The history of the Republic up to this time has been such a course of
surprises, that any forecast as to the future must be made with a large
reckoning for accidents; but this much may be said, that the Republic
owes its present appearance of stability to the want of commanding
talents among her ruling men. The outlook could not have been so
peaceful had Gambetta been alive. Gambetta had a vast ambition, and a
leonine, roaring energy, which provoked furious opposition. The men who
have parted his influence among them may be as ambitious as he was;
but they are so for personal objects, and as there is nothing great in
their characters or their policy, nothing imperious in their manner,
nothing stirring or seducing in their eloquence, they are less feared
than the man who wished to be a master, and said so. Nobody could
denounce M. Jules Ferry as aspiring to become a dictator; yet during
the past year he has held more effective power than was ever wielded
by Gambetta. He is a faithful party-servant who has been allowed to
exercise authority, because his employers have felt that they could
dismiss him at a moment’s notice. We bear more from a humble, useful
domestic, than from a self-asserting master. Louis XIV., who broke
the tyranny of Mazarin, and could not brook the arrogance of Fouquet,
submitted to the management of the quiet, astute Colbert.
In his novel “Numa Roumestan,” written while Gambetta was alive,
Alphonse Daudet showed “the North being conquered by the South,” that
is, the blustering, bragging, blarneying _blagueurs_ of Provence
and Gascony enthralling the democracy with their charlatanism, and
seizing upon all the public offices. Sardou had worked out the same
idea in “Rabagas;” but it must be noticed that the holders of the four
most important posts in France at this moment—the four Presidents,
of the Republic, of the Senate, of the Chamber of Deputies, and
of the Cabinet—are conspicuously exempt from the usual attributes
of demagogues. They are cold-headed men, plain of speech, dry in
manner; they are not Southerners, and, in fact, they are by no means
representative of the French as a nation.
M. Grévy comes from the Jura, on the borders of Switzerland, a
department which has for the last half century been more advanced in
public instruction than all the others, and where the _bourgeoisie_ are
something like the Scotch in their puritanism.
M. le Royer, President of the Senate, a hard, sententious little
man, with solemn eyes peering through gold-rimmed spectacles, and a
voice like the drone of a Lenten preacher—M. le Royer is a Genevan
Protestant, whose father became French by naturalisation. M. Brisson
was born and educated at Bourges, in the old province of Berry. He is
a trim, mathematically-minded lawyer and logician, creaseless in his
morals as in his dress, one of those Frenchmen to whom all the levities
of French life—light literature, music, gossip, and even _cuisine_—are
distasteful. M. Jules Ferry is a Lorrainer, born in the mountainous
Vosges; and, like M. le Royer, a Protestant—at least so far as he
confesses to any religion at all.
* * * * *
A nation must be turned upside down before a man like M. Jules Ferry
can become Prime Minister. It makes one smile to think that the
French have demolished three dynasties, and that countless thousands
of enthusiastic revolutionists have let themselves be shot behind
barricades, in order that the country may now be ruled by a Cabinet
containing three second-rate journalists, and three barristers who have
no names at the Bar. “No more revolutions: I have become a Minister,”
wrote the late M. Garnier Pagēs to his constituents in 1848.[14] M.
Ferry, to do him justice, did not conclude that progress reached its
zenith on the day when he took Cabinet office; he has rather shown
modest thankfulness at his own elevation, while feeling privately, no
doubt, some astonishment. Now that he has been in place some time,
the astonishment must have worn off, for he has learnt to know men,
and to perceive that circumstances do more for most successful rulers
than these accomplish for themselves. An inexperienced man at the helm
soon gets accustomed to see the big ship obey the propulsion of his
rudder, and if he be steering in calm weather, he may do as well as the
skilled pilot. M. Ferry became Prime Minister _faute de mieux_, and he
may remain so (with occasional displacements) _crainte de pire_. The
course of French Republicanism is always downward, and the constant
preoccupation of men’s minds under that happy _régime_, is the fear of
worse.
[14] “L’ère des révolutions est fermée! Je suis devenu Ministre, et le
peuple entier entre au pouvoir avec moi.”
Jules Ferry owed the beginning of his political fortune to his luck in
writing for a newspaper which had a witty editor. Just twenty years ago
(1865), being then thirty-three years old, he joined the staff of the
_Temps_, and after contributing leaders for three years, undertook in
1868 a series of papers attacking the administration of Baron Haussmann
as Prefect of the Seine. Baron Haussmann had rebuilt Paris and made
it a city unique in the world for beauty and sanitation. M. Ferry
could not have performed such a task, but he was able to criticise
the Prefect’s work, to array long columns of figures showing how much
it had cost, and to ask whether it would not have been far better if
all these millions had been given to the poor. Baron Haussmann sent
_communiques_ to the _Temps_ impugning the accuracy of M. Ferry’s
figures; but the journalist of course stuck to his multiplication,
and, as spirited opposition always made a man popular under the
Empire, the Vosgian’s articles obtained more success than is usual
with statistical essays. It was proposed that they should be rebound
in pamphlet form and circulated among Parisian householders in view of
the general election of 1869. M. Neffzer, editor of the _Temps_, then
suggested that the pamphlet should be called, “Les Comptes Fantastiques
d’Haussmann.”[15]
[15] A play upon the title of “Contes Fantastiques d’Hoffmann”—a book
which is popular in France.
The title took, and Jules Ferry got the reputation of being a comical
fellow. Resolving to make the most of this character while it
lasted, he came forward as a candidate for Paris at the elections of
1869—calling himself a Radical for this purpose. He was no more Radical
than comical, but if he had not taken up extreme views he could have
offered no reason for opposing the moderate Liberal (M. Guéroult,
editor of the _Opinion Nationale_), who was the sitting member of the
sixth Parisian ward. M. Ferry defeated his brother-journalist; and
in the following year, when the Empire collapsed at Sedan, he became
_ex-officio_ a member of the Government of National Defence. It will be
remembered that this Government was composed of the nine members for
Paris, because M. Grévy and some other leading Republicans refused to
accept power unless it were lawfully conferred upon them by a national
assembly.
M. Ferry was of course installed in Baron Haussmann’s post; but
during the siege of Paris he was very nearly lynched by some of those
excellent working-men who had formerly hailed him as a friend and
brother. On the 31st October, 1870, an insurrection broke out in the
beleaguered city, and a vigorous attempt was made to overthrow the
Government. M. Ferry fell into the hands of the insurgents, and for
six mortal hours these rude men subjected him to every species of
indignity. They pulled his luxuriant black whiskers, they taunted him
with eating white bread and beefsteak, while his proletarian brethren
had to content themselves with rations of brown bread and horseflesh,
and when dinner-time came they offered him his choice between a grilled
rat and some cold boiled dog. Happily the Breton Mobiles were at hand
and delivered him; but from that day M. Ferry’s Radicalism perceptibly
cooled, and when the Communal rebellion occurred, he took good care not
to let himself be kidnapped again by the once-idolised working-man.
Decamping to Versailles he remained there throughout the second siege,
and did not return to take possession of his post as Prefect of the
Seine until the rebellion had been crushed. It was on this occasion
that alighting from his brougham near the still-smouldering Hôtel de
Ville, and seeing a convoy of Communist prisoners pass, he shook his
nicely-gloved fist and exclaimed: “_Ah! tas de canaille!_”
The exclamation was pardonable, for these Communists had shot M.
Ferry’s friend and former Secretary, Gustave Chaudey, and the
new-fledged Prefect must have imagined bullets whistling by his own
sleek ears as he looked at them. However, M. Ferry’s vindictiveness
went no further than words, for he exerted himself charitably to save
some old journalistic comrades who had taken the wrong side during the
civil war. He is believed to have secreted several of these in his
private lodgings and to have covered them with his official protection
while the police were hunting for them. What is more, he honorably
connived at the escape of one of his vilest detractors, Félix Pyat.
This charming person, always the first to preach sedition and regicide,
and the first to fly in the hour of danger, had been unable to get
clear away from Paris when the Commune fell. He took refuge in a
convent, where the nuns harbored him for six weeks, though these poor
women were quite aware that he was the Pyat who had been clamoring for
the demolition of churches and the shooting of hostages. Jules Ferry
happened to hear of Pyat’s whereabouts, but instead of delivering
up the wretched men to a court-martial, he caused a passport to be
privately given him.
Good nature abounds in M. Ferry’s character, and this quality, in
combination with perseverance and a quiet talent for picking up other
people’s ideas, has been the secret of his success. During the last
years of the Empire while he wrote for the _Temps_, he was a daily
frequenter of the Café de Madrid, and there he was appreciated as
an attentive listener to no matter whose stories. He had then, as
he has now, a face such as is only to be seen on the shoulders of
old-fashioned French barristers and Belgravian footmen. The judges of
the Second Empire did not allow _avocats_ to wear beards, so M. Ferry
shaved his upper lip and chin, but his whiskers were of stupendous
size. Add to these a Roman nose, a fine forehead, shrewd playful
eyes, a well shaped smiling mouth, and a certain plumpness of girth
which removed him altogether out of the category of those lean men
whom Shakespeare thought dangerous. He always shook men’s hands with
a hearty grip; he could laugh loud and long even when not amused; if
conversation flagged he could light it up suddenly with a few crackling
jokes, but he generally preferred to sit silent, smoking penny cigars
(for he was not rich), sipping absinthe, and taking mental notes of
what was being said around him. Now and then, especially if a talker
appealed to him, he would nod approval with a grave closing of the
eyes, which is the supreme politeness in the art of listening.
He never squandered his knowledge in small talk, so that his public
speeches always took his most intimate friends aback. Gambetta once
said to him: “You are the most secretive of chatter-boxes,”[16] the
truth being that Ferry used commonplace ideas in private intercourse,
just as some men keep half-pence for beggars. To stake gold in
conversational games over a _café_ table was more than his intellectual
means could afford. A _blagueur_ himself in a small way, he knew the
destructive power of that light chaff which can be thrown upon a
good idea while it has the bloom of novelty on it. Then he was not
combative. Gambetta, a millionaire in talents, could scatter his best
thoughts broadcast without ever impoverishing himself. At the Café
Procope, at Brébant’s, and in the dining-room of his friend, Clément
Laurier, he would pound his fists on the table and thunder out long
passages of the speeches which he intended to deliver, and this without
caring whether political opponents heard him. “You are showing your
hand,” Laurier[17] and the still more prudent Arthur Ranc used to say.
But Gambetta could win without hiding his trumps, or he could win
without trumps.
[16] “Tu es le plus cachotier des bavards.“
[17] Clément Laurier used to be Gambetta’s chief political henchman.
During the war he was sent to London to negotiate the Morgan Loan. But
the Commune sickened him of Republicanism and he joined the Royalist
ranks. He died in 1878, being then one of the Deputies for the Indre.
His change of politics never impaired his private relations with
Gambetta.
Ferry always went into political action with his powder dry, chose
his ground carefully and picked out an antagonist whom he was sure to
worst. Gambetta would rush at the strongest enemy, Ferry fired at the
weakest; but this system had the advantage of leaving him after every
combat victorious and unwounded. It was a great triumph to him, when,
coming back among his friends, he heard their self-astonished bravos
as they slapped him on the back. There is much slapping on the back
in French political assemblies. Many a time has Gambetta’s broad hand
descended upon Ferry’s stalwart shoulders with the shout, ”_C’est bien
fait, mon petit!_”
The two were capital friends from the first, and remained so till
nearly the end. It was not till within two years of Gambetta’s death,
that the chief began to find his _protégé_ a little too independent.
Mutinous Ferry never was, but a time arrived when, from one cause and
another, he found himself second in influence to Gambetta among the
Republican party. He was but Addington to Gambetta’s Pitt: nevertheless
he got tired of hearing people say that he was only allowed to hold
office as a stopgap; and with a proper dignity he resented Gambetta’s
pretensions to act as occult Prime Minister without assuming the
responsibilities of the premiership. Gambetta, as we know, wanted to
become President of the Republic, or else Prime Minister with a secure
majority to be obtained by _scrutin de liste_. Until he could compass
one or other of these ends, he preferred to play the Agamemnon sitting
in the Presidential chair of the Chamber of Deputies. M. de Freycinet
and M. Ferry each humored this whim so long as it was possible, and
indeed nothing could have been more amicably subservient than M.
Ferry’s conduct while Prime Minister in 1881. He not only dispensed his
patronage by Gambetta’s directions, but framed all Government measures
according to the Dictator’s tastes, and even agreed to the performance
of little Parliamentary comedies, in which Gambetta pretended to attack
the Cabinet in order to dispel the notion that M. Ferry was not a
free agent. This state of things, however, could not continue after
the general election of 1881, when a strong Republican majority was
returned—not to support the Ferry Cabinet, but to set up something
better. Gambetta forgot that in putting on the gloves with his friend
Ferry, simply _pour amuser la galerie_, he was apt to give knock-down
blows which made Ferry look small. The cautious Lorrainer felt that he
had had enough of these sparring-matches, and he had the sharpness to
see that if he accepted a portfolio in the “Grand Ministère,” which
Gambetta formed in November 1881, he would confirm the general opinion
that throughout his premiership he had only been the great man’s
puppet. For all this, it was a very brave thing he did in refusing to
sit in Gambetta’s Cabinet. Gambetta was deeply offended and doubtless
as much surprised as Richelieu would have been if Brother Joseph had
declined to “act any longer with him for the present.” Happily the
Dictator could not punish Brother Jules as the Cardinal would have
chastised Brother Joseph.
He sent twice to Ferry to offer him a portfolio, wrote to him once, and
ended by proposing to get him elected life-senator and President of the
Upper House. But when all these favors were declined with thanks, he
shrugged his shoulders and exclaimed: “_Mais c’est absurde!_” meaning
that his friend Ferry had come to think a little too much of himself.
Two months after this the “Grand Ministère” had fallen. Jules Ferry
had given the _Scrutin de Liste_ Bill his vote, but he had refrained
from exerting any influence on behalf of the Cabinet. “_C’est un coup
de Ferry!_” ejaculated Gambetta, when the numbers of the division
were announced,[18] and upon somebody’s remarking that Ferry had
voted aright, “Bah, you should have seen him in the smoking-room,”
growled the angry chief. “But he was speaking up loudly for you in the
smoking-room.” “The song is in the tune,” answered Gambetta, “and Jules
was singing flat.”[19]
[18] The _Scrutin de Liste_ Bill was rejected in the Chamber of
Deputies on the 27th January, 1882, by 282 to 227.
[19] “Le ton fait la chanson, et Jules chantait faux.”
The fact is that the fate of the _Scrutin_ Bill had turned wholly on
the question as to whether Gambetta could be trusted. The measure
establishing election by caucus would have placed absolute power in
his hands for years, and the Left Centre were naturally afraid of
this prospect, which was tantamount to the destruction of regular
Parliamentary government. But before committing themselves to a
coalition with Radicals and Monarchists, many of these moderate
Liberals came and sounded Ferry. He would only answer that he was
sure Gambetta meant well, and so forth; but of course this was not
enough, and the Moderates marched over to M. Clémenceau. The day after
this vote M. Ferry was back in office with the portfolio of Public
Instruction, and thirteen months later he was Prime Minister once more,
but this time under conditions very different from those which had
chequered his first Administration. Gambetta was dead, three Cabinets
had been overthrown within eight months, and M. Ferry was actually
able to make a favor of accepting a post in which M. de Freycinet, M.
Duclerc and M. Fallières had wretchedly failed. Things had come to such
a pass that if M. Ferry had objected to form a Government, M. Grévy
would have resigned.
Thus M. Ferry was truly on a certain day the _Deus ex machinâ_. His
advance to a position so powerful can only be explained by comparing
him to the winner of an obstacle race. Nine years ago, any politician
contemplating the possibility of Gambetta’s death, would have named
at least six Republicans now living as more likely than M. Ferry to
succeed him as leader of the party. He would have named Jules Simon,
Léon Say, William Waddington, Charles de Freycinet, Challemel-Lacour,
or Eugène Clémenceau; and supposing all these runners had started with
M. Ferry over a flat course, it may be questioned, to keep up the
racing metaphor, whether Ferry would have been so much as placed. But
in an obstacle race, one man comes to grief at the “hanging-tub,” one
at the crawling, another at the water-jump, and the winner is often the
man who, having scrambled through every thing in a haphazard fashion,
comes in alone—all the others having dropped off.
No man ever spoilt a fine chance so sadly as Jules Simon—the first
to “drop off”—and this all for want of a little spirit at the right
moment. The author of many learned and entertaining works on political
economy, a bright scholar, charming _causeur_, persuasive debater, a
man of handsome face and lordly bearing, infinitely respectable in his
private life, full of diplomatic tact and with a genuine aptitude for
administration—M. Simon had all the qualifications of a party-leader.
Under the Empire he was an Orleanist, but he let himself be converted
to Republicanism by M. Thiers after the war, and he was the only
Minister whom Thiers trusted to the extent of never meddling with the
business of his department. He was Minister of Public Instruction and
Worship for more than two years, and acquitted himself of his functions
in a manner to please both Catholics and Freethinkers, cardinals and
vivisecting professors. He was perhaps a little too unctuous in his
phrases; he had a suspicious facility for weeping, and he scattered
compliments and promises about him, as a beadle sprinkles holy water in
a May-day procession. But these are the little arts of diplomacy: M.
Simon could be quite firm in dismissing a Bonapartist professor, even
while shedding tears over the poor man’s appeal to be suffered to earn
his bread in peace; and when he was sent as High Commissioner of the
Government to visit the pontoons and prisons in which Coummunists were
confined, all his tender pity for political offenders in general (he
recognised many of his quondam electors in bonds) did not prevent him
from investigating each individual case with unemotional acumen. He had
power to liberate whom he pleased, but he used it sparingly. At Brest
he was much pained by the rudeness of a prisoner to whom he had said
kindly: “Why are you here, my friend?” “For having too much studied
your books,“ was the sniggering answer.[20] He had another disagreeable
shock at the prison of Versailles, where Louise Michel called him
”_Vieux farceur._”
[20] “L’Ouvrier,” “L’Ouvriére,” “L’Ouvrier de huit ans,” “Le Travail,”
“La Peine de Mort,” &c., works couched in the purest philanthropy and
which remind the working-man of all his grievances against society.
But Jules Simon rendered some very great service to the Republican
cause. The office-holders of to-day often talk as if they had founded
the Republic—which shows that they have defective memories. The Comte
de Chambord was the real “Father of the Republic,” as even Senator
Wallon must acknowledge in his meditative moments.[21] If the Bourbon
prince had been anything better than a Quaker, Monarchy would have
been restored after the Commune—in fact, during the five years that
followed the civil war, the Republic merely lived under respite of a
death-sentence, so to say, until its enemies agreed as to how it should
be exterminated. But they could not agree, and Jules Simon was in a
large measure the cause of this. He went about among the Orleanists,
coaxing over this one and that one to the idea that Republicanism was
the only practical thing for the moment. His favorite argument was
this, that Socialists and other such people could be put down much
more summarily by a Republican Government than by a King. Under a
Bourbon Sovereign, Liberals and Socialists would make common cause,
and there would inevitably be another revolution before long; but if
the Orleanists would only take the Republic under their patronage
they might rule the country according to their doctrines, just as the
English Whigs had long ruled England, keeping their Radical tail in
subjection. With these words, Jules Simon wiled away many; and the
trophies of success thickened upon him. He was elected to the French
Academy; in 1875 he was nominated a life-senator, and in 1876, some
months after the first general election under the new Constitution, he
became Prime Minister.
[21] M. Wallon was the mover of the resolution: “that the Government
of France be a Republic.” It was carried in the National Assembly,
1875, by a majority of _one_ vote.
He kept his post for about eight months, and then one memorable morning
he allowed Marshal Mac Mahon to dismiss him from it like a lacquey. The
Spaniards, by way of expressing their disbelief in the consistency of
courage at all times and in all circumstances, are accustomed to say
that a man was brave “on a certain day.” One may assert then, without
any imputation on M. Simon’s general valor, that on the 16th May, 1877,
he showed an utter want of pluck. The reason for this appears to have
been that he was out of health at the time—worn out by two or three
sleepless nights, and disgusted with the worries of office. He had
gone to bed on the 15th May without any suspicion that the Marshal
President intended to dismiss him and his Liberal Cabinet, and he was
therefore astounded when, as he was dressing, a messenger brought him
a letter in which the Marshal cavalierly told him that, as he had been
unable to manage the Republican majority, he must make way for stronger
men.
Now it was quite true that the Republicans under Gambetta had behaved
very factiously towards Jules Simon. Parties were so divided in the
Lower House that no Minister could govern, and it was manifest that
the only way out of the death-lock would be through a dissolution.
But M. Simon was cashiered at the instigation of a Royalist Palace
Cabal, who wanted the next elections to be held under the auspices of
a Reactionary Cabinet, and he should have had the boldness to denounce
this intrigue. Instead of doing that he sat down in his dressing-gown,
it is said, and wrote a tame, self-exculpatory letter to the Marshal.
He did not see that Mac Mahon had played into his hands by enabling
him to take his stand as champion of the entire Republican party. A
few brave words of defiance to the Cabal, a dignified reproof to the
Marshal himself, and an appeal to the whole nation to rouse itself for
a grand battle at the polls, this is what Jules Simon’s letter should
have contained, and an epistle couched in these terms would have made
him immensely popular.
But the ejected Premier’s abject, doleful apology appearing in the
papers on the same day as the Marshal’s letter, spread consternation
and disgust through the Republican party. It was a whine at the moment
when a trumpet blast was expected. Simon had missed the opportunity of
being great. The Republicans were ashamed of him, and spurned him with
a positive yell of execration. In the course of the morning he hurried
to M. Thiers’s house, and began in a lachrymose style to descant upon
his wrongs, saying that he had never been the Marshal’s effective
adviser, that the Duc de Broglie had all along been guiding Mac Mahon,
&c. “Why on earth didn’t you say that in your letter?” screamed Thiers;
and the lugubrious M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire, lifting up his long arms
in woe, repeated like his chief, “Why was not that said in the letter?”
Why indeed? If Jules Simon had shown spirit he would have been
accounted the foremost man of the Republican party after Thiers’s
death, and he might eventually have been President of the Republic in
place of M. Grévy. As it was, the Republicans, after their victory at
the general election of 1877,[22] refused to rank him as one of their
number, and he has ever since been in the humiliating position of a
pariah. His speeches in the Senate are always applauded, but not by
the Republicans. It has become the fashion among his former allies to
speak of him as a renegade, and facetious party-newspapers have not
scrupled to play practical jokes upon him. One of these pleasantries
was rather funny. A paper announced that M. Simon had inherited a large
sum of money, and that, in the excess of his philanthropy, he had taken
to distributing twenty ‘napoleons’ every morning among the first five
score beggars (being true Republicans) who knocked at his door. For
days the Place de la Madeleine, where the unhappy statesman lived was
infested by hordes of vagabonds, howling “Vive la République,” and the
police found it difficult to disperse these believers in M. Simon’s
munificence.
[22] There were mistakes all round in that 15th May business. The
Conservatives should have allowed the Republicans a little more rope.
If the Simon Cabinet had been overthrown by a vote of the Left, and
if another Liberal Administration had been put up to meet with the
same fate—then would have been the time to dissolve the Lower House.
But the Royalists were too impatient. They called for a national
condemnation of Republicanism before the nation had grown tired of
Republican dissensions. The 16th May was the making of Gambetta as a
leader, for up to that time he had only been a free lance—“_un fou
furieux_,” as Thiers called him. He stepped into the place which ought
to have been Simon’s.
M. Léon Say has been mentioned among the politicians who once seemed
destined to do great things. He may do some of these things yet, for
he has not lost the confidence of his party, but he is such a rider of
hobbies, that he can never be expected to fall into the swing trot of
any party cavalcade, even though he be suffered to caper at its head.
He has been Prefect of the Seine, Minister of Finance, Ambassador to
London, and President of the Senate. He is a jovial man, with a plump
waist, face and moustache, not quite sixty, the proprietor of the
_Journal des Débats_, a millionaire, and the highest French authority
on finance. He writes as well as he speaks, and he speaks like a clever
book. The Bourse has so much confidence in him that this return to the
Ministry of Finance would at any time make the funds rise, and for
this reason every Premier has been anxious to have him in the Cabinet.
If M. Say would only confine himself to finance as M. Cochéry does to
postal matters,[23] he might abide comfortably in office for years; but
he is a political Sybarite who chafes at rose leaves. He has no sooner
accepted a post than he begins to see reasons for throwing it up. Hours
are wasted at every change of Cabinet in trying to persuade M. Say to
join this or that combination; but either his Free Trade principles
stand in the way, or he cannot sit with so and so, or he insists upon
having such and such a man to be his colleague. The curious thing
is that, while in opposition, M. Say takes immense trouble to get
the offer of one of those places, which he rejects when they have
been given him. He is not the dog biting at shadows, but the dog who
snatches substantial bones, and then turns up his nose at them.
[23] M. Cochéry has been Minister of Posts and Telegraph under six
successive Administrations.
Very different is M. de Freycinet, who has neither snatched at the
bones of office, nor surrendered them willingly when they fell in his
way. How came this able and active politician to fail so egregiously as
Prime Minister? About his talents there is no dispute, and he entered
public life under Gambetta’s special and most admiring patronage. A
distinguished civil engineer, he was almost unknown to the political
world, when, at the senatorial elections of 1876, Gambetta brought him
forward as candidate for Paris. De Freycinet was elected, and all of a
sudden he got talked of as the coming man—that is, the man who was to
be Gambetta’s factotum. He had dedicated a book on military tactics,
with some academical compliments to his patrons; and it was remembered
that he had been Gambetta’s military secretary and adviser during the
war. He was supposed to be full of new ideas about army reorganisation,
railway management, tax-assessment, and colonial extension. The first
time he spoke in the Senate there was a hush of curiosity, and though
he delivered himself in a small, piping voice, the lucidity of his
reasoning, and his business-like exposition of statistics, produced a
favorable impression. He was not much cheered, for applause would have
drowned his voice. “Nous n’applaudissions pas pour mieux écouter,” said
Léon Say politely to him.
Unfortunately, De Freycinet too soon forgot that Gambetta had singled
him out as an assistant and not as a rival. He did fairly well as
Minister of Public Works in M. Waddington’s Cabinet, but the rapid
using up of men in parliamentary warfare forced him out of his turn
into the front rank. His total and often amusing ignorance of foreign
countries made him unfit for the post of Foreign Secretary, whilst his
want of suppleness rendered him incapable of managing a party by means
of easy social intercourse with its most prominent members. He is a
politician of self-asserting conscientiousness, with a smileless face,
a distant manner, and a captious tone of saying, or rather speaking,
“no” to every proposal which he does not approve on a first hearing. At
the Quai d’Orsay he always seemed to Ambassadors to be in a hurry; but,
though he would draw out his watch two or three times in ten minutes
and repeat, “Venons au fait,” he generally wasted half the time in
every interview by telling his hearers that which he did _not_ mean to
do, “because my conscience forbids it.” At the time when the rewards
for the Exhibition of 1878 were distributed, he told an English attaché
that as the French Government had allotted 150 crosses of the Legion
of Honor to exhibitors, he thought that the Queen of England would do
a popular thing by awarding “twenty Garters.” When the constitution
of the Order of the Garter was explained to him, he said: “Ah well,
then twenty Victoria crosses.” He once remarked to Lord Lyons that he
was afraid it was only an antiquated insular prejudice which prevented
the English from adopting the French decimal system of coinage; and
he maintained in the hearing of Prince Orloff, the Russian Ambassador,
that “every Russian peasant speaks French.”
Respecting M. de Freycinet’s trick of pulling out his watch, a droll
story is told. M. Tirard, now Minister of Finance, who made his
fortune in the jewelry trade, once gave his colleague a gold watch as
a New Year’s present, the reason of this gift being that De Freycinet
had lately lost a watch. Next time the Foreign Secretary pulled out
his timepiece in the Senate, a facetious member observed in a stage
whisper: “He wants to make sure that Tirard’s present isn’t pinchbeck.”
“I am sure it is not,” answered the unjocular Freycinet, turning round
quite gravely in his place; “you are quite mistaken in ascribing any
such suspicions to me, sir.”
De Freycinet and Gambetta soon quarrelled, because the former as Prime
Minister wanted to follow out a policy of his own or else compel
Gambetta to take the reins. “I’ll be coachman or passenger,” he said
with his love of logical arrangements: “but I won’t sit on the box and
let you drive from the inside.” He had to resign, and the next time
he came to office, after the fall of the “Grand Ministère,” it was
as Gambetta’s declared opponent. But Gambetta at once set himself to
show that, although he had been unable himself to command a majority,
no Cabinet could live without his support, and M. de Freycinet was
made the first victim of this demonstration. He was overthrown on the
Egyptian question, and as M. Ferry did not care to be bowled over in
the same style, the veteran M. Duclerc was asked to form an emergency
Cabinet. But this gentleman and his successor M. Fallières, nick-named
“le Gambetta blond,” were mere nonentities.
M. Duclerc’s Cabinet was called the Long Vacation Ministry, because it
was too obviously predestined to collapse at the first contact with
Parliament. M. Fallières’s Administration lasted but ten days, owing
to the excessive modesty of its chief in recognising that he had been
placed on a pinnacle too high for his nerves. On the strength of his
_sobriquet_ —though his only resemblance to Gambetta consisted in
his being fat and hearty—he had been giving himself some airs as a
pretender to office, but his sudden accession to the Premiership in the
trying period that followed Gambetta’s death, made him so giddy that
he was smitten with gastric derangement and had to pen a resignation
in his bedroom. It was then that Jules Ferry, laughing quietly in his
sleeve at the discomfiture of his various competitors, came back to the
helm as already described.
We have said nothing about M. Waddington and M. Challemel-Lacour,
who were once thought superior to him in their prospects because M.
Jules Ferry has really always had advantages over these two rivals.
M. Challemel-Lacour, who is now shelved, has been a much over-rated
man, and M. Waddington is an Englishman. If it had not been for M.
Waddington’s nationality, which has estranged him a little from French
thought and made the French people somewhat suspicious of him, his
talents would possibly have enabled him to keep the leadership of the
Moderate Republicans; but then it has to be borne in mind that if
he were not English—a Rugbeian, a Cantab, a scholar and athlete—his
talents would not be what they are. M. Waddington may remain a valued
servant of the Republic and hold all sorts of high posts except the
highest; but the greatest destinies perhaps await Eugène Clémenceau—the
sixth on our list of men who were once preferred to M. Ferry, as
“favorites” for the first place.
M. Clémenceau is another of those Northerners whose ascendency
disproves M. Daudet’s theory. He is a Breton, a doctor by profession,
a keen, cold man with a cutting tongue, and something of military
peremptoriness in his manner. He began his political career by opening
a free dispensary in the Montmartre quarter of Paris, and giving advice
gratis to the poor on politics as well as medicine. He was elected
mayor for one of the wards of Paris during the siege, and performed his
administrative business splendidly, at a time when almost all the other
mayors were blundering. He and Gambetta hated each other so thoroughly
that it is a wonder they never came to duelling. The Breton Doctor, who
loathes “gush,” despised the Southerner’s rhodomontade; and Gambetta
used to bound and roar like a stung lion at the contemptuous thrusts
which Clémenceau made at him both from the tribune and from the columns
of his newspaper, the _Justice_. This paper is not pleasant reading,
for its editor appears always to write as if he meant to provoke his
enemies into personal quarrels. He is a brilliant swordsman, most
dangerous because left-handed, and a capital shot with pistols. Even
the doughty Paul de Cassagnac once declined a meeting with him.
M. Clémenceau has been patiently biding his time—which does not
mean that he has been spending his time to good purpose, for he has
attacked every Government during the last eight years with an utter
disregard of the dangers which might accrue to the Republic through
the continual overthrow of Ministries. This must lead one to doubt
whether there is not more of personal ambition than of public spirit in
his tactics, for the only alternative would be to suppose him stupid,
and that he certainly is not. He has now transferred to Jules Ferry
the scorn which he formerly poured upon Gambetta, and the two men
must be regarded as exponents of two completely antagonistic schools
of Republicanism. Jules Ferry used not to be an Opportunist, but in
succeeding to the leadership of Gambetta’s party, he has had to take up
its programme—colonial extension, little wars for glory, Protection,
temporisation in Home affairs, and in particular as regards the
relations between Church and State. M. Clémenceau, on the contrary, is
a Free-trader, non-interventionist, decentraliser and disestablisher.
He is more in harmony with the Manchester school than any other French
politician. That huge system of administrative centralisation, which
Napoleon created, is to him abhorrent, and he is a partisan of local
self-government on the largest scale. He is fond of relating how a
certain village mayor, receiving in 1852 a copy of the new Imperial
Constitution with orders to post it up, wrote to M. de Morny, saying
that he had done as requested, and would be happy to post up as many
more Constitutions as might be sent him thereafter.
M. Clémenceau’s Church policy may be summed up in the word
Destruction; he goes much further than a mere abrogation of the
Concordat. He looks to the day when Notre-Dame shall be a museum, and
the Madeleine a scientific institute. He holds that the Republic should
repudiate the Catholic Church and treat all ecclesiastical buildings
as State property. He would not object to a Gallican Church being
afterwards constituted, nor forbid members of that communion from
buying back some of the churches if they could afford to do so; but
he would apply to Roman Catholics the law against secret societies,
and absolutely prohibit French priests, under pain of banishment, to
acknowledge the authority of Rome. When people arguing with him about
this scheme, remark that “persecution never succeeds,” he answers:
“Nonsense, it is half-hearted persecution that does not succeed.
Protestantism was thoroughly well stamped out of Spain, and Romanism
out of England. I should not expect to get rid of our French Romanists
within a few years—two or three generations would be required to
complete the extirpation. But if the work is to be done fully, it must
be commenced with vigor.”
M. Clémenceau will never do much when he comes to office, because
he wants the power of moving masses. He has already been yelled at
in Montmartre as a backslider because he has refused to espouse the
economic fallacies of the Socialists. The multitude is not to be swayed
by pure reason, and no man can be a successful revolutionist unless he
have a dash of the fanatic about him. Events are nevertheless preparing
to bring M. Clémenceau to the Premiership, and this consummation will
be important because it will involve the incursion of an entirely new
set of men into all the public offices. M. Clémenceau’s influence
comes, not from his doctrines, but simply from his combativeness which
has made him the captain of a fine hungry host of young men who see
no chance of turning the Opportunists out of their snug places under
Government except by banding together as a new party.
If M. Ferry could bring the China and Tonquin wars to a brilliant
ending, could manage to create a Budget surplus, reduce taxation,
relieve the military burdens of the country, and put an end to the
agricultural and commercial stagnation—he might become a People’s man
for some years. Indeed he might consolidate his popularity by carrying
out half of the programme just sketched. The least success on his part
in war or diplomacy would be inflated by his Opportunist supporters
into a great triumph, because it is indispensable for the existence
of a party that its leader should be a man of reputation. Political
ideas must be incarnated in a man before democratic electorates can
understand them. Gambetta’s death took the Opportunists by surprise,
and they were not prepared with a man to put in his place. “_Jouons
au Ferry_,” said M. Arthur Ranc, and M. Ferry had the great luck of
coming to power just at the moment when the Opportunists had begun to
perceive that there must be no more overthrowing of Cabinets for some
time.—_Temple Bar._