Seventeen Republican Deputies have issued a manifesto calling upon the
electors either to vote "No," to deposit a blank vote, or "even to abstain " from voting on the plebiscitum. The constitu- tion submitted is, they say, a pretence intended to hide the reality of absolute power. It "withholds self-government from the communes, and does not even leave to the people the right of electing their municipal officers." The plebisciturn "asks the abdication of the people." "Will you, remembering the 18 years of oppression, Mexico, Sadowa, the debt increased by £00,000,000, the taxation of £80,000,000, renew the plenary powers of the Em- pire? " For "it is a signature in blank that is required from you, the alienation of your sovereignty, the infeudation of the popular right in the hands of one man and one family, the confiscation of the imprescriptible right of future generations." All that is true enough, but it does not strike us as very effective. The peasantry care little about Mexico or Sadowa, they rather like the debt and the vast expenditure which has not been met by increased taxes, and would rather have had an assurance that in voting " No" they were not voting for the Red Republic, which, of course, the Deputies of the Left could not give. The Opposition are at variance among them- selves, the Irreconcilables advising abstention from the polls, as even a hostile vote is a recognition of the Empire ; and the Radicals preferring a direct negative. Discussion is to be free for a week before the vote, and wild speeches made in Paris will be carefully circulated through the provinces.
