THE NEW FRENCH GOVERNMENT.
WE wonder if there is any truth in the idea so often alluded to in French correspondence, that the manufacture of Cabinets is hampered by a secret determi- nation on the part of the more influential Republicans ? They intend, the story runs, to make the foreign policy of France, including, of course, her military policy, strictly continuous until the opportunity for the " revanche" arrives, and with this view will do nothing which may impede the re-election of M. Carnot as President, or the retention of M. de Freycinet and M. Ribot as War Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs. M. Carnot's name, as the son of the "organiser of victory," has still its charm for the people, to whom the period between 1789 and 1815 is the one interesting period in the history of France ; M. de Freycinet is the one man acceptable at the War Office to both soldiers and civilians, and he has carried out a large and successful policy of reorganisa- tion ; and M. Ribot comprehends thoroughly, and knows how to keep up, the secret understandings on which the future alliance between France and Russia depends. It is a curious story, requiring much confirmation ; but it is certainly supported by some recent events. At the last change of Ministry, M. de Freycinet and M. Ribot both retained their portfolios, and they retain them still after this recent unexpected overset. It is true the cards have been shuffled, and M. Loubet, who was Minister of the Interior and Premier, is now Minister of the Interior without the Premiership, and M. Ribot, who was Minister of Foreign Affairs, is now Minister of Foreign Affairs and Premier ; but, under a Presidential system, the allocation of the Premiership does not signify much while the governing group is unchanged, and it remains unaltered. France was controlled yesterday, and is controlled to-day, by a governing group of five, M. Carnot as general Referee, Moderator, and keystone in the arch, M. de Freycinet with the Army in his hand, M. Ribot with the diplomacy of France, M. Bouvier with the Treasury, and M. Loubet with the vast machine, ruling throughout France, which is called the Department of the Interior. The group did not want just now a new colleague, and a word from them to their Opportunist supporters was fatal to the chances of M. Brisson, who is the only alternative to M. Carnot, and to those of the succession of shadowy figures who clutched at the Premiership after he had failed. They all receded silently, only pleading that they found 'they had not the support of " all " Republicans. After a decent interval of apparent constitutionalism, the governing group resumed power, and they will, we imagine, be permitted by the Chamber to retain it. They may not, for they have still a rock ahead in the Panama Inquiry and its possible develop- ments ; although they have in substance yielded upon this subject, which is not, to the policy they are pur- suing, of first-rate importance. Suppose the Committee of Inquiry does brand a certain number of Deputies, they can be replaced by others, who will probably be of much the same political colour. None of the leaders of the central group, it is certain, have been taking bribes. As for the danger which the Times' correspondent foresees, of the Committee expanding into a Committee of Public Safety, it is nonsense so patent that we can only imagine that M. de Blowitz's great shrewdness has for once de- serted him. The powers demanded by the Committee are no more like those of the Committee of Public Safety than they are like those of the Revolutionary Tribunal. They ask power to summon witnesses, to administer oaths, to seize papers necessary to the Inquiry, and to make domi- ciliary visits in search of documents, which are, in fact, the powers of any examining Magistrate, both in France and England. They have no power of punish- ment whatever, still less the tremendous power of pardon- ing the suspected, even if guilty of murder, if they offer evidence, through which alone an English Commission extracted the secret of the Sheffield outrages. It is asserted over and over again that the Panama Committee pretends to supersede the Judicial Courts ; but it no more does that, if regularly invested with legal powers, than any special Commission does in Great Britain, or any Coroner's Court which happens to try a murder case pari passe with a Magisterial inquiry. Did the Parnell Commission super- sede the High Court ? The exaggeration on this side of the question is patent, and although it is true that the inquiry may produce dangerous results, the danger of stifling it, as M. Ribot's Government clearly perceives, would be infinitely greater. Enough is already known to make Frenchmen suspect that bribes were syste- matically offered in the crises of the chequered history of the Panama Canal for Deputies' votes; and if the inquiry is stopped or made futile, the Deputies as a body will be accused of tolerance for corruption. That is most dangerous for the Republic ; whereas, if the inquiry is pushed home, the penalties will fall only upon the guilty, who cannot be more than a fraction of the Assembly, and who can be compelled one by one to resign. They may' be replaced, as the Times' correspondent fears, by richer men; but that will be no injury to the Republic, or to the foreign policy which leading Republicans are supposed to have adopted. M. Carnot could find Ministers even if every Deputy and Senator possessed a, thousand a year in Relates.
To understand the extreme excitement which the Panama Inquiry produces in France, we must recollect that it involves the whole question of the fitness of the sovereign power to exercise its functions. The dispute among Frenchmen, the radical dispute which underlies all others, is whether universal suffrage, uncontrolled and unguided either by a Monarch, a Caesar, or a class, is competent to create for itself a sovereign power. That it has created one in the Assembly is not questioned. That body can, in practice, dismiss the President—did do it, in M. Grevy's case—can compel any Minister or Cabinet to resign ; can nominate their successors ; and can pass any law whatever that it thinks indispensable for France. Its action is not arrested by any veto, and it is not liable to penal dissolution without the consent of that half of itself which is called the Senate, a consent which it might be very difficult to extort. Indeed, the Chamber itself must often be consulted, for it must pass the Budget before a dissolution can be safe, and the Budget is often, as this year, delayed to the very expiration of the legal term. The Assembly is, in fact, sovereign; and if the Assembly—that is, the Senators and Deputies taken together—are proved to have been bribable, or to have tolerated bribery, the deduction is painfully obvious. Universal suffrage has failed to elect an honest sovereign power. If the electors knew the character of their repre- sentatives, then they are incompetent from immorality ; and if they did not know it, then they are incom- petent from deficiency in the art of selecting agents. Universal suffrage has, in fact, failed. as a governing power ; and some other system must be adopted less liable to fail. This is what all the Monarchists, who are a third of France, will say; all the men of probity, who are, fortunately, numerous ; and all the Socialists, whose constant charge against the Republic is that it raises a sordid class to power. The very foundation of the State is, in fact, threatened ; and every Monarchist, every Republican, and every Socialist, feels as if his theories were being tested by actual experiment, as if his very doc- trine, the system of thought upon which he bases himself, were upon its trial. There is hardly a man in France who is not anxious that his party should come out clean-handed, or is not at heart hopeful that his adversaries will be dis- credited. It is not his friends or his foes only that the elector thinks about, but the credit or discredit of his own ideas, which involves, in his judgment, credit or discredit to himself. Such a situation would produce excitement in any country, and in France, where ideas dominate, it pro- duces a feverish condition of opinion amidst which almost any event, even a Revolution, becomes possible. Whatever course the Government may adopt, it will have to steer steadily in order to be safe ; but of all policies, the feeblest and worst would have been to stifle the inquiry. The only effect of that would have been to convince all suspicious French- men that there was some corrupt secret which the Chamber was desirous to conceal, and, in such cases, the party of the suspicious includes every French elector and artisan. Louis Philippe survived everything except the suspicion that he had plotted to obtain the wealth of the Prince de Conde. That endured, and did more than any other cause to produce that general decay of respect which was fatal to the Monarchy of July. We hope, for the sake of the Republic, that the inquiry will be pushed on to the bitter end, though we cannot now affect to hope that it will result in a general verdict of acquittal. The majority may escape, and probably will, but there is a class, chiefly com- posed of Deputies and Senators interested in advertise- ments and in speculations, which has not been able to dis- tinguish between payments for work done and payments intended to secure votes.
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