article in the October No. of _The North American Review_, on
"Louis Napoleon and the Southern Confederacy," which puts this
alleged friendship for the North in a very doubtful light.
Among some State Papers found in Richmond, a despatch from
Mr. Slidell says,--"Lindsay saw Disraeli, who expressed great
interest in our affairs, and fully concurred in the views of
the Emperor." Louis Napoleon was then intriguing hard to get
the South recognised.]
CONTEMPORARY LIFE AND THOUGHT IN FRANCE.
SUMMARY.--_Politics_: Agitations during the Parliamentary
Recess--Unjust Accusations levelled at the
Ministry--Reforms carried out or projected in the Public
Instruction--Justice--Public Works--Activity and Liberalism of
the Ministry--Its want of Cohesion and Unity--Renewal of the
Socialist Agitation--Return of the Amnestied--Election of M.
Humbert in Paris--M. Blanqui's and M. Louis Blanc's Addresses
in the Provinces--Socialist Congress at Marseilles--Reaction
against these exaggerations--Dangers caused by the attitude
of the Conservative Party inspired by the Clerical
spirit--Efforts to create a Republican Conservative Party--"Le
Parlement"--Unfortunate effect of the Ministry's Anti-clerical
Campaign--Legitimist Banquets--The Bonapartist Party and
its hopes--M. Naquet's Campaign in favour of Divorce.
_Literature_: Novels--Mme. Greville, Mme. Bentzon, M.
Lemonnier, M. Gualdi, M. Daudet, M. Zola, Flaubert, M.
Theuriet--"L'Eglise Chrétienne," by M. Renan--"Rodrigue
de Villandrando," by M. Quicherat--"Mémoires de Mme.
de Rémusat"--"Nouvelle Revues". _Science_: Geographical
Studies--"Géographie Universelle"--"La Terre et les Hommes,"
by Elisée Reclus--Map of France on scale of 1/100000--Lectures
on Historical Geography, by M. A. Longnon. _Fine Arts_:
Subjects opened to Competition--Death of MM. Viollet Le Duc,
Cham, Taylor. _Theatres_: Le Grand Opera, l'Opéra Populaire,
Pasdeloup and Colonne Concerts--Professor Hermann--The
Hanlon-Lees--"Jonathan," by M. Gondinet--"Les Mirabeau," by M.
Claretie--Le Théâtre des Nations.
The Parliamentary recess is generally a time of political tranquillity
for the country, and leisure or peaceful occupation for the Ministers;
not so, however, in France this year. M. Blanqui's candidature at
Bordeaux; M. Humbert's election in Paris; the return of the amnestied
from New Caledonia; the Workmen's Congress in Marseilles; the
Legitimist banquets of September 29; MM. J. Ferry's, Louis
Blanc's, and Blanqui's tours in the provinces; the inauguration of
Denfert-Rochereau's, Arago's, and Lamoricière's monuments, have kept
France in a state of perpetual agitation, if not disturbance. And
even the business world, which generally slumbers quietly through the
summer months, has been stung with a craze for speculation. A number
of financial companies have sprung up, based chiefly on most unsound
and absurd combinations, some of which threaten to collapse before
they have even begun to work. The great jobber, M. Philippart, who
so upset the Bourse some years ago, reappeared in greater force than
ever, only to get another ducking at the end of a couple of months.
Even the Republican party, which hitherto seemed to have kept out of
the way of dangerous speculations, has been drawn into the current,
and names of Republican deputies, senators, and municipal councillors
have appeared on the lists of the administrative councils by way of an
advertisement to subscribers. Nor, with so many causes of disturbance
at home, was the country free from anxieties abroad: the settlement of
the financial supervision to be exercised conjointly with England in
Egypt; the difficulties raised with regard to the same by Italy, who
would have wished to form a third in this new order of syndicate; and
Turkey's opposition to the decisions of the Berlin Congress concerning
Greece, must have caused M. Waddington more than one sleepless night.
Has the Ministry been weakened or strengthened by the toils of the
Parliamentary recess? The attitude of the Chambers when they meet
(Nov. 27) for the first time in their new, or rather old, quarters
will show. According to the enemies it has, both in the Republican
and Monarchical camp, it is in a state of complete dislocation; and
M. Waddington, in particular, is unable to exercise any authority over
his colleagues. This is the favourite theme, nightly recurred to,
of M. E. de Girardin, who, under colour of Radicalism, seems to be
entering on a campaign against the Republic of 1879, in favour of
Prince Jerome Napoleon, similar to his former one against the Republic
of 1848, in favour of Prince Louis Napoleon. The injustice of most
of his attacks, it must be acknowledged, borders on dishonesty.
Complaints are made of the Ministry's weakness and inaction. But on
what grounds? By the one side, because it leaves the Socialists
free to put forward their views; by the other, because it lets the
Royalists banquet in peace, and expels neither the Orleans princes
nor the Bonapartes. People in France always regard Government as a
gendarme whose business it is to imprison or escort to the frontier
those whose opinions are displeasing to them; if not, they declare
there is no Government. Or else it is still looked upon as a
Providence, whose duty it is to make the people happy from morning
till night. If trade be dull and the crops bad, as they are this year,
the Government is pronounced incapable, and the change to have been
not worth the cost. People cannot understand that a Government's sole
mission is to give a general direction to politics, to attend to the
wise administration of the country, to protect the liberty and the
rights of all, even of those who do not like it, and see to the
carrying out of existing laws and the making of new ones. The present
Ministry has not seriously failed in any one of these duties, and to
charge it with inaction would be most unjust. The new appointments
have almost all been excellent; particularly in the administration
of public instruction, where considerable changes have been made, the
most competent men have in every instance been chosen without regard
to political party. The remodelling of the Council of State was an
absolute necessity, as the Ministry could not work with men radically
hostile to its views. This remodelling was carried out with extreme
moderation; if the voluntary retirement of MM. Aucoc, Groualle,
Goussard, &c., gave it a more radical character, the retiring members,
not the Ministry, are to blame. Of the activity of the Minister of
Public Instruction there can be no doubt; he has even been laughed at
for his zeal in propagating his views, as shown in his southern tour,
during which he found time to make a series of speeches in favour of
the famous Clause 7, that deprives unauthorized religious bodies of
the right of teaching, and to plan important material improvements in
the constitution of the Faculties of Letters, Science, Medicine, and
Law. The inspection of the infant-schools, of the drawing-instruction,
have at length been properly organized, and a project for the reform
of secondary instruction has been elaborated. With regard to the
administration of justice, M. Le Royer has drawn up a very important
scheme, whereby the courts of justice will be reduced to one-half the
present number, important economies effected, the administration
of justice accelerated, and the number of unemployed magistrates,
barristers, and lawyers, which constitutes one of the evils of the
country and of the Parliamentary assemblies, diminished.
Can M. de Freycinet be accused of inaction, seeing that every day he
is told he will sink under the load of vast undertakings he has on
hand for the improvement of the harbours and the completion of the
railway and canal system? What accusations can be brought against
General Gresley, seeing that our military organization is making daily
progress, and that the autumn man[oe]uvres have been more satisfactory
this year than ever? The very criticisms addressed to the Ministry
with regard to its weakness towards its enemies prove how it has
respected the common liberty. It is, however, the habit in France,
when a Government allows the attacks of party free play to laugh at
its timidity, and when it puts them down to accuse it of persecution.
The thing to do, therefore, is to apply the principle said to have
been formulated by the President of the Republic himself--"To let
everything be said, and nothing done."
The only point whereon the criticisms of the Cabinet's adversaries
seem in some sense well-founded, is the charging it with having no
definite political line, and being consequently incapable of any
homogeneous influence either upon the Chambers or public opinion.
It is quite certain that the Cabinet is wanting in unity; that
MM. Waddington, Léon Say, and Gresley represent a less strongly
accentuated political shade than MM. Le Royer, Jauréguiberry, Tirard,
and Cochery, and these again a less strongly marked shade than MM.
J. Ferry, De Freycinet, and Lepère. Each Minister has his particular
plans, and occasionally the question suggests itself how far his
colleagues approve and support him. In any case, the Cabinet's most
important projects, M. Le Royer's judicial reform, M. de Freycinet's
plans, the Ferry laws, were accepted rather than desired by M.
Waddington, who cannot in consequence be considered to exercise
any paramount sway over his colleagues. This subdivision of the
Ministerial responsibility is unquestionably to be deplored, and
impairs the strength of the Government; but is it not the fault of
the Ministers, or rather the result and the faithful image of the
Republican majority, whose unity proceeds solely from the necessity
of fighting against Monarchical parties, and which represents very
different tendencies? A homogeneous Ministry representing one of these
tendencies only would command no majority. The Republic is still in
the period of struggle and formation. It cannot observe the rules
of the Parliamentary system quite regularly yet. Every Ministry is
fatally a coalition Ministry, and consequently without unity. When it
is, like the present one, agreed as to its general lines of policy,
at once liberal and moderate, and sufficiently sympathetic to both
Chambers, it would be hard, we must acknowledge, to find a better, and
to wish for a change would be madness.
Not the constitution of the Ministry, but rather the political
condition of the country, may, indeed, be productive of difficulties
and dangers to the Republic. Were we to believe the reactionary papers
and the anxious spirits, the greatest danger France is exposed to
arises from the revival of Socialistic ideas occasioned by the
return of the insurgents of the Commune. That disquieting signs and
tendencies show themselves in that direction is true. The amnestied,
who should have been received as penitent and pardoned culprits,
have, by many--by M. Talandier, M. L. Blanc, and others of the Extreme
Left--been welcomed as reinstated martyrs. People even went so far on
their arrival as to dare to raise a cry of "Vive la Commune." One of
the most criminal, M. Alphonse Humbert, who edited in 1871 a filthy
and bloodthirsty paper, _Le Père Duchesne_, and in it directly
provoked the murder of Gustave Chaudey, has been elected municipal
councillor of Paris by the Javel Ward. Though the Comité Socialiste
d'aide aux Amnistiés had rudely repudiated all community of
action with the Republican committee presided over by V. Hugo, and
contemptuously alluded to it as _le comité bourgeois_, the _Rappel_
did not hesitate to support this candidature, stained as it was
with blood. Hardly is old Blanqui released from his imprisonment at
Clairvaux when he starts for a tour in the south to propagate his
revolutionary doctrines, and finds people credulous enough to applaud
the senile declamations in which he accuses M. Grévy and M. Gambetta
of having sold themselves to the Jesuits and the Orleanists. M. Louis
Blanc, whilst issuing in book form, under the title of "Dix ans de
l'Histoire d'Angleterre" (Lévy), the wise and impartial letters
he addressed to _Le Temps_ from London between 1860 and 1870, has
reverted to his dreams of 1848, and, more intent on winning a vain
popularity than on consolidating the Republican _régime_, has aroused
the passions and desires of an ignorant multitude by unfolding to them
the chimerical and deceptive picture of a complete remodelling of the
French Constitution, and the prosperity which, according to him, might
be secured to all if they would lay down their liberties and their
rights for the benefit of a Socialist State. Finally, the Workmen's
Congress in Marseilles revealed with the utmost naïveté the false
notions, the gross ignorance, and the bad instincts that M. Blanqui
draws out from a fanatic monomania, and M. Louis Blanc encourages
from desire for noisy popularity. The majority of the Congress
plainly declared that they preferred the revolutionary course of an
insurrection to the peaceful course of voting and legal action, that
gradual progress was a chimera, that individual property must be
converted into collective property, and that such conversion could
only be effected by force. What was, perhaps, even more disquieting at
the Marseilles Congress than these brutal declarations, was the almost
fabulous ignorance, stupidity, and credulity displayed by most of the
delegates, who must, nevertheless, be among the most intelligent and
educated members of the Syndical Chambers. Neither in England nor in
Germany would an assembly of workmen put up with such silly and empty
discussions in which not a single practical question was treated
seriously, and the general reform of society was accomplished in three
or four high-sounding and pretentious phrases. The ignorance of the
multitude is an immense danger, leaving it a prey to every illusion
and dream and to the brutal impulse of its instincts.
Without being blind to the gravity of these symptoms, or denying that
much of the leaven that produced the Commune is still to be found
amongst the inhabitants of the great towns, I do not think the fact
presents any immediate danger, or that there is any chance of a rising
in Paris, or a revival of the Commune. The late manifestations have
done exactly the reverse of furthering the end in view. At Bordeaux,
Blanqui, who was elected in the first instance, failed in the second.
His journey, triumphant at the outset, ended amidst murmurs on the
one hand and indifference on the other. Humbert's election excited
the disgust of the most advanced Republicans, and has insured the
rejection of every new proposal of pardon for the members of the
Commune. The folly talked at the Marseilles Congress provoked the
protests of a strong minority in the very heart of the Congress, which
energetically defended the principles of good sense and public order.
If the revival of Socialism threaten the existence of the Republic, it
is not so much on account of the possibility of its bringing back the
Commune as that it may serve to provoke an anti-Republican reaction.
This is much more to be dreaded at present than any demagogical
excesses. The attitude of the Conservative party presents much
greater dangers to the Republic than that of the Socialist party. The
Republic's only chance is its free acceptance by the _bourgeoisie_
and the formation of a large Conservative but not reactionary party
to counteract the impatience of the progressive element. Until now no
such party exists. Many Conservatives have undoubtedly stuck to the
Republic, but they are absorbed by the progressive Republican mass;
the others have preserved a hostile attitude, and cherish visions of a
Monarchical or Imperialist restoration. Clerical ideas confirm them
in this attitude, and render them the irreconcilable enemies of the
present order of things; they follow the inspirations of the clergy,
who are convinced that no Republic can give them the liberty of
action they desire, and who, moreover, consider themselves persecuted
wherever they are not masters. The thing is to convince this
Conservative mass, now enrolled under the banner of clericalism, that
it is possible to give the clergy the honours and the liberty they
deserve, whilst confining them strictly within the religious domain,
and that the public _régime_ can be a secular one without recourse to
persecution. This is what the few members of the old Left Centre who
refused to join the ranks of the Ministerial Left, and are headed by
MM. Dufaure, De Montalivet, Ribot, Lamy, &c., are trying to convince
the Conservatives of. They have started a new paper, _Le Parlement_,
to vent their ideas, conducted with talent and earnestness, which if
it succeed in its object will have done the Republic good service by
calling a Republican Right into existence, whereas at present only a
Republican Left exists, without any counterweight, and bounded by two
abysses, the Commune on the one hand and Bonapartism on the other.
Certain members of the Republican party and even of the present
Ministry thought that the deplorable influence Catholicism exercises
on public affairs might be counteracted by open contest, and this
was the origin of Clause 7, and the war at present waged everywhere
against the Catholic bodies and the action of the clergy.
Unfortunately there is a fatal solidarity between the Catholic
religion itself and its most compromising representatives; the regular
and secular clergy are united by the closest ties; it is impossible to
deal a blow at the clergy on one point without in appearance attacking
religion itself. Moreover it loves strife, and above all persecution;
it feeds upon it; it wins the sympathy of the simple-minded by
resisting, in the name of conscience, all even the most legitimate
attacks against the authority it has usurped. The duty of a wise
Government, therefore, is as far as possible to let all religious
questions lie dormant, to cultivate towards them a salutary
indifference, to avoid the possibility of being accused either of
favouring or persecuting the clergy, so as to secure the countenance
of all those who, without being hostile to the Church, have no wish
to be its blind servants. One must be content to resist the Church's
encroachments without attacking it in its own precincts. The present
Ministry has stirred up, we think with unfortunate precipitancy,
questions which might still have remained awhile untouched, and thus
needlessly lessened the number of its partisans. But to be fair, it is
certainly very difficult to be impartial and indifferent in face of
a body in open revolt against the Government, whose bishops,
like Monseigneur Freppel at the inauguration of the monument to
Lamoricière, preach contempt for the Constitution and the law. The
behaviour of the Belgian episcopate, on the occasion of the new school
law, has proved that neither justice nor moderation is to be expected
from the Catholic Church. Whence violent minds are too disposed to
conclude that reconciliation being impossible, intolerance must be met
by violence, and fanaticism by persecution.
Were it not for this unfortunate clerical question, the opposition to
the Republican form of Government would be reduced to a minimum. The
Legitimist banquets organized throughout the country in commemoration
of the Comte de Chambord's birthday, September 29th, testified to the
ridiculous weakness of a number of aged children who indulge in the
phrases and fables of a bygone time. This flourish of forks was met
by all parties with ironical compassion. The Bonapartist party has
but imperfectly recovered from the blow dealt it in the death of the
Prince Imperial. Prince Jerome Napoleon may alter his outward line,
become as reserved as formerly he was unguarded in his language,
organize his house on a princely footing, have his organs amongst the
press, rally round him a great number of those who but now overwhelmed
him with the most ribald insults; he will never either wipe out a too
well-known past, or with all his intelligence make up for the total
absence of military prestige or personal regard. Nevertheless,
Bonapartism is so decidedly the fatal incline towards which France
will always be impelled if she become disgusted with the Republic,
that he appears to some the only issue in case of a new revolution,
and more than one of those who had of late reattached themselves to
the Republic were seen to turn their eyes to Prince Napoleon when
Humbert's election or the Socialist speeches at Marseilles renewed
their old terrors. Universal suffrage is always threatening France
with sudden surprises. If, as some politicians wish, the _scrutin de
liste_ be substituted for the _scrutin d'arrondissement_, it might
yet be that the name of Napoleon would find a formidable echo in the
popular mass, and eclipse all the new names which want its legendary
and historical prestige. This might happen, especially if the
depression of trade and the clerical contest were by degrees to weary
and disgust the mass of the electors with political questions, as
would appear to have been the case at the legislative elections of
Bordeaux and the Paris municipal elections, when more than two-fifths
of the electors abstained from voting. It might, above all, happen if
the Chambers continue to postpone all the reform laws, those relating
to the army, to education, and to the magistracy, which await
discussion and passing from session to session.