THE EXAGGERATION OF GENERAL BOULANGER'S DEFEAT. T HE London correspondents of
the English newspapers are greatly exaggerating the meaning and extent of General Boulanger's defeat in the cantonal elections. That he has been defeated very decidedly, there is no doubt ; for to be elected in a dozen cantons out of some two thousand is to be made conspicuous as the candidate who wished to fix the attention of the world as the candidate of France and who is evidently not, for this purpose at all events, the candidate of France. Undoubtedly the election does show that the feeling in France for General Boulanger is not that feeling of universal personal confidence in him and loyalty to him which he had himself hoped and apparently been injudicious enough to believe, when he gave out that he intended to be elected in a large number of French cantons just to show his enemies how powerful he is. The result establishes, we think, what we have always been disposed to believe, that General Boulanger is fixed on by France for want of a, better candidate, to show negatively that France is thoroughly dissatisfied with her political institutions as they exist, that she is not Royalist, that she is not Imperialist, but that she is also not Republican as the word " Republican " has been understood by recent French Governments. France has wanted to express a disgust with what has been ; not enthusiasm for any ideal. How could she better express this than by exhibiting first in a series of political elections her rather languid preference for a man who, while not belonging to any of the known sections of French political life, yet avows his utter dissatisfaction with the Parliamentary system as it is now worked, and next de- claring by the results of a series of non-political elections, that it is not nearly so much his personal merits, as the personal demerits of other prominent leaders, and of the whole Parliamentary system as it is worked under the in- fluence of those leaders, which she wishes to publish to the world ? As we understand the elections which have just taken place, they say distinctly to General Boulanger No, it is not for you particularly that France cares. It is your dislikes, in the main, that she approves. She does not like all this weakness, this Parliamentary squabbling, this poli- tical uncertainty, this feebleness of the executive authority. She is with you in declaring that the Parliamentary system as it has been developed for the last ten years in France is rotten and intolerable. But there is no such personal enthusiasm for you as you imagine. These are cantonal elections by which the general political situation could not be directly affected, and in these elections we are quite content to let things remain much as they were, though with evidence of a slightly increased Conservative feeling. It is not that we believe so much in you, as that we disbelieve so much in what you disbelieve in, and we make that clear by not responding to your appeal as if it were for your own sake that we had strengthened your hands. We strengthened your hands to weaken the hands of others, and we could hardly show that better than by not voting for you in a crisis, when if we had voted for you, it would have given you a purely personal victory. We will use you to express our deep disgust at the present working of Parliamentary institu- tions, but we will not express any unbounded confidence THE invasion of Upper Egypt by a force of fanatics in you personally, for we do not feel it.' sent from Khartoum has not unnaturally raised That is the political drift of the recent elections, as we afresh some old questions which were fiercely debated understand them ; and if we may judge by the tenor of almost every day a few years ago. It is no doubt a very General Boulanger's rather ineffective manifesto, that, suggestive and dramatic incident. For the followers of too, is how he himself really interprets them. They do not, however, prove in the least that at the General Election General Boulanger's party will not come out victorious ; for in the General Election he is almost certain to be supported by the whole Conservative vote, and also by a considerable number of discontented Republicans, such as those who carried for him his only remarkable personal success, the Paris election. In the other Departments where he has headed the poll, his success was chiefly due to the Conservative vote, and there is, as we conceive it, no reason at all to suppose that that Conservative vote will be withdrawn from him when the General Election comes. At the cantonal elections, the Conservatives very naturally elected the candidates to whom they had been accustomed, and who expressed their own party bias, and apparently the Republicans did the same. The occasion was not one on which the fate of Parliamentarism in France could possibly turn, and there- fore there was no particular reason why those who are utterly disgusted with the fruits of Parliamentariem, should go out of their way to express a confidence in General Boulanger which they did not feel. But when the time comes for saying whether they like the institu- tions under which France now groans or not, they will very probably say that they do not like them, and show it by uniting on a man whose chief claim to their vote is that he, at all events, has said in the bluntest way that he does not like them, and that he intends to do all in his power to get them recast, not in an Imperialist fashion, and not in a Monarchical fashion, but in a fashion that will render the strength of France more visible, and the political divisions of France less conspicuous. It will be said, and justly said, that the completely negative character of the preference felt in France for General Boulanger as the man "who divides us least" will not diminish the danger of a coup d'acct if he should ever persuade the French people to entrust him with the chief power. The Conservatives and all who had voted for him would then be very much at his mercy, and a coup d'etat would not be any the less easy because he knew that he was only the man on whom a certain number of parties had united because they could not find any one else on whom they could unite. This is, of course, perfectly true. All that can be effected by this parenthetical snub to General Boulanger's vanity, will be effected by the impression it may produce on his own mind. But that impression, though it will probably be temporary, may well be salutary.. When he realises more distinctly that he is not quite the popular hero he had imagined, but only the least hopeless of many modes of expressing the discontent of France, he will, if he is cool and prudent, be all the more cautious in his policy, and walk more circumspectly than before. We have never pretended to feel any personal confidence in him. Shrewd he may be, but great in any way he has not yet proved himself to be, and very likely is not. He certainly needed a reminder that it was only faute de mieux that he was at all likely to succeed to power.. That reminder he has now received, and it may, we think, in the end prove advantageous to him rather than disadvan- tageous. Of course, the real doubt is whether a sufficient number of Republicans are so thoroughly disgusted with the present working of Parliamentary institutions in France as to desert their party and vote for the pinchbeck Dictator who is the only alternative for the moment. That question is still very doubtful. But if General Boulanger is wise, his future conduct will show that he has profited by his latest lesson; that he no longer seeks to pose as the favourite of Prance, but only as the sober and resolved interpreter of the impatience which the weakness and vacillation of successive Governments have inspired. He will try to show that Republicans, Monarchists, and Imperialists will all find in him a reformer who cares less for sensation than for the stability and dignity of the country, and who is determined that, however inadequately he may represent the will of the country, France shall not, if he can help it, be teased and talked to death.
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