neither placard his denial on the walls, nor insert a paragraph in the newspapers, declaring that the charge was false. So that, according to this, a man who ventures to oppose a Government candidate in France may, at the most critical moment, just before the election, be made the object of the most calumnious attacks-carefully reserved until the twenty days in which he is permitted to address the electors have elapsed -and he is not to be allowed even the liberty of denying them.

Another ingenious mode of stifling opposition at elections is to prevent as far as possible the cards of the obnoxious candidate from getting into the hands of the electors. This is done by attempting to put in force the law relating to colportage, and declaring that all who distribute the cards or tickets are acting as unlicensed hawkers, and so are guilty of a misdemeanour.

The colportage law is part of the Loi du 27-29 Juillet 1849, sur la Presse, and is in the following terms: 'All distributors or hawkers of books, writings, pamphlets, engravings, and lithographs, shall be obliged to be furnished with an authority (or licence), which shall be delivered to them for the department of the Scine by the prefect of police, and for the other departments by the prefects.' And the penalty of contravention is fine and imprisonment. We cannot state that any French court of justice has actually held the distribution of electoral cards to be within scope of this law, but we know that individuals have been brought before juges de paix, and charged with it as a penal offence. And in one case a candidate was himself arrested for handing about his own cards in a market-place! At a late election which took place for the arrondissement of Pont de l'Evèque, which embraces part of the coast of Normandy, the report was carefully spread that if the Government candidate did not obtain an imposing majority, there would be a general impressment of seamen, and that those who were known to exert themselves for the opposition candidate, would be compelled to sail in the expedition to China. And to such an extent was the system of Government interference carried, that none of the licensed victuallers (débiteurs de boissons) dared to receive the addresses and cards. of the opposition candidate, and they positively refused them,

knowing well that they were at the mercy of the prefect, who could, if he pleased, make them close their houses. In one of the communes of the arrondissement of Lisieux, the commissary of police threatened a distributor of some opposition tickets on the eve of an election, that if he did not desist, his son, who was away from his regiment on furlough on account of health, should be immediately recalled to active service, and of course the threat was effectual. Sometimes opposition placards are torn down by or in presence of the authorities, whose zeal, although sometimes, as in the case of M. Thil, it overshoots the mark, is quickened by the hope of thereby recommending them to the favour of Government, the absolute dispenser of every kind of patronage in France.

We might go on multiplying such instances to an indefinite extent, but we think we have said enough to illustrate the way in which M. Baroche's maxim as to the necessity of not abandoning electors to themselves, and of enlightening them with respect to the performance of their duties, is practically understood and carried out by the authorities; and how universal suffrage may and does become universal 'mystification.' We have seen the enormous amount of influence, both direct and indirect, which the Imperial Government brings to bear upon elections-the promises, the threats, the frauds, which are employed to secure the return of the Government candidates; and how, then, can we accept the results as a fair test of the political opinions of a majority of the population? When the masses are told by their prefects, who have the power of verifying their own predictions, that unless they return a particular deputy the roads of the commune will not be repaired, and the bridges not rebuilt, that the parish church will be allowed to fall into decay, and no public money will be spent on the district--how can we wonder that they vote as they are bid, and become passive instruments in the hands of Government. To us, we confess it seems to be little short of a miracle that any opposition should succeed, and we admire the moral courage of the men who venture to confront the serried phalanx of officials, with all their machinery of power, patronage, and means of annoyance at command. They run in a race where the competitors are so unfairly weighted as to make the chance of victory on the side of opposition almost impossible.

But it may be said that opposition members do sit in the Corps Législatif—and how did they get there if the system at elections is such as we have described? We answer first, that it would not serve the purpose of the Imperial Government not to have even the show of an opposition in the Chamberthat would be too transparent a mockery; and, secondly, public opinion is not so utterly powerless and dead in France as to make it safe to attempt such practices in the larger towns. It is therefore quite consistent with all we have here stated, that M. Emile Ollivier should be elected in Paris, and M. le Beschu de Champsavin rejected in Brittany.

We will, in conclusion, quote one or two passages from the writings of the present French Emperor, which deserve to be carefully studied, as containing the opinions of a man who, more than any other in Europe, has the power to convert his ideas into facts. In a short essay on the electoral system which he published in 1840, in 'L'Idée Napoléonienne,' intended to be a monthly periodical, but of which only one number ever appeared, after proposing a system of electoral colleges based on universal suffrage, he says:

In a well-organised body two contrary currents must always be perceptible; one rising from the base to the summit, the other descending from the summit to the base.

This influence of the Government, which must be felt in the lowest classes of the people, and the authority of popular will, which even the head of the State must acknowledge, must act and react by mutual degrees in the ascending as in the descending current.

When the people vote in a body in the public street, and give their suffrage directly, it is as if all the blood of the body rose to the head, and the consequence is discomfort, congestion, giddiness.

Even the interests of the people are inadequately represented, because reflection and judgment have no influence over the elections; only passion and excitement of the moment direct the vote.

A striking example of this truth presents itself in the democracy of the Swiss cantons. The people assemble in a body on the public place to choose their representatives; yet, though they enjoy the plentitude of power, the retrogressive spirit is firmly implanted in the minds of the people in their Swiss cantons. There is no ancient prejudice which they do not sanction in their popular assemblies, and no improvement which they do not reject.

In France just the contrary takes place. In our election system, founded on fear and privilege, the influence of the Government acts directly on the people, and this influence, which might nevertheless be enlightened and protective, acts by corrupting the consciences of the people, by deceitful promises, by making a real political traffic of the votes of the citizens.

Such is the character given by Prince Louis Napoleon of

the action of the Government on the electoral system twenty years ago. It then, according to him, corrupted consciences and trafficked in votes. At the present moment, Napoleon III. wishes the world to believe that under the Imperial régime it is enlightened and protective.' But, after the facts we have adduced, we leave it to everyone who reads this article to declare whether the Emperor has not, in the above passage, pronounced his own condemnation, and given a true description of the system now practised in France; and whether universal suffrage and vote by ballot in that country are not 'a mockery, a delusion, and a snare.'

247

A JOURNEY TO ASHANGO LAND.1

'Quarterly Review,' 1867.

WHEN Mr. Du Chaillu published, in 1861, his 'Explorations in Equatorial Africa,' the book met, in several quarters, with an unfavourable, not to say hostile reception. Some of his critics went so far as to assert that the work was a fiction, and that the author had not travelled in the interior of Africa at all. It is not necessary to confute insinuations which nobody now pretends to believe; but we do not deny that the volume was open to adverse criticism, and that the narrative involved contradictions which it was difficult to explain. There was a confusion of dates, and also a confusion of journeys, which made it difficult to explain some points of the narrative, and certainly the most was made of these discrepancies and mistakes. We who had examined Mr. Du Chaillu's original journals never doubted for a moment the main truth of his narrative, although we saw that, owing to the manipulation of a literary hand in preparing his book in America, his published work mixed together separate journeys, and betrayed a strangely involved chronology. It was on these grounds that the maps drawn up by Dr. Barth and Dr. Petermann in 1862 moved all the positions of the places he had visited much nearer the coast than he had fixed them, so as to reduce greatly the length of his routes. We all know how the accounts of the gorilla were discredited by those who had never an opportunity of witnessing the animal's habits, as only one or two stuffed specimens had reached the museums of Europe. Some writers asserted that Mr. Du Chaillu had never seen the creature alive, and that the specimens he brought or sent to

A Journey to Ashango Land and Africa. By Paul B. Du Chaillu. further Penetration into Equatorial London: 1867.