General Cavaignac has not fallen in the contest to which
he challenged M. Barthelemy St. Hilaire, and has won a great victory. The pamphlet which was to have been brought out as an electioneering device, he has dragged forth into the National Assembly ; and if he has not literally confuted it, he has answered it in a way that overwhelms its authors. Cavaignac was accused of tacitly permitting the insurrection of June, in order that by suppressing it he might make his way to the Dictatorship; and for that purpose, he was further accused of disobeying the orders of the Provisional Government. In meeting that accusation, the prudent General did not precisely confute all the specific charges in their own terms, but he established an opposite case. He showed that some of the requirements made by the worthy and heroic civilians were impracticable ; some wide of the in- tention in those who made them ; and that he had done not less but more than he was required to do. He did not say, but he almost implied, that he had suffered the insurrectionists to come out, that they might show themselves and be more effectually crushed ; and it is probable that by such strategy he not only economized the sacrifice of life in the con- test, but saved Paris a reign of terror. He saw that the in- surrections of July 1830 and February 1848 had been treated by the existing Governments as a sort of larger street riots, to be quelled in a police fashion: he treated that of June as an outbreak of civil war, and met it in true order of battle. Ile conquered then; and he conquered M. St. Hilaire now,—not only by his facts, but by his unexpected eloquence. The critics who had despised his brief, dry, abrupt manner, were surprised at his keeping up an incessant reply to attacks in a series of speeches which filled up three hours of time, every sentence pregnant and direct. His earnest manner, his openness, his resolute bearing, took entire possession of the Assembly, and his victory was complete. He had called out the plotters, as he had the June men, and beaten them : a resolution setting aside the charges of M. St. Hilaire with slighting contempt was voted by 503 to 34. His triumph has even been deemed to improve his chance as candidate for the Presidency, at least to the extent of increasing his minority and bringing the choice within the power of the Assembly. M. Louts Napoleon Bonaparte, not to be distanced by General Cavaignac, has published a manifesto, offering halcyon days for Prance if she elect him : 'like a gipsy fortune-teller, he promises to give the Republic many things which he does not possess, and which the country can only obtain by earning them.
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