“The financial question, the state of trade and commerce, and the task of providing work and food for the people, with which the government has charged itself, are additional motives for seriousness, however. The credit of more than one banking-house is to-day said to be tottering. One firm, it is openly mentioned, has resolved to stop payment to-morrow. Trade is very bad. Work will soon become scarce, and distress and outcry must be expected; and with the knowledge of all these facts, and with the determination to do every thing possible for the relief of the working classes, possessed by the Provisional Government, this source of uneasiness is menacing to-day. I wish a more cheerful view of the situation of affairs were more general than it is, for it might check the departure of rich natives and foreigners from the capital, who _continue to retire from it in alarming numbers_, and, obviously, with no view to return, for we hear of sales of carriages and horses, for a _fifth part of the value_ they bore three weeks since. _Twelve thousand servants are said to be already discharged_ in Paris, and many houses or hotels in the fashionable quarters have become literally devoid of occupants.”—_Times_, 14th March 1848. That such a state of things must in the end terminate in domestic or foreign war must be evident to all who have looked even on the surface of past events. The causes which at present uphold, and must ere long destroy the Republican Government in France, are thus ably stated by the Paris correspondent of the same well-informed journal:—