NOTES FROM PARIS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIII, Issue 22, 25 September 1885, Page 21

NOTES FROM PARIS.

(From the Nation.')

FbenCHMEN are fully persuaded that Ireland is soon to have a Parliament of her own, and the best writers maintain that it is not only the duty of England to give her one. but also that it is dans son interet. The letter of Sir Charles Duffy, which has been read and commented on here, confirms them in their conviction. Mr. Herbert Gladstone's statement in favour of such a measure has not passed unseen, either, and good articles are being written to-day on this subject.

It is no longer possible to disregard public opinion abroad, for the time has come when the rights of nations cannot be set aside with impunity. Les nations sont solidaires les lines avec les autres is rt last a truth. What is said in France and ia otber Continental countries on the Irish and other important questions is therefore ■important, and I shall make it my duty to give extracts on the from the leading papers. To-day I give an extract from an article by the academician, John Lemoinne, who was so often unjusf to Ireland, on a subject that, thank God, does not concern our country, except in as much as it does the nation by which she is governed. M. Lemoinne says :—": — " We beg to reassure our readers. We have no intention of returning to the narrations given by the English paper the name of which has become for some days a kind of persecution for the public here. The scandales de Londres, as they are called, have stunned the people in the streets of all the large cities in the world ; it is only in the town in which they originated that they are put under a bushel — concealed, in fact. This is a very curious example of that spirit of discipline which characterises English formalitme, and of that conspiracy of silence organised in a Press that is accustomed to say everything, and to publish it with unlimited liberty. The journals of all parties have established a sort of cordon sanitaire around the audacious papsr that dared to lift up le vet&ment le phis intime de la pudeur nationale, and to show la favitusE blanchenr d % Albion to the profane eyes of foreigners. We are inclined to think that morality is for very little in this reserve. The English are less offended and less humiliated by the thing itself than by the publicity given to it. It is for them an affair of wounded vanity, of pruderie taken in the fact— en flagrant delit. They well know they have foul linen, but they wash it en famille. This is a sentiment we cannot entirely blame, but when people have the conscience of their own infirmities they should not at every moment thank God that they are not like the others."

After entering further into the subject the ex-admirer of England and everything English says :

" The movement may become a dangerous oae, but it ought not to have been treated with the systematic silence in which the wealthy Press wanted to hide it. Kespectable people commit perhaps a grave imprudence in organising and persisting in this conspiracy of silence. It will be thought that they are concerned iv tbe affair."

This, from John Lemoinne, is hard hitting; but since the war he has been losing gradually his aimiration for the nation he so often praised to the bkies, and has sometimes gone even so far as to do justice to Irish patriotism. He is not tho only remarkable wnter brought roun4 to a just cause by facts.

At the " concovrs " of the Conserva ory a young giil, still in her te ns, has astonished and charmed the whole audience and the judges themselves; Her hinging of the part of Ophelia in Ambtoise Thomas' opera of " Hamlet " (he was one of the judges) was fully equal if not supeiior to anything heard on the stage. She is declared to be a star tie la j>rrmiere grandeur — a future Patti, or, lather, Mahbian. Of course the first prize was granted to her. She gloves in the nami' of Mooie. and hails from the country ot the national poet.

We have had murders too horrible to relate this week. Marchamion, it is Siid, will be executed this week in the interior ot the Uoquette prison. Yesterday Foigeand was executed at Bordeaux. He walked to the scaffold deploring the infamy cast on his family, but affirming that there was uo premeditatiou in the murder he committed. Pel, the watchmaker, is to be tried again, but this tin^e O'Uy for crematiug his servant. Pickpockets are spending their holidays in Pans, and are doing a lively trade among the inuocen'. foreigneis and sUhi-seers wandering about the city. A regular collection of English novels aud other works are now to be found in the piiho-i*, with a few religions works for the benefit of the light-handed people, who, nine out ot ten, are of British oiigiu, \v\th now now and iheu a pooi [iisWm.in pacing his debt for having talleu into b<ul company. .1. P. L.