The result of the excitement and ill-feeling produced by the
con- flict over the French Government's Education measure,—a mea- sure, no doubt, forced on by the Radicals in a spirit as dictatorial as that in which measures of the opposite kind would be forced on by the Ultramontanes, if they were in the ascendent,—is visible in the supplementary elections of last Sunday. In the one Conservative arrondissement of Paris, the Moderate Repub- lican has been defeated by a Bonapartist, M. Godelle, who succeeds to an Orleanist of much more moderate Conser- vatism, who had represented this arrondissement previously. At Muret, again, a Bonapartist—M. Niel—has defeated the moderate Republican, evidently by the diversion of a certain number of votes given in the first ballot for Republican candi- dates, to the Bonapartist. On the first ballot, the votes divided between three Republicans had amounted to 12,852, of which the only Republican candidate who went to the second poll—M.
Penent —received only 10,124 ; while M. Niel, the Bonapartist, received 11,569 votes. At Bordeaux, on the other hand, the angry resolve of the extreme propagandist Repub- licans to assert themselves against the Moderates, showed itself by the election of the irreconcilable Blanqui, who has spent a large part of his life in prison, for conspiring against all Governments,—Republican Governments as much as any others, for he led the mob's irruption into the Assembly in 1849, —by 6,801 votes against 5,330 given for the Moderate Republican, M. Lavertujon. Blanqui is still in prison, and his election is invalid ; but the Radicals demand that the voice of the people shall be regarded as having pardoned him for his purely political, but very grave political, sins. That might be plausible, if France had elected Blanqui, instead of Bordeaux. As it is, it is a demand to let the favour of the people of a single city override the laws of France.
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