The Times' letters from "an En g lishman in the French provinces"
have thrown a good deal of light on the meaning of Ministerial pressure in France. Writing from Toulouse, in the Haute Garonne, he describes how first a new prefect was appointed who made a clean sweep of all subordinates, from sub-prefects down to postmen and yanks chompitres, who were in the least suspected of Republicanism. These were all told they might vote as they pleased, but if they voted for a Republican, it would be regarded as a bad deed, which would not be forgiven. In one commune, a new Mayor was appointed during the very night preceding the Sunday of the elections, in order to prevent the Republican Mayor from presiding over the voting. The Liberal papers, however moderate,—like the Progres Liberal of Toulouse, for instance—were involved in all sorts of law- suits, expenses, and hampered by illegal police interference, and repeatedly obliged to appear with some of their columns blank,—columns in which articles, cancelled by the prefect at the last moment, had been printed; then the cafds and the caba- rets were all threatened, and their proprietors told that they should be shut up if they admitted an Opposition journal or a word of politics. In the whole of the Haute-Garonne the Re- publicans did not venture to hold one popular meeting. Again, when the gendarmes suspected a peasant of Republican principles, they tore off the corner of his electoral card, and then when it was presented, the Conservative Mayor refused it, and rejected the vote as illegal. This is what ' political pressure' means under M. de Fourtou, and in spite of such pressure the Republican vote has been diminished only by one per cent.1
