T HE fall of M. Combes is not a catastrophe, because
the electors of France evidently desire to continue his policy ; that is, to suppress the religious Orders, to separate Church and State, to adopt certain social reforms which will supply the place of a Poor Law, and to maintain peace. But it is an important event. It is useless to say that a. change of persons need not involve any change of programme. No two personalities are the same, and when the person to be changed is the Premier of a great State, the personal equation must count for a great deal. A Committee with a new chairman is a new Committee. The mere alteration of pace in carrying out great reforms will be felt in every department of the State. M. Delcass4 will doubtless remain in any adjust- ment which may be formed, but M. Delcassel plus a new Premier cannot remain precisely the same as M. Delcass6 plus M. Combes, the combination which together have for two and a half years done so much to preserve the peace of the world. If M. Rouvier is Premier, the Church will gain time to organise further resistance, the administration of the Army may be changed, and the entente cordiale with Great Britain, though it may again be extolled in debate, will in practice depend much more upon the possibility of reconciling it with the entente cordials with Russia. The new Premier must at all events have some new men in the Cabinet, and if he does not choose them from among the " dissidents," or, as we should call them here, the Old Whigs, he will be distrusted and opposed by the very force which has seated him in his place. In the end, no doubt, M. Combes's programme will not be altered, for it meets the approval of a majority of the electors of France ; but for the present the question is not of the electors, but of the Assembly, which has still many months of legal existence to pass through. Even though the " Bloc" were to become coherent again, it would not like once more to overset a Cabinet, and thus create in every foreign State an impression that the Government of France, whatever its merits or demerits, was too unstable to be trusted. The new Government, even if the electors are a little distrustful of its action, is pretty sure to retain power for a time; and just now events, more especially external events, are so crowded that all Cabinets are watching them with perplexity, not to say with dismay. In the Indian Ocean, in the Far East, in Russia, and in Macedonia almost anything may happen ; and if anything happens, the diplomatists of the world may be taxed to preserve a peace which it is not certain that they all prefer.
Moreover, there is another aspect of the defeat of M. Combes which has hardly been sufficiently considered. It is a striking exhibition of the power which the groups, hostile in different degrees to a democratic Republic, have of Parliamentary combination. M. Combes had contrived to excite the hostility of many diverse interests. One, perhaps the most formidable, was the Church. It saw in him an opponent whose convictions could not be shaken, and who was prepared to employ revolutionary methods rather than allow the power of the monastic Orders and the aggressive policy of the Vatican to remain undefied. M. Combes was without that relic of reluctance to adopt extreme Anti-Clerical measures which can almost always be traced in the Roman Catholic statesmen of the Continent, even when they are agnostics, or have suffered injury at the hands of the priesthood. He was prepared not only to separate Church and State, but to retain after that separation a. definite control over the Church, which would, at all events, have greatly hampered its political action. Every cleric in France was therefore openly or secretly plotting for his downfall. So were a large section of the rich, who dread the Income-tax, not on account of the pay- ments it will involve, but out of a distrust that if the instrument is once forged, the Radicals will use it to reduce that inequality of possessions which so many Frenchmen think is the last and the greatest inequality now remain- ing. It is probable also that the section of the Army which detests M. Combes includes a majority of the officers, some of whom, having been brought up by clerics, take from them their political opinions, while others dislike the reduction of the term of service, and others again believe that under a Republic the military caste will never regain the ascendency which they consider its right. It must not be forgotten that the actual occasion of M. Combes's defeat was due to military irritation, the Opposition using the contempt which Frenchmen feel in theory for all forms of espionage, even though they are employing them every day. Some of the Staff officers may have been indiscreet ; but con- fidential reports upon the conduct of officers are sent up to headquarters in every State in Europe, our own included, and if the real question at issue were one of loyalty or of creed, the private opinions of officers on those points would very often be recorded. M. Combes is perhaps indulging in rhetoric when he professes fear of a military coup d'etat, for France has no general or statesman in whose name such a stroke could be struck, more than half the private soldiers must be of necessity Republican, and the one risk which no experienced officer will face, as Marshal MacMahon once confessed, is the risk of " civil war in the barracks." Nevertheless it is certain that ever since the Dreyfus affair the corporation of officers has been ill at ease, has thought itself looked down upon, and has hoped for the installation of a Government which would be at least respectful in its demeanour towards the armed caste. Add to these two great interests, which it is nearly impossible to conciliate, that solid body of opinion whose one dogma in politics is "Down with the Republic ! " and we have a combination of forces before which in the end almost any vigorous Minister, and especi- ally any doctrinaire Minister, must in the end go down. It is possible that at the next Election the country may pronounce its opinion so decisively that most of the hostile parties—the Clericals, of course, excepted— miy give up opposition in despair; but till that Election it is vain to say that the Republic is absolutely safe.
This is the reason why we think the overthrow of M. Combes, on the whole, a misfortune. We have no attachment to him, or to any doctrinaire. We feared under his rule for the great cause of religious liberty, and were by no means certain that he would not deepen the cleavage in French society until France was deprived of much of her power of beneficial action. Great Britain needs a strong France, if only that the autocratic Govern- ments of Europe should not have everything their own way ; and the fixed ideas of M. Combes occasionally seemed to us to threaten the strength of France. But the real ground of alarm at the recent vote is the strength of the Nationalist party, which if it attained power could not, and would not, go on for long without a Dictator, whether he were a Monarch or only a General, and would to a certainty seek to restore, or rather exaggerate, the military prestige of France. The Republic, at all events, whatever else it is, is peaceful, because if it were warlike it would be overthrown. The people would not bear it if it were defeated ; and if it were victorious, it would evolve some general who would be hailed as " the necessary man," the " saviour of society," and the " glory of France." The defeat of M. Combes, accomplished as it has been through clerical hatred and military dislike, must tend, in however small a degree, to strengthen the Nationalist party. They will not love M. Combes's successor for himself any more than they loved M. Combes, and, as the Premier himself foresaw, the new man must, to protect himself, lean slightly upon the Right, instead of leaning upon, as M. Combes did—and thereby restraining —the more extreme democrats of the Republic. There will be no new programme in the new Ministry, but there may be a new bias.
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