The “pressure from without” on the Provisional Government becomes every day more severe and alarming as time rolls on: wages cease, stock falls in value, savings’ banks suspend payment, and all means of relief, save such as may be extorted from the fears of the government, disappear. The following is a late account of the state of matters in this important respect, from the French metropolis:— “France, crowded, impoverished, indebted, and straitened at all points, sees an opening in the exercise of a sovereign people’s will. It gets a glimpse of light and life through the Hotel de Ville. Hence this desperate competition for the national resources; and hence, we grieve to add, this wasteful and improvident distribution. “These deputations are a congenital evil. They began from the very moment the Provisional Government was proclaimed in the Chamber of Deputies. Its progress thence from the Hotel de Ville was a deputation. The members immediately began to thunder at the doors and clamour for admittance. A club orator has since boasted that, had it not been for this importunity, nothing would have been done—that not a step has been taken without external impulse—and that the people had to wait two hours, on that wonderful Thursday, before the Provisional Government would announce a republic. Since that moment the deputations may be said _never to have ceased in Paris_. For the first week they did not affect a distinctive character, but came as accident had thrown them together—_ten thousand from this quarter, and twenty thousand from that; sometimes the people, and sometimes the National Guard, or a medley of all sorts. In those days they were armed._ Lamartine had to turn out six times a-day, make gestures half an hour for a hearing, and then spend his brilliant eloquence on a field of bayonets and blouses. When the poet had sunk from sheer exhaustion, the indefatigable deputation adjourned to the Ministry of the Interior, and drew forth M. Ledru Rollin, who had not learned his way about the apartments, or the names of the officials, before he was required to promulgate, off-hand, a complete system for the internal administration of France. It is possible that his first thoughts might have been as good as his second on this subject; but the demand was nevertheless premature. The stream of deputation has since become less turbid, violent, and full; but it has been quite continuous, and, to all appearance, _Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis œvum_.