The leadin g men in France are issuing programmes addressed to
the electors, and intended to tell at the elec- tions i important, September. None that we have seen contain much i that is mportant, except that of M. Constans, who"is a can- didate for the Presidency as well as for office. He, in a speech delivered at Toulouse on the 4th inst., steps forward as leader of the Moderates, and offers, if they will accept the laws already passed, including the religious laws and the laws on secular education, to accept all parties as genuine Repub. Beans, and to leave men's consciences in future alone. He is in favour of a restrictive Press Law, and will move slowly along the road of the Socialists ; but he is willing to assist the benefit-societies, to grant annuities to the aged, to reduce the railway-rates of transport for heavy goods—a great grievance with the peasantry—and to remit the Land-tax absolutely. He professes to desire peace and the friendship of Russia, and is favourable to a policy which will develop and utilise the Colonies. The speech in England would be called a mode- rate but not a stirring speech, and the importance attributed to it arises rather from the confidence of Frenchmen in M. Constans' character as a strong, resolute man, who holds that a Government should govern, and would not shrink from em- ploying force to repress mob-dictation. It is said that the Moderates are willing to accept his terms, but the Radicals consider him far too bourgeois, or, as they now define it, " Panamist."
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