THE MEANING OF THE FRENCH ELECTIONS. T HE first circumscription of
Paris has returned to the Legislative Body, M. Carnet, member of the Provisional Government, son of the regicide who organized victory for Napoleon because Napoleon was France, but refused, never- theless, to accept honours from the hand of an Emperor. The fifth circumscription has elected M. Gamier Pagas, Republican "of the eve," member of the Provisional Government of 1848, and one of the few men in that remarkable committee who understood that republican government is a means as well as an end, that it implies the elevation of the national character as well as the downfall of the national privileged class. He struggled within it against repudiation as vigorously as he had ever struggled against the House of Orleans, and came this week before the electors in the double character of a man who had never broken his own faith, and who peremp- torily refused to let others break the faith of the nation. In both instances the successful candidates were resisted by the whole influence of the Government, which even stationed policemen to watch individual voters, and in both they were returned by a majority of nearly three-fourths. Thirty- one thousand Parisians voted in favour of two repub- licans, and only eleven thousand for two gentlemen who possessed the confidence of the Government. And this result, it must be remembered, was not produced by inci- dental causes, or personal likings and antipathies, or any sudden gust of unreasoning popular feeling. On the contrary, Paris, being rid of Persigny, is a little less irritable than it was during the last general election, has in these elections merely continued the course which it commenced nine months ago, has repeated after deliberation the verdict it recorded when out of twenty members it sent up no single Bonapartist. There is no disguising the import of such a manifestation, no hiding the fact that Paris is ill content with the present system.
That fact may be important or valueless, burn° intelligent observer will deny its existence, and, least of all, the watchful forecasting politician who is now Emperor of the French. His flatterers may explain such rebuffs as they please, but he will point to the figures as he does to the price of the funds, that silent but irresistible evidence that capital in France rightly or wrongly looks to some point beyond the continuance of the existing regime. If not, why are Consols in France which are held by the masses twenty-five per cent. lower than Consols in England which are held by eighty-three thousand persons and public bodies ? If Paris, the Emperor may inquire, loves the Imperial system, why should it send up Republican representatives ; if it loves the dynasty, why select out of all liberals men from whom that dynasty can have nothing to hope ? How many votes would an avowed Republican get in an English democratic borough, or what would a jury assembled de lunatic° inquirendo say of a gentleman who thought it feasible to banish the House of Hanover? It is with other dynasties that Napoleon compares the position of his own, it is their stability, not their rank, which he now regards with envy, and though, as he himself once said, "ho might as well live in a cellar as in the Tuileries" for all the truth he hears, he will not miss the import of facts his underlings cannot hide.
But what is the import of those facts? The discontent of Paris is, we conceive, certain, but then it only proves that Paris is discontented, and the important question is. rather the grounds of that discontent. Are they such as must in time destroy the dynasty, or, what is the same thing, compel it to rely on bayonets alone, or is it possible to remove them without abolishing the Empire ? That is the question which observers who do not know Paris find it so difficult to answer, and to which they invent so many and such different replies. As a rule, we believe, in England they accept the first solution,—that the question lies in reality between Republic and Empire, and make excuses for tyranny al' they would for the use of any other weapon when *hided in-- self-defence. The Emperor, they say, cannot govern if there is to be liberty of association; he cannot reign if there is to be liberty of the Press; he cannot continue Emperor if he is to grant Parliamentary free- dom. The fatal necessity of despotism is upon him, as upon all other despots, and he must increase compression as the vitality of his victim returns. The first act of a free Parliament would be to abolish his initiative, the first course of a free Press would be to rake up all the scandals of the past, the first use of the right of association would be to march upon the Tuileries. No man can be expected to light the fuse while the mine must blow up himself, and the Emperor is in the right when be refuses all concession. It is enough for him to allow M. Camot to take his seat ; if he were to try to conciliate the opinions which send M. Carnot up he would simply commit an act of political suicide. Englishmen, in fact, out of the very keenness of their dislike for repression, justify the Emperor in continuing to repress. It produces, they think, such hate, that the first relaxation will bring the inevitable retribution.
There is force in this view, which is also that of the most honest, if not the most acute, among the Emperor's friends ; but there must be also exaggeration. It may be strictly true that France is by nature incapable of limited monarchy,—for that and nothing less is the thought at the bottom of these apologies—but as the experiment has never been honestly tried no one has yet a right to lay that down as an axiom. It is most certainly true that in France the Legislative and executive powers have in- variably commenced a struggle for the supremacy, but then that struggle may end, as in England, in establishing the power of the former without destroying the throne. Abstract ideas are a feeble guide to the future of a nation like France, and the few facts which can be ascertained wear a widely different aspect. Those who best know the voters of Paris, who are administering these heavy blows, say that they are directed against the regime, not the man that regime protects ; that the workmen, though all republicans in theory, are not just now voting for a republic. They are simply expressing their weariness of a repression nowhere so perfect or so severe as at the point where, when gravely tried, it seems so utterly to break down. Paris, the one modern city which, like ancient Rome, is a being as well as a col- lection of beings, is weary of tho police, weary of being forbidden to write what it will, and say what it likes, and read what it chooses, and act such dramas as please it, weary of feeling its daily life at the mercy of little men. It is weariness rather than wrath, for Parisians are trained to bear logical " organization ; " but then it is safer to fetter than to ennuyer France. The daily, hourly interference of authority frets the Parisians till they can hardly recognize what that authority has accomplished on their behalf. Paris is beautiful, and • they enjoy its beauty, enjoy it appreciatively as English- men never would ; but they do not enjoy the restrictions which have grown up-as fast as new streets. It is a weari- ness to workmen who want to join companies for the manu- facture of chairs, to ask a dozen permissions, an oppression to be driven about by everybody in a cocked hat, an insult to be told, as they were on Friday in the Moniteur, that though Government puts up *lies for them to read, they are not to crowd round to read them. They do not care very much for the astounding wrongs inflicted on men of letters but to hear of a private assembly dispersed by police because those who assembled are supposed to favour 31. Gamier Pagds, to see a pasquinade treated as a high political crime, to know that there are spies in every cafe and little wino-shop, this irritates them beyond endurance. If the populace is ever master again in Paris, it is the "agents of authority," not the aristocrats, who will be sent to the lamp-post. They would, it is true, forgive all this for the sake of external victory, as in a lesser degree the English people would also; but without such victory they are inclined to use the one mode of speech the police are powerless to restrain. For all this irritating conflict there is, we believe, no necessity whatever, and it is because he can end it, and does not, not because he is simply Emperor, that we condemn Napoleon. He may not be able to end his regime, but he could just as easily end its more cruel incidents as he could suffer them to continue. It is not to his advantage that all the electors of Paris should be insulted by an order not to crowd round advertisements under penalty of imprisonment, yet the order is given, yielding, of course, thousands of votes to the men from whom it was devised to divert them. It might not be possible yet to grant the right of association, but it is possible to tell . lee Prefets never to interfere with a meeting' or company without grave reason of State. It might not be possible to allow full liberty of the Preis, but ,-- at least writers might be placed under an intelligible law, in- stead of being left at the mercy of individuals who have neither the responsibility of Ministers of State nor the discernment of men of genius. Napoleon has granted to his Parliament a right of free discussion without conceding responsible minis- ters, and he might grant the liberty of society without giving at the same moment that of the tribune. Suppose Parisians treated as the British Government treats the Fenians, that is, let alone to talk, or write, or threaten just as they pleased, and put down only when words were visibly transmuting themselves into actions. Would the police be less powerful in the streets because M. Pees could chat to his friends, or the garrison be less masters of Paris because the blouses could read the pasted slips from the Mortimer without worry from the cocked hats. The very men who uphold these tyrannies say the Empire rests on the soldiery, and are bayo- nets the sharper because the police are annoying ? If there is any reality in the Empire at all, all these social precautions are simply impertinences,—freaks indulged in to gratify the pride, or spite, or fears of officials, not to protect either the Emperor or the Empire. The Parisians have shown already that they will return whom they like in spite of Prefects, and the Emperor should heed the lesson, and order Prefects out of the way. What is their dignity to him or his dynasty that he should fight his capital for their sake, or why create in thousands of families the impression of wilful injustice in order that a class on whom he is not dependent should be in- solent at its will ? There is folly in this waste of power, want of capacity in all this purposeless worry, blundering in this deference to the whims of the hierarchy of office, and in France rulers cannot blunder in peace. Ctesar can be borne, nay, is borne; but if he wants to be borne for long in France his lictors must be taught to keep their bands from the staves.
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