ERUPEAN ITEMS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 1169, 16 November 1871, Page 3

ERUPEAN ITEMS.

(From the Spectator.) The Liberals have been beaten again at Truro, where a Conservative, Colonel Hogg, the Chairman of the Metropolitan Board of Works, has gained for his party the second seat held till now by the Ministerialist Captain Vivian, who has just accepted a permanent appointment in the War office. Truro is now, therefore, represented by two Tories. Mr Augustus Smith, the potentate of the Scilly Isles, having ascertained towards the end of last week that if the Liberals went to the poll with two candidates, a Ministerialist and a Radical, they would have no chance of success, retired, and Mr Jenkins, author of " Ginx's Baby," remained the only Liberal candidate. In the meantime, Colonel Hogg came forward to represent the Conservatives, and Mr Jenkins did what he could to undo the effect of his violent and mischievous attack on Mr Gladstone — the " Ananias and Sapphira" letter addressed to the Daily News — and gain spme of the moderate Liberals to his side, but almost without effect. He got only 30 votes more than the Radical who competed for the seat with Captain Vivian in 1868, and Colonel Hogg, who himself polled but a very small Conservative poll, was returned by a majority of 169 (605 against 436). Mr Jenkins said, on the return ot' the poll being declared, first that Truro had disgraced itself, and next that the victory of principle had been on the Liberal side, — inconsistent oracles which will hardly wipe out the recollection of his famous libel on the Liberal leader who, whatever his failings, had done more for the popular cause in the three years of power than his predecessors did in twenty-three. Mr Jenkins has good stuff in him. If he will learn modesty and loyalty, and respect for the Ninth Commandment in matters political, he will do. At present we cannot pretend to regret his defeat. The Queen has been even more seriously ill than we knew last woek. She has had bad sore-throat, followed by a formidable glandular swelling under the arm, the reduction of which has much weakened her. On this the Times waxes effusively penitent for ever having urged her to do more than she did, and wauts to persuade the whole nation that it should now bewail its sin in complaining of her inactivity, and henceforth grant all the younger children's portions without a word of further grumbling for the rest of the reign. We do not quite see it. Nobody can feel sincerer concern for the Queen's trying illness, or sincerer pleasure in her recovery than ourselves ; but it is surely a mistake to assume tbat a serious illness justifies every valetudinarian feeling of the previous six months, on the hypothesis that it must then have been lurking in the system. On that principle, the Prince Conßort must have felt the languor and inability to work, to which, if he felt them, he never yielded, long before his fatal illness ; and Lord Palmerston and Sir Cornwall Lewis would have been justified in living in retirement rather than dying in harness. At this critical period for the throne, there is every need for the energy of character which the Queen is known to possess, for a great example of earnestness and disinterestedness at the head of society. We should grieve to think that the

Queenly late serious* illness should be made the occasion for persuading her that she owes it to> herself to take even leas part than before in public affairs. After all, energy quite as often drives off disease as brings it on ; and even Queens are liable ■pnoptevvitamvinendi perdere ccntsasi The Aldershot Army has been engaged during the week in marching, camping, drilling, and outpost practice. The three divisions have hitherto worked separately, each in its own area, but now two have united, south of the Hog's Back, against the third, to which is entrusted the duty of barring the routes to London. Somewhere, in tho angle between Aldershot, Guildford, and £iphook, severe actions will be fought during the coming week, and the tactical skill of the officers and the discipline- and training of the men will be tested. Hitherto, the divisions have not acted strictly as if they were in the presence of an enemy : now we assume they will be less lax. Great defects, crying loudly for serious treatment, are visible to the experienced eye ;. but on the whole, the experiment — tried for the first time, bo it remembered — is- full of encouragement, and the re/ults are creditable to the army. Th« Russians, however, as we learn from an account of their manoeuvres^ are far more in earnest, and mimic war more closely than we, even to the extent of breaking bridges and tearing up lines of rail! The Imperial meeting at Gastein has been followed by a second Imperial meeting afc Salzburg, and though we have, of course no trustworthy, information of the drift of the understanding arrived at, except from rumour and from the significant fact that the German Government has, told the Roumanians that Roumania has no existence as a separate European State, and must look to Turkey to represent her interests abroad, universal rumour seems concurrent on the point that Germany and Austria are disposed to unite, very cordially, to maintain the peace of Europe against either Russia, or France, or both, — that Turkey has an understanding with them which has led.to the administering of the Roumanian snub, and that Italy, anxious about Rome, has given in her adhesion to this league of peace. "Whether the league is not also intended to bring about mutual understanding and cooperation against the revolutionary party, wherever found, against the Communists of Germany, the possible rebels among the chequered elements of the Austrian federation, and the Mazzinians in Italy, there is no distinct information. It is, however, certain tbat the tendency of this league, as of all leagues which make rulers feel more independent of their subjects, will be to encourage repression. France and Italy have had a sharp misunderstanding on the question of a French convent at Rpme over which France has a sort of protectorate, and into the affairs of which the Italian Government proposed to inquire. It seems that the protection which France interposed was resented by Italy, the more because it came through the ambassador to the Papal Court, the Due d'Harcourt, who has np;relations at all with the Italian Government, and no duties which can admit of his approaching them. The regular French Ambassador to the King of Italy, the Due de Choiseul, was, however, not at Rome, and in his absence the remonstrance, which should have been made by his subordinate, was made by the ambassador to the Papal Court, the Due d'Harcourt. But whatever the misunderstanding was, it appears to have been removed. TFhe French Government is said to have declared that it haß no intention whatever of interfering in any way to restore the Pope, though it had felt great anxiety for the guarantee of his absolute spiritual independence ; and on the other hand, the Italian Government seems to have conceded the French claim to protect the convent in question. Still Italy no doubt feels that she,; has more to fear for her new capital from France than from any other European power ; and hence her eagerness to secure a complete understanding with Germany while France is still paralysed. The message in which M. Thiers proposed to the Assembly to take itß holiday, and which was read out in a very mournful manner by M . Jules Simon, was certainly one of the poorest

and asnsi? pompous of his productions, and v?as- received with a good deal of laughter at parts of the composition. The President appeared very anxions to repudiate the idea that the Government wished to escape from the supervision' and restraint of the Assembly, and elaborated his denial in a metaphor which provoked general laughter :" — "Rest assured it is not our wish to withdraw from under your control. W«e ask you to continue this control, we could wish that your eyes should not leave us for a single moment, for you would be but the witnesses of an incessant application to the difficult work of re-organising the country, you would see in us devoted labourers sinking under fatigue, but moved by that unique interest which animates the crew of a ship in danger. Fortunately, gentlemen, we may already perceive the port looming on the horizon. This sight cheers and sustains our hearts. . Let us be united, let let us work undisturbed, and under your guidance the State will once more find a country of order, liberty, and well-being,, and will add to all its ancient glories that of having saved itself from the greatest and most threatening of shipwrecks." The conception of M. Thiers, " with eye like a skipper's cocked- up at the weather," commanding a crew sinking with fatigue, — and M. Jules Simon's funereal tones elaborated this pathetic suggestion till ib became positively tragic, — struck the Assembly as infinitely ludicrous* and the peroration of tho document was received with general mirth. M. Theirs should beware of writing, especially when another than himself reads. He is so consummate an actor as to be natural, but then you cannot act to an absent audience. Prince Bismarck is always willing to reduce the strength of the Germanarmy of occupation to 50,000 men, and to evacuate immediately the Jura, the Cote dOr, the Aube, and the Aisne, on condition that the-French will ratify a commercial convention which prepares the way for the gradual treatment of Alsace and Lorraine in the French tariff as completely foreign territories. On Thursday the French Minister of Foreign Affairs declared to the Assembly that " notwithstanding the desire to favour the noble inhabitants of Alsace and Lorraine, we have been unwilling to raise well-founded grievances among our own commercial establishments," consequently he proposed to the Assembly to consider and declare urgent a Convention to provide that Alsatian and Lorraine products will be admitted till the end of the present year on paying a quarter of the frontier dues ; then, till the end of the first half of 1872, on paying half the frontier dues ; and then, till the end of 1872, " there will be reciprocity for French manufactures." Or, as we understand it, the Germans are offering the strongest inducements to the French to begin as soon as possible to treat Alsace and Lorraine like foreign countries in their tariff, under the impression, we suppose, that this will tend to alienate those provinces from France by severing their interests from hers. This continual reiteration that if we hurt nobody, nobody will hurt us, can have no real meaning, unless it be this — should the time ever come when England would be called upon in honour and humanity to give offence abroad, we ought not to do so for fear of suffering for it. Is that what our statesmen really believe P If it is, it is a degrading and evil doctrine. If it is not, and they only mean to say " be quiet and modestaslongas you honourably can," they need hardly make such an ostentatious parade of so very humble a maxim.