Prussian State Loan

Trieste, 23 May. 6 p.m. We have received a copy of the following communication from Rear Admiral Albini, commander of the Sardinian, the combined Neapolitan and Venetian fleet, to the commander of the English steam frigate *Terrible*:
Most honoured Sir!
Roads of Trieste, 23 May.
While I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your esteemed communication of 23 May 1848, I have the further honour to inform you that the squadron of His Majesty the King of Sardinia, under my command, is in these waters solely for the purpose of securing our commerce against an Austrian naval force, which, being hostile to my government, it is my duty to combat.
I have the honour, etc., etc.
Rear Admiral, Commander of the Squadron
Albini.
We add here that Albini has also given a verbal undertaking to take no hostile measure against the city without prior notification.

7 p.m. The agitation of the morning hours has given way to calm, prudent activity, in order to prepare as well as possible for any eventualities that, according to the above declaration of the hostile admiral, at least will not be able to take us by surprise without warning. The military and the National Guard are displaying the greatest zeal, the former in fortifying the moles and occupying the streets and squares leading to the harbour, the latter in maintaining internal peace and order, which has not been in the slightest disturbed during the day. Lieutenant Field Marshal Gyulay is just now riding through the city and is everywhere accompanied by loud *Evvivas*.
The English steam packet *Antelope*, which was to have left yesterday with Sir Stratford Canning for Constantinople, is still in our harbour. (Journal d. Oestr. Lloyd.)

Belgium. X Brussels, 30 May. You still recall the time when Belgium was regarded *par excellence* as the land of Jacobinism – particularly in Prussia and in Russia. Nowhere had “shallow” liberalism constituted itself more purely than in the Belgian constitution. Even the upper chamber a chamber of election! No organically, naturally grown structuring principle, everything made – down to King Leopold. Thus grumbled the “historical school” and the *Berliner politisches Wochenblatt*. How all this has changed – within the last few weeks, of course. Princes are dispatched to study the Belgian constitution. Overnight it has become hoary and historically respectable, no less respectable than if it were as moth-eaten as the charter agreed upon at Runnymede by John Lackland with the English barons. Formerly one opened Virgil’s poems to prophesy the future. And today one opens the Belgian constitution, not to prophesy the future, but to render it superfluous. The Belgian constitution immunises against revolution. And as the *Politisches Wochenblatt* was wont to express itself: *Nous ne voulons pas la contrerévolution, mais nous voulons le contraire de la révolution.* With this motto and a more or less schoolboy translation of the Belgian constitution, people nowadays prove their vocation to be Lycurgus in lands where the dative is confused with the accusative. Wondrous healing powers slumber in the Belgian constitution. Look at Belgium! The ungodly waves of the Paris February Revolution have shattered against this marble cliff. They have flung the Lion of Flanders, M. Spilthoorn, into prison and the Belgian Republicans onto the sands, where they wither hopelessly. Wondrous Belgian constitution! The famine typhus and Flemish pauperism have found a tolerant asylum in it. But towards the February Revolution it was intolerant. And typhus and pauperism strike only wretched weavers and peasants. The February Revolution, on the other hand, could have struck Don Quixotes like Merode, ministers like Rogier, doctrinaires like Lebeau, demagogues like Verhaegen, and even a man like the Police Prefect Hody, who is everything in one: ex-Republican, Phalansterian, and rallied Leopoldist. Does one demand more of a constitution than that it preserves the powers it has called into being: electors, deputies, ministers, police prefects! Meanwhile, it has cost 70 million francs within a few weeks to protect the robustly healthy, immaculate Belgian constitution from the terrible French disease. But what are 70 million francs for a giant country of roughly three million inhabitants? A few per cent more typhus, a few per cent more pauperism, a few per cent more bankruptcies – more immortality. And on top of that, the assurance of the former old-clothes dealer, now Baron and Minister of War Chazal, that the army is the most glorious link in the chain of Belgian institutions. Is Belgium not rich enough to pay for its glory? And you can draw the final proof that the Belgian monarchy is the best of republics from the fact that all the official parties that had previously stood opposed to one another, aristocrats and liberals, de Theux and Rogier, have united peaceably to guarantee the people its constitution and to guarantee one another their mutual well-being. What a touching spectacle!

Italy. Verona, 24 May. In the localities lying along the road to Vicenza, heavy cannonading was heard during the past night. It lasted from 1 a.m. until towards 7 a.m. Yesterday it was already rumoured that the passage through the Borgo (suburb) of Santa Lucia had been forced by the Austrian troops. Fires are also said to have broken out at several points. Such lively resistance had hardly been expected. The junction with the Isonzo army has been partially effected. Artillery had been sent from here to reinforce it for the attack on Vincenza. (A. A. Z.)

Naples. Considering that those who had been elected as members of the Chamber of Deputies, on 15 May, as is evident from authentic documents, combined to assume the character of an *Assemblea unica rappresentante della Nazione*; that they created a Committee of Public Safety, under whose unconditional command the National Guard was to stand; considering that this was illegal, since the oath required by the law had not yet been taken by those members, etc., etc., the King of Naples (on the 17th) has dissolved the Chamber of Deputies. The number of citizens shot after their capture is said to be 9; the deputies, it is reported, in contradiction to other accounts, are imprisoned on the royal ships; a deputation of Neapolitans is said to have gone to Paris to request the help of the French Republic.
* The House of Bourbon has not yet reached the end of its glorious career.

French Republic. Paris, 29 May. The most contradictory rumours are still circulating about the sudden disappearance of the former director of the National Workshops, Emile Thomas, who was arrested by the government and taken to Bordeaux under escort of police officers.
The Minister of Public Works, Trélat, has issued a proclamation, in which he speaks of an “reorganisation” of the National Workshops that is to be carried out. He declares that many people have been enrolled who otherwise still had their own resources; others have been enrolled several times and receive multiple wages, and the consequence of this is that the government now finds itself obliged to have the lists newly drawn up and to admit only truly breadless, needy workers.
The *Moniteur*, on the other hand, already speaks quite differently. It first relates that the agitation among the workers employed in the Parc de Monceaux was calmed by the presence of Trélat, that M. Lalanne, the new director, has been installed, and then continues in the following terms: “The government cherishes the most sincere and most undeniable sympathies for the workers; they themselves cannot doubt it. If it thinks of dissolving the National Workshops, (not of reorganising them), which indeed cannot continue to exist any longer, it nevertheless knows what careful consideration is due to the sufferings of so many workers, workers who, for a long time without employment, have found in the state workshops a wage that is scarcely sufficient. A special commission, appointed by the National Assembly, is, at this moment, together with the commission of the executive power, engaged in finding new resources. The government has no thought of taking any measure with regard to the National Workshops, so long as safe and good employment is not offered to honest and industrious workers. But if, unhappily, disorder were to increase, if criminal intrigues were to spread among the workers and lead them astray, it would be the most urgent duty of the authorities to make use of the power entrusted to them and, by the most energetic measures, to secure the execution of the determinations which it has deemed necessary to take.”
One sees from this article how much has changed in Paris since 24 February. The style of this government article is already once more strongly reminiscent of the decrees of the “government of the King.” The workers are no longer treated as citizens standing on an equal footing with the minister, but as needy beggars. The National Workshops are not the first foundation, the first step, conditioned by momentary necessity, towards a change in the position of the worker vis-à-vis the capitalist, they are purely charitable institutions, and as such, of course, “they cannot indeed continue to exist.” That, in this altered state of things, and especially given Minister Trélat’s attempt to foist a supervisory, restricting commission of bourgeois on M. Thomas, M. Thomas, who had taken office under different conditions, tendered his resignation, is easy to understand. There is no need, therefore, to resort to the supposition that M. Thomas had committed significant embezzlements. German newspaper correspondents in Paris, themselves most superficially acquainted with the conditions and the persons, completely disoriented since the Revolution, are still so accustomed to the regime of bribery that they immediately scent an embezzlement behind every conflict. The vanquished of February, the great Paris stock exchange wolves, are likewise doing their best to accuse the Republicans of old stock, and particularly the radical faction among them, of every kind of fictitious embezzlements, extortions of money, etc. People are familiar with that in Paris and are not concerned about it.
Incidentally, M. Thomas, as emerges from a letter written by him to his mother, which by chance was conveyed correctly, was summoned to Trélat’s on the evening of the 26th, who informed him that he had to resign his post and depart on a mission to Bordeaux and Bayonne. The minister gave no further explanations; Thomas had to remain in the hotel, was not allowed to see his mother again, and departed at half past ten in the evening in the company of two police officers, who were to attest to the government that Thomas had really arrived in Bordeaux. By the way, he was treated very politely. As the probable motive for this treatment he himself states: “I have declared that as soon as measures were taken that I regarded as imprudent with respect to public tranquillity, I would tender my resignation so as not to be responsible for them; but that I would at least appeal to the National Assembly.”
The government will probably have to provide further information about this affair. Quite apart from personal collisions that may have occurred, Thomas’s removal is an entirely logical step on the part of the government majority. After Louis Blanc had been ousted from the Luxembourg, only Thomas remained in an official position at the head of a significant mass of workers. He belongs to the left wing, to the labour organisers, and naturally he had to be removed. Thus, for the workers, one conquest of the February days disappears after another.
The workers of the National Workshops are naturally still extremely agitated by this step of the government. The heads of the National Workshops declared that they could answer for nothing. The workers themselves are signing a petition to the commission of the executive power, in which they demand to know the reasons for the proceeding against Thomas, declare their attachment to him, and demand his reinstatement in the event that he has not been guilty of any kind of offence. It says: “The sacred right of election, which we conquered on the February barricades, gives us hope that you will have the goodness always to respect this right.”
For the rest, Paris was completely quiet on the 28th, and all the precautionary measures taken by the authorities proved to be entirely superfluous.
— At the head of the National Workshops, by a decision of the Minister of Public Works, there now stands a directing commission, which will take all necessary measures to reduce the costs that burden the state, without, however, contravening the sacred principle of the guarantee of labour! Whether M. Trélat really believes that to be possible, or whether he merely throws the phrase about the guarantee of labour to the workers to pacify them, we do not wish to decide. The commission consists entirely of experts and has as its President M. Boulage, General Secretary at the Ministry of Public Works; as its Secretary M. Lalanne, the deputy of the deposed Thomas.
— The Revolutionary Club, over which Barbès presided and which has held no sessions since the 15th, was reopened the day before yesterday. By acclamation the prisoners Barbès and Raizan were reappointed President and Vice-President. Three to four hundred members were present.
— Caussidière is again coming forward as a candidate for the National Assembly in Paris. He promises the publication of a memoir on his administration.