THE NEW FRENCH MINISTRY.
IF the object of M. Carnot and his advisers during the crisis which ended on Tuesday was to get rid of M. Constans, they have succeeded ; but if it was not, it is difficult to avoid believing that they have made a failure. In the first place, the prestige of M. Carnot himself has been considerably shaken. He is not a constitutional Sovereign after the English fashion, but President of a Republic, and invested by law with a right co-ordinate with that of the Chamber to dismiss and appoint his own Ministers. In other words, though he must choose men acceptable to the majority, he has a right of choice, and may exercise during an interregnum an initiative not necessarily arising from " advice." He probably did exercise one, for the new Premier is a personal and close friend ; but he exercised it weakly, and with an appearance of vacillation. He talked over the crisis with all manner of people, including some who are not of Cabinet rank ; he sent for an Opportunist, then for a Radical, then for an Opportunist again, and finally for M. Loubet, a " sagacious " person of colourless politics and no repute, who happened to be his friend. He occupied, moreover, in all these processes an unprecedented amount of time ; and Frenchmen during an interregnum grow first suspicious, then angry, and at last hostile to the pro- crastinating power. It is no wonder, therefore, that a virulent attack on the President was just beginning, that M. Rochefort was calling him the origin of mis- chief, and that more serious politicians were remarking that, as regards the union of Church and State, the Presi- dent was as indecisive as everybody else. He sent for M. Bourgeois, who, as he must have known, considers, like Gambetta, that clericalism is the enemy, and he sent for M. Loubet, who is quite content to be on excellent terms with the Church, provided it neither teaches nor inter- feres. That looks weak ; and in France, more than in any country in the world, men despise weakness in the Head of the State. They do not want him to interfere, but they wish him to be a reserve force, capable of interfering in au emergency with an effect which will be popular in pro- p3rtion to its decisiveness.
This unfavourable impression as to the President would, of course, pass away if he had in the end made an able, or even an original combination ; but he has not. The new Cabinet is for all practical purposes the old Cabinet over again, without the man upon whom property-holders and peasants rely to keep Paris in settled order. It is not at all likely that the President is jealous of M. Constans—though he may be hankering after a second term, his dignity suiting him if his work does not—but he has certainly allowed M. de Freycinet, who has craft in him as well as some force, to edge his one principal rival out of office. This alone makes the Cabinet weaker than it was, and it will hardly acquire strength from M. Constans' substitute. M. Loubet is over fifty, has been a Minister, is a Senator, and has not succeeded in impressing himself in the slightest degree either on the Administration or the Senate. Consequently, the pre- sumption is that he is an ordinary man, gifted with a pleasing voice and some faculty of speech, but without any of the qualities necessary either to attract Frenchmen or to govern them. Certainly none of those qualities appear in his lengthy and indecisive programme. The new Ministry, like the old one, is not prepared for the separation of Church and State, but only, as it avows, because there is no majority in the country for that policy, while it is prepared to " exact re- spect" from the clergy for all their obligations, one of which is to " hold themselves aloof from party struggles." That is just what the last Ministry proposed to do, and this Ministry is only a little weaker, for it does not withdraw the Bill on Associations, and does not press it, but only leaves it to the judgment of the Chamber, which is to persecute, or not to persecute, as it thinks best. The new Ministry will do things for the poor, just as the old Ministry said they would—taking up, by-the-way, with some adroitness M. Constans' proposal of pensions for old age—and they will " rejoice to welcome " any votes they can get from the Right, whom they nevertheless call " our adversaries," and to whom they offer nothing except a maintenance of the Concordat "in its true spirit." Finally, they go off into rhetorical ecstasies about the Republic, which for them is " not a form of government," but the " representative of the collection of institutions springing from the French Revolution." The Deputies of all parties who listened wearily to the pro- gramme might well have clamoured as it finished, like the hungry mob which once invaded the Assembly, " Bread, and not so much discoursing."
The debate was a little more characterised by a note of decision. The suspicion current among Radicals and Monarchists was that the old Government had " nego- tiated " with the Pope, and that this Government intended to do the same. That suspicion annoys the Right, because they think a negotiation with the Pope means, in Oppor- tunist mouths, a menace to the Pope ; and annoys the Radicals, because, as one Deputy avowed, it brings a power which claims to emanate from God into the internal affairs of France. The interpellation on this subject produced the crucial moment, and we are bound to say that M. Ribot met it with some spirit. He had not, he said, negotiated with the Pope in the ordinary sense—" though while the Concordat lasted France must have relations with the Papacy "—but he had directed the French representative at the Vatican to warn the Pope, with all respect, that if French Bishops continued to attack the Republic, opinion would disable the Government from protecting the Concordat, a view which had impressed the Pope, and produced the recent Encyclical. He thereupon read out his despatch, which was what he had described it, and which might have been read with good effect before the last Ministry fell. The despatch contented the Chamber, because most of the Right understood it to be conciliatory, while the Left saw in it a threat to separate Church and State, if the Bishops could not learn to " behave themselves " in the Radical sense. A vote of confidence, in its barest form, was there- fore passed by 341 to 91, and the Loubet Ministry has permission to go on in the path of its predecessor.
It will hardly last as long. M. Constans will be missed every day, and is a most dangerous opponent, who con- ceives, perhaps justly, that he has been treacherously under- mined, and who is therefore in a condition of flaming irrita- tion. Moreover, the policy of the Ministry really settles nothing upon a question which nothing but determination can prevent from bursting into flame. They try to avoid acting in ecclesiastical affairs, because, whichever way they act, they arouse irreconcilable hatreds ; but in so trying they offend both the extreme parties, which on the first opportunity will coalesce to overturn them. The Right would be glad of confusion, even if it involved M. Carnot, whom they hate for sitting in the King's seat ; and the Left, with the red rag before them, will think neither of the Presidency nor of France. It is most significant that, even in the formal vote of Thursday, the minority of ninety-one was made up of fifty Radicals and forty-one Members of the Right. Of course, if the new Cabinet dare be moderate, and abstain from war with the Church, and so attract the Right, the Moderate Opportunists, the religious Opportunists, of whom a few still con- trive to maintain a precarious existence, and the Right together could make a strong majority; but then, this is the precise course M. de Freycinet does not intend to take. We believe it is opposed to one of his few inner convic- tions, but, at all events, it is opposed to his political interests as a person. He is playing for the Presidency, and without some sort of support from the Left, he has no more chance of the Presidency than M. de Mun has,—much less chance than M. Carnot, whose very name represents the Revolution. He will not, therefore, break with the Left, and as he really rules the Cabinet, its steps must continue to be marked by indecisiveness, and excite the conflicting passions which induce Right and Left equally to put their consciences in their pockets and coalesce to enjoy a few hours of the delightful sense of gratified vengeance on the "friends" who will give neither of them complete satisfaction, and therefore are denounced as at once Terrorists and agents of the priesthood. France survives all situations, and is only in name governed by Cabinets ; but certainly the new Administration does not promise her much help in solving her many problems.
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