p. 221 | Untitled article

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · September 17, 1867

The Late French Election.

The elections, in France, of the councils-general of the departments, which have been held during the last month, cast ominous conjecture on the future of Bonaparte. Their direct influence on the administration of affairs is not great; but the change which they indicate in the public opinion of the nation as to the way in which they are administered, is most marked. These councils-general answer in some faint measure to our State governments, and have the control of the internal affairs of the departments, under the superintendence of the prefects, who are appointed by the emperor. The result of the elections in the departments, therefore, is significant of the feelings of the inhabitants as to the public policy, much in the same way that those in our States are as to the conduct of our national affairs. They have no direct effect in confirming or changing it, but they are of pregnant import as to the state of mind of the electors toward the national as well as toward the local government. These late demonstrations show the existence of widespread discontents in the most important centers of the divisions of the French Empire, which are only waiting for a fit occasion to break forth into revolution.

In France there is no decent disguise, even, thrown over the interference of the government with the elections. The prefects plainly tell the electors whom it is the wish of the emperor that they should choose. And, knowing as we do in this country how potent is the intimation of the pleasure of the men who have the strings of the purse, the distribution of offices, and the promotion of favorite schemes in their hands, it may be easily imagined how doubly potential is the voice of power in a despotism like that of Bonaparte. Therefore, when the elections in many of the towns of the first consequence go directly in the teeth of the dictation, it is a fact full of meaning. In the Cotes du Nord M. Glais-Bizoin, who is the very arch type of a French radical, and one of the most prominent members of the opposition in the Corps Legislatif, has prevailed over the government candidate by a majority of four hundred. In Nantes, Dieppe, Lille, Limoges, and many other places of importance, the government suffered defeats more or less signal, in spite of the employment of all the corrupting influences of intimidation and the temptations of interest. Perhaps the most significant of these signs of the times was the election of M. Morin, at Lyons, over M. Dufour by a majority of two to one, and this though the defeated candidate was personally popular, very rich, an extensive manufacturer, and against whom there was no objection, apparently, excepting that he was the nominee of the prefect. Now Lyons, next to Paris, has always been the most important center of revolutionary movements.

The iron hand of Bonaparte still keeps the control of the action and the utterance of the French people, in the main. But wherever he has been obliged to allow any freedom of expression, either by words or deeds, it has been growing more and more emphatic in its condemnation of his reckless tyranny. The crushing speeches in the Corps Legislatif of Thiers, and the other members of the Left, were brilliant flashes of the volcano, prophetic of future eruptions and earthquakes. And these elections show as clearly, if not as loudly, the combustible and explosive elements which sleep under the dead level of despotism, ready to burst forth when the fated time shall arrive. The grounds of these discontents are such as touch the interest and the pride of the French people. The public debt doubled; the annual deficits growing larger year by year; Mexican loans devouring the savings of the industrious; monopolies multiplied and given to favorites; taxes growing heavier and heavier; and the conscription more and more exigent—all these things come home to the business, and bosoms, and pockets of every Frenchman. And, in return for all these sacrifices, nothing at home but a hollow and factitious prosperity, and abroad a rival kingdom created in the Italian Peninsula, and a rival empire erected in Germany, growing out of the intermeddling with Italy, Poland given up to Russia, and Denmark to Prussia—old allies both of France—and last of all, the great and crowning disgrace in Mexico. All these things have been undermining the throne of Bonaparte, which rested only on the belief of the masses in his skill and sagacity. This support lost, it will need but the first rude shock to send it crumbling into the abyss beneath. A Sadowa defeat would be the Waterloo of his dynasty. And the chance of such a defeat it seems to be his inevitable destiny to run. A month before their fall Charles X. and Louis Philippe seemed as firmly seated on the throne as he. A day may yet bring forth changes as sudden as these revolutions, and which can hardly fail to be more beneficent.—N. Y. Independent.