yellow, white, and brown, John ; Now, which is your idee ?"

John Bull's " idee,"—so far, at least, as John Bull is a work- ing man,—was, after a very proxona fashion indeed, the upward one. And it is also moving upwards in English society ;—infecting the cultivated but languid thought on the surface with that earnest faith which, somehow, is apt to take refuge in the labouring masses below.

On the same night a meeting equally large was held at Bradford ; the Yorkshiremen, whose love of freedom is more like a pulse than a thought, swarmed into the hall, and resolved unanimously that slavery was the cause of the war, that the slaveowners had, by rebelling, brought incalculable misery on their own country and this, and " that any intervention, phy- sical or moral, on behalf of the slave power, would be espe- cially disgraceful, now that the Government of the United States had avowed an emancipation policy, in which the meet- ing rejoiced, as giving ground for the belief that this terrible war would be overruled to the destruction of the system of Slavery." They cheered the eloquent hits of Mr. Forster with a heart which showed that they felt them, and that, like him, they believed that the South were fighting for freedom, "for the freedom to enslave—(applause)—for the freedom to oppress, for the freedom to tear the wife from the husband and the mother from the child—(applause)—for the freedom to make it legal to torture or kill a black father for defending his outraged daughter; for the freedom to make it legal for a white father to sell his own child in the market place ; for the freedom to make it a crime to teach boys and girls to read and write ; for the freedom to extend that system which makes labour a curse—that was the freedom for which the South were fighting. (Applause.)" It is pleasant in these times, when the foremost journal of England proclaims slavery Christian, and therefore divine, and the Saturday Review calls any demonstration for freedom " a carnival of cant," and men like Mr. Buxton doubt whether emancipation can be morally right, to find one member with a name to lose who dares risk his position to strike one strong blow for the only race who, speaking English, will never hear of his efforts on their behalf. Remember, that to show to a slave the sentence we have quoted would be an act punishable by law with death for the white man who uttered, and the black man who heard, the words of sympathy.

The French Senate has prepared its address in reply to the Emperor's discourse. It is a mere echo of the Imperial speech, very well written, very diplomatic in phrase, and painfully servile. The most remarkable assertions arc, that the elec- tions will produce " courageous and devoted auxiliaries of the Empire," which, as the Prefects arc absolute, and the Mayors official, is very probable ; that in Mexico "nothing remains but to go forward,"—(" conquerors, conquered, or hanged, for- ward we must," said Cavaignac, representative on mission)— and that " the Emperor knows that the independence of Italy is not a compact made by France with the Revolution." Certainly not; for France had nothing to do with the matter; but it was a compact between Napoleon and the Revolution, and by keeping Rome lie breaks it—leaving the other con- tractor to ask for damages.

The electors of Cambridge will have to choose, we hope, only between Mr. Powell, a respectable Liberal-Conservative, and Mr. Fawcett, who is blind, but who is also one of the most accurately informed as well as able politicians of the Liberal party ; and if thero be no insane division in the Liberal ranks, we have no doubt that they will elect Mr. Fawcett. His critics say that his blindness is an absolute disqualification for Parliamentary duties, a canon which, if true, would virtually disqualify at least one eminent man now on the Treasury bench, who is certainly quite as unable as Mr. Fawcett could be to catch the telegraphic hints or frowns of the political Olympus. Deafness seems to us a far greater disqualification, and the Conservatives have not deemed it

a sufficient bar even to high Ministerial office. And though blindness is of course no advantage, it not unfre- quently happens that obstructions, triumphantly over- come, measure the characteristic powers of a man :better than any direct gift. Did not Demosthenes even exag- gerate the difficulty of a stammer by filtering his speech through pebbles as well—and fis; prove his native .gift for oratory ? Mr. Fawcett's blindness is the rarest proof the Cambridge electors could have of the powers of a man who, even though blind, can contrive to be an authority on many questions of elaborate learning, economical and political. A blind man who skates well, speaks well, thinks deeply, and associates with the broadest liberalism that thorough respect for the representative system, which will always guard England against the evils of pure democracy, will 'be a far brighter ornament of the Liberal party than many of those who see with their eyes, but only grope with their under- standings.

For the past ten days all Poland has been in insurrection. The revolutionary party had intended to wait, but the Russian Government resolved on an act of oppression which even Poles were unable to endure. They abolished one of the veryfew rules which, in Russia, protect the subject, drew up immense lists of all distinguished for liberality, or energy, or influence, and ordered the Cossacks to seize them, and them only, as conscripts, to be expended in war in the Caucasus. The soldiers of course obeyed, and for a week hundreds of Poles were kidnapped every night, torn from their families, and marched off in chains. If the victim escaped his brother was seized, if the brother fled the father was taken—any one who resisted was brutally beaten with muskets. The out- rage was unbearable, and on the 22nd January, Poland and most of Lithuania rose. The doomed persons fled to the woods, where they were followed by large sections of the population, and commenced a guerilla war. The Germans assert that the peasants side with their masters, and that there are 200,000 men in open revolt. The Russian Government denies this, but observes that the suppression of the revolt is not doubtful, for it has 100,000 good soldiers in the province. No symptom of sympathy is yet reported among the Russians ; but the Czar, in a speech to his soldiers, admits that the Poles rely upon Russian treason, and takes trouble to express his confidence in his army. No evidence has yet been offered of the suppression of the rebellion ; but with the four great forts, the capital, the telegraph, the railways, and the cannon all in Russian hands, success is all but impossible. The Poles can but die—as John Brown died.

The Government has performed an act of singular grace. It has ordered that when the Griswold—the Northern vessel laden with food for Lancashire—arrives in the Mersey, it shall be received with a royal salute.

The Duke of Saxe-Coburg has made his choice, and chosen Byzantium. The foreign Greeks announce through M. Mavro- cordate that they approve the selection, and the Greeks at home will, it seems certain, cordially welcome their King. Greece this time is really fortunate. She takes as her King the head of the only dynastic house in Europe which, though Liberal, knows how to reign, the only prince who has a fair chance of obtaining Byzantium without a European war, and a far- sighted, sagacious, and thoroughly honest man. There is a vein of weakness in Duke Ernst, obvious in his pamphlets ; but he knows how to step out of the groove, and how to con- ciliate all who can understand him. The power of returning at will to Coburg will give him strength in Greece, and his successor, a nephew of the Sohari House, is to be educated in the Greek faith.

The intelligence from America is, on the whole, unfavourable to the North. The attack on Vicksburg has been abandoned, and with it the possibility of securing the Mississippi. Galveston, the port of Texas, has been lost, after a singularly stupid fashion ; and an expedition, under General Banks and Commodore Farragut, sent against Fort Hudson, has, it is reported, failed. The Democrats have carried an election of a Senator for Pennsylvania amidst scenes suggestive of civil war, Mr. Vallandigham has formally proposed an armistice, and the Tribune announces that if the South will accept it first mediation, may be endured. Mr. Chase has power to issue another 20,000,0001 in unconvertible paper, the expenditure is estimated at 400,0001 a day and gold has risen to 47 premium; the other hand, the House of Representatives has resoved to discuss a bill for arming 150,000 slaves, and so make compromise impossible, by 88 to 53. The High Church party is greatly exercised in mind because the Prince of Wales is to be nezied in_Lent. Accordingly, the Guardian has autlliafity to inform them that although the wedding cannot be postponed, the Qaeen will not object to. any•r:;on or corporation postponing festivities till Easter. We do not see how that,precisely meets.the difficulty. These gentlemen want everybody to be in a miserable mood all. Lent. Now, the anticipation of fun is much pleasanter than its reality, and all Lent these good folk will be anticipating fun,. which is irreligious. We thought an early Father, too early to be much quoted or read by High Churchmen, had forbidden all this reverence for " times and seasons."

As the time of the marriage of the Prince of Wales. approaches, the annoyance of half England at the locale fixed_ for the ceremony seems to increase. Windsor will not hold half the people who want to go, and will live for twelve months on the fortune extorted out of the visitors. London in particular, indignant at its supersession in favour of the in- odorous little Berkshire borough, seems disposed to take as- little notice of the ceremony as it loyally can.

About one young lady a day is reported burnt to death, and the papers are full of suggestions on the best means of preventing catastrophes. One idea is to mix tungstate of soda with starch, when the muslin will only char ; but that suggestion evidently came from a man, for fine muslin dresses are seldom starched. Gauziness, not stiffness, is their recom- mendation. Another notion is to abolish low grates ; but as they are almost universal, and fire-places have been built only to- hold them, that one looks a little extravagant. A third is to purchase a guard, and insist on its use, except when anybody approaches the fire, to " stir it," or poke it, or make it up, that= is, except when protection is wanted. Perhaps the best is to extend to young women a little of the care by which children. are prevented from tumbling into the fire-place, the watchful- ness to last till the Princess Alexandra appears without crinoline, when that dangerous " necessity" will disappear in. a week.

The Emperor of the French has again proposed mediation: in America, this time alone. M. Drouyu de Lhuys writes to the Minister at Washington, bidding him suggest that a meet- ing of Plenipotentiaries might take place in a neutral city without an armistice, and they might decide, first, whether re- construction was impossible; and secondly, what should be the- bases of peace. The temper of the people, both North and South, seems not indisposed to this plan, as neither has heard that the Emperor intends "to restore the strength of the Latin race in America," and, even if it is rejected, the Emperor will have secured his great end—viz., shown to the suffering operatives that he was labouring to get them cotton. If thin had not been his first thought he would have made his pro- posal secretly, and so left M. Mercier the power to word it in, the form least obnoxious to a susceptible race.

The Emperor of the French, on Sunday, distributed the prizes gained by Frenchmen in the International Exhibition, and took occasion to make a strong speech in favour of English. institutions. "Behold," said his Majesty with a fair smile at English panics, " behold the invasion so long predicted, a campaign with the veterans of industry.' " After remarking' on the spoils brought back by the invaders, which included ideas, ho added a sentence really remarkable for its apprecia- tion of England. There, he said, was " unrestricted liberty and " perfect order," a liberty " respecting the bases on which society and power rest, carrying not an incendiary torch but. one which sheds light around." France also will achieve it when we shall have consolidated the indispensable bases for the establishment of perfect liberty." The foundations then of that " edifice " which is one day to be " crowned" have not settled yet.

TheBritish Chamber of Commerce of Shanghai has addressed a memorial to the Foreign Secretary, praying his lordship to. take "a firm and decided tone " with the Chinese Govern- ment, and prohibit the establishment of Custom Houses on the Yangtse-Kiang. They also pray him to attend to the conduct of the Government in disputing their right to trade in that river, and refusing them permission to build houses in the interior. The memorial is signetpy all the great houses, and is, on one point, sensible. The right to trade on the Yangtse-Kiang is the only really valuable concession obtained lately from China, and worth almost as much as the opening of the treaty ports. The trade may be as important as that on the Ganges; and if the Chinese are really shutting the river, the -memorialists have strong reason to complain. This, however, we doubt. Prince Kung would hardly demand our assistance just while he was refusing its price, or organize a British fleet while stopping British mer- chant vessels. It is more probable that the merchants want to land goods in the river without the inconvenience of pass- ing through any custom-house at all. As for the right to build houses, the prayer is puerile. The merchants have Chinese clerks, and know what a deed of trust means.

The members for Liverpool, Mr. J. C. Ewart and Mr. Hors- fall, at the meeting of the Chamber of Commerce on Monday, expressed a few sensible and common-place convictions, ob- jecting, for example, to Mr. Cobden's plan for abolishing the right of blockade, which the Liberal member (Mr. I. C. Ewart) coupled with a depreciatory estimate of the Times. He even -ventured to compare that journal to the New York Herald. This audacity brought down upon him and on his innocent colleague a rebuke worthy of the Thunderer of a few years ago,—a clap of penetrating acute vibration that must have amazed the brain of these two hapless gentlemen, and which then rolled away muttering like a retreating storm. In Wednesday's Times Mr. J. C. Ewart was annihilated. The speeches of Mr. Horsfall and himself were likened to the effete bangs which sometimes proceed from the stump of an extinct Catherine-wheel. They were accused of having played over all the tunes which have been popularized by the Times' barrel-organ, and then " insulted the composer ;" and Mr. J. C. Ewart, especially, was called, for his own personal sins, "the smallest of all the curs which yelp at our heels." We fear, however, that the writer in the Times did not look quite closely enough to " our heels." The Mr. Ewart abused is described as, " so far as our experience of him goes, very seldom known to agree with the common sense of the rest of mankind, and never to give even a plausible reason for disagreeing." This was a taunt meant, we take it., fer Mr. Ewart, M.P. for Dumfries, not Mr. J. C. Ewart, M.P. for Liverpool. The member for Dumfries has, at times, been crotchetty and doctrinaire, which Mr. J. C. Ewart has not been; yet few members of Parliament have done better service on the whole than the member for Dum- fries. He was the author of the Public Libraries Act, the mover and chairman of the Committee on Colonization in India, the author of several Acts abolishing capital punishment for different kinds of theft, the seconder of Mr. Villiers' motion for the repeal of the Corn-laws, one of the most prominent of the reformers of the import duties on wine, and in general a most practical and thorough Liberal. If this gentleman be the man intended by the cur yelping at "our heels," we must say that the cur at "our heels" is worth to the country almost as much as " our head itself."

The address of the Prussian Deputies in answer to the ad- dress from the Throne is one of the strongest, and best political papers hitherto put forth there. It begins by professing "inviolable fidelity to the Crown," and " the most conscien- tious care for the maintenance of the constitution;" and then proceeds to comment on the "gloomy circumstances" under which it meets. The last session was closed, it says, before the budget of 1862 had been legally sanctioned in the way prescribed by the constitution. The bill for the budget of 1863, which should have been passed, was withdrawn. The request addressed to the Government to reintroduce that bill within the legal period was disregarded. The Ministry have carried on the administration in opposition to the constitution with- out any legal budget, and have incurred an expenditure which the 'Chamber had definitively refused. The "first right of a representative assembly," that of voting ways and means, is thus assailed. The country, say the Deputies, has, "with affright, beheld the whole gains of our previous politi- cal development called in question." Besides these infractions of the constitution, the same abuses, which so often occurred during the time which preceded the regency of the present King, have been repeated. Public functionaries, true to the consti- tution, especially if also Deputies, have been punished by oppressive measures. The Press has been persecuted when it defended the constitution. " Landwehr ' men have been restrained by inadmissible orders from the legitimate exercise. of their civic rights. In one word, the deputies do not dis- pute,-nor wish to dispute, the right of the King to maintain all his constitutional prerogatives, but they represent that the constitution has been violated by the Ministers, and that the Article 99, giving the Chamber the duty of voting the budget, is no longer a reality. This address was carried by 255 to 68 votes.

'The Prussian Minister, Count von Bismark SchOnhaueen, entered into the debate on this address with characteristic audacity. lie said there was a hiatus in the constitution. Nowhere was it provided what should be done when King, Lords, and Commons could not agree ;—hence had arisen a conflict, and the Crown, in fact, had both might and right to claim for itself the decision when the Upper and Lower House differed. The speech was received with great uproar of indignation. Count Schwerin replied that it was not by setting might above right, but by putting right above might, that previous Prussian kings had achieved great- ness—a statement historically questionable, since Frederick the Great had considerable sympathies with Count von Bismark Schiinhausen's maxim, but which, partly perhaps because it was historically false, so touched the heart of' the Chamber, that the whole house (except the small body of Reactionaries) rose to its feet and cheered enthusiastically this fragment of fanciful history but substantial political ethics.

Mr. Spaulding has made a careful calculation of the funds of the United States Treasury, and the general condition of its finances, which is still more gloomy than that of Mr. Chase. First, as to the debt, he gives us the following cal- culation. The United States debt up to the beginning of the war (estimating the dollar at 4s.) was :- Debt up to breaking out of war... ... 213,328,791

Debt incurred in the war, funded and unfunded, up to Jan. 2nd, 1863 ... £143,432,059 Estimated requirements up to July 1st, 1864 ... 243,239,150

Public debt estimated to July 1st, 186,4 ... 400,000,000 —which would make it by that time about half as great as our own National Debt. In the meantime, Mr. Chase asked leave to issue 10,000,0001. sterling, in new "greenbacks," and from a house only too liberal in greenbacks has received permission to issue twice as much, 20,000,0001. The Missouri Emanci- pation Aid Bill had included power to give 2,000,0001. to the State Legislature, and has been reported back from the Judi- ciary Committee with the-2,000,000/. changed to 4,000,0001. sterling, about at the rate of 401. per slave, or, we suppose, scarcely half price for each of the 100,000 slaves attributed to Missouri in the last census. At this low rate the 4,000,000 slaves would only cost 160,000,0001. or less than the sum calculated for a single year's war expenditure.

Galveston, the strongest fortified place in Texas, has been taken by the Confederates by a coup de main. Early on New Year's-day the rebel force under General Magruder, com- prising 5,000 troops on land, and five war-steamers, " pro- tected by double rows of cotton bales," fell upon this strong- hold, which is situated on an island in the very mouth of a large bay—a perfect natural haven on the coast of Texas. The port appears to have been very slenderly defended, and was regularly overpowered, the " Harriet Laue" losing all but 14 out of a crew of 130. This is a great blow for the Union cause. To keep or lose Texas is to keep or lose an unpopu- lated kingdom to the cause of freedom. Its area is 274,000 square miles, or about one-third Larger than France; and its population only 600,000, or not the combined population of Liverpool and Manchester.

M. Mongruel, a French inventor, announces his intention of freeing us from the tyranny of gas companies and the dangers of gas, and providing a light at once infinitely cheaper and more efficient. This is to he accomplished by passing atmospheric air through a fluid termed " photogene," but which seems to be a naphtha of a highly volatile description, binning it with the ordinary gas fittings. The generating apparatus is simple, the light seven times as powerful as gas, and the real question seems to be as to the absence of expensiveness. The promoters of the invention, however, say that in case of escape, the " pho- togene" would precipitate itself on the floor or furniture, and at the worst, only render the latter inflammable when coming in actual contact with fire. Gas, as at present used, may also be passed through photogene with a saving of forty per cent. in consumption, and a gain of five-fold illuminating power. The invention is said to have been largely adopted in France.

In the debate upon the address, as yet reported only by telegraph, M. Thouvenel strongly expressed his approval of the Emperor's view that the Romans have a clear rig:tt to choose their own form of .Government. M. Thouvenel is the man who was, once selected to defend the peace of Villafranea, and 'his speech is a curious evidence that even in France :opinion marches.