TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE GREAT FRENCH ELECTION.
BEFORE our next issue appears the great French election, upon which so much depends in the imme- diate future, will have come and gone, and Europe will know in a general way whether France is or is not to be a centre of disturbance. There will, no doubt, be many second ballots ; but second ballots tend, as a rule, to the advantage of the stronger side ; and, unless there should be an approach to a tie, an unusual event in French politics, the result will by Wednesday be tolerably clear. The ablest Frenchmen are uncertain as to that result, and it is folly for any foreigner to attempt to predict it ; we can only say with safety that as yet the confidence of the Republicans appears to be a little overweening. We should not, if we were they, like this strange torpor on the eve of such an event. They rely too much upon M. Constans, who will hardly dare to stuff the ballot-boxes, and who cannot in any other way seriously affect the returns. They have themselves given up their talk about the Exhibition, for they now admit that they will lose Paris, and it is Paris which the Exhibition is supposed to have enriched, and there- fore conciliated. They are compelled, therefore, to denounce dictatorships, which is waste of power, as the question at issue is between Parliamentarism and personal govern- ment, and to scold at General Boulanger, who has been used as a standard by men quite as well aware as they are of his personal defects. The best hope of the Republicans is the reluctance of the peasantry to commence another Revolution, and their gravest cause of apprehen- sion the wide diffusion of the belief that the men they favour and. follow are incurably corrupt. That scene in M. Floquet's electoral meeting, when two of his chosen speakers were silenced by charges of personal corruption, and compelled to leave the hall, was singularly significant. The peasants are penetrated with the idea that the ex- travagant expenditure, of which they are fully conscious, is due to direct pillage ; while the Parisians have been fed for two years with a long succession of scandalous reports, which represent every leading Republican, except M. Carnot, as having grown suddenly rich by misusing his official opportunities. Which of these two feelings is the stronger it is impossible to say ; but it is on their com- parative strength that the verdict of the silent masses will to-morrow in great measure turn.
The ballot keeps its secret well, and it is more useful to consider what the immediate result of a popular decision against the Government would be. M. Jules Ferry says the effect would be immediate Civil War, and M. Jules Ferry is the strongest statesman in France ; but it is diffi- cult to believe that in so speaking he is not addressing the gallery. Where is the Civil War to come from ? The reorganised Army, with its vast numbers, its revived discipline, and its possession of all fortresses, holds France in a grip which is practically irresistible. No city, not even Paris, could keep up an insurrection for twelve hours, and the country districts are as powerless as if they were occupied by Germans. The people cannot rise against the Army, and the Army will not divide. It never has divided since the First Revolution, and there is not a particle of evidence that it will not obey the verdict of the people. The soldiers are the children of the voters, and their officers, though fretful with the Republic, which they think too tame, are not Spaniards, to make a Revolu- tion on their own account. They will obey the Minister of War, and unless he sanctions a coup d'etat against the decision of Universal Suffrage, there will be no manifesta- tion of military strength. M. de Freycinet is not the man even to think of striking such a blow, and if he did, the result would be, not a Civil War, but a dictatorship of some favourite General. There no longer' exists in France a force which can resist the Army ; and the policy of the Army is to obey the law, whatever the consequences may be. The law confides ultimate power to the Assembly ; and while the Army will obey the Chambers when organised, the people must. We look upon that threat of Civil War as a flash of rhetoric, and expect to see the old Government or the new one—M. Carnot or General Boulanger—installed in power without a shot being fired.
Nor can we attach more importance to the argument which the Times' correspondent so incessantly repeats, that the Senate will prove a rock upon which the Revolution will break. The impact of a verdict given by a nation shatters even rocks ; and this one has no particular tenacity. It is. quite true, and very remarkable, that Gambetta's prophecy has proved correct, and that the Senate is "the citadel of the Republic," the majority of its members being such earnest devotees of that form of government that they recently condemned General Boulanger to imprisonment for life, for plotting to overthrow it. It is also true that its legal position, if it chooses to be independent, is singularly strong, as the Senators have the right to refuse to summon the Constituent Assembly ; and the right, if they do summon it, to sit and vote in it en masse ; and the power, if they agree with President Carnot, to order con- tinuous dissolutions of the Chamber until they get one to their mind. Those powers, however, are very like the power of our own House of Lords to arrest all legislation, even the Appropriation Act, or to compel a dissolution just after a General Election,—they are magnificent pre- rogatives, if it were only possible to exercise them. The Senate has no moral foothold except the idea that, like the Chamber, it represents France; and what is the value of that when the electors of France have just solemnly decided —as on the hypothesis of the Opposition gaining a majority they would have decided—that it does not ? The Senators know perfectly well that in such a contingency the victors will not shrink from insisting on the fruits of their victory, and that the choice for them lies between acquiescence and Revolution. They are not men who want Revolution, but men who desire order and a peaceful reign of law. Many of them are rich, a majority are elderly, and all, with the exception of a few fanatics like M. Tolain, are more afraid of anarchy than of any conceivable form of repressive government. They may try to make terms for themselves, such as a continued existence with restricted powers ; but once satisfied that a national verdict has been delivered, they will abstain from resisting it, and so will President Carnot. The losses of the President will be much greater than those of the Senate, and his powers are at least as formidable; but he is as liable as M. Gr6vy to "dismissal,"—that is, to a forced resignation,—and he has no strength whatever out- side the law. He is not a General, there is no party in the State which follows his lead, and, though he is respected for his integrity, he is not a, necessary statesman. The impact of the vote will be all the greater because the single issue before the electors is contained in the word "Revision ;" and if the verdict is "Yes," Revision there will be, the legal obstacles in the way melting like iron before sufficient heat. We believe that verdict to be absolutely doubtful, with a balance of probability in favour of that which exists ; but if it should be Boulangist, the Boulangists will be supreme within a month, and M. Naquet will be the guiding brain of France.
It may be fancied, as we have so often had to argue with the anti-Boulangists, that we wish Boulangism to triumph ; but that is by no means the case. The Republic has disappointed us, especially by its disposition to perse- cute and to treat belief in the supernatural as an offence against the State, and we have the English dislike of senseless financial extravagance. We are inclined, too, to believe, if the whole truth is to be spoken, that there is a. foundation for the charges of peculation, and that too many of the Republican party in France, as in America, legislate and administer with a keen eye to their own material interests. It is difficult to believe in the stain- less probity of men who, inheriting nothing and earning nothing, at once grow rich in office. But the Republic is a form of government under which all these evils may be cured ; and if the people would but do their duty, and reject the talking rascals who offer themselves for election, we should prefer the Republic to any of its alternatives. There is nothing in the history of Boulangism which suggests financial purity, and though it would pro- bably leave the Church alone, it would do so in consequence of a bargain not wholly to the Church's credit. The pro- mised " consideration " for clerical support must be the revival of the Temporal Power. We greatly fear, too, that un- known quantity, the foreign policy of General Boulanger, and think it may turn out specially unfavourable to this country, as well as threatening to the peace of Europe. Our bias, therefore, if anything, is against him ; but the duty of journalists is to discuss facts as they are, and that is not to be done by assuming in the face of evidence that the internal coalition against the French Republic has no chance. It has a very excellent chance, unless the peasantry, wiser than they usually are when, after eighteen years, the cycle comes round for revolution, decide that they will improve the means they have, and not set sail once more in quest of a land where all material things go well, and everybody is virtuous, and religion is unknown.
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