THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PANAMA SCANDALS.
WE shall make no apology to our readers for recurring to the subject of the Panama Scandals. They grow worse from day to day, and may with unexpected rapidity produce grave dangers both for France and for Europe. Those as yet incriminated and examined are defending themselves with a certain skill, pleading, it may be, in some instances, with truth, that they only received cheques in payment of debts justly owing to them ; but it must be remembered that the Inquiry has reached no depth as yet. The Committee has not yet fully examined the judicial papers it is allowed to peruse ; it has not yet the power to seize documents ; and, above all, it has not yet cross-examined the persons suspected of having authorised the illegal expenditure. It is perfectly possible that some one of the latter, badgered beyond bearing, might turn round on his accusers ; state frankly -whether he had, or had not, paid blackmail to representa- tives of the people ; and either fasten the whole guilt upon a clique, which is what we should expect, or blow the Re- public out of water by proving widespread corruption. In the latter case, if the history of modern France is any guide, there would be a revolutionary movement of some sort, possibly through a legal " Revision " of the Constitution, but possibly also through a convulsion in the streets, within t'iree months. Even now, so continuous are the revelations, and so well known are some of the personages assailed, that France is growing wild with " preternatural suspicion," as Carlyle put it ; and cruel as the suspicion must necessarily be in regard to individuals, it is foolish to deny that there is ample ground for entertaining it. This man or that man may be innocent, but there has been corruption on a large scale. It seems, for instance, certain that Baron Reinach, the chief agent, if there was one, in corrupting important persons, died of a dose of atropine—extract of nightshade—a drug which dulls the sensibilities, and then kills, or, in other words, that he died either from murder, or by suicide. The theory of murder is most improbable—indeed, one would say impossible—for the Baron died in his own house, and the phial containing the poison was found by his bedside. His family, too, though naturally anxious to suppress any rumour of suicide, would have set the police at work at once had they believed in murder. He killed himself, and if he killed himself it was clearly because he could not endure the exposure with which he was threatened from the judicial proceedings against the Panama Canal. Under those circumstances, the natural inquiry was, " who had last been with him before he died?" and as that inquiry had not been made officially, the sensational papers made it, and declared, quite truth- fully, that these persons were M. Rouvier, the Minister of Finance, and M. Clemenceau, the leader of the Radical Opposition, two men not expected to meet each other, much less Baron Reinach as a third, in consultation. M. Clemenceau, reading these statements, at once published a full account of his action, which we give in substance below, and which completely exonerates him, but M. Rouvier resigned, and M. Carnot, without parley or pause, accepted his resignation ! The resignation can, of course, be understcol as an act of self- sacrifice for the sake of colleagues, not uncommon in the Ministerial history of many countries ; but the acceptance of it without inquiry would, under most circumstances, have been on the part of the President a timid betrayal of duty.
It was, however, well justified. M. Rouvier doubtless told the President and his own colleagues on Tuesday what on Wednesday he told the Committee of Inquiry, and that was sufficient to render it impossible that he should remain in a Cabinet pledged up to the lips to throw the fullest light on Panama affairs. He denies absolutely all charges of corruption, and none whatever are as yet proved against him ; but he admits that Baron Reinach had said that even to be summoned as a witness was " matter of life or death to him," and had besought him to accompany himself to M. Cornelius Herz and M. Constans, in order that those two persons— one a person who received large cheques from Baron Reinach and whom the Panama Committee is anxiously desirous to interrogate, but who is in England sick ; and the other the former strong-fisted Minister of the Interior —might by pressure at their disposal stop the attacks on him, and prevent his appearance before the judicial tri- bunal. M. Rouvier, " out of pity," consented; but he was so well aware that he was doing a strange thing that he asked M. Clemenceau, as a witness whose " loyalty" no one would distrust, to accompany him on his visits. He did not know, he says, that M. Reinach was to be prosecuted, though he had heard the list read in the Cabinet Council ; but he did know that M. Reinach was summoned as a witness, that he regarded the with- drawal of that summons as " matter of life or death," and that, whether he had bribed anybody or not, he had distributed gratifications. Here is M. Rouvier's own answer to the Committee, as reported in the first person to the Standard :—" Baron de Reinach had been very excited for several days. He had been subpcenaed as a witness, and he apprehended danger for the Government which his son-in-law served. I asked him if he had com- mitted any offences against the law, if he had bribed any Deputies or Senators. He replied : No ; I realised profits, which I shared with my friends.' He was, I repeat, a financier with a very large connection." Do large financiers give away much out of friendship? It was after receiving that answer that M. Rouvier drove with Baron Reinach to M. Cornelius Herz, who told them "it was too late," for judicial proceedings had been commenced, and to M. Con- stans, who angrily denied the possession of the power im- puted to him • the Finance Minister in both instances ad- mittedly intending " out of pity " to back up M. Reinach in an effort, as far as regarded that central figure in the scandal, to stifle the judicial inquiry ! Is it to be wondered at that, after such admissions, the Chamber should have received M. Rouvier's defence, which was simply that he was the victim of calumny, in silence, or that M. Deroulede should ask why, if that were the case, nobody ever calumniated M. Ribot or M. Loubet, or that Paris should be raging with suspicion, and the Provinces so agitated, that it is admitted, if the Chamber were dissolved, the result would be a Conservative majority, which would reverse half the policy of the last few years ? The English are not suspicious, but even in England, such a proceeding on the part of a Chancellor of the Exchequer would render it impossible for him to retain office. The French people believe that leading representatives have dipped their hands " in that foul cesspool of agio "—as Carlyle charac- terised a similar scene of corruption, when assignats were daily raised and lowered by executive decrees— and holding all in Paris to be rascals, they demand a thorough change.
They are ill-informed and probably far too hasty. It is most improbable that the Republican Party, as a party, is corrupt, though individuals within it may be deeply tainted, and most unlikely that any change in the form of govern.. ment would, if the corruption were deeply seated, burn it finally out. It is, however, quite clear that the Inquiry must go on to the end, and that if the Government, which refuses to grant powers by law, should refuse also to grant them in practice, it will be overthrown, with the result of producing a storm such as France has not witnessed since 1870. The people will believe that the object of the entire governing group is to suppress the truth, and will demand a change of some kind, which can hardly be less than revolutionary. They will not bear to suspect that their own representatives are dishonest, and have helped to waste the sixty millions sterling of which they consider themselves to have been deprived. It is very doubtful whether a new Cabinet could be formed, for the present one, as M. Rouvier said on Tuesday in his defence, " per- sonifies what still remains of Governmental force at the service of the Republic," and new men of the same party would shrink either from condemning their predecessors, or from facing the tempest which would arise if a third Cabinet refused the powers necessary to probe the scandal, and, it may be, other similar scandals, to the bottom. It is even possible that M. Cannot himself might resign, for he is said to be utterly disgusted both with the facts, which he probably knows, and with the self-assertiveness and jealousy displayed by those to whom he is compelled to offer Ministries. In that event the Republic would really be in the crucible, and how it might emerge would depend on events it is impossible to foresee,—that is, on the action of two Chambers governed by emotions, and without a great man, or, at least, to be exactly truthful, a recognised great man in either of them. Their action might fail, either from want of promptitude, or a wrong choice, or some repugnance in the popular mind, and then —the Army would be the only solid and irresistible force left in France. We have, however, more trust in the patriotism of M. Cannot, and do not forget his repeated hints, that if he found his task impossible he would him- self appeal to the people direct,—an appeal which would, of course, suggest some definite change in the Constitution, and which might easily be successful. There can be no doubt, however, that popular confidence in the Republic has been shaken to its very base—the vote of Thursday is sufficient to show that—and that M. Ribot's Government, or any Government which may succeed it, must cut out the tumour from the present organisation or die of its effects. The Panama Canal is not the only institution controlling millions which has frequently need of political help ; nor is the Ministry of Finance, as a permanent institution, severed so completely as it ought to be from that financial cesspool in which Paris at intervals has shown herself so ready to wallow. There is hardly an undertaking which that Ministry cannot make or mar ; while it offers, in its own organisation, extraordinary temptations to the form of fraud known as "concussion,"—jobbing with official in- formation. That is, of all temptations, the one which Con- tinental Ministers feel most. There is a passage in the correspondence of the Daily News of Thursday which, to many of our readers, will be a revealing one :- " M. Rouvier is credited with having worked up Rente to par. What did this is the last savings bank law. It is obligatory to invest deposits in the Savings Bank and in the Caisse des Consignations in Rente at short intervals, but not sufficiently short ones. There is now such a plethora of Savings Bank and Caisse des Consignations money as to become a cause of grave embarrassment. The law needs to be amended to cut at the root of woeful corruption. The investments should be made by the directors of the Savings Bank and Caisse des Con- signations every day, and a statement of the operations sent to the Journal Officiel. A Finance Minister who is not a man of fine character and honour is too liable to make his department a focus of corruption. He can each morning order, or not, the deposits of the two above•mentioned establishments to be invested or to lie idle for some days. At the end of this time there is a colossal sum in hand. He can tell his confidential secretary to order the purchase on the Bourse of a proportionate number of options. He can also, to keep in his lucrative office, tell the secretary to give a hint of what he is doing to the inner or the outer brokers of his Parliamentary or Press friends. Of course they all combine to laud him as a necessary man. What is worse is that they become the humble servants of the great bankers, who other- wise might play over their heads in the game of options. These bankers in this way command the Ministry of Finance. It may be said that the masses in saving money are, through the mechanism I have been describ- ing, feeding sharks to devour them and fostering cor- ruption." Where such is the system of keeping trust- money, the grand trustee should be something more than a " plain man " familiar with book-keeping and Stock Exchange finance.
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