380 



FRANCE. 



the C6tes-du-Nord and some of the other de- 

 partments, the Bonapartists seceded from the 

 combination and set up separate tickets. M. 

 Ferry was the spokesman of the Opportunists 

 in the electioneering campaign. He was de- 

 cried as " the sinister man of Tonquin " ; yet 

 he made no attempt to justify the mistakes of 

 his ministry, but unfolded the doctrines of Op- 

 portunism. The republic, he said, could afford 

 to wait for reforms. The peasantry are the 

 "granite foundation of the republic," and 

 legislation should conform to their stolid and 

 conservative mood, and not be hastened by 

 the impatient impulses of the city populations. 

 The socialistic projects of the Extremists he 

 did not condemn as wrong, but as inoppor- 

 tune. He sought to win over the Radicals by 

 describing them as the " vanguard " of repub- 

 licanism. Olemenceau and the Radicals de- 

 nounced the Opportunists for truckling to the 

 money-power and forming a " shameful syndi- 

 cate " of private interests, defeating the demo- 

 cratic hopes of the people and doing less for 

 the working-men than the empire had done. 

 M. Paul Bert said that the time had come to 

 turn the course of the ship of state further to 

 the left. The Reactionaries stigmatized as the 

 chief sins of the Republicans their extrava- 

 gance, which added four milliards to the debt 

 in eight years, the Tonquin Expedition, and 

 their outrages upon religion, notably their 

 treatment of the clergy, compulsory school 

 attendance, and the divorce law. The Con- 

 servatives offered nothing that was calculated 

 to attract popular support in the place of re- 

 publicanism. The Bonapartists had two can- 

 didates, neither of whom possessed the quali- 

 ties of either Napoleon ; Bourbonism was an 

 obsolete and unintelligible doctrine ; and Or- 

 leanism promised only a repetition of the re- 

 public in the guise of a monarchy. The Radi- 

 cals presented a confusing multiplicity of pro- 

 grammes that convinced the rural voters more 

 than ever of the danger of intrusting the 

 Government in such reckless hands. Their 

 most common demands were the separation of 

 church and state, and the extension of univer- 

 sal suffrage to the Senate and the presidency. 

 A progressive income-tax was a part of their 

 general programme, also an elective judiciary 

 and cheap justice, and universal three years' 

 military service. The unexpected Conservative 

 gains in the elections indicated partly a feel- 

 ing of dismay at the growth of Radicalism, and 

 partly dissatisfaction with the conduct of affairs 

 by the Opportunists, but not a genuine reac- 

 tion^ in favor of monarchical government. The 

 Minister of Education issued a circular saying 

 that^the Government would exercise strict im- 

 partiality, and expected teachers and other 

 functionaries to abstain from partisan conduct. 

 The general election took place Sunday, Oct. 

 4. The number of deputies elected was 584. 

 In the late Chamber the Royalists and Impe- 

 rialists together counted only 95 seats. There 

 was dismay in Paris when it was known that 



they elected 183 members on the first ballot. 

 The Republicans set up a variety of lists, cor- 

 responding with their various shades of opin- 

 ion, and were able, by combining, to win most 

 of the secondary elections. An absolute ma- 

 jority of the votes cast and a vote equal to one 

 fourth of the registered electors was necessary 

 for election. The Republican leaders arranged 

 to have all the lists withdrawn on the second 

 ballotage, except the ones that received the 

 highest number of votes. The popular vote 

 was about 7,500,000, and 3,300,000, or not 

 much fewer than half of the total number of 

 ballots, were cast for the Reactionary lists. 

 M. Mangon, Minister of Commerce, and M. 

 Pierre Legrand, Minister of Agriculture, lost 

 their seats and resigned their portfolios. The 

 central and eastern departments remained sol- 

 idly Republican. In the south, Ardeche, Lo- 

 zere, Aveyron, and neighboring districts, were 

 won by the Monarchists; while immediately 

 north, Gironde, Dordogne, and other depart- 

 ments went over to the Republicans. Corsica 

 reverted to Bonapartism. The Nord, Pas-de- 

 Calais, and Somme, before represented princi- 

 pally by Republicans, elected Conservatives. 

 The Reactionaries gained also in Manche, Eure, 

 Orne, Calvados, Mayenne. In Ille-et-Vilaine 

 the towns just turned the scale in favor of the 

 Republicans. In other departments of Brit- 

 tany and La Vendde and the Bonapartist dis- 

 tricts of the north, where many towns former- 

 ly returned Republican members, the Conserv- 

 atives now carried their entire tickets. In the 

 southwest, where the vote was previously 

 divided, a marked Conservative reaction was 

 observed. Paris and the Rhone, and other 

 industrial centers of the south, returned Radi- 

 cals. The Radicals gained sixty seats, and 

 numbered about one hundred and fifty in the 

 new Chamber. Among the^r successful candi- 

 dates were Socialists of the stamp of M. Roche- 

 fort, who took a prominent part in the Repub- 

 lican counsels in the coming session. The 

 ruling motive with the Radicals and the other 

 Republicans who joined with the Reactionaries 

 in overturning the Ferry ministry, was to take 

 away from M. Waldeck-Rousseau, the Minister 

 of the Interior, and from M. Ranc, the party 

 manager, the power of controlling the elec- 

 tions. The new Chamber contains 391 Re- 

 publicans and 205 Reactionaries, the relative 

 strength in the last Chamber having been 4i 

 to 95. The ministers offered their resignations 

 to President Grevy on Nov. 6, but he declined 

 to accept them. The vacant post of Ministei 

 of Agriculture was filled by the appointment 

 of M. Gomot, and that of Minister of Com- 

 merce was given to M. Dautresme. 



Alsaee-Lorralne. The question of the recove] 

 of the Rhenish provinces came up continually 

 in connection with the Tonquin expedition. 

 In the parliamentary controversy between M 

 Clemenceau and M. Ferry, the former decla; 

 that a nation whose frontier had been weafe 

 ened should not scatter its forces over the 



