CXIII. Le passé
CXIII. The Past
President Polk's message on Oregon and tariffs, Tsar Nicholas I's Vatican audience, and the opening of the French legislative session dominate this issue.
- Tsar Nicholas I knelt and prayed for fifteen minutes at the tomb of Saint Peter, then embraced Pope Gregory XVI in a private 80-minute audience that may reshape the status of Catholics in Russia and Poland.
- President Polk, in his message to Congress, attacked the 1842 tariff as anti-democratic, noting it passed the Senate by a single vote and effectively imposes duties of up to 200 per cent through fictitious minimum valuations.
- The Anti-Corn Law League raised £60,000 — roughly 1.5 million francs — in a single Manchester sitting, with twenty-one merchants subscribing £1,000 each while Cobden filled a lull in donations by giving an impromptu speech.
- The Gymnase-Dramatique announces for 30 December the première of Eugène Scribe's comedy-vaudeville La Foi mutuelle, with Rose Chéri playing Christian of Denmark.
- Construction workers in Bruges, digging beneath a former Dominican convent, unearthed a vault containing 17 monks' coffins, one holding a decapitated bishop still wearing his mitre, ring, and holding a gilt crosier.
- Nineteen-year-old recidivist Édouard Compagnon, serving his fourth prison term, fashioned a stylet from a three-cornered file and stabbed lay brother Frère Pascal six times; his appeal against the death sentence was rejected today.
- A Paris court ordered soldier Méré to repay a former companion 1,000 francs with 5 per cent interest, ruling that a written acknowledgement of debt overrode the defence that its cause was concubinage.
- A posthumous complete edition of Casimir Delavigne's works has appeared from bookseller Didier, including the unfinished tragedy Julien, whose fragments suggest it might have been his greatest triumph.