GENERAL BOULANGER ONCE MORE.
lATHY General Boulanger should have been victorious. in three departments after being beaten in two only the other day, it is hard to say. Perhaps if we knew the exact circumstances in each case, the difficulty would disappear. Political parties are differently distributed in. different parts of France, and the three departments. which went to the poll on Sunday had before given the Reactionists a majority. The different elements in the Reactionary party may also be differently distributed in different constituencies. Wherever the Bonapartists are strong, General Boulanger is likely to succeed ; but where the Royalists are strong, his success is by no means certain. For the Royalists are now divided into two well.. marked groups. There is one group, represented by the Gaulois, which holds that at present the business of the Royalists is simply destruction. They have to overturn the existing Republic. There is another group, represented by the Figaro, which holds that the Royalists should be con- structive as well, and that the fact that General Boulanger is hostile to the Republic as it is, does not entitle him to the support of the friends of the Comte de Paris. According to the one group, any stratagem is profitable, provided that it be used against the Republic. According to the other, the Royalists will only march -wisely if they march under their own flag and under their own leader. Neither section would be content to have General Boulanger for its ruler ; but the one thinks that it may safely pretend to be content with him, whereas the other prefers to proclaim its hostility to him from the first. According as one or other of these sections happened to predominate among the Royalists of a particular depart- ment, General Boulanger might win or be defeated.
One thing, however, is clear. General Boulanger is still an important personage in France. He has not been put out of -court by his recent misfortunes. If his reverses a short time back meant that France had turned against him, his successes last Sunday meant that France had come back to him. If, as is more probable, his reverses only meant that a part of France was hostile to him, his subsequent successes show that a larger and more important part of France is on his side. No by-elections will decide the question finally. Only a General Election can give us the exact measure of General Boulanger's popularity. But the very fact that in the interval it will be im- possible to speak positively on the question may of itself have an important bearing on French affairs. It will be always open to the enemies of France to say that General Boulanger is the coming man. Even if he were defeated in other by-elections, it would still be possible to say this, because defeat has been followed by victory in his past -career, and may again be followed by it. There is no reason, however, to suppose that General Boulanger will run any such risk. Probably it will be out of his power to do so, for by-elections are not likely to be permitted during the last year of the Chamber ; and even if it were in his power to offer himself again, he would have the good -sense not to do so. For the present he has got all he wants. For the next three months he will be the representative of -three departments, and as he said to the reporter of the _Figaro, "can there be a better situation for a politician ? " After that, indeed, he can only represent one ; but in the next Chamber he hopes to do a great deal more. In 1889, -he will present himself as a candidate in every consti- tuency, and in those for which he is elected but cannot sit, he hopes to secure the return of Revisionists. Indeed, lie feels no doubt that he will do so. On August 18th he had sixteen supporters in the Chamber; on the 20th he had twenty-five. Nine Deputies who till Sunday last had held no communication with him, sent in their adhesions on Monday. If the notion once gets about that General Boulanger is to be the Grand Elector, every Deputy who is uneasy about his seat will be eager to gain his favour. Whether these calculations prove true or false, they cannot well be proved false for another year ; consequently, any Power that wishes General Boulanger's success has a year in which it can treat it as assured without opportunity of contradiction. That is a chance which may conceivably be turned to very serious account.
Even now, if the Moderate Republicans had sufficient -sense and courage, they might do something to retrieve their lortunes. To form a Ministry, indeed, is to all appearance • out of their power. For that purpose, the support of the Reactionists would be wanted, and the only doubt that presents itself to the Reactionists is whether they shall leave the Republic to die, or help to bring its death nearer. But outside the Chamber, at all events, there must be a great body of Conservative opinion which is not Reac- tionary, which does not want a restoration of any kind, which is equally indifferent to the Comte de Paris and to Prince Victor. What these men really care for is good government. Give them a Cabinet which shall leave the Church alone, be economical in expenditure, raise the necessary revenue by sound methods of taxation, treat the Army as a military instrument, and not as a means of propagating democratic theories, maintain the independ- ence of the Magistracy, and secure to every citizen full freedom to go about his business with no uneasiness as to the future, and they will be perfectly satisfied. If the Republic is to live, it must be by securing the support at the next election of men of this way of thinking. That can only be done by giving them something tangible to support. If the Republicans in the present Chamber went to the country to-morrow, there are scarcely ten of them who could point to their votes and speeches in proof of their determination to support a Cabinet of this kind and none other. All the rest are more or less included in the tremendous indictment which the Due d'Audiffret Pasquier brought against the Republic on Thursday. But though in the year that probably separates France from another General Election, there is time to do some- thing to build up a Republican Opposition which should have some chance of recommending itself to the Con- servative electors, what trace is there of any intention on the part of the Opportunists of turning this in- terval to account? We can see none whatever. The principal organ of the Opportunists—as, we suppose, the Temps may fairly be called—is quite aware of the danger ; but when it comes to suggest a means of averting it, it has nothing newer or more effectual in its armoury than "Republican concentration." We are confronted, it says, by a coalition resembling that of May 16th, and now, as then, we must meet the enemy by "the concentration of all Republicans round the Govern- ment for the common defence of Republican institutions." Surely never was there a more unfortunate analogy. On the 16th of May, the Reactionary party appeared, at all events, to be playing the revolutionary game, and the great body of French Conservatives who did not wish to see a Conservative Republic overthrown were willing to join even the Extreme Left in defeating Marshal MacMahon's enterprise. To-day the Reactionary party is again attacking the Republic ; but that Republic is no longer Conservative, and unless it can once more be made so, there is no reason to suppose that the great body. of French Conservatives will lift a finger in its defence. They are much more likely to join with General Boulanger in upsetting it. Consequently, the work to which the Moderate Republicans are called is not that of rallying round M. Floquet, who represents and embodies every- thing that has made the Republic unpopular. It is rather that of showing that the Republic, as understood by M. Floquet and those who think with him, is a mere caricature of the genuine Republic. The dissociation of the true Republicans from the false, not their union in one dis- credited body, is the end at which the Opportunists should aim. Unfortunately for themselves and the Republic, they seem powerless to detach themselves from the Radical allies who have consistently used them to bring about the common ruin of all Republicans alike.
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