THE REAPPEARANCE OF GENERAL BOULANGER.
WE do not wonder that French parties and French journalists are disconcerted and perplexed by the miniature plebiscite given on Sunday in favour of General Boulanger. No more remarkable symptom has ever been shown of latent malaise in the body politic of France. There were seven by-elections to the Chamber on Sunday, and though General Boulanger is by law ineligible as a candidate, issued no address, made no speech, and, publicly at least, abstained from putting himself forward in any way, he received in every department serious and spontaneous support. No less than fifty-five thousand ballots were cast for him, an average of nearly eight thousand votes in each department. If they had been given in Paris, the incident would have been of little importance, as it would only have proved that the new Lafayette has not yet lost his popularity with the lower Parisians ; but these voters were rurals, peasants and artisans scattered through large departments, their vote was in the main spon- taneous, and there is no proof that it was affected by any sort of localism. It hardly could be, in fact, for under scrutin de lisle a whole department votes. The evidence, in fact, is that in the coming election General Boulanger may be a for- midable candidate throughout France, and may even be returned to the Chamber by as many departments as returned M. Thiers, a division of the peasantry everywhere inserting his name in the place of one of the names on the card of names made necessary by scrutin de lisle. That would be a grave incident, and it is natural that politicians should study its causes very deeply. It may mean that the relatives of the conscripts are still full of gratitude for all the General did for the private soldier, or that a section of French voters are eager for war, or that a proportion of them are longing to substitute a dictatorship for the slower, and to them perplexing, method of government by discussion.
The first solution is by no means an improbable one. There are many signs that the French masses, though they do not resist the conscription, watch it with increasing jealousy and care. They regard it, now that "lucky numbers" are practically abolished, and soldiership is not a chance but a certainty, as the heaviest of their burdens, part with their sons with increasing reluctance, and display a quite new sensitive- ness as to the probability of injury inflicted on the conscripts' health. They are said to hear of " orders for Africa " with groans, and they openly protest against tropical expeditions in a way clearly reflected within the Chamber itself. They fear, in fact, for their children the high proportions which invaliding some- times attains, more even than they fear battles ; for the dead have at least glory, while the dysenteric may be weak for labour through life. Any improvement in the conditions of service is therefore strongly felt ; and it is not denied that General Boulanger did improve those conditions. Personal gratitude is not, it is true, a French virtue, but it may have had its effect in this instance ; and it must not be forgotten that the conscripts now go out of every family. The desire for war is not an explanation which observers on the spot accept, they denying that the peasantry are even willing for war • but the third solution has much evidence to support it in French history. Modern Frenchmen—that is, Frenchmen born on this side of the great chasm cut in French history by the events of 1792—have periodically shown a disposition to be governed by representatives, and, whenever the fancy came, have trusted them entirely. The Assembly has always been absolute as the old Kings. We cannot remember in any time of revolution even a proposal to limit its authority, or any evidence, however faint, of the American and Swiss notions on the subject. The French have hated the veto, even in the form of the veto suspensif; have never treated the Second Chamber as a completely serious body, and would regard a limited Assembly with defined powers as something illogical, as, in fact, a recognition and a denial of the dogma of universal suffrage. The very notion that a Chamber could be restricted like a King, is, we think, foreign to their minds. On the other hand, they have always, after a time, wearied of their Chamber, or Assembly, or Convention, and, as a new generation grew up, have sought to cumin their right of self-government through the simpler and swifter method of a dictatorship. We are accustomed to suppose that the First Napoleon was a tyrant ; but the plebiscite supported him, and the people were on his side, till his defeats induced him to try the fatal experiment of " anticipating the annual conscriptions." That was the charge brought against him by the people when they mobbed his carriage after his abdication. Weariness of government by a Chamber had much to do with the acceptance of the Consulate, as it had also to do with the election of Napoleon III. The people tire of Parliamentary conflict, of the waste of their money, of the want of great deeds, of the lack of anything that moves or fires the imagination. They do not care about the petty politicians they are governed by ; they hardly know their names, and they seek blindly, but with a certain eagerness, for some alternative. That is necessarily a man ; and though we in England think that to make of General Boulanger the man is a little absurd, we must remember that France, since Gambetta's death, has been barren of men who have even made themselves fairly known to the body of the people, or have in any way touched their imaginations. The French masses wearied of M. Grevy's strictly bourgeois excellence ; they know of M. Carnot only his great name—to which, we notice, M. Gabriel Monod, a most shrewd observer, mainly attributes his election—they think of M. Ferry as a man who blundered in Tonquin, of M. Clemenceau as a Radical orator who has done nothing, and of the rest of the political eminences of France as so many figures. Who is M. Rouvier to the French peasant I There is no General who has won a battle, diplomatists in all countries are unknown to the people, and France has no Mr. Gladstone, or other kind of Parliamentary hero. So, in sheer lack of a person to lead, she makes one, and convinces herself that she has a possible alter- native ruler in General Boulanger.
This is, we greatly fear, as we see the Figaro hopes, the most reasonable explanation of the vote, and it must greatly dis- hearten those moderate and sensible Republicans who are the ultimate hope of France. They desire, before all things, to " close the era of revolutions"; to make the Republic solid ; to create in the minds of Frenchmen the impression, which exists so strongly in America and Switzerland, and, indeed, in all strong States, that there is no such thing as an alternative method of government, that the Constitution will exist always, and that all quarrels of opinion, even those which affect the distribution of property and the methods of securing obedience to law, must be fought out within it. They know that until this can be done, there is no security against monarchy, or militarism, or a regime of dictators, for every ambitious party in France will seek to revolutionise the form of government, instead of the direction of its working. They thought they had secured their object when, in 1870, the peasantry turned Republican, and thus ended the quarrel which had led to the Napoleonic restoration. They thought so still more strongly when, in 1879, Marshal MacMahon resigned ; and when, in 1886, M. Gr6vy was re- elected President without even a creak in the body of the con- stitutional machine. And now to see the very floor of their edifice, for the practice of election is the floor, exhibiting a great crack, as if the soil below were loosening and giving way ! If a large section of the people long for a dictatorship, there is, they see, no security for the Republic. The very meanness of the man enhances the danger, for while great men are rare, little men are all about ; and if a little man will suffice, there is always a dictator ready. The spontaneity of the move- ment, too, increases the alarm. There is an effort to deny this spontaneity, but it must be an afterthought. There is talk of this or that secret organisation, and of a distribution of pamphlets ; but the Government, which in France is omni- present, knew nothing of the movement, and neither com- mittee nor pamphleteer could have made fifty-five thousand Frenchmen vote under the ballot against their will. The electors must have acted from a common impulse, which was a common liking for the popular notion embodied in General Boulanger's name. The incident may turn out to be nothing ; but it may also turn out to be like the vote of the minority in Napoleon III.'s last plebiscite, the event which shows most accurately how opinion drifts. In any event, the vote will greatly increase the desire of any Ministry which may succeed M. Tirard, to increase their strength in the country by the insertion among their Cabinet Ministers of General Boulanger's name. He was supposed to have been forgotten ; but he has reappeared as a formidable candidate in at least seven of the departments of France.
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