TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE FRENCH MUNICIPAL FLECTIONS.
TITimmediate effect of the Municipal Elections in France an hardly be otherwise than disastrous. Those elections have been governed for the most part by political considera- tions, and their result proves, past all question or demur, that in all the great cities of France, and. all the towns except four or five, the majority of the active electors i.e. of those who take a strong interest in politics, are Radical i.e., All shades of Monarchists, Septennists, and Conservative Repub- licans have been equally defeated, and the citizens have announced everywhere that they desire a Republic, and a Republic of the Gambetta or even a more decidedly Red type. There have been, of course, numberless abstentions— in some places so many that the Conservatives have some ground for asserting that latent opinion is with them, though the Ballot is against them—but calculations from abstentions are extremely delusive. The rule, now almost universal on the Continent, that an election to be final must be attended by one-half plus one of all voters on the register ensures a tolerably heavy vote • Conservatives have no more motive to abstain than Liberals ; and in politics, as in everything else, one active man who will move is worth three who will not take the trouble even to record their names. The cities and towns must be taken to be Radical for the time, and we do not know that in any other country than France this would be matter for regret. A seat in a deliberative Council, however small its number or limited its functions, tends to educate its pos- sessor' and if 100,000 of the most energetic Radicals in France have become Municipal Councillors, so much the better for France and for the party. 'they will learn moderation in power, and their ideas as a mass would not, we imagine, greatly frighten Englisluiten. There are of course among the newly- elected some doctrinaires of the most dangerous order, men who unite to the dreamy utopianism which has since 1'189 always lingered in French thought the furious impatience character- istic of the South ; who want in order to regenerate society to abolish most of the principles upon which it has hitherto been founded. But the mass of French Radicals, we take it, are, except in their overweening dislike of the Priests, very much like Radicals everywhere else,—anxious to do all that can be done to further their own views without destroying the pro- sperity of their cities. Some of their ideas are wild, no doubt, and one, the substitution of a progressive income-tax or pro- perty-tax for all other forms of taxation, is most dangerous ; but their powers are restrained by very strict laws, they can do little without official consent, and they must possess, at least in a degree, some of the financial aptitude of the French, and men of financial aptitude soon find out the consequences of menacing those who possess capital. In most countries, we think, the Conservative classes would say to themselves, "Let us see what these bodies actually do, before we fall into a panic' or attempt to interfere with the result of a suffrage regularly established and exercised."
We fear there will be no such patience exhibited in France. There, even if the rural elections are conservative, the Con- servative classes, including those who now control the Assembly, the Army, and the Bureaucracy, will say that the urban returns must be taken as a menace ; that the masses of the towns are clearly hostile to property and order; that their " rising " is a sufficient warning to all men that " society " must be pro- tected by giving new strength to the principle of authority. The Government will be urged to exert still more freely its power of nominating Mayors. It will be implored to strengthen urban garrisons. It will be advised to dissolve unhesitatingly any municipality which attends to politics, even though atten- tion only takes the form of an address. The Marshal-Pre- sident will allege that here is a clear proof of the necessity for formulising his powers in some method which will not allow Re- publicans to call themselves the only " Constitutional " party. The majority in the Assembly will urge that here at last is final reason against a Dissolution which might end in the election of a Chamber like the Municipality of Marseilles, which is believed in France, apparently without evidence, to be almost Terrorist in tone. Even the Moderate Re- publicans will be startled, more especially those among them who were originally Orleanists, and will begin to fear that the old cycle of French revolutionary progress is coming round once more ; that the Constitutionalists will be beaten by the Girondins, the Girondins by the Mountain, and the Mountain by some purely anarchic mob. They will draw slightly more towards the Right Centre, and we may see again some spasmodic effort to obtain from repression that calm strength which is only to be obtained from the acqui- escence of the people. Already it is asserted that Government will in future act through the officials and disregard the Elec- tive Councils,—that is, will act despotically and leave anybody to protest who pleases, thus adding day by day to the irritation of the neglected but legal power, and deepening the fissure which menaces all French society.
This, we say, is what we fear, judging from all the recent history of French politics, but we do not add, as most of our contemporaries do, that the electors have showed their incapacity to elect. We wish they had acted otherwiser but it is vain to expect that large bodies of men not fully used to free election, and valuing logic as much as political success, will permanently repress all their views, and all their prejudices, and all their aspirations, in order that safe mem in partial agreement with them may have a fair opportunity to conciliate the parties which the electors detest. They will do it when the political instinct is awakened by any great
crisis, but they will not do it in ordinary times and rs
the burden of responsibility must be laid in practice rather on the repre- sentatives than themselves. The active canvassers for any party are always its most eager men and whenever choice in fairly open they will tend toward; candidates like thera- selves' and will choose men apparently more pronounced than the citizens who elect them. If the Municipal Coun- cillors are really the picked men of the parties to which they belong—and there is much reason to suppose that this is the case—the duty of displaying moderation and rea- sonableness and some little foresight now rests mainly uport them. They have to show that the party is maligned, that its objects have been misapprehended, that the existence of a Radical Council, say in Lyons, is quite consistent with order, property, and respect for the general law. We quite admit that the situation is annoying, that the Prefects are high- handed, that it is most vexatious to any elected body, be it only a Highway Board, to be told that its votes have of them- selves no executive force; but still the representative Radicals of France ought, if they are worthy of their position, to possess that much self-restraint, ought to be able to discern those less% apparent necessities of the political position which their electors have failed to perceive. That they will choose to see them may- be doubted, for a Municipal Council differs from a Parliament first of all in this that it lives among its electors, and can be scolded, or even threatened for any departure from their views, but the duty of Councillors is none the less apparent. Their busi- ness is to be better, wiser, and cooler than their electors, not to be, the quintessence of electoral passion. One of the worst signs we perceive in modern democracy is that it tends to forget this idea--which is the secret of the British House of Commons— and that both in America and France though from different causes, the aggregate responsibility of the Representative Bodies tends to become less. The Member is careful, it may be, of his dignity and reputation, but the House is not, or at all events, instead of being infinitely more careful than the indi- vidual, tends to become greatly less so. The sense of corporate existence seems to be deficient, and wherever that is the case, the collective action of numbers shields the individual, and the Council tends to become worse than the Member in the face of the world would venture to appear. We want to see the Councils of France behave themselves as well as the electors, and if they claim power and freedom as Radical Councils must, to show that they have some notion how to use the one and to avoid abusing the other. The expression of that want seems a platitude in England, but on the Continent, whether the reason be the suffrage or any other, the desire is- by no means fulfilled, and outside Switzerland we cannot mention the representative body which is distinctly abler, or, wiser, or better than the mass of its constituents. In England the House of Commons is and so outside St. Pancras is the Council of the dirtiest little borough in the kingdom. One of the great uses of representation is to .gire-a: vent to feeling, emotion, or even passion before it is transmuted into executive action,—to filter, as it were, the popular sentiment through the minds of the men who govern.
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