[From the London Examiner.]
THE PARIS ELECTION.
All Paris is absorbed in the contest between the stationer Leclerc and Eugene Sue the novelist. Strange it is that the party which pretends to superior intelligence and refinement, should have put forward as their candidate merely a specimen of constabulary violence, an honest policemen, in fact; while the party accused of consisting of the mere dregs of society has selected for its representative one of the most refined and searching intellects of the day. If ever a man became a Socialist from conviction, it has been Sue; for his writings clearly show the progress and the changes of his mind. From depicting high society and influences he acquired a disgust for them; by diving among the vulgar, he discovered virtues whose existence he did not suspect. And though the conclusions he has drawn are erroneous, they would seem to be sincere.
It is remarkable indeed to observe how all the great literary geniuses of the day in France have taken the popular side. We know how boldly Lamartine plunged into it. Victor Hugo has taken the same part, and Eugene Sue. Alexandre Dumas, though in the employ of Louis Philippe in 1830, soon flung aside court livery and conservatism. Emile de Girardin, another man of first rate literary ability, is decidedly Socialist. Beranger, as far as age will permit him, is a stern republican. When a cause thus attracts and absorbs all the floating talent of a country, there is a vitality and respectability in it, more than we are at present inclined to allow to French democratic parties.
That the intellect, that is, the entire working intelligence of the country, has labored on the Democratic, and, we fear even on the Socialist side, is too evident from the fact that the opinions of the latter have gained ground, and not retrograded even in the provinces, where property is subdivided, and where there are few of the indigent classes. In no place is property more generally possessed that in the South of France; and there the results of the last two years have been certainly to strengthen democratic ideas, and to make monarchic ones decline. There is no mistaking, indeed, in what direction the current of ideas has set.
The Conservatives, or Monarchists, or the old political class, whatever one pleases to call them, begin to perceive that they are beaten in the intellectual, the argumentative struggle. They therefore make an appeal to arms. This is evident in all their acts, arguments, and movements. Their efforts are directed to crush the press, proscribe and imprison writers, and abolish meetings and speeches, except those delivered in their own clubs. They give the universities over to the Jesuits, and elect for the Assembly no longer orators, but stout soldiers. Changarnier is the Alpha, and Leclerc the Omega of such a party. Strategy is its policy. It meditates no question of political economy or of trade, but bethinks it how streets are best defended, and how towns are fortified against themselves. A War Minister, a Tax Minister, and a Police Minister—these form the head Cabinet of France. As to foreign policy, trade policy, and the other paraphernalia of government, all this is as much a sham and a humbug, as an assembly must be of which the majority is marshaled and instructed in a club, before it dares proceed to its duties of legislation.
The entire tendency is to change an intellectual and argumentative into a physical struggle. What events may occur, and what fortune prevail in a war of this kind, it is utterly impossible to foretell. For, after all, the results of war depend infinitely upon chance, and still more on the talent of the leader which either party may choose to give itself. Nor is it always the one which conquers first that maintains its ascendency to the last. A war of this kind in France would evidently have many soldiers enlisted on either side, and soldiers in that country make excellent officers. The Conservatives seem to think that the strife will be decided, as of old, in the streets of Paris; and they look to the field of battle, and prepare for it, with a forethought and a vigilance as sanguinary and destructive as it is determined. We doubt, however, whether any quantity of street-fighting in the metropolis can decide a quarrel which becomes every day more embittered and more universal. Socialism will not be put down in a night, nor yet in three days; no nor, we fear, even in a campaign.
Looking on the future in this light, it appears to us of trifling moment whether M. Leclerc or M. Sue carry the Paris election. Some thousand voters, more or less, on this side or on that, is no decision. The terrible fact is, the almost equal division of French society into two camps, either of which makes too formidable a minority to put up with defeat and its consequences, without one day or other taking up arms to advance fresh pretensions and defend new claims.