THE FRENCH ELECTIONS.

Southland Times, 2 March 1864, Page 5

THE FRENCH ELECTIONS.

(From the Saturday JRerlew, December 12, 1863.) The disclosures which have been made during the last fortnight, concerning the mode in which the French elections are managed, have very much the same kind of interest as the explanation of a good conjuring trick. Tt is not that the contrivances are very recondite, or the machinery very ingenious ; but still the startling results they have been made to produce invest them with an artificial merit. *The pliancy with which universal suffrage and vote by ballot, the vaunted instruments of liberty, have been bent into tools of despotism, makes the somewhat commonplace mechanism by which the change has been effected a subject for the investigation of the curious. There is nothing very new about the electioneering tactics of which the debates in. the Chamber have given us a "lhnpsc. We can see them at work at home° whenever .we please. They may be studied in full operation, every election time, at Barnstaple or at Berwick ; and far more piquant details than any that French experience can furnish may be culled out of the reports of the committees which are employed to track out the transactions of those enterprising communities. But we have been so constantly taught that these disgraces are peculiar to our aristocratic form of representative Government, and might be easily reme-

(lied by the adoption of two or three Radical nostrums, that there is an interest in the discovery of the: same disease flourishing, with symptoms almost identical, in a polity which whatever its faults, is ' c'ettafely not aristocratic. '•:,.,.■' : : ..-< . ; -.:v :, ! .^- ■ : ..--; ~\->^\)'^ iThe last case that was decidea-^fe case of Cambrai— in which the Chamber plucked, up courage to defeat the (Government, is, the most instructive, perhaps because* the ' violent: debate has given us the opportunity of knowing most about It. Probably, as the itf&Cnty is in one of the most enlightened paints of France, the case U titi unfavourable sample ofUhd whole. Two candidates started for the district of Cambrai. They:<3?# not differ in their politics, for both were devoted Iffijperialists. They only differed in social position". M. Stievenard was the maire of a commune, arid a ; member of the Council-General. M: Bbrtfelle was only the captain of a fire brigade, titii i M, "^oittelle was also brother of the Prefect of Ptfltcte sV Paris, and. consequently he had interest eridu^K Of., be named as; the "official candidate. This indignf# was rather too much for the people of Cambra'i, whatever their abstract admiration of equality might have been. A letter from one of the electors, cited in the debate, shows that they were bitterly indignant at what they called Tinsolencc et hi brutaltte de ces parvenus. A vehement opposition sprang up, and it became evident that the most energetic employment of official resources would barely suffice to secure M. Boitelle's return. JSfo pains, however, were spared. The first sj'mp'om, of special administrative activity was the sudden disappearance of the sonsprcfet. He had been active in canvassing for M." Boittelle, as in duty bound ; but he had fallen short of the zeal required in one or two particulars. In the first place, he appears to have possessed an abnormal, but still sincere, objection to intemperance. He was unwilling to open new beer-houses, right and left, for the purposes of the election j and he actually issued a circular, in which,- though duly recommending the official candidate, Ke was weak enough to exhort the maires not to carry the election by '■' (lie distribution of beer in the cabarets." It was also alleged against him, by the Prefect of Foliee in Paris, " qiC'd vtvatt. parmi Us injxt teles." It was very difficult for the poor man to do otherwise, unless he reth'ed from society altogether ; for every decent man in Cambrai was upon the side of the independent candidate. For these sins, however, in the dead of night, he was suddenly summoned by telegram to Paris, and informed that leave of absence for a fortnight was granted to him, and that be was not to return to Cambrai until the election was over. The news of this vigorous =!te'p acted with electrical rapidity upon the maires o.f the whole electoral district. They set. to work to' canvass with a will. Publicans were informed that their licences would be withdrawn if they did not vote for M. Boittelle, or if they exhibited the circulars of his opponent. Small traders were threatened with loss of official custom : and even the paupers — for paupers have votes in France — were told that their names, if they voted wrong, would be' struck off the lists of the Bureaux tic Bienf'dmncc, and the relief o-iven to them would be withdrawn. Even a number of poor wretches who had been burned out the year before, and liberally assisted at the time by AT. Stievenard, were forced under this threat to vote against him. The Government even stooped so low as to pounce upon a man who had sold bonbons in a cabaret for twenty years, and deprived him of his privilege on the suspicion that he had taken the wrong side. So much for intimidation. Bribery and treating were quite as effectively represented. From fifty to a hundred francs appears in nmnj cases to have been given for a single vote, hut ia men who brought votes in large masses only a franc a heatl wa.3 allowed. The most efficient form oc bribery, however, was a promise to save the voter from the dreaded conscription. M. Boittelle's committee issued a circular to every father of a family who had a son 'that was liable to be drawn during the following year, to this effect:—" Tons aver. vns jih vnlita'trc nu en reserve/ Pcul-ctrc p<nirroiix"ii(m.? cuv.s t'lre nti/es." The treating was conducted upon n scale which leaves all English precedents in the shade- An English candidate is compelled to he satisfied with throwing open all the public-houses. An official candidate in France has another resource beyond that. He can not only open all the existing public-houses, but he can create new ones at discretion. M. Boittelle issued tickets for beer to his supporters on a liberal scale. Some were produced before the committee authorising the consumption, on M. IJoittclle's behalf, of fifty pots de Mere. French beer is weak, and the name of the measure in question has not precisely the same meaning in French as in English. But still, at that rate of consumption, it is not surprising to learn that as many as ten thousand gallons of beer were consumed during the two election days in a single commune, or that the whole labouring population was, in the dclfcate language of one of the witnesses, in a state of " sur -excitation alcooligue." The election was one continued orgy; and the streets were occupied by mobs of drunken roughs who barred the way to opposition voters. A parallel, or almost a parallel, to these scenes might, perhaps, be found in English electioneering annals; but that to winch we can furnish no parallel is the open part which the Government took in encou-rao-in<>- these demoralising proceedings. Great efforts had been made by the Prefect in the Departement dv Nord to limit the increase of beer-houses in his district. He had been rigorous in reducing the number to a fixed percentage of the population. All of a sudden, just before the election, his rigour relaxed. The inhabitants were astonished by the intelligence—that men of the worst character— former publicans whose houses had been suppressed for disorderly conduct, and convicts who had just come out of prison, were receiviu"- licenses from the Prefect. As many as thirty-four of these new cabarets were opened in time for the election. By the help of such indecent manoeuvres, M. Boittelle obtained a small majority. But they so disgusted even the strongest partisans of the present dynasty that all the respectable classes, even the very judges of the tribunals, ( joined in impeaching the election. It was at last quashed by the Chamber, at the instance of one of the Emperor's own household officers, without, even the Minister of the Interior venturing to say a word m its defence. ,- •• ■ Two points deserve to be noted m these transactions. One is the modest standard of electoral freedom which Frenchmen have set up for themselves. M. I)'HavrincOurt, whose speech procured the avoidance of the election never dreams of censuring the interference ot the Government ; nor, apparently, do any of the local petitioners. On.the contrary, lie is at jn-eat pains to prove that the unlucky souspre'fet who was Surreptitiously spirited off at two in the morning had done his best to obtain votes for M. Boittelle. So long as the interference does not take the form of sheer corruption, the French seem to be very well

content ;that: the Grpyernment officially should, ? as weir as 'any 'other party, have its candidate.' The other point is the complete and, absolute ihefficac'y of the ballot. There is no imggestibn that the ballot boxes were tampered with, but still it never seems ;to haye'rentered into I the head of any one that it was possible for a • man to conceal the vote he had given. The population do hot appear to be equal to the I systematic mendacity;, before and after -the -election, which would be necessary" for the ■preservation-! 'of- ; sttch a • secret^- There are difficulties also^in' the mere manipulation -of ' the ballot. :;r -Mr;;Grbte's''-celebrated'v systeni^of •:; i 'Sact^punctuatipli ";ha¥'never been ■seriously; i tried, in practice, "ih : Prance as Veil "as- -in America and , Australia, voting -by ballot, has=. always meant Voting by a folded votmg-papef; * !• And it seems that iri France, as in America,. "it! lifts been found impossible to prevent a snarp-^fad political agent from guessing, by the material fe- colour of the voting-paper,, the secret of its extents. A voter is always in this difficulty, that iff he lets his voting- . paper be 'seen, his] vote can: be conjec--1 tiered ;- while;- if takes: great pains^to.cdric#t ifrfhe betrays that he has cause to-' fear the dbservatiou of the side, whichever it is, that has 'Hie 1 ' power of putting pressure upon him. r As a matter pifact, in .this, recent election, where parties fati high, and, the contest was close, menace* were used, and listened to, with as little doilU of their po^er as if no ballot had been in existence-.