The French Elections are to come off before March, and
M. Buffet is busily providing gags, handcuffs, and strait-waistcoats for the electors. He has already, by allowing only one member to each arrondissement, reduced the Chamber from 735 members to 540, and has now further diminished this by striking off four votes from Algeria, which is Republican, and is to be allowed, there- fore, six votes instead of ten ; and by disfranchising the colonies, which are also Republican, altogether. He has further refused to abandon the right of appointing a mayor wherever he pleases, instead of allowing the Municipal Council to elect him, and has proposed a Press law so stringent that the Assembly has ap- pointed a Radical Commission to examine it, and will probably prefer that the state of siege, under which any journal can be suspended by military order, should con- tinue. He has affirmed, moreover, in a speech on the Maires, that Marshal MacMahon has the right to select a Cabinet outside the Assembly ; and through M. Dufaure, in a speech on the Press Laws, that it is the intention of Government to "make its ideas prevail." The Republicans bear all this impatiently, but without serious resistance, hoping that the Elections, whatever the pres- sure, will give them a considerable majority.
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