M. BRISSON'S IDEAS.
MBRISSON has spoken, and the curious uncertainty • whether the Prime Minister of France was going to take any part in the appeal to the country is removed. There is no longer any mystery as to his precise position among French politicians. He has made his confession, and we can jr0ge him for what he is. It must be admitted, however, that tht.' discovery, now that it has come, is a little wanting in interest. M. Brisson is only M. Ferry writ a little smaller. There are shades of difference between the two men, but they are only shades ; and such as they are they are not to M. Brisson's advantage. You may dislike or distrust M. Ferry as much as you please ; but you cannot deny that he has great pluck and abundant resource. He was more nearly kicked out of office than a Minister has ever been, and yet within a few months he is once more to the front as the proposed leader of a majority which only waits for the Elections to become a Ministerial majority. M. Brisson has had no fall, but he has had no rebound. His turn has come, that crisis for which he has so long been waiting, and he improves it by making a speech which marks him out as an excellent colleague for M. Ferry. He will play Minister of Justice to M. Ferry's President of the Council, and do it very well. But it is rather a disappointment when the Coming Man turns out to be only a very capable second-fiddle to the man who has already come ; and this is the impression which M. Brisson's speech has left on us.
We do not deny the difficulty of the situation in which M. Brisson finds himself. Three varieties of Republican policy are offered to the electors, but each of them is already appro- priated. M. Ferry leads the Opportunists, M. Clemenceau leads the Radicals, and M. Ribot stands ready to lead the Moderate Republicans, if there should prove to be any to lead. A great political genius would have made nothing of this difficulty. He would either have forced the actual leader to make way for him, or have invented some new and attractive combination of the rival programmes. M. Brisson, on the ,contrary, has been content to make a thoroughly Opportunist speech, merely colouring it with a slightly deeper shade ,ef Radicalism than M. Ferry has cared to introduce into his. He goes over the same ground as the late Prime Minister, gives the same general advice, appeals to the same element in the electorate. The only difference is that he hopes, perhaps, to detach a few wavering Radicals from M. Clemenceau ; whereas M. Ferry aims rather at detaching a few wavering Moderates from M. Ribot. But it is only by
the fringe that the parties they severally wish to lead can be distinguished. The main body is the same in each case. The line of demarcation between the Minister and the ex-Minister is as lightly traced as that which separates Sir Charles Dilke from-Mr. Chamberlain.
The two points on which M. Brisson seems to reproduce M. Ferry's views with a slightly more pronounced drift in the direction of Radicalism are Colonial policy and religious policy. As to the first, they both say the same things, but they say them in a different order. They both deprecate fresh conquests, while laying stress on the necessity of not abandoning the conquests already made. But with M. Ferry, the deprecation of fresh conquest seems secondary to the necessity of not abandoning those already made ; whereas with M. Brisson, it is the other way. In particular, he treats the Madagascar affair as already over, which must mean that the French ought in his judgment to put up with a very much less complete success than they at one time hoped to achieve. It is not much of a distinction ; but, so far as it goes, it may impress wavering electors here and there with the idea that as regards foreign adventures a Ferry-Brisson Cabinet will be a safer thing than a Ferry Cabinet pure and simple. With the uncertain majorities, which are all that French Cabinets can at present command, no support, however slight, is to be despised. M. Brisson's deference to his constituents probably suggested the complimentary reference to Paris ; but here again there is the same disposition to make Opportunism palatable to M. Climenceau's followers. To exert any hold upon the Parisian electorate is becoming more and more impossible for an Opportunist. The Advanced Party in the Capital will have nothing but a Radical Republic ; the Moderate Party have pretty well ceased to desire any sort of Republic. But habit may still make M. Brisson's seat safe ; and so long as that is possible, it is important for him not to forget the common- places of Radical oratory.
The part of X Brisson's speech that has moat interest for foreigners is his reference to the religious question. Those who would like to see some modus vivendi established between the Church and the Republic will find this thoroughly unsatis- factory. M. Brisson, like M. Ferry, insists on treating the Church as an enemy ; and considering the pains that the Republic has taken to make it so, he may have good cause to think that it is no longer possible to regard her in any other light. That it once was possible, we have no doubt. The French Clergy had no motive for disliking the Republic beyond a fear of what would happen under its ascendency, which has been amply justified by facts. They were not an aristocratic clergy ; they had no reason to look back with any special affection either to the Bourbon or to the Orleanist rule ; and they had a strong pecuniary in- terest in keeping on civil terms with their paymasters. Some of them had, it is true, been mixed up with the reactionary dreams that were current between 1871 and 1877 ; but these dreams had come to nothing, and in the cold chill of waking those whom they had visited would have been quite willing to forget them, and to make terms with the party that had the testimony of success on its side. Whether a reconciliation would now be within the reach of the Republic is a matter on which speculation is useless, since both Opportunists and Radicals are resolved not to make the attempt. But as between the two, the attitude of the Radicals is in every way preferable. The Radicals say plainly that they wish to abolish the Budget of Public Worship, to put an end to the existing connection between the State and the Clergy, and to rescind the Concordat. We believe that this would be a misfortune for France ; but upon this point the French Radicals have a perfect right to their
opinion. They hate the Church ; they think Christianity in all forms a degrading superstition, and in the Catholic form a mischievous superstition as well ; and they are determined to have no further association with it. The Opportunists do not think much better of the Church than the Radicals ; but instead of putting an end to the connection with it, they propose to keep it alive for the sole purpose of crippling the Church. They are in the position of a business man who, while keeping back from his partner his stipulated share of the profits, should refuse to dissolve partnership, on the plea that his partner might injure him by setting up a rival concern. Separation of Church and State
might only make the Church more formidable ; and as this is not the object of the majority of Frenchmen, they cannot—
so M. Brisson argues—seriously wish to abolish the Concordat.
So far as the Church is concerned, a declaration of this kind is to the full as hostile as any that has been made by M. Clemenceau. It makes the gulf between M. Brisson and the most moderate and reasonable Catholics incapable of being crossed. But this, as M. Brisson probably knows, would have been the case under any circumstances, so that he loses nothing by his frankness. What he looks to is the off-chance that a few Radicals maybe tempted away from M. Oldmenceau by their belief that religion will be less powerful with the Church enslaved than it would be if she were free.
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