The Madison Daily Leader

M. CONSTANS' AMBITION.

He Seeks to Succeed Carnot as President of the French Republic.

M. CONSTANS.

France is just now in the throes of a general election which is more than usually interesting. The presidency is at stake, for the chamber of deputies chosen will in conjunction with the senate be called upon to choose a successor to President Carnot if they do not choose Carnot to succeed himself, as that gentleman and his partisans hope they will, and as it might be safe to predict they would if it were not uncertain what effect the Panama scandal has had upon the voters, and if it were not equally uncertain on which side the votes of the Catholic royalists will be thrown.

No one can say just how the Panama affair has affected the French electorate. In Paris it seems to have been almost forgotten, but the French peasantry are notably jealous of anything that touches their pursestrings and not apt to forget the large proportion of their savings dumped in the Panama ditch. How far they may discriminate between those whose reputations were besmirched and those who came out scathless or whether they will discriminate at all is the problem.

The votes of the Catholic monarchists, newly rallied to the support of the republic by the advice of the pope to the French hierarchy, might reasonably be expected to go in favor of Carnot, who has been a satisfactory and conservative enough president to suit everybody but his political enemies. But Constans, who is practically Carnot's only contestant, has been hard at work trying to exploit those votes in his own favor, and only results can tell the effect of his somewhat hazy promises of tolerance and conciliation, particularly as he does not propose to abandon secular education or exempt the priests from military service.

Otherwise Constans' programme seems to aim at the combination of the conservative and socialist forces. To the latter he throws a sop in the shape of a proposition for old age pensions and legislation to reduce the burdens of the peasantry, while in general he declares for a strong policy of law and order.

Constans is a native of Toulouse and was minister of the interior under Grevy. He held the same portfolio early in Carnot's administration, and it was he who crushed the Boulangist conspiracy. Among the possibilities that if Carnot is re-elected Constans may be called to the premiership of the new cabinet.