12 APRIL 1873, Page 2

The chief subject of difference at present between the moderate

and the extreme Left is the competing candidature of M. de Remand (the Minister for Foreign Affairs), and it Barodet, the Mayor of Lyons, who represents the cause of the suppressed Lyons municipality, for the vacant seat for the City of Paris. The President is trying to persuade all the Moderates to support M. de Remusat, and if he continues the contest, a good many moderate Republicans will un- doubtedly support him. At the same time M. Barodet is un- questionably the candidate of the masses,—whom it is not easy to defeat in a Paris election. Undoubtedly M. Barodet is identified more or less with the rather revolutionary proceedings of the Lyons Committee of Public Safety and of the municipal body which succeeded it, but this will serve, instead of injuring, him with the Paris electors,—the majority of whom probably still favour the Commune. It seems pretty evident that M. Gam- betta regrets the choice of M. Barodet, and would have preferred a more moderate Republican, and his organ insists that the choice of M. Barodet is not a declaration of war against it Thiers and his administration. Still, M. Thiers obviously so regards it, and is not sorry to appear as the guardian of Conser- vative Republicanism against the violence of the Radical Repub- licans. That, indeed, has always been his cue.