28 NOVEMBER 1874, Page 1

NEWS OF THE WEEK.

election of 400,000 Municipal Councillors for the 37,000

communes of France was completed on Sunday, but the returns have as yet been received only from the towns. They show that the electors have in general become once more Radical, very few urban constituencies—and only one of any importance, Dunkirk, —baying elected a majority of Conservatives. In all the large cities—Paris excepted, where no election has yet been held—the Radicals have gained a complete and easy triumph, the Monarchists seldom venturing to go to the poll. The Moderates.of the Left Centre have been beaten as much as the Monarchists, and the cities may be said to be in the hands of Gambetta's following. The Conservatives affum that these returns do not signify, that the rural Communes will show a different return, and that the Radical Couneillors will not exceed 100,000, but we sus- pect, from the great delay in publishing the rural returns, that their hopes will be disappointed. This new evidence of the temper of the cities will, we fear, alarm the "friends of order," and as we have explained elsewhere, may lead to still more severe measures of repression. In France Conservatives consider the Radicalism of a constittieticy a reason for disregarding its behests.