TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE ' CONSERVATIVES' IN FRANCE.
THE word " Conservative " has often been misapplied, but never misapplied so grossly and perversely as to the present Government of France. It is Conservative to wish to support all the venerable institutions that have survived a long past and are deeply rooted in the living present. It is Conservative to have so much respect for these institu- tions that even improvement and change are feared, lest in pruning away what is pernicious some injury should be caused to the living root of what is beneficent. But it is not Con- servative, it is the most revolutionary of all policies, to break faith, to uproot confidence in both men and government, to play fast - and-loose with solemn con- tracts, to bring the law into odium, the Constitution into derision, all in the name of that venerable past which those who do these things are professing to revere and to defend. When Marshal MacMahon has at last made up his mind to choose one of those alternatives which M. Gambetta has been condemned for insulting him by proposing —but which were so obviously required both by simple honour and necessity, that there is certainly no escape for him except in acts of violence which can hardly succeed—it will be said of his Government that in the present year of his office he did more to estrange the French people from the past, to make them connect good-faith with anything rather than Conserva- tism, to make them regard Radicalism more as the sworn enemy of oppression and corruption than as the dangerous foe of France for which he wishes it to be taken, than M. Gambetta himself could have effected in ten years of undisturbed power. What the Marshal's Government has taught France is that Conservatives' are the most unscrupulous of all breakers of Constitutions ; that to suppress Radicalism,' as they call it, there is no one, of a social status however honourable and eminent, whom their agents will not libel and blacken by the grossest political slanders, and hardly any breach of the law itself that they will not authorise; that in the name of property and as the foe of confiscation, they never for a moment scruple to infringe the most sacred proprietary rights and confiscate the most indisputable possessions ; and worst of all, that they will fight with far more ardour against the Moderates of the opposite party whom they know to be opponents of all really destructive principles, than against those extreme men whose views they most abhor, but who for that very reason are the more useful to them, as warnings to France of the ultimate consequences of subversive principles. Marshal MacMahon and his Ministers have struck a blow at public faith, at the respect for law, at the rights of property, at the influence of rank and prestige, such as no leader of the Liberals could have struck, had he even exceeded,—which would be difficult,—the political crimes of M. de Pourtou ; for their blow has been struck in the name of Conservatism, and has thereby associated with Conservatism, and especially with religious Conservatism, all that is most offensive to the conscience of true men.
In the first place,—and this is the least charge against him, .--the Marshal has been positively disloyal to the Constitution. He has told the electors of France that whatever the result of his appeal to them, he would stand by the " faithful func- tionaries" who had been true to him, that his "duty would grow with the peril ;" and that he would "remain to defend, with the support of the Senate, the Conservative interests of France." No pledge could possibly have been a more thorough breach of the spirit of the Constitution, or more clearly intended to produce breaches of the letter of the law,—which it has actually produced,—by others. What it said virtually was this,—that if France declared against him, he would still support those who had tried to induce France to declare for him ; and the object of saying this was to make his political instruments and agents less timid and less scrupulous in trying to force the political consciences of the French people. Such a pledge and threat as this were utterly at variance with the Marshal's pretence of appealing to the people of France, and proclaimed him to be professedly using the forms of the Constitution in order to violate its meaning. After that, who could hope for a Con- stitutional President from such a Conservative,—such a foe of Radicalism,—as the Marshal? Nor was the threat an empty threat. As every one now knows, it pro- duced its full effect on the " faithful functionaries" referred to,—who, assured that they would not be abandoned in case of failure, rivalled the most outrageous efforts of the Napoleonic regime to get the official candidates returned. The Marshal's proclaimed intention to ignore the results of the elections, if they went against him, was the general signal for a raid on the Constitution.
But this is the least of the counts in the indictment against this professedly Conservative' Government. The Government of moral order has itself been the grossest assailant of moral order in the rural districts of France. We read of department after department, of arrondissement after arrondissement, in which the Government has openly violated the law on behalf of what it calls the respect for law. Official voting-papers so distinguished in colour that the secrecy of the ballot could not be maintained have been used ; and where the electors countermined this trickery by using the official papers, but pasting the Republican candidate's name over that of the official candidate, these ballot-papers have been rejected,, though it has been again and again decided that they are legally unobjectionable. The law on the Press has been openly violated in the provinces in the most flagrant way, by surrounding the offices of even moderate Liberal newspapers with gendarmes, and requiring articles to be cancelled at the latest moment, on pain of imprisonment for all the staff of the paper if they were issued. Republicans have been arrested on the day of election and marched about a town during a fair, merely to inspire terror. There was no idea of keeping them under arrest,—no pretence, indeed, for doing so—but the object was to fill the peasants' minds with the fear of Cayenne, if they voted against the Government. Towns which were as tranquil as London were paraded with cavalry and artillery, to influence the vote. The terror in some places was so great that even a resident landlord could not get his own people to come and listen to his appeal. Everywhere the law has been broken without pretext or excuse, to inspire terror, and this in the name of law. Since the time of the coup cretat there has not been worse pressure exercised against the Constitutional rights of the electors.
But not only has the law been flagrantly broken,—the rights of property have been flagrantly confiscated by this Govern- ment, which professes itself the sworn foe of all invasions of property rights. If the local Press succeed in obtaining damages for all the arbitrary confiscations of their most unquestionable rights during this electoral campaign, the prefects and sub- prefects of M. de Fourtou will have ruin staring them in the face. The Times' correspondent has told the story,—one of hundreds,—of the interference with the most moderate of Liberal French journals, the Progris Liberal, of Toulouse, a paper compared with which the Debats itself is, he says, quite virulent in its tone,—and has described all sorts of police interference with its publication, wholly unjustified by any legal plea ; and then at the last moment before publication, the journal, if not seized and wholly suppressed for the day, is, perhaps, compelled to come out with two or three columns blank, where an article, disapproved by the Prefect, should have appeared. Opposition candidates have been warned that they must not dine with their friends,—even two or thiee friends,—at any inn during the election-time. In numbers of places, cafe's and public-houses have been closed for a word or two on politics, and threatened to be closed every- where in case such politics should be heard in them. In a word, the proprietary rights of people who had any kind of interest in either public journals or places of public resort have been utterly set at naught by the very Government which shrieks so loudly against the Socialists and the organised plunder of a progressive income-tax.
But most discreditable of all, perhaps, in a Conservative Government has been the virulence of its attacks on men of moderate Liberal views and of the highest moral standing, as compared with its opposition to the fiercer Radicals. Every- where we read of the slander and ferocity of the attacks directed by the subordinates of the Government and their clerical allies against men in the position, for instance, of M. Paul de Rdmusat, son of the well-known M. Charles de R6musat, who has been rejected in the Department of the Haute-Garonne through the most unscrupulous efforts of the Government to blacken his reputation. In some of the country districts, the priests have told the peasants that their children would be excluded from their first communion if they voted for M. Paul de Remusat. That, of course, may not be the fault of the Government. But it is the fault of the Govern- ment that a Mayor harangued the peasants as to the social catastrophe which would follow if M. do Remusat were returned. And that is but a specimen of what has gone on all through France. It has been the Moderates of high social status,—the men who might as truly be accused of revolutionary violence as Lord Hartington or Mr. Whitbread, —against whom this Government of hypocritical ' Conser- vatives' have directed all their most vehement efforts. The truth is that they really respect legal order, social order, and moral order, indefinitely less than the fiercest of the Radicals against whom they rave. They have fought for their own hands. And when they fall, France, after well considering their day and their opportunities, will look back upon them as some of the worst enemies of order and religion who ever fought under the banner of order and religion. And yet almost all the worst enemies of order and religion whom the world has known, have, unfortunately, from time to time, fought, and fought furiously, under that banner.
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