The Conservatives in France have failed even more completely in
the election of the Councils-General than in the election of Deputies. In the latter they did at least diminish materially (for the moment, and pending the revision of their unconstitutional expedients) the Republican majority, but in the election of Councils-General last Sunday they positively lost ground, and the Senate, so far as it is replenished from the Councils-General, will at the next biennial period come out more Republican than before. There are 87 Departments of France, and in the previous election the Conservatives had secured a majority in the Councils-General of 47 of these, leaving the Republicans a majority in 39, while in one department the proportion was doubtful. The result of last Sunday's election is that the Conservatives have a majority as yet in only 42, instead of 47 Departments ; the Re- publicans, in 89 as before, while in five the parties were equal,— the issue being subject in three of these to the results of a second ballot. Even, then, if these three ballots all go for the Con- servatives, the Conservatives will have definitively lost their pre- ponderance in two departments, while it will have been greatly reduced in a large number of departments. Now the Councils- General supply the most Conservative of the various elements for the replenishing of the Senate, and as these Conservative elements are less Conservative than before, it is to be hoped that after the next Senatorial crisis, when a third of the popularly-elected members are replaced, there will no longer be a Senate willing to grant a Dissolution to any President who chooses to call in a Government of Combat.' The Senate will hardly a second time espouse the cause of a party against that of the French nation.
