The Marshal-President is extremely anxious to pass the new Electoral
Law, accepted by the Committee of Thirty on Tuesday, the 21st inst. By this law all males in France under twenty-five are disfranchised, all elections are to be by single-seat districts containing 50,000 inhabitants,—which districts cannot, however, he altered except by law ; and each Deputy must either have been born in the department which chooses him, or have been rated in it for five years,—that is, have owned property in it for that time, or have represented it before, or have paid in it some direct tax. The result of the first proviso will, it is supposed, be to disfranchise young Radicals ; and the result of the last to exclude the eminent men of France, and fill the Assembly with local notables, who, it is assumed, will be Conservatives. As Frenchmen are indisposed to allow Napoleon IV. to promise universal suffrage, think the choice of the people suffi- cient claim to a seat, and detest the notion of a property qualification, this law is not very likely to be passed, more especially as it has already been rejected when proposed as the basis of the municipal suffrage. We doubt very greatly if it would have the effect inteldedhy its authors, who forget that a local agitator is often as popular as a local magnate, while it would distinctly lower the intellectual status of the Chamber.
