THE FRENCH REPUBLIC AND THE ULTRAS.
THE little brush between the French Minister and the Ex- treme Left has not ended to the profit of the latter. M. Buffet had the 'Ultras at a disadvantage, when he asked them why they had supported Constitutional laws which they now declared so utterly unsatisfactory ; again, when he re- minded them that he had explained the programme of the new Ministry on the very day after its formation, before the Assembly separated for the Recess, and had distinctly chal- lenged the Assembly to express their dissatisfaction with that programme if they felt it ; and most of all, when he declared that even now it was not too late to censure the Ministry directly, and so to test the temper of the National Assembly in regard to it. To none of these challenges was it possible for the Extreme Left to respond by taking up the gauntlet. It was true that they voted Constitutional laws which they did not approve, for fear of worse results if they declined to vote them. It was true that when M. Buffet challenged an immediate disapproval of his programme by the Assembly on the very morrow of his Cabinet's existence, the Ex- treme Left, though that programme had given them great offence, kept silence "even from good words." It was true, again, that they could not afford to accept his latest challenge, and bring forward an interpellation on which the Right would notoriously have voted with them solely for the sake of upsetting the structure that has been reared, and reducing the Constitu- tional Republicans to despair. Thus the Ultras have really cut the ground from beneath their own feet. M. Louis Blanc and M. Madier de Montjau have uttered nothing but a groan at the hard fate which compels them to enter into fellowship with Orleanists and Conservative Republicans. ' Woe is me,' they cry, that I must dwell with Meshech, and have my habi- tation among the tents of Bedar I' But though thus ruefully they eat the bread of tears and are given tears to drink in great measure, there is no escape for them. The wail they have sent up before the country is a barren one. While the present Assembly exists they cannot escape from their existing allies without falling into the arms of still more bitter foes. And when the present Assembly has ceased to exist, then, though their tongues may be loosed, they will be bound by the Constitution they have voted, and compelled to keep within its lines, even in their preparations for its eventual revision. Of course they think their fate hard. Of course M. Louis Blanc cannot refrain his soul and keep it low in so cruel an emergency. Hence he soliloquises aloud on that disgrace with political fortune and men's eyes into which he has fallen, and makes the rafters of Versailles echo his eloquent impatience and indignation. But while, understanding what he and some of his comrades feel, we pity the sense of moral nightmare under which they evidently labour, we can- not persuade ourselves that their sense of disgust is justified by the facts. On the contrary, the more carefully we weigh the moan they make against the new Constitution, the more per- suaded we are that M. Gambetta and those of the Left are right who, instead of quarrelling ab initio with the new Con- stitution, discern in it ample opportunities for a satisfactory
assertion of Constitutional liberties, and an adequate if a modest foundation of Republican institutions in France,—the more satisfactory, that there is no room under the new Con- stitution for those raptures of ideal enthusiasm over the birth of a new society which, from the first, do so much to provoke un- favourable judgments among sober men, and end in first damp- ing, and then finally extinguishing, the unnaturally exalted hopes of the very fanatics who had hailed the close of the old era as if it implied the advent of a golden age.
It is clear that what M. Louis Blanc and M. Madier de Montjau really mourn over most is the tendency in the new Constitution to give the Executive a power in many respects entirely independent of the legislative and representative bodies. During a portion of the year, which may be as long as the English Recess,—seven months,—the President of the Republic will reign without even the control of responsible discussion, or representative interpellations, or projects of law intended to guard against the errors of the Executive. Even during the session of the two Legislative Chambers he will have great powers independent of them. He will be able to return proposals to them which he disapproves, and to compel Parliament to pass them over again in the face of his disapproval, before they can become law. He will be the head of the Army, and very little restrained, except by the statutes which provide for the constitution of the Army, in military administration. He will conclude provisionally, under reserve of the future assent of the Houses of Legislature, all treaties except treaties of commerce with foreign States, and appoint and instruct the Ambassadors or Envoys who are to negotiate with those States. He will have the right to convoke the Houses of Legislature when they are not in session, and to adjourn them for short periods when they are. And he will be responsible absolutely for the order of the country, and of course, under cover of that responsibility, may exercise a good deal of pressure in favour of the party which he most approves. All this cannot for a moment be denied. Nor can it be denied that, failing cause for impeachment, the President will be able to exercise these great powers steadily and independently of Parliament for a period of seven years at a stretch, which may be extended to fourteen or twenty-one years by favour of the Houses of Legislature themselves. But granting it all, we cannot see why the Extreme Left regard this condition of things with so much jealousy and despair. M. Louis Blanc says that this Constitution is a Monarchy in all but name, and a Republic in name alone ; that France is to have the name of a Republic, but is not to have the thing. But that is precisely what he does not even attempt to prove. He refers to England as the country where the absolute power of Parliament over the Executive has been most efficaciously and completely conceded. But the curious thing is that in England almost all those privileges of the Executive which alarm him so much have existed from time immemorial, and, even so far as they are now abandoned in practice, are not even yet abandoned in theory. In England the monarch dissolves Parliament without consulting either House of the Legislature. In England the monarch can prorogue Parliament without being required to secure for it, as in France, a session of at least five months in the year. In England no number of Members of Parliament have the right to require the Ministers to convoke Parliament when Parliament is prorogued. In
England such a coup delat as the Left professes to fear for France is always physically possible, the Army being completely at the command of the Executive, and the authority of
Parliament being founded only on the affections of the people, not in any constitutional guarantees for its government by direct Parliamentary influence. Moreover, when M. Louis Blanc
says that our English Executive is completely under the influence
of Parliament, he is going much too far. It is, of course, quite tree that any Ministry which is defeated on a question of the first magnitude gives way in favour of a Ministry which com- mands the confidence of Parliament. But on all secondary matters not involving the retirement of the Ministry, everybody knows that it is all but simply impossible to carry through a law against the strenuous resistance of the Executive. Either in one House or in the other, the Government is quite sure to have influence enough to defeat a measure it does not like,
even though it may have been itself defeated in one of the two Houses. PracticallA the Executive in England is fully as powerful as the proposed Executive will be in France,—the one difference being that the true English Executive can be changed at any moment by a defeat of the Ministry, while in some sense the true French Executive may be supposed to remain even after the advisers who are responsible for its course have been changed. But even so far as this might be so,—and we must remember that English statesmen ascribe to the occupant of the Throne, who is permanent, almost as much real influence over ;ffairs as the new French Constitution proposes to give to the President, — the French President is to be himself a representative officer, with all those incentives to consult French opinion which the hope of re-election will give him. And M. Laboulaye is quite right in saying that there is nothing less really Republican in a Constitution which divides the representative functions amongst many distinct institutions,—under the expectation that these will not only check, but assist each other, so as to make the total effect a much more adequate declaration of the voice of France than any mere Assembly of delegates taken alone could give,—than in a Constitution which concentrates the representative functions in a single Assembly. It was the theory of the Empire that a plebiscite delegated adequately to a single man the function of representing France ; and if that was not a Republican theory, which it certainly was not, there is nothing specially Republican in the creed that a general election alone delegates, and delegates adequately, to the Assembly which it elects the function of re- presenting the nation in all respects and on all issues. In relation to the administration of justice,---one of the critical tests of a true Republic,—it has hardly ever been maintained that elective Judges would represent the French desire for justice and equity half so adequately as Judges chosen by the Executive. Yet here is a crucial test of the theory that it is repugnant to a Republic to leave the Executive in any respect independent of the constituencies. As M. Laboulaye well said, Republics are no more limited to one kind than Monarchies. The Swiss Republic and the Republic of the United States are very different Republics indeed from any French Republic which has ever existed, yet hardly more differ- ent than is the proposed French Republic from the Republic of 1793 or of 1848. The question for French Republicans is not whether every Republic is bound to concentrate all power in the hands of the representative popular Assembly,—indeed, for a Federal Republic this has never been proposed, a great part of the stability of the system being due to the many limitations imposed on the power of such popular Assemblies, some of these limitations being conceived on behalf of the separate States, others being implied in the powers granted to the E'xecutive,—but how much power it is for the ad- vantage of the whole nation to hand over to that popular Assembly, and how much to deny to it and leave in the hands of officers whose responsibility to the people is more individually imposed and more personally felt. For our own parts, we are far from thinking that France is doing wrong in leaving a good deal of direct power to the man whom the Senate and representative Assembly shall deem the most trustworthy for the duty of governing France. The great remaining popularity of the Imperial regime is evidently due to the suitability of this principle to the French genius. Any Republic which hopes to be permanent ought to borrow from the Napoleonic system something of its popular element, even while guarding against the dangers which practically made that system incompatible with a free Parliamentary life. No Republic in France will be enduring which is not suited to the ,country districts as well as to the cities. And assuredly the sort of Republic to which M. Louis Blanc and M. Madier de Montjau aspire, whether it be suited to the wants of the great cities or not, is not suited to the wants of the peasantry of France. The respect for official authority is deeply rooted in the French peasant, and even the representatives whom the peasantry themselves choose and send to the Assembly would not ade- quately express the distaste of their constituents to seeing any popular Assembly allowed to overrule absolutely and at all points the experience and the judgment of the actual administrative rulers of France.
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