THE “BONAPARTIST CONSPIRACY."

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 306, 5 June 1875, Page 3

THE “BONAPARTIST CONSPIRACY."

(Pall Mall Gazette .)

To make intelligible the voluminous report just presented to the French Assembly by the committee appointed to inquire into the election for the Nievre, it is necessary to recall a parliamentary incident which many of our readers will perhaps have forgotten. The assault on M. Gambetta at the St Lazare Railway Station is probably better remembered than the “ Scene in the Assembly,” and the verbal attack on the Bonapartists which provoked that assault—and a fortiori than the incident which excited the storm in the first instance. On the 9th of last June M. Girerd produced in the Assembly a document said to have been picked up in a first-class railway carriage, and purporting to have been issued by the “ Central Committee of Appeal to the People,” sitting in Paris. It was in condemning this circular (supposed to have been issused to certain electors of the Nievre during M, Bourgoing’s candidature for that department) that M. Gambetta stigmatized the Bonapartists as “wretcheswhile M. Rouher, who followed him, expressed doubts as to the authenticity of the circular, pronouncing it at the same time a “ reprehensible document.” He added that he had no knowledgeof anyßonapartistcommittee. One consequence, however, of this incident was that several of the procureurs-gencraux were invited to open an inquiry into the existence of such a committee in Paris, with agencies in the departments ; and the preliminary steps of this inquiry having brought to light facts proving that a committee of the kind had taken a part in the election for the Nievre, the bureau then sitting on M. de Bourgoing’s return resolved that they could arrive at no decision on the point unless they were permitted to inquire into the extent to which the action of that committee had influenced the result. This inquiry was forthwith undertaken, but is as yet uncompleted, and the object of the present report is merely to lay before the Assembly the statement of a difficulty which has arisen to obstruct the access of the committee to certain documents necessary to the conlinuance and completion of their work.