M. Gambetta delivered a speech on Wednesday at a private
meeting held at Chateau Chinon, Nievre, to promote the candidature of a Republican (M. Gudin) at the second ballot to-morrow, the chief interest of which is its moderation as to the politics of Republicanism. Against the Government political agencies be was severe enough. He said he had counted on a Republican party of four hundred in the new Chamber, but he had not reckoned with theft and fraud such as had been ex- hibited at Vaucluse, or with intimidation and fraud such as had been applied in the Pas de Calais. Still he trusted that the shortcoming would be only temporary, and that when the Assembly came to judge the illegalities alleged, the numbers would not be far off what be had predicted. "They deceive you," he said, " by telling you I am a man of disorder, that I am the enemy of those who govern France. I am not the enemy of anybody. I am the enemy of unhealthy ideas, of despotism under all forms, under the form of the brutal Camarism of the 2nd December which has led to Sedan and to Metz, or under the equivocal form of the Inquisition and Jesuitism. They say that we have invented the Clerical spectre. I wish it were only a phantom. Unluckily, everything proves its power and activity." There was nothing of the reddish tinge which is so freely and we believe so falsely imputed to his politics, throughout his speech.
Previous page
