ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE FROM FRANCE.
Paris, September 21.
For the whole week past, Paris has looked something like the city of Westminster during a general election. We lack yet the processions, the flags, the colours, the best part of the demonstration; but that may be easily accounted for, as we have the ballot. All the walls, however, were placarded with addresses from candidates or committees; clubs were reopened; preparatory meetings were held; and all this was enough to throw alarm about town. French people, you know, are not yet accustomed to meet in numbers without soon coming to fight; and with them a mere row very often ends in a revolution. For several days and nights the troops and the National Guard have been patrolling. Order has been maintained; it still reigns—but for how long?
You already know the result of the votes; and such a strange compound never was seen in any country at any time. That Louis Bonaparte would be returned somewhere was generally expected, and you were already pre- pared for that by my last communication. But the other two returns are made to confound all notions and all speculations upon human mind in general and French mind in particular. Paris seems to perform a melo- drama with a double mask, one side laughing, the other weeping. The same city sends at once into the Assembly the representatives of both ex- tremes—a Banker and a Communist, a Conservative and a Destructive. Now, fancy a foreigner, or a philosophical observer, or a future historian, in search of the real opinion of the French capital, and deeply speculating upon these three names, Bonaparte, Fould, and Raspail—that is, military despotism, money aristocracy, and agrarian democracy—all coming out at once from the same ballot! Try, if you can, to build something upon that!
However, who knows?—perhaps it is the real expression of the public mind. There is now such an extraordinary confusion of all principles, such a storm of conflicting doctrines, that the most illogical result must be the truest. The French nation have made a revolution in the name of liberty, and they can now neither speak nor write nor assemble freely; and the young Republic, as it is called, after a six-months struggle, throws herself in despair or disgust into the arms of a soldier. Were the whole country actually called to elect a President of the Re- public, she would most probably misname him, and return a King or an Emperor. This is the general meaning of the late election. If the Royal Families, both branches, had not been already excluded by a special law, depend upon it you would have seen the Duke de Bordeaux and the Prince de Joinville both returned. As the Bonaparte was the only candidate left, he embodied the popular feeling; and you see what an immense majority he has found in all parts of the country. National glory still shining in the Imperial name, military spirit and love of uniform, so characteristic of the French people, went for a good deal in that election; but it was at the same time an instinctive protest against anarchy, as the almost unanimous votes of the departments testify.
Still, if that simultaneous return of Bonaparte is a 'danger for the pre- sent Government, for the Republic, for the existing order of things, it is not in any sense the real danger for society itself. The struggle is else- where; it must be looked for in the two other names. There lies the question, to be or not to be; on that ground are social order and its ene- mies fighting their deadly fight. The Emperor's nephew represents but a name, and a name which he is unable to bear; it is something mate- rial; but Socialists represent ideas, doctrines, something intangible. See how strong, how disciplined, how perfectly united they have remained, even after their last battle of June! They have been dispersed, dis- mantled, transported; and, like the earth- worm cut into pieces, they have reunited and become one again. Whilst Conservatives of all shades were disseminating and losing their strength upon a dozen names, they set aside all differences and waived all rivalries, and unanimously adopted three names. They were summoned by their leaders in the name of desolated wives, slain brothers, proscribed children: and to a man they voted the same list. What an example, and what a lesson for the other party! The Conservatives had the majority in their hands: if you take the total of the votes given to at least twelve candidates, you will arrive at 300,000 and more. At all events, though Bonaparte could not have been excluded, the Socialist candidate would. How does the matter stand now? Both parties, I might say both armies, remain under arms, Sudety on one side, Socialists on the other. A compromise had been at- tempted; it has miserably failed. Prudent: politicians had tried equi- librium, and a sort of Republican juste-milieu; it was rejected on both sides, and, with a kind of centrifugal force, popular feeling rushed at once to both extremes. That means nothing else but war, deadly war, between interests and classes. Fearful and melancholy to say, nothing has been changed by that terrible battle of June—nothing! At the last elections, the Socialists were about 80,000; this time, they have numbered about 65,000; the 15,000 missing are the dead or the transported: the mass has remained compact and undivided, ready for another time. On the oppo- site side, you find a majority, but no unity: it appears they still want some cruel lesson to learn discipline; they require severe drilling.
As an additional insult to the Establishment, the Socialists have signifi- cantly returned to the House an individual who had invaded and violated that same House, and is now for that very fact a prisoner at Vincennes. That Raspail is one of the strange figures of the times. There is in him an odd mixture of the philosopher and the physician; he is a medical as well as a social reformer. He has invented a panacea, and pretends to cure all with camphor: having taken no degrees, he was never allowed to practise; so that he was obliged to spread his remedies like his doctrines, secretly. Amongst low classes he has that sort of influence which physi- cians and jugglers exercise over savages.
This is the man Paris has returned to the Assembly, together with M. Fould, the well-known banker and Conservative Member in the late House. These two names, as I have already said, I believe to represent the real state of the question. The struggle between those who have and those who have not will still reappear after the Bonapartist crisis shall have been gone through, as it must soon. For, although Bonapartism may not be the most serious danger, it is certainly the nearest. You may be sure there is a plot, and that it will break out before long; the sooner the bet- ter. I told you that in the Republican party there were two plans,—one to exclude Bonaparte by renewing the law against the Imperial Family: this seems to have been given up as unsafe. The other was to elect Ca- vaignac at once to the Presidency, so as immediately to secure the place: this plan, I believe, will be carried; and the ominous return of Bonaparte will be an additional motive and the readiest occasion for it.
Fancy, for instance, the people who have just been voting for the Prince preparing a triumphal entrance for him; some thousands going out of town to meet him on the road, and coming back with him to the doors of the House!—who knows that they will not try to get in, and make another 15th of May! Has not the nephew before his eyes the example of his great uncle, when with a few bayonets he threw another Assembly out of window? Well then, at that moment some Republican would come for- ward, and proclaim the " Caveant Consules"; and necessity would be in- voked, and Cavaignac proposed as President for three years, and the whole business carried spontaneously. Of course, it would be for the first and for the last time; only this one President; only to put the car in motion, only to say, " All right!"—after that, it would go on of itself. Indeed I should not wonder if we were to have something like that; the only question is, will the play be a comedy or a tragedy ? Why, it may be both. But General Cavaignac must make haste: he is evidently losing ground; the more he waits, the more he sinks. Some days ago he was, most unex- pectedly, driven into a Cabinet question. If he had resigned, the House would most certainly have been in greater trouble than himself; but still the hollowness and insecurity of his power appeared to all eyes. The Re- publican party feel, that so long as the first power in the state is a mere Minister liable and responsible to every day's majority, nothing secure, no- thing durable, can be founded. They know also, that if they leave the choice of the first President to universal suffrage, the Republic will run great risks. It is for them a question of life or death: and I believe that plan will ultimately prevail. A few days more will say if it can be ac- complished without a struggle.
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