HOW THE FRENCH GOVERN THEMSELVES
It may be broadly stated that the French people are content to be
governed and to feel a controlling authority in operation in all
departments of their lives. This results in a silent acquiescence
under long-endured grievances which could easily be redressed by a
little ventilation of public opinion. Where the Anglo-Saxon uses his
newspapers to make known his attitude towards various matters
requiring new legislation, where he takes advantage of an election,
parliamentary or municipal, to obtain undertakings from candidates,
the average Frenchman will neither write nor speak, so that editors
and deputies, and the great public as well, remain generally ignorant
of a widespread area of smouldering resentment. Like the burning
coal-beds not unfrequently discovered in Central Europe, the
underground combustion, which has perhaps been continuing for many
years, is only brought to light by accident.
When legislation takes place on some important economic issue it will
be framed, as a rule, on abstract lines disregarding the past, and in
many ways ignoring general convenience. There is in this way little
evolution in the growth of the French constitution, and an old law may
exist unmodified so long that when change comes it is so out of date
that it must be swept away. The Revolution cut down to the roots the
rotten tree of unregenerate feudalism, and planted in its place a
sapling which has to conform to the essential requirements of
progress; it must be trimmed and lopped, and must put forth new growth
in order that it too, in the effluxion of time, may not become as
unsuited to modern needs as its predecessor.
In August 1789 the first Republican Parliament wrote down certain
cardinal matters relating to the welfare and freedom of the individual
and called it the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
Thirteen years before this the United States of North America had
drawn up their Declaration of Independence, and no doubt this
inspired those who framed the more compactly worded document. In their
seventeen brief articles French Republicans, in an age when ideas of
freedom had fertilised both sides of the Atlantic, boldly and simply
stated their new-born beliefs, commencing with the assertion that "All
men are born and remain free and have equal rights." In _Article 2_
they stated that "the object of all political groupings is the
preservation of the natural, inalienable, and sacred rights of man,"
those rights being "liberty, property, security, and the right to
resist oppression." Although possessing the last-mentioned power, it
has already been pointed out that the people are slow to make use of
it. The nation likewise fails to carry out the spirit of _Article 9_,
which says, "As a man is deemed innocent until he shall have been
declared guilty should it be necessary to arrest him no rigour that is
not essential for the securing of his person shall be tolerated by the
law." In the final--the 17th--Article there is food for thought for
the Socialist, for it is there stated that property is "an inviolable
and sacred right," followed by the qualifying sentence, "No man may be
deprived of it, unless public interest demand it evidently and
according to the Law, provided, moreover, that a fair indemnity be
first paid to him." Even the most civilised of peoples are still a
good deal short of that high degree of wisdom and goodness which will
make every man competent and willing to be his brother's keeper, and
it is therefore probable that for some time to come _Article 17_ will
stand as a living part of the French Constitution. It is interesting
to remember that in the Declaration of 1789 the right of Habeas Corpus
was first established in France, while it had been on the statute book
of England for over a century, and would have been there some time
before but for repeated rejections by the House of Lords.
Upon the splendid substructure of the Declaration of the Rights of Man
the first French Constitution was reared. It was framed with care,
took two years in the making, and was finally accepted by Louis in
1791. Since then there have been many constitutions, but, omitting the
Napoleonic interlude, the principles of the Declaration show
themselves with triumphant ascendency as the foundation of each
reconstruction. Like all written constitutions, modifications are
frequently found necessary. There is none of the elasticity of the
unwritten constitution which exists only in the land of the people who
are said to have a genius for governing themselves, and perhaps it is
that endowment with the capacity for self-government which makes the
nebulous character of the British Constitution so valuable. It is true
that a very great majority of well-educated British people could not
give any clear idea of the nature of the constitution of their
country, and when any constitutional point arises only a handful of
experts can state how far the precedents of the past, by which the
constitution is modified, affect the immediate issue; and yet there
would be a considerable feeling of alarm if it were seriously proposed
to make the whole situation plain by producing a modern written
constitution, however much based on all that has gone before.
Britons, as a rule, do not even trouble to acquaint themselves with
the survival of many ancient royal prerogatives. Walter Bagehot[1]
puts into one pregnant paragraph what Queen Victoria could do without
consulting Parliament. "Not to mention other things," he writes, "she
could disband the army (by law she cannot engage more than a certain
number of men, but she is not obliged to engage any men); she could
dismiss all the officers, from the General Commanding-in-Chief
downwards; she could dismiss all the sailors too; she could sell off
all our ships of war and all our naval stores; she could make a peace
by the sacrifice of Cornwall, and begin a war for the conquest of
Brittany. She could make every citizen in the United Kingdom, male or
female, a peer; she could make every parish in the United Kingdom a
'university'; she could dismiss most of the civil servants; she could
pardon all offenders." The present sovereign could do the same, but
safeguards in the form of impeachment of Ministers and change of a
Ministry preserve the country from proceedings of this nature; but in
a country with a written constitution such legacies from the days when
the head of the State was a military dictator exist no longer.
[1] _The English Constitution_, Introduction to 1872 Edition.
While the British law-makers and administrators bear on their backs
the whole weight of centuries of laborious constitution-building, the
French work with the light equipment of a constitution framed in 1875,
everything prior to that date being null and void.[2] No French
politician is therefore required at any time to be aware of a usage of
the reign of Louis XI., or any curtailment of the royal authority
which may have taken place when Philippe Auguste occupied the throne.
The throne itself has ceased to exist since the fall of Napoleon III.
in 1870, and France since that year has remained under its third
Republic.
[2] The Constitution was slightly revised in 1879 and 1884.
The laws passed in 1875 provide that the legislative power shall be in
the hands of two assemblies--the Chamber of Deputies and the
Senate--and the executive in those of an elected President and the
Ministry. The Upper House or Senate is composed of 300 members, now
entirely elected by the Departments or Senate. They must be over forty
years of age. In England, if the Prime Minister is a commoner he can
only go into the Upper House as a listener, and all the Cabinet are
under the same restriction, but in France Ministers can sit in both
Chambers and can speak in either place as occasion requires or the
spirit moves. Voting, however, is restricted to the Chamber to which
the Minister belongs. One is inclined to wonder whether eloquence
that stirs the hearts and sways the voting in the British House of
Commons would be as productive if addressed to the hereditary body.
There is no separate Minister for the Post Office, that office being
included in the Ministry of Commerce, and there are only twelve
Ministers against the twenty or twenty-one of the British Cabinet. The
Ministry of Labour and Public Thrift appears almost quaint to the much
less thrifty people of England.
The Lower Chamber consists of 584 deputies, and is elected every four
years by universal suffrage. On coming of age, every citizen not in
military service and having a residential qualification of six months
may exercise the franchise. Women have not yet achieved the right to
vote. Perhaps the majority of French married women exercise already as
much power as they care to possess, for even peasant women are quite
familiar with the method of voting through their docile husbands. Only
in 1897 were women entitled by law to act as witnesses in civil
transactions; prior to that date a woman came under the same category
as a minor or the insane!
That the Frenchwoman is beginning to wake up to the possibilities of
her twentieth-century emancipation is shown in a hundred directions.
In January 1913 a woman came forward as a candidate for the French
presidential chair, the first in the history of the Republic. When
questioned as to the seriousness of her purpose she asked, "And why
not a woman head of the State? People may regard it as a joke; but
what about Catherine the Great and Queen Victoria?" When one
remembers, too, the astonishing business capacity of the average
Frenchwoman, one is inclined to echo the question, "Why not?" There
are already more than a dozen women barristers in Paris, besides
seventy doctors, eighteen dentists, ten oculists, and six chemists!
Women, too, have for many years occupied on the railways of France
positions which are exclusively in the hands of the stronger sex in
England. Who is not familiar with the hard-faced woman who with a horn
at her lips controls the level crossings?
The only restriction among French citizens to becoming President is
that which rules out any member of a royal family which has reigned in
France. He is elected for seven years and the salary is L48,000 a
year, one half of which is received as salary, the other being for
travelling and official expenses connected with office. This sum
appears generous when contrasted with the L5000 paid to the British
First Lord of the Treasury and his unpaid services as Prime Minister
of the Crown. The President appoints all the Ministers and heads of
the civil and military departments. He declares war with the consent
of both Houses, and a Minister counter-signs every act.
The national desire for security prompts the men folk of a large
proportion of the upper middle classes to aim towards the pleasantly
safe pigeon-holes in the State dovecot. In order to attain these
places of refuge from commercial or professional struggle, every
public official who has reached the desired haven of his ambition, or
at least one of the assured steps that will surely lead him thither,
is the subject of endless demands for aid in the same direction from
his remotest relatives and acquaintances. Upon this system of
_pistonnage_ the aspirant to an official position must lean, for if he
does not the crowd ready to fill each vacancy will all have superior
chances on account of the word here and there spoken on their behalf
in the right quarter. _Pistonnage_ does not, however, apply to those
who aspire to a seat in either the Senate or the Chamber of Deputies,
where a salary of 15,000 fr. a year and free travelling relieves the
representative of financial anxiety, so long as he is devoting his
time to his country's service.
By direct and semi-direct taxation about L25,000,000 was produced in
1912. These taxes include a levy on windows and doors, varying
according to the density of the population, the more closely inhabited
areas paying more than the less populous. There is a tax on land not
built upon, assessed in accordance with its net yearly revenue based
on the register of property drawn up in the earlier half of last
century and kept up to date. The Building tax is 3.2 per cent on the
rental value, and is paid by the owner. The Personal tax places a
fixed capitation on every citizen, varying from 1s. 3d. to 3s. 9d.
according to the department. The Habitation tax is paid by every one
occupying a house or apartments in proportion to the rent. The Trade
License tax embraces all trades, and consists of a fixed duty levied
on the extent of business as revealed by the number of employes, and
population, and the locality, and so on, and also an assessment on
the letting value of the premises.
By indirect taxation a little over L100,000,000 was raised in 1912.
The sum was realised by stamps of all sorts (excluding postage), by
registration duties on the transfer of property in business ways and
general changes of ownership, and by customs, including a tax on Stock
Exchange transactions, a tax of 4 per cent on dividends from stocks
and shares, taxes on alcohol, wine, beer, cider, and alcoholic liquors
generally, on home-produced salt and sugar, and on railway passenger
and goods traffic. The State monopolies of tobacco, matches, and
gunpowder produced the large sum of L38,000,000, but even this did not
meet the charges for interest on the National Debt, which were about
51-1/2 millions, the accumulated sum for which this is required being
(1912) L1,301,718,302. This is almost double as great as the British
national indebtedness.
Over each of the 86 Departments is a prefect chosen by the Minister of
the Interior, and through him the minor officials are kept in touch
with the Government. The arrondissement and the canton are
administrative divisions into which each Department is divided, each
canton including about a dozen communes. The commune is controlled by
the mayor, who is chief magistrate and, as in England, is the head of
the municipal body. According to the size of the commune deputy mayors
are elected. The great city of Lyons requires 17 of these officials,
and when one remembers that the presence of the mayor or a deputy
mayor is required at every marriage in order that it may become legal,
the number does not seem excessive.
Every canton has its _juge de paix_, who is in a general sense a
police court judge. He tries small cases, but his responsibilities are
carefully limited, and he may not inflict a fine exceeding 200 francs.
Any offence requiring a heavier hand must go up to the _Tribunal
correctionnel de l'arrondissement_ or the court of _Premiere
Instance_. The _juge de paix_ wears a tall hat encircled with a broad
silver band, and although, as a rule, a man who has received a fairly
good education, his salary averages between L120 and L160 per annum.
On such an income there is no opportunity for pretentious living! The
wife of a _juge de paix_ cannot, as a rule, afford to keep a
nursemaid, and one maid-of-all-work is as much as the _menage_ can
afford to maintain. Nevertheless the position is an honourable one,
there is a pension at sixty years, and the hours of labour are, to the
man with a sense of humour, often brightened by the absurdity of the
cases that are brought into court. There is generally much fun for the
court in the frequent cases of _diffamation_, in which citizens drag
one another into the presence of the _juge de paix_ for calling each
other names. The court allows noisy altercation in a fashion unknown
in England, and the task of the magistrate is, to the Anglo-Saxon
mind, almost beyond belief. The breezy outpourings of plaintiff and
defendant are ended with the _juge de paix's_ words, "You can retire,"
and, as a rule, some sound and friendly advice has been offered to the
unneighbourly neighbours. A very considerable amount of litigation
arises through the possession of land or houses, for the thriftiness
of the French has always inclined the people towards the ownership of
their farms or the land they till. In the old days before the
Revolution, all such disputes came before courts in which the
unprivileged and poor might be fairly sure of losing the day. The
scandal of those venal courts was so great that nothing short of a
clean sweep could effectually rid the land of the curse they
inflicted, and the overthrow of the monarchy was followed by the
establishment of administrators of justice who were servants of the
State and none other.
The correctional courts mentioned deal with the graver offences which
are outside the ambit of the _juge de paix_. As a rule there are three
judges and no jury. These courts are empowered to inflict punishment
up to imprisonment for five years. The Courts of Assize are held every
three months in each Department. They are presided over by a
councillor of the Court of Appeal with two assistants and a jury of
twelve, but a unanimous verdict is not required, the fate of the
accused hanging on a majority only. Another feature of these courts is
the _juge d'instruction's_ secret preliminary investigation into each
case.
Superior to the Courts of Assize are those of Appeal and the _Cour de
Cassation_, which became so well known to the English public during
the famous trial of Dreyfus. This court, as its name implies, can
abrogate the ruling of any other tribunal, with the exception of the
administrative courts. This high authority decides on matters of
legal principle or whether the court from which appeal has been made
was competent to make the decision in question. It does not concern
itself primarily with the facts of the case, and if it should annul
any finding the case is sent to a fresh hearing of a court of the same
authority.
The administrative police, or _gardiens de la paix_, are approximately
equivalent to British police constables, and must not be confused with
the _gendarmerie_, which is a military body carrying out civil duties
in times of peace. The _gendarmerie_ are recruited from the army,
there being one legion in each army corps district. Their strength is
roughly 22,000 men, equally divided between cavalry and infantry. In
Paris there is a separate force known as the _Garde republicaine_,
which carries out police duties very much the same as the
_gendarmerie_ in the Departments. They number about 3000, of whom 800
are mounted. The French prison system was in a very antiquated state
in 1874, when a commission on prison discipline issued its report in
favour of cellular confinements. Prisons were therefore reconstructed,
and after many years had elapsed some of the older ones were
demolished, the prisoners thereafter being removed from the
disadvantages they encountered in association. The system of
isolation required the construction of a huge new prison at
Fresnes-les-Rungis. It contains 1500 cells, and when it was completed
in 1898 the historic Paris prisons of Grande-Roquette, St. Pelagie,
and Mazas were swept away.
[Illustration: FIVE O'CLOCK TEA IN PARIS.]
Taken as a whole, one can scarcely endorse Taine's utterance that
modern France is the work of Napoleon. The present organisation of the
nation is undoubtedly due to the masterly brain and tireless energy of
Napoleon, but the national characteristics of the French people have
shown little change. The existence of a constitution, the even-handed
administration of justice, and the opening of the highest offices in
the State to the citizen of the humblest origin, do not yet seem to
have affected the nature of the people. Laughter, tears, and anger are
still near the surface; love of adventure in thought, word, and deed
does not yet lead the French into the acquisition of the solid
advantages their enterprise would bring did they only persevere on the
lines of their initial enterprise. In spite of the almost frantic
desire for liberty there is no doubt that the French tamely submit to
a regime which Englishmen would find in some matters quite
intolerable. If suspicion of smuggling falls upon a house the police
can make domiciliary visits of a quite arbitrary character. The Civil
Code, too, must be regarded as oppressive so long as it retains its
attitude of looking upon the untried person as guilty until such time
as his trial establishes his innocence, and the Anglo-Saxon mind is
revolted at the practice of endeavouring to extort a confession from a
prisoner. The Napoleonic mould did not alter these qualities, and even
in the matter of religious tolerance the French have still much to
learn.