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Show OUR EUROPEAN LETTER. (From our regular correspondent.) This Republic is in a turmoil of political and financial excitement, the questions involved being purely of a domestic nature, but of the gravest importance. Gambetta's power in the State and his reputation as a leader, are hanging on the uncertain fate of his proposition for Constitutional revision, while the enormous speculations, which have flourished for the last five or six years, are tumbling like a row of bricks, and involving the strongest houses. Gambetta took office at a moment most unfavorable and with unnecessary bravado installed a chum cabinet of the most radical type in the actual direction of affairs. He opened the new year with the demand that the Senate should no longer be allowed to control the election of its own, life members-but that both houses should vote for them separately, and for the remainder who are now elected by a cumbrous machine more complicated and less expressive of the popular will than even our Electoral College, he demands that every five hundred electors shall choose a delegate to the Senatorial College and thus ensure an approximate accord with the popular will. A number of our city papers are drawing the attention of the police to the sad fact that a number of those brasseries de femmes are a nuisance and a public scandal. These establishments mostly abound in the Latin and other student quarters, where the customers are waited upon by women of the most depraved class, whose rouged cheeks and finery serve nevertheless to attract the young and inexperienced of the male customers. But these damsels not only draw custom, but are also instrumental in inducing customers to drink an unlimited supply of beer, absinthe, etc. Indeed, if some of the papers are to be believed, the waitresses in several houses are required to drink or affect to drink an average of 50 glasses of beer, 2 absinthes, and 15 liquors each before the establishment closes at two o'clock in the morning. They are treated to these by the customers, and the inevitable consequence is that most of the waitresses are intoxicated before midnight, and scenes ensue which it is needless to dwell upon. Of course the health of these unfortunate women must be affected by the life they lead, and the youths who request these brasseries are often ruined. The anniversary of King Victor Emanuel's death was celebrated at Rome on Monday with great manifestations of public feeling. As for the removal of the pope from Rome, his Holiness has no doubt by this time thought better of it. Better be first in Rome than second in Malta. True, he cannot command what was once so dear to the papal mind, temporal as well as spiritual power. But there is after all an influence to be exerted from Rome, which would never have the same effect elsewhere. His Holiness is said to be engaged in a history of the present condition of the papalry. This is to be published at Easter. August. Paris, France, Jan. 21, 1882. |