M. BUFFET'S POLICY.
THEpolicy of M. Buffet has since the vote on the &rutin de Lists become much more intelligible, and in one respect satisfactory. He evidently regards that vote as a triumph so great, that his hands are at last tolerably free and his path visibly marked out for him. He has decided, therefore, not to retire, and thus allow the Marshal to choose a Ministry outside the Parliamentary parties ; and not to appeal to extra-legal authority in any way, but to strengthen himself by every law he can devise ; to hurry on the Dissolution, which, it should be remembered, must be preceded by the election of the Senators ; and when the great struggle actually arrives, to employ every legal means at his disposal "to cause the opinions of the Government to prevail." In pursuance of this policy, he has already taken some remarkable steps. Under the vote carried by the Assembly, the number of members in the future Chamber of Deputies will, it must be remembered, be very greatly re- duced. No arrondissement is allowed more than one member, unless it exceeds 100,000 persons, and the number of arron- dissements with a heavier population is only 112. The Assembly now contains 735 members, but even the new mode of voting reduces it in future to 532, a reduction of nearly one- third. M. Buffet calculates that this is greatly in his favour, because the smaller the number the greater the proportion of "eminent men," in the sense in which be uses the phrase, who must be returned, and the greater their weight in a division. A hundred and fifty great proprietors, Breton nobles, millionaires, officials, Generals en retraite, and persons look- ing for personal advantages, will count much more heavily in a House of 500, the usual number that will attend, than in a House of 700, the largest number that can be relied on to attend now. Even this number, however, he has reduced. Algeria only sends one Conservative to Versailles, and he has therefore reduced the representatives of the Province from ten to six, on the ground that the arrondissements are too thinly populated to justify,the application of the usual rule. That is sound sense enough, but still his proposal, which has been accepted, breaks the grand uniformity of treatment which France had previously extended to all her possessions, with- out in return' making the mother-country absolute. Then the Colonies return none but Liberals, and they have therefore been disfranchised en naasse. M. Buffet has therefore already, before the Elections, won eight seats away from the Radicals. He has, moreover, resisted, and apparently with success, the attempt to limit his power of appointing Mayors whenever those elected by the Councils are likely to be displeasing to the Government ; and finally, he has introduced a Press Law as an alternative for the State of Siege which makes most French journalists exclaim.that they would prefer the military despotism under which they at present live. By this law, any journalist may be sent before the Correctional "Tribunals," in which the Magistrates are devoted to the Minister of Justice, and visited with enormous fines, for any language of which Govern- ment disapproves. So close are the meshes of the Law, that it is gravely affirmed that a journal could not appear without material in some part of its columns for a Government prosecu- tion, which, before such Judges, cannot fail, and indeed is not intended to fail. M. Buffet is perfectly frank about it. He says, through M. Dufaure, that he expects sharp personal polemics during the Elections. He thinks the public views these polemics with undue complacency, and "is too little apt to exhibit indignation at seeing the honour or motives of individuals or of functionaries of all ranks attacked." The Government, therefore, arms itself with power to repress such attacks, and does not intend to let that power sleep. In other words, no journal is, during the elections, to say that the Government is crypto-Royalist, or that a Prefect is man- oeuvring in the Bonapartist interest, or that a proprietor is oppressing, or that a millionaire is bribing, unless indeed the Cabinet approves his utterance, for then he will not be pro- secuted. The mission of the Government is "to make its ideas prevail," and it arms itself with legal power to silence the Press, to appoint friendly Mayors, and to protect all functionaries from criticism. If the Assembly thinks that too much, then the State of Siege must continue, and the journalists must remain at the mercy of the General in command.
And yet, in the midst of what appears to most English minds outrageous oppression, we must confess with a sigh that M. Buffet is by no means extraordinarily.oppressive. If we were only sure that he were honest, that he would use his powers fairly, we should be forced to admit that he was, on the whole, an improvement on the majority of French rulers on the eve of an election. He proposes to make the Government, as a Government, a party to elections, to arm every functionary with the power to intimidate if he chooses, without any check from opinion, and to deprive all parties in opposition of a keen weapon which the parties favoured by Government will still retain; but he proposes to do all this through legal means, in virtue of powers either now belonging legally to the Executive or to be bestowed on it by law. That concession, slight as it seems to Englishmen, means a great deal in France, where successive Governments, some of them armed with much less power than M. Buffet claims, have broken through every legal restraint in their eagerness to seat their candidates. It is hardly expected in France that a Government will not try to "make its ideas prevail," and that right once conceded, it cannot be blamed for using powers either voted or sanctioned by the representativei,i, of the people. It is not on this point that Republicans raise the keenest outcry. Their doubt goes, deeper. They doubt whether M. Buffet, thus panoplied tn. authority, will try to make the professed ideas of the Government to prevail; whether he will battle for the Conservative Republic, whether he will not endeavour to ostracise all genuine Republicans, however Conservative; whether he will not fight the battle of the crypto-Monarchists, or even, in his hatred of Liberalism, strike some bargain with Bonapartism, —say, by agreeing that if Bonapartists support the Septennate,
they shall be unmolested in their struggle for future power. In other words, Republicans fear that the Government will not try to make legal ideas prevail, but will try to spread ideas contrary to the Constitution, which it is its duty to defend, and there is reason for this fear.
We do not believe that M. Buffet is deliberately dishonest, but we do believe that at heart he shares in the opinion once expressed by a great Orleanist, that "the people is a danger- ous animal, which must be caged," and that he would see any party triumph sooner than the true Republican. If he sees, or believes on Prefects' reports, that three hundred M. Dufaures will be returned, he will continue to accept the Republic ; but if, as is quite possible, he becomes convinced that the Repub- licans will secure a majority, he will, we may rely on it, allow any kind of compromise with the Monarchists, and especially with the Bonapartists, who alone, as he well knows, have any serious chance of attracting the electors. This is now the most pressing danger of the Liberal party in France, and we do not wonder that in view of it, many members of the Left declare that the Republic has been lost in the abolition of the scrutin de liste, or that M. Gambetta is for a moment denounced as no tactician. We should agree with them, but for our trust in a principle which we have never seen fail, viz., that in a popular election, ideas, if only they are large enough, will invariably beat interests. If the question were among Republicans alone, a quarrel between Liberals and Tories, with the Constitution accepted, we should fear the result of M. Buffet's tactics ; but when the question is so broad and so simple—" Shall the Republic stand or not e—we believe all his finesse will be powerless before the popular will, which may yet, to the dismay of the Monarchists, express itself unmis- takably. If it be true, as reported on official authority, that of 225 Senators to be elected by the Councils-General 120 are certain to be Republicans, two-thirds at least of the Deputies may be pledged to the Constitution, and in that case, all these Conser- vative precautions will be thrown away. There is no instance in French history of an unmistakable popular vote being resisted, even when, as in the Presidential election of 1848, the Government is hostile ; and no proof that the Army could be induced to dissolve an Assembly elected by a decisive majority of the people before it had brought itself into disrepute. All that M. Buffet, armed with his enormous powers, can do to make the Elections insincere will be done ; but the vote will be taken, and taken legally, and the vote may override drawing-room calculations. The oppression of twenty years has given Frenchmen at least this one advantage,—they know how to communicate with one another without public meetings, without a free Press, and without the approval of "authorities" who seem able to control their very smiles.
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