Out of fifteen seats in the French Chamber of Deputies
filled up last Sunday by fresh elections, the Republicans have already gained fourteen, and are morally certain of the fifteenth, the two highest candidates being both Republicans. Taking all the con- tests caused by the annulled elections, thirty-one out of thirty- five have been gained by the Republicans, and only four by the Reactionary party. This result is final evidence of the substan- tial unanimity of the French people. Even the Bonapartist Ordre virtually admits this, when it explains the result by the remark that a great number of French Conservatives, having no very strong prepossessions, necessarily vote for the existing Government, especially when they do not see what would take its place, if it were defeated. That is only another way of saying that genuine Conservatism is beginning to regard fidelity to the Republic as the most Conservative of French policies, and no testimony to the victory of the Republican idea could be more convincing than this. When Conservative Frenchmen begin to think and speak of the Republic with the same pride with which English Tories think and speak of the House of Commons, the Imperialists and Royalists of France may regard their occupation as definitively gone.
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