22 AUGUST 1874, Page 5

THE ELECTION FOR CALVADOS.

N see no use in denying, or attempting to explain away,

V the significance of last Sunday's election in Calvados. It is a Bonapartist victory, and one of the most menacing kind. It may be quite true, as asserted, that M. Guizot, who resides in the Department, advised all Orleanists to vote for the Bona- partist candidate, though we can perceive neither motive nor justification for such an apparent act of treachery ; that M. de Broglie nominated Bonapartist Mayors, though the Govern- ment, out of 760 Mayors, admits only sixty as its own ; and that the successful candidate, at the eleventh hour, 4‘ accepted" the Septennate, which was also accepted, much more honestly, by his Republican rival. It is certainly true that M. Delaunay was an excellent candidate, having been Prefect of the Department, and in that capacity made himself most popular with the electors. A good Prefect, of any party, is always a good candidate. The average French elector, as we have repeatedly pointed out, does not merely tolerate a Prefect, but likes him ; regards him as the representative of the province in his dealings with the Government, looks to him for protection against the rich, and is frequently, as in the case of Janvier de la Motto, too proud of his energy and suc- cess to care much about his personal character. Nobody can contend in America against a successful General, and in France a Prefect is, in his own department, as visible as a General in the States. The elector likes in fact, to be governed so that he feels the government, and if. Delaunay not only governed, but governed very well. Nevertheless, in spite of all those extenuations, the fact remains that in one of the richest Departments of France, a department which had seen the Prussians a department where Republicanism in 1871 con- trolled half the electors, and two years ago was in the ascendant, a great majority of those who vote consider an open profession of Bonapartism no disqualification in their representative. They acquiesce, as far as votes can do it, in the restoration of the Empire under the Napoleonic dynasty. M. Delaunay, like everybody else, accepts the Septennate in words, because, like everybody else, he knows that for the present Marshal MacMahon cannot be dis- missed; but no one could be a more open Bonapartist, or have brought his policy, the submission of a plebiscite in order to restore the Empire, more clearly home to the minds of the people. He stood as Bonapartist, he was abused as Bonapartist, he succeeded as Bonapartist, and every new analysis of the figures does but increase the significance of his triumph. He drew his majority out of the Legitimists, and the mass which in 1872 declined to vote. He had six times the vote of the Legitimists, one and a half times the vote of the Republicans, and 6,000 more than the vote of both the other parties combined. Finally, while the Republicans had remained stationary at 28,000, the Bonapartists had increased in two years from 3,000 to 40,000, or more than 1,200 per cent. It is true that 40,000 electors, or thereabouts, abstained from voting ; but if we assign half to the Republicans and half to the Bonapartists, the majority is the same; or if we consider them uninterested, then they are of those who will acquiesce in almost any arrangement, the Empire among the rest. It is not the election of a Bonapartist which signifies so much ; it is the acquiescence of the majority in Bonapartism, and the impression of this acquiescence is only deepened by the number of abstentions. If in less than four years after Sedan the population of a department traversed by Prussian cavalry 'will not take the trouble to vote against the friend of the s• e'gime which brought the invaders there what conclusion is possible, except that in their own minds they have condoned or agreed to forgive the authors of the events which they cannot have forgotten ? It is useless, in the face of such figures, to assert that Calvados is not, for the moment, at all events, Bonapartist to the extent of acquiescing in Bonapartism, the only question of real interest being the cause.

We believe the causes to be two,—distrust of the power of the Assembly to establish any Government, and dislike of the form which happens to be temporarily in existence. The

powerlessness or the Assembly has worn out the patience of the most impatient race in the world. The electors, it begins to be clear, and more especially the rural electors, not only admitted the right of the Assembly to be Constituent, but expected it to constitute, and to constitute something which, in theory at all events, was intended to last. When its labours were first commenced, it might, so far as Calvados was concerned, have constituted the Monarchy. Out of eight representatives, five were Legitimists of the stricter type, and each of them received 72,000 votes, or nearly double the number given to M. Delaunay last Sunday. That did not imply, of course, that Calvados was thirsting to reconstitute the throne of St. Louis ; on the contrary, it was thirsting for nothing except immediate peace ; but it did imply that the department trusted local.men of eminence more than anybody else, and was not deterred from trusting them by the thought that they might when peace was made re-establish a throne. The opportunity was lost at Bordeaux, M. Thiers was appointed President, the Assembly was expected to maintain the ironclad Republic, and again Calvados acquiesced, electing M. Paris, a Republican of the Ultra-Conservative sort—he followed M. Target, and voted the downfall of M. Thiers—by 28,000 votes. The Assembly, however, instead of founding a Conservative Republic, appointed an ad interim government called the Septennate, and after two years of incessant debate, intrigue, and proposal, avowed itself in July unequal to the task of founding any permanent government whatever. This time, therefore, Calvados did not acquiesce, but despairing of the Assembly, elected the candidate who least respected its autho- rity, who looked beyond it to a plebiscite, and who promised. to recall a re'gime which would leave to Assemblies very little power. Calvados, as we read its successive votes, has no especial hatred of Legitimacy, if the legitimate King would accept existing facts as, in 1870, Henry V. was expected to do ; has no dislike to a Conservative Republic, if only it will get itself constituted, but has a particular dislike for an Assembly which has proved itself inefficient. Its people demand from their representatives, before all things, effectiveness, the capacity not only to govern—for the Assembly, with all its short-comings, has done that—but to found, which the Assem- bly has by repeated votes proclaimed itself unable to attempt. It has not founded a Government, but only sanctioned a Pro- visional Administration, and Calvados, though it accepts, dis- likes that method of postponing everything to the maintenance of order. Nothing can be more evident than the slight hold the Septennate has obtained upon the affections or even the respect of the people. Marshal MacMahon's personal power is not consistent with the restoration of the Empire, any more than with the restoration of the Monarchy, but it is consistent with the consolidation of the Republic. Yet the people vote for the Empire, which must destroy the Presidency, though it may use Marshal MacMahon as a soldier ; and not for the Republic, which, with the faintest change of title, might have placed him beyond attack except from a Revolution. They feel that the Septennate has in it every quality which made the Empire oppressive, while it has not the apparent permanence which was in the eyes of Frenchmen the compensation for oppression. If France is to be governed by a Marshal supporting a riginze of repression, why not by an Emperor, under whom repression would have some meaning, would be intended to secure a throne which, while secure, would preserve external order? Moreover, this Septennate, besides being only a makeshift, seems not to be a makeshift of the effective kind. Ex-Marshal Bazaine has escaped. Consequently the Septennate is either in league with the Bonapartists, in which case it is a mere sham ; or it is unable to secure the obedience of its own gaolers, to retain in the strongest prison in Europe a man condemned to death by military law. The electors despise in- effectiveness of that sort as they despise also the ineffectiveness of the Assembly, and they consequently vote for the regime which, though more ineffective than either, appears to them to possess the elements of strength. How far Calvados now re- presents the remainder of France we are unable to decide, but of this we may be sure,—that if the Assembly continues its career, if it will neither constitute nor dissolve, the next Assembly will contain a majority of Bonapartists.