tunately for the world, the ministers of England interposed a decided negative. The language used by Mr. Canning in his correspondence with the Prince de Polignac, amounted in substance to this: We claim and enjoy free commerce with the trans-atlantic provinces: we are willing to allow Old Spain the grace and advantage of being the first to acknowledge their independent sovereignty; but should she hesitate, our recognition can in no case be delayed long; that recognition and alliance, too, would be immediate ly consequent upon any attempt on the part of the mother country to regain possession of the separated states by the aid of foreign arms: neither will we pay the slightest regard to any attempts on the part of Spain to revive the obsolete interdiction of intercourse with countries, over which she has no longer any actual dominion. The duke of Belluno was minister of war during the continuance of military operations. His dismissal, however, had been expected for some time; for it was believed that Villèle distrusted him, and that the duke of Angoulême disliked him. On the 19th of October he was removed from his situation, and was replaced by the Baron de Damas. The displaced minister was, by way of consolation, appointed ambassador at Vienna; but that court refused to receive him under a title derived from a place within the Austrian dominions. On the 23rd of December a most unexpected creation of peers took place. Several of the most vehement of the ultra-royalists were included in this promotion; The following were the individuals which gratified them and their party, at the same time that it removed them from an assembly, where, in consequence of their intemperate zeal, they were sometimes dangerous friends, and enabled Villèle to replace them by more tractable auxiliaries. On the 24th of December an ordinance was published, dissolving the Chamber of Deputies, and ordering the electoral colleges of the departments to meet on the 6th of March, and those of the districts (arrondissements) and of departments having but one college, on the 25th of February. The opening of the session of the chambers of 1824 was fixed for the 23rd of March. The public attention in Pari (and Paris is France) was, in November and December, more attracted by three trials, which came on before the Court of Assizes, than by the public concerns of Europe. The first was that of a physician, Dr. Castaing. The in Frère de Villefrancon, archbishop of elevated to the French peerage:-count Besançon; count de Vich, bishop of Autun; baron de Glandèves, brigadiergeneral; count de Puy-Segur (Gaspard); viscount Dode de la Brunerie, idem; count de Mesnard, idem; count brigadier-general; viscount d'Agoult, de Bourbon Busset, idem; marquis de Juigne; viscount Gabriel Dubouchage; chevalier de Charette; marquis de Croislin; count de Tournon, counsellor of state, formerly prefect of the Rhone; count de Breteuil, prefect of the Gironde; count de Bethisy, member of the Chamber of Deputies; count Chabrol de Crouzol, idem; count d'Orglandes, idem; count de Chastellux, idem; marquis de Villefranche, idem; Laine, minister of State, idem; viscount de Bonald, idem; count de Vogue, idem ; count de Marcellus, idem; count de Rastignac, idem; count de Courtavel Kergorlay (Florian), idem; marquis de (Peze), idem; count d'Ambrugeac, idem. dictment charged him with three crimes-1st, with having administered poison to his young friend, Hippolyte Ballet, about the end of October, 1822; 2ndly, with having, in conjunction with the surviving brother, Auguste Ballet, destroyed the will of the deceased, to convert his property to their joint use; and 3rdly, with having, in the end of May, 1823, made his accomplice his victim, after he had secured the spoil by having induced Auguste to be queath it to him by testamentary in struments. The poison said to have been employed in both cases, was of a vegetable kind, called acetate of morphine; and it was alleged to have been administered in the last case in a tavern at St. Cloud, where Ballet and Castaing had gone to pass some days of pleasure or relaxation in the confidence of friendship. There was evidence that Castaing had acetate of morphine in his possession; but there was not the slightest proof that either of the Ballets died of poison, or that any thing obnoxious was administered by Castaing. Many of the witnesses for the prosecution fell into gross contradictions. How ever, after a trial which lasted several days, [See Law Cases P. 1*] the unfortunate physician was found guilty by the voices of only seven to five, and the court, adding its own numbers to the jury, and thereby constituting a legal majority, condemned him to death, besides heavy da mages for having destroyed the will. The proceeding exhibited a curious specimen of French justice. Hearsay-evidence in the third and fourth degree was admitted without scruple; when a difficulty arose, the prisoner was called upon to explain it, in order to assist in his own conviction; and lastly, when five out of twelve jurors acquitted him, the Court, instead of giving the prisoner the benefit of a doubt which had weighed with five men out of twelve, joined itself to the scanty majority, in order to award the penalty of death! The second trial was that of a Madame Boursier and her paramour for the murder of her hus band. Boursier, one of the richest grocers in Paris, died two or three months before in terrible agonies, attended with circumstances of strong suspicion. It was proposed, on his death, to open the body, His widow, however, opposed the proposal, and he was interred in the cemetry of Père La Chaise. The widow's grief dried up as soon as her husband's remains were interred; and she received the visits of Kostolo her Greck lover, whom her husband had forbidden the house. The suspicions of the family could no longer be suppress ed. Boursicr's brother procured an order from the proper authoris tics to disinter the body, and to examine the servant: and a great quantity of arsenic was detected in the contents of the stomach. The proof of death by poison was complete: but there was no evi dence to show, how, or by whom, the poison was administered. Both the lady and her friend were acquitted. [See Law Cases, &c. p. 19*.] The third trial was in some re spects more extraordinary than either of the others. The accused were two persons, mother and son, of the name of Lecouffe. The murder was committed on Madame Jerome, a beggar, in the Faubourg du Roule. The crime was con judge issued an order for his arrest, on the disclosure of facts stated by himself. The young man denied afterwards the crime, and declared that he made a false confession, to induce the judge to release his mother. However, additional evidence was collected: and the result of the trial was, that the son was declared guilty of the murder and robbery, and the mother, though acquitted of the assassination, was convicted of having concealed the articles stolen, with knowledge of the murder. Both the prisoners were condemned to death.* In the budget for the year 18223, the sum of 29,520,003 francs was set apart by the government for the maintenance of the French clergy. In addition to this, the communes voted 6,407,727, and the councils of the department 1,162,618 francs; so that the total of the funds appropriated to the sidered at first to be without motive, and therefore the more unnatural: but it was at last discovered, that the deceased had a watch, which she concealed in the straw of her bed, and which might have been the inducement of the criminals. The mother, Lecouffe, was first arrested, under circumstances of strong suspicion. During the time that the Judge d'Instruction was examining witnesses against her, the son came forward, and avowed himself the murderer. The account which he gave, both of his motives for committing the crime and his reasons for confessing it, were of the most singular kind. He told the Judge d'Instruction, that he wanted to marry, but could not find money to pay the expenses of his noce, or wedding; and that having heard of the old beggar's possessing the requisite sum in property or coin, he had taken away her life to get possession of it. He had then married, but soon began to repent In the course of this trial, M. of the assassination. His first idea, Dubois, an eminent physician, was called he said, was to expiate his crime upon to say whether he observed in the by suicide; and having heard that prisoner Lecoufle any appearance of mental alienation. In vain did the phybrandy, taken in sufficient quantity, sician protest that he saw no mark of would produce death, he had derangement; the counsel for the pribought a bottle as a certain poison. soner, with the consent of the president, Having, however, drank two glasses insisted upon the head of his client of this mortal liquor, he found that being examined. The doctor felt the murderer's head, which was perhaps he was the less disposed to die, and destitute of Spurzheim's protuberances therefore postponed the consum- -but, after groping all over and round mation of the process to the follow- about it, he solemnly declared that he could discover nothing remarkable in ing day. In the night-time, the the prisoner's skull. The following diashade of his father, his own guar-logue succeeded to this examination :dian angel, and two other angels, with whose physiognomy he was unacquainted, appeared before him, and enjoined him to confess his guilt. He therefore proceeded to the Judge d'Instruction, whom these messengers pointed out, and who happened to be the same person who was drawing up the evidence against his mother. The The President." What is the result of your examination ?” M. Dubois." The cranium of the dicates no kind of alienation." accused presents no deformity, and in Prisoner's Counsel.-" Can you say, that the accused never has experienced mental alienation?" have when young-before the bones of M. Dubois." It is possible he may the head joined; but at present there is no kind of deformity ;" clergy amounted to 37,089,745 francs, or about 1,483,589l. sterling. The aggregate number of the actual clergy was 35,676: The number of candidates for holy orders, in the seminaries, and in the Theological colleges, was 29,379. It would appear, that France was availing herself of the skill of our artisans. At the iron-works of Charenton, two hundred Eng lishmen were said to be employed; and new works for rolling iron were begun to be built by some of our countrymen on the banks of the Seine near Paris. Two iron steam boats plied regularly from Havre to the metropolis; and in several large cotton factories, the majority of the workmen were obtained from Scotland or England. SEL CHAP. XI. NETHERLANDS-Suppression of Roman Catholic Societies; Restrictions on Commerce with France; Session of the States General; Plans of Improvement: Military operations in Sumatra-DENMARK-SWEDEN: Measures of the Diet; Tenor of the King's speech on the Dissolution of it-BADEN-WEIMAR-HESSE CAS-PRUSSIA: Establishment of Provincial Assemblies: Prosecutions against Secret Associations: Restraints on the Press-WIRTEMBERG: Proceedings of the Diet against the German Observer : Refusal of Wirtemberg to concur in the approval by the Diet of the Proceedings of the Congress of Verona-BAVARIA: Measures taken at the recommendation of Austria-SWITZERLAND: Measures adopted at the Command of France and the Holy Alliance, against personal liberty and the Press: Swiss Diet: further Demands of the Holy Alliance-AUSTRIA-Russian ordinances against FreeMasons-Meeting of the Emperors of Austria and Russia at Czernowitz. IN N the beginning of the year, some trifling disturbances took place in the grand duchy of Luxemburg. Subsequently the government of the Netherlands issued a decree for the suppression of two Roman Catholic Societies. One was called "The Catholic Society of Belgium," and had its principal establishment at Brussels; the other, which took the more general title of "The Roman Catholic Society," had its chief seat at Utrecht. The ground for suppressing them was stated in the preamble of the decree to be" because they were formed without the knowledge and consent of the government, and because they had shown themselves, by divers circumstances, to be institutions, the further existence of which would influence the public tranquillity in a manner the extent of which could not be foreseen." The government of the Netherlands took no open part in the political measures of their neigh bours: they were wholly occupied with plans of internal improvement, and commercial regulation. Of the latter the most important was a decree, dated the 20th of August, regulating commercial intercourse with France. For the purpose of retaliating upon that country her own narrow prohibitory system, it augmented the duties on some of her productions, and forbade or fettered the importation of others of them.* This The following were the heads of this decree: Art. 1. The following articles, so far as they are of French origin or imported from France into our kingdom, shall be liable to the following import duties : Porcelain, white or painted, per 100lb., 30fr.; china of all kinds, 20fr.; earthenware, 15 per cent.; stockings, caps, mittens, and other articles of wearing apparel, of cotton, wool, or thread, either knit or wove, 20 per cent.; slates per 1,000, 3f. 2. The following articles of French |