M. GAMBETTA'S MANIFESTO.
THE most important paragraphs of the great manifesto just issued by M. Gambetta, a manifesto which for thoughtful moderation might have been written by an English Whig economist, are those which describe the operation of the scrutin de liste. The French Cabinet, it is well known, intend to make of the abolition of this method of election a sine qud non. M. Buffet, and the unlucky statesman, the Duo de Broglie, who stands behind M. Buffet, believe that if France is split up into petty electoral districts, the Government, the officials and the wealthy will enjoy all the influence they can and will return another ultra-Conservative Assembly. M. Buffet therefore promises to resign if his project is not carried, and his friends hint un- mistakably at the coup d'e'tat, or reign of a non-Parliamentary Ministry, or appeal to the people, which must be the result of his dismissal. So great is the alarm produced by these threats, that many Republicans are believed to be willing to yield, and to propose that the next Assembly should be elected by district voting, the Liberals being pledged, should they be in a majority, to return to the more popular departmental system. The Liberal leaders, however, M. Thiers included, are most averse to the change, even for one election, and M. Gambetta boldly appeals to the Moderates upon entirely new ground. The vote by scrutin de liste is, he says, a Conservative guarantee, for it enables the leaders to use their democratic support for the return of Moderate men. His words are most remarkable :—" I say in all sincerity, that the Republicans 'de Raison 'are most interested in the definite success of scrutin de liste. In fact, my information allows me to assert that they alone have all to lose by scrutin d'arrondissement, and I do not fear that I shall be belied by events. Whatever may come, moreover, have no uneasiness as to the final result. The elections, both for the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, will result in a triumph for the Republican Democracy. For four years I have never neglected an opportunity for studying and following step by step the progress of Republican ideas in the various parts of France and in the various strata (couches) of French society. With- out entering into details which would here be out of place, I believe I can assert that France has only waited with patience and calm- ness for the hour when it should please her mandatoties to give her back her sovereignty, because her resolution to consolidate the Republic was immovable. She knew that she must in the end be consulted, and that on that day, without tumult, with- out violence, almost without emotion, she would choose her men and dictate her will. Taught by unprecedented and un- deserved disasters the nation has evidently gained in experi- ence and practical reasoning. It is tired of saviours who lost it, of orators who led it astray ; it despises fanatics who would lead it back to a past whose very name it cannot bear ; it wishes to conduct its affairs itself, and at last to realise the government of the country by the country, of which the French Revolution brought the promise and the principles." M.Gambetta has the means, through his allies in every department, and especially in the South, of ascertaining the exact strength of each opinion, and he may very easily be perfectly right. That is to say, he may know
that in each arrondissement the Republicans can win, provided they conciliate the Reds. The effect of that position would be that, rather than let in a Bonapartist, who is the only other opponent with real strength behind him, the Republicans "de Raison" will accept the Republican "sans Raison," and leave the Moderate out in the cold. That is an extremely probable conclusion, and one which, if M. Gambetta is honestly saying what he thinks, may be accepWd as if it had been an electoral calculation by the late ;Kr. Spofforth.
But then is Gambetta honest Those who ask that question _ misread M. Gambetta's political aspirations alto- gether. They think that he is only a shrewd anarchist,— a man who is moderate only because he has the brain to
see that moderation is essential to his own career. M. Gambetta, who is believed to be Hebrew by descent, and who has in his character much of the Italian and Provençal tenacity, may in secret hold extreme views about the Church, but in politics he is undoubtedly a sincere Republican, whose single temptation is a desire that he should guide the destinies of the Republic he approves. He does not want to be an insurgent, but a ruler, supported, so far as possible, by all France, and securing at once his own greatness and the de- velopment of his country. He will pardon anybody, Legiti- mist or Communist, who will accept the Republic ; and he knows that in a nation of freeholders the condition of accept- ance is external order. His habitual appeal is to the orderly Re- publicans, and he has no more interest in deceiving them than M. Thiers has; and M. Thiers, who has hopes from them only, having no Radical party to fall back on, tells them precisely the same thing. It comes to this, then, that the two ablest politicians in France—one by feeling a Constitutional Monarchist, and one by feeling a Democratic Republican—alike assert that the scrutin de liste will establish the orderly Republic. That is a most important fact for the Left Centre to consider, and one which may yet tempt them to risk all that Marshal MacMahon may venture to try in the way of unconstitutional Ministries. We ourselves cannot quite follow them, believing that any election held in any form must end in the triumph of the Republic ; but it is not wise in Englishmen, what- ever their sympathies, to pit their judgment on such points against the judgments of men who have governed France, who may be Presidents, and who are consequently sup- plied with information as in France only possible Presidents can be.
There is one other point to be noted about M. Gambetta's manifesto, and that is his daring assault on two favourite pre- judices of the French bourgeoisie. If there is a financial sub- ject on which that bourgeoisie is furious, it is the Income-tax, which half the moneyed men believe would be public, and therefore an exhortation to the workmen to strike for higher wages. Yet M. Gambetta boldly declares that the Income-tax ought to be the sheet-anchor of French finance. If there is a social question on which the bourgeoisie is resolute, it is that its sons shall not serve as ordinary conscripts. Yet M. Gambetta declares that compulsory service ought to press equally and personally on all. It is difficult to understand why M. Gambetta should at this moment have assailed so large a class with promises so unpalatable, and we believe the reason is this. He wishes to attract the residuum in the rural districts to the banner of the Moderates, and he knows that in the provinces the inequality of the conscription is detested as a scandal, and the holders of wealth without land, who in France really escape taxation, are considered almost public enemies. Frenchmen in the mass are for equality, above all, and M. Gambetta proposes to remove the two greatest legal in- equalities which remain.
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