An electioneering manoeuvre of M. Leon Faucher has strengthened the
suspicions, which have been for some time gaining ground, that the French President's new Minister of the Interior has been plotting with the Legitimists to undermine his principal. Of late it has been the policy of the Elysee at Paris to conciliate the Retinblieans ; the hostility of the Monarchists, especially of the Legitimist section of them, to Louis Napoleon, having been found unconquerable. To this end, the President has been represented by his private friends as hostile to the law of May limiting the suffrage. But while this game was played at Paris, the Minister of the Interior has sent a telegraphic de- spatch to the Landes, where elections are now in progress, charging the Prefect, Sub-Prefects, and other Government officials, to support General Darrieu, the candidate of " the party of Order," on the express ground that he is the only one who has " declared in favour of maintaining the law of May." The telegraphic despatch is addressed to the Prefect, and instructs him " to declare, and cause to be declared by the Sub-Prefects, that in the opinion of Government, the electors, friends of order, cannot, in consulting the interest of the country, give their votes to any candidate but one who is very decided to maintain the elec- Ural law of 31st May." It is not denied on the part of M. Leon Faucher that he has been guilty of this interference with the free- dom of election : his organ in the press simply pleads in extenua- tion (what is properly an aggravation) that the despatch was meant to be kept a secret—" The telegraphic despatch has not been published by any of the agents of Government : but one of the Sub-Prefects of the Landes having communicated it to several per- sons, one of those persons had copied it and had it printed, adding the postscript. There will be seen in all these facts nothing but what is very simple and natural." It is impossible as yet to say with certainty whether this gross duplicity is chargeable both upon the President and his Minister, or whether the latter has been intriguing against the former. The commercial treaties which have recently been ratified be- tween Sardinia on the one part and England and Belgium on the other, have excited a ferment among the Continental Governments. The fever has not been allayed by the report that Sardinia is on the eve of concluding a similar treaty with Switzerland. That Austria and the states of South Germany favourable to a re- strictive policy should be alarmed by such an extension of the principles of reciprocity and free trade, is natural ; but the hos- Way to these messages evinced by part at least of the Prussian Cabinet is unaccountable, and the soreness expressed by the French Government impolitic in the extreme. The revolution in Portugal appears to be all but complete. Sal- denim is Prime Minister, and Thomar is in London. Neverthe- less, the new Premier advances with very tardy steps to Lisbon, anti appears afraid to trust his person in the capital.
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