15 NOVEMBER 1873, Page 4

THE POLITICAL WEAKNESS IN FRANCE.

ONE point of weakness emerges in all the recent politica history of France, which is, we suspect, very near indeed, to the heart of the present political feebleness and irresolution. It is that the French Parliaments,—from the National Con- vention to the present day,—the States-General were the only conspicuous exception,—hardly exist at all except as the mere federation of a number of cliques and coteries where every point is debated and virtually settled, as far as the action of that atom of party goes, before the discussion even comes on- in the House itself which alone has any real jurisdiction. The effect of this is that instead of getting great debates turning on large principles which are put fairly and freely before the public, you have a number of petty little councils of war, in which considerations of prudence and policy natu- rally take precedence of public principles ; and then the Repre- sentatives all go into the final discussion with hands tied, and with the very natural feeling that the sooner the cloture is voted, and the enunciation of merely ornamental argu- ments, which are not in the least likely to affect the decision, ceases, the better for every one concerned. Here is a crisis of the gravest importance which has been agitating French society in the most powerful manner for months, and on which, for the last ten days, the Members of the French Assembly have all been deliberating and taking hourly council together in their various little cliques and sections, and as yet not a word of free, large discussion has taken place, and it is in the highest degree probable that when the final discussion begins on Monday, all the best statesmen of all parties,—the Inde- pendent no less than the Ministerial parties,—will go into it with their support promised to some petty compromise on which no large discussion has been held at all,—while the House will order by a large majority that even that discussion

shall terminate within twenty-four or forty-eight hours • from its commencement. The mischief of this course seems to us indefinitely great. Statesmen in France are so afraid of the emotion caused by the wider kinds of discussion, that they bottle as much of it as they dare up within the Bureaux, where the speeches can have none of that largeness and vitality essential foi. any popular purpose, while almost all that is not done in the Bureaux is done in those atomic Parliaments,— those mere conferences on policy,—the meetings of the Right, the Right Centre, the Left Centre, the Left, and the Extreme Left. When the Assembly itself debates a great question, the speakers only issue manifestoes, and Parliament, panic-struck at

the mere fact that a great and exciting question- is still in an unsettled state before the country, hushes its voice and rushes to a decision, far more anxious to get such a question out of the exciting stage, than to settle it thoroughly, wisely, and well. This is what we have seen happening again and again in France, from the days when the Girondists, the Jacobins, and the Mountain debated the most burning questions in caucus, before they were brought before the Convention, to the days when M. Leon Say addresses one section of the Left Centre, M. Christophle another, and M. Casimir-Perier a third, and the discussions in the Assembly itself are but show occasions, on which the leaders rehearse what they settled long ago with their party colleagues. Had the Assembly been what it ought to be to France, the Due de Broglie and M. Thiers would have given full ex- positions of their view of the policy of the Administration during the recess on the very first day of the assembling of Parliament, and we should have had no Bureau work at all on a question so eminently and exclusively one of large policy as the extension of Marshal MacMahon's powers before an appeal to France and before the definitive settlement of the Constitu- tion. The Ministry would have brought in a Bill in accord- anCe with their own views. That Bill would have been dis- cussed from the first in the House itself, and party meetings, if there had been party meetings, would have been simply auxiliary, and in no degree the real birthplaces of the resolves of the various members. As it is, there is a hidden root for every compromise suggested,—nothing comes clearly before the country ; M. Leon Say, for instance, agrees to a compromise after discussing matters with his colleagues of the section Leon Say, nobody knows why, and he himself does not venture to say why. The real reason probably may be not so much a rational one at all, as that he fears the result of "going too far," does not want to be thrown back on the support of the Radicals, or is him- self afraid of the agitation in the country if Marshal MacMahon should retire. What is the true policy, and why, is not, under these circumstances, ever discussed in its wider bearings before the country. Each politician ascertains how he can best carry the knot to which he belongs with him, and if that be not possible,—to which other section of the party it is best to transfer himself,—but never really contemplates the possibility of acting simply on the reason and justice of the case, and on that alone. Unless he can live in the shadow of a clique, he hardly ventures to have a political creed at all. Now, not perhaps unnaturally, the nuances of sectional tendency are far less founded on plain and rational grounds than are individual opinions. The Conservative sections of the Left for instance, the Casimir-Perier sec- tion, the Leon Say section, the Christophle section, and the others, had all made up their minds that though they would stand out for a Republic, they would treat the Government tenderly ; and it was to be their principle as Left Centre that they would not press on any dangerous crisis. Consequently, when the question about the delay in filling up the thirteen vacant seats was put, these sections, acting on this unreason- ing and unreasonable policy of tenderness in the abstract, without any moral or intellectual justification for it, acquiesced in the Due de Broglie 's demand for a delay till after the pro- longation of Marshal MacMahon's powers had been debated. No policy could well have been less defensible. If anything in the world seems clear, it is that the Government's reasons for shrink- ing from a needful and constitutional challenge of public opinion should be well known, and publicly confessed, before special powers are conferred on a sort of dictator whom it nominates. For, why are these powers wanted ? Is it because Government has made up its mind that Radical constituencies ought not to exist in France ? If so, is it constitutional, is it prudent, is it sane, to bestow special powers on the nominee of such a Government ? But if that be not the reason, if it be admitted that Radical representatives are just as fairly entitled to vote as any others on the destiny of France, how monstrously unfair it is to keep up a narrow majority in the Assembly by the exclusion of a number of representatives who would probably cancel that majority ! It seems to us hardly possible to conceive a discussion more strictly preliminary to a debate on the proposal to acquiesce in a dictatorial power appointed by this Ministry, than that on the reluctance shown by the Government to give the French constituencies now without members the right to elect members. Nor, had the whole crisis been fairly discussed in the Assembly itself, could any answer have been made to such a position. But now, by the various devices by which discussion is either suppressed or confined to the pettiest and most timid expression cf sectional tendencies, the Left Centre have managed to escape interrogating the Government on what is a most important constituent element, and a clearly preliminary element of the main discussion. The irrelevant wish to seem moderate, has, in the absence of discussion, completely stifled the real political considerations affecting the matter. Nothing can be conceived more fatal to the proper education of public opinion, and the proper growth of public courage, than this system of brewing opinion—a modicum at a time—in all sorts of private little political utensils, instead of making it on a large scale by appropriate means. On Monday, opinion will all be made on one of the greatest crises of French history, without a single great speech from either Radical or Con- servative, Monarchist or Republican ; and then the leaders will just express their view, and we shall see ant the effect of political argument on conviction, but the effect of petty party arrangements on political argument and the division list.