TOPICS OF THE DAY
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THE SITUATION IN FRANCE.
FRANCE, whether in weakness or in strength, is certainly as much as ever the heroine of the story of the political life of Europe. The great new Empire of Germany, which has both novelty and originality of policy in its favour, and which has a strong man, who knows how to say what every one attends to, at its head, hardly attracts a tenth part of the attention wh:ch France in anguish, France in trepidation, France in languor, France in doubt, keeps fixed upon every beat of her political pulse. She has the mission, we suppose, of fascinat- ing the mind of Europe, of keeping it awake, and holding fast the attention of European observers to the phenomena which
involve the deepest questions in politics. Certainly it is amazing how much more eagerly we all watch every charac- teristic of the scenes now going on at Paris than we watched even the development of that mighty power which by the three great strides of 1864, 1866, and 1870 gained the first position in Europe, and gained it only to find that all the interest centres not on Germany, but on Germany's poor captive. When these lines are before our readers, a fight will be going on at Versailles far exceeding in the European and English ° interest it excites the struggle between Prince Bismarck and Rome, though the Pope and those who strike at him are usually objects of an even morbid curiosity, especially among Englishmen. M. Thiers, on the contrary, can wield at present very little power outside France, and the Assembly to which he is compelled to appeal for support is known all over Europe to be entirely out of sympathy with the French people. Yet the various parties to the contest effervesce with such a spontaneous sense of importance and excitement, their sensibilities are so vivid, their anxieties so contagious, and so much depends on the breakers of national emotion which they have it in their power to set running, that every one gazes at those little threads of political foam at Versailles which mark sunken rocks and sandy bars on which the Government may strike, with a curious fascination of hope and fear. The situation is so like that of just twenty-three years ago, in 1850, after M. Sue's election for Paris, when the National Assembly returned in a panic of reactionary dread to vote "the law of the 31st May,"—that it is hardly possible for those who observe the frequent periodicity of history not to feel some alarm for the future. Still there is this great difference in the two situations. Then, Prince Louis Napoleon was President, with an imperial throne tempting him in his dreams. Now a shrewd old statesman is President, who knows that not only his own fame, but the peace of France, depends on holding faith- fully and tenaciously to the Republican idea. We trust that this great difference will make the further difference between wild and insane reaction, and steady, moderate progress.
But it will not make that difference unless M. There can keep steady in his Presidential chair, from which it is quite evident that the Right are intent on ejecting him ; and the real danger of the situation lies in this,—that the extreme Left may be ready to support the Right, or at least to hold aloof from supporting M. Thiers in the coming struggle. M. Thiers, with a sagacity all his own, but on this occasion by no means certain to succeed, having observed that the recent elections, whatever else they are, are a most formidable and unmistakable protest against the disinclination of the Assembly to accept the Republic definitively, has decided on forming a Ministry committed to the policy of immediately proclaiming the Republic, and clear of such doubtful Ministers as M. de Goulard, the late Minister of the Interior. But to soothe the fears of the Con- servatives, who dread above all things the Radical Republic, and to inspire the Conservative party with hope that if they once go so far as to accept the Repubre frankly, they may have a very great influence in guiding the Republic, he has also dismissed his most Radical minister, M. Jules Simon, who was especially distasteful to the Church party, and he has appointed in M. Simon's place,—at least so far as the Ministry of Public Worship, which is now again separated from Education, is concerned, —one of the most Conservative of his Ministers, M. de Fourtou, while putting Education itself under the care of M. Waddington, an Englishman by birth and culture, though a very popular Frenchman by naturalisation. These appointments and that of M. Casimir- Prier to the Ministry of the Interior sufficiently define the
character of the new Ministry. It is to be as Conservative as is consistent with resolutely and strenuously Republican prin- ciples. It is to be a Ministry which deprecates all further suspense and takes a strong line at once, and that line is to be Republican, with all possible safe-guards for a cautious and coherent policy, a policy of moderation in action, and as far as possible, impartiality towards all shades of political feeling.
But as regards the action of the Radicals, the critical point is not so much the principles of the' new Ministry, which might suffice, but the Bills for the organisation of the Republic which the Government has prepared and presented to the Assembly. M. Gambetta maintains steadily the reason- able enough doctrine that the present Assembly, which was elected for a single object, the conclusion of peace, was never meant to be constituent ; that it is now completely and obviously out of sympathy with the people, and that the Republic ought to be organised by a new Assembly elected for that purpose. Further, the measures which the Govern- ment have presented for the organisation of the Republic are,, in many respects, unwelcome to the Radicals. Many Radicals. dislike altogether the idea of a Senate or Second Chamber, which they think diminishes the sense of responsibility in the popular Chamber without providing any real control over its- actions. Again, the restriction on the age of the President, —he is, according to M. Thiers' scheme, to be at least fortyyears old,— appears to be aimed at the exclusion of M. Gambetta, who is only thirty-five. This last is indeed evidently a foolish provision, for if a man is popular enough to be elected but for this provision, the provision itself is only a very superfluous temptation to a breach of the constitutional law. Then, again, there are various, novel, and we should say, very fanciful provisions as to the organisation both of the Senate, and of the Electoral body which is to choose the President, —provisions which savour too much of literary ingenuity, and bring back re- miniscences of Mr. Disraeli and his famous India Bill No. 3. The Senate is to be chosen by universal suffrage,—three Senators for each department, irrespective of population,—out of fifteen classes of persons, of whom we may name members of the re- presentative chamber, or of any former such body, ministers and retired ministers, prefects in office, mayors of towns of more than 100,000 inhabitants, members of the Institute, members of the Supreme Council of Commerce, of Agriculture, and of Industry, generals and retired generals, bishops and cardinals, presidents of the two most numerous consistories of the Augsburg Confession, and the twelve most numerous con- sistories of the Reformed Religion, the President and Chief Rabbi of the Central Jewish consistory, and so forth. In short, the Senator must have been, to some extent, a publie character in France. Now, our own impression is that to demand official qualifications of this kind is a policy by no means really Conservative. As a rule, a man must be some- thing of a public character in order to be chosen ; but is he a bit more likely to be a cautious or a Conservative character be- cause he is or has formerly been a representative in a Legislative Assembly, or because he is a prefect, or a mayor of a town of 100,000 inhabitants ? That was M. Barodet's qualification for the Paris candidature, and it was not by any means a Conser- vative qualification. M. Ranc had a like qualification for the election at Lyons. The truth is, that the most Conservative of all classes are those who usually shrink frooa public life altogether, and these are to be deliberately shut out by the list of senatorial qualifications demanded ; and people whose careers are for the most part over, the used-up notorieties of the past, substituted. We confess that M. Thiers' conditions for a Senator,—except perhaps the condition of age, which is to be at least thirty-five, as is not unreasonable for a body whose chief function, if it must exist at all, is careful revision and correction,—seem to us to smell of literary authorship, and to betray more of Mr. Disraeli than is desirable. And so, too, of the body which is to elect the President. This is to consist of the House of Repre- sentatives and the Senate sitting together, but increased by a body of delegates from the Councils-General of France and Algeria, to be named in their annual sessions of the month of August, each Council-General to nominate three such delegates. The object of this complicated proposal is to give the Presi- dent an independent authority in reference to his right to ask the Senate to dissolve the Representative Chamber,—for he cannot dissolve under M. Thiers' Constitution without the assent of the Senate, which is to be given in secret session. Now, to our mind, this origin, independently of the French Parliament, is in itself rather mischievous than otherwise. It will induce
the President to think he is representative of the people in some higher sense than Parliament itself, and so to court collisions with Parliament. It seems to us that the President should feel, like our Prime Minister, that he is the choice of Parliament, and that only when he thinks Parliament really beginning to misrepresent the constituencies, should he desire an appeal to the constituencies.
With constitutional Bills of this fanciful and intricate kind before the Assembly, it is impossible that the Radicals should heartily support the Government. But if English opinion can make any impression on them, we would strongly urge their giving M. Thiers all the support in their power, even for measures that they think more or less encumbered with ostentatious and silly detail, rather than aid in any attack which might be fatal to M. Thiers' rule. If he be over- thrown now, all is chaos, and almost anything is possible. If he remains, even though these fanciful and intricate constitutional laws,—which seem to us to smell, nay, almost to stink of the lamp,—be passed, the next Parlia- ment will be able to simplify and abolish whatever is childish in them. There are no provisions which will really gag the public opinion of France. Indeed, the one Conservative provision which seems to us really good and effective,—that for electing members of the Representa- tive Chamber individually by arrondissements, and in the case of very populous arrondissements, by subdivisions of arron- dissements, instead of in groups by departments,—will do so much to ensure a sober liberalism, as distinguished from an excitable socialism, at the general elections, that the Liberals may fairly hope by its means to overcome what M. Gambetta has called France's evil genius,—" fear." It is quite clear that in the debate on the Interpellation which the Right put yesterday to the Government, the whole of the Left will act together, and as we hope, with not a few allies drawn from the Right Centre. M. Thiers ought to gain a very fair majority on that issue. The danger will come when the temptation comes for the Radicals to join the extreme Conservatives in an attempt to defeat the Government bills for organising the Republic. We sincerely hope that they will not yield to that temptation. If France is to be Republican, and to be Re- publican without that most disastrous of all auguries for a Republic, a coup d'etat, M. Thiers must be sustained in power till after this Assembly is dissolved.
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