I have the honour to enclose to Your Lordship herewith in original and translation a Report given in yesterday's official Gazette of the proceedings in a plenary meeting of the Federal Council which took place on the 5th Instant, at which The Imperial Chancellor was present in person.

The prospect of the Elections for the German Diet has determined the Leaders of the National Liberal Party in South Germany to endeavour to arouse their adherents from the condition of apathy into which they had lately fallen, and to define more accurately the characteristic attributes which should distinguish the Party as a whole, and as freed from those minor divisions which have so lamentably weakened it during the last few years.

On the occasion of the New Year, the Saxon Press has spoken in very optimist language of the state of Europe, as guaranteeing a continuance of peace. The Germans seem to have a belief in the existence of a separate diplomatic faculty, to whose agency they ascribe events due more to the natural evolution of affairs than to the forethought and contrivance of statesmen. Prince Bismarck is credited with the monopoly of this force, with which he regulates at will the European alliances, bringing the continent into an international system controlled by Germany. The feeling that the Reichskanzler has created a German hegemony in Europe, is expressed in the ‘Dresdner Nachrichten’ in some remarks of which the following is the purport.

I have the honor to report that three British subjects have been tried and convicted here under the following circumstances.

During the night of the 9th–10th of February a drunken affray took place at the Stuttgart railway terminus between four young foreigners (three of them English) and some railway porters. No one was much hurt.

The Munich journals have lately reproduced a note published by the official Journal of the Empire regarding a resolution taken by the Bundesrath in its’ session of the 5th instant on the subject of the probable establishment of an Imperial Ministry responsible to the Parliament.