There is a pause in the political movements of France.
All parties are waiting for the report of the Committee on Revision. The expedition of the President of the Republic to Poitiers is hardly an exception. If Louis Napoleon promised himself any results from that progress, the comparative quietness of his recep- tion must have disabused him. His speech in returning thanks when his health was proposed by the Mayor of Poitiers does not afford any handle to his opponents; but perhaps the allusion to what "the Emperor" said of the Old World having come to an end and the New not being firmly settled, betrayed the "fixe idee " which has taken possession of the mind of the Emperor's nephew.
The last moves of Austria and Prussia in their interminable game of political chess are sufficiently perplexing. This may be accounted for on the principle that "true no-meaning puzzles more than wit." Austria claims to have all her non-German territories admitted into the Germanic Union. Prussia begs to be allowed to withdraw her non-German territories from the Union, into which she contrived to smuggle them in the confusion of 1848; and Austria refuses her consent. Now, on the one hand, the territo- ries which Prussia affects to consider non-German are, with the exception of Posen, German in everything but name; and on the other hand, Austria must be aware that Conservative quite as much as Movement Germany is at this moment pervaded by grave apprehensions from the growing power of the non-German popu- lations towards the East. The annual ratio of increase among the Sclavonian nations has of late -years been nearly three times as great as that among the German. The desire to draw closer the bonds of unity among the German states, and define more exactly the boundaries which separate them from those countries in which other races preponderate, increases daily. The prospects of the next Presidential election in the United States of America are becoming more obscure as the canvass ad- vances. There are three " Whig" candidates in the field. As the actual President and the most powerful member of his Cabinet are both candidates, the official influence is neutralized ; and a misgiving that in recent elections too much weight has been allowed to military services weakens the chance of General Scott, who in other respects would appear to be the favourite. On the Demo- cratic side, there is as yet only one candidate in the field, but the party appear to be in no haste to wait upon him.
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