THE RELIGIOUS QUESTION IN FRANCE. T HE by-play of French politics
is again becoming interesting. It seemed at first as though the Exhi- bition would be allowed to have the field to itself, and party manceuvres be suspended beneath the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. Whether it be, however, that the weariness which necessarily comes of Exhibitions, when more than one has been seen, has been too much for the politicians, or that the Republican Party sees cause to believe that it cannot safely efface itself, there has been a sudden revival of excitement in the Chamber and in the newspapers. M. Ferry's reappearance on Thursday week was not a mere isolated or personal incident. It was to all appearance part of a plan, of a fresh attempt to concentrate, not as formerly the whole Republican Party, but the Republican Party with the extreme section left out, and to pursue, by the help of the Government, the Opportunists, and the Moderates of the Union Libgrale, a policy which should invite the acquiescence, if not the support, of the Right. Each of the three elements in this coalition was given its special work. M. Ferry and M. Ribot had to make speeches ; M. Carnot and his Ministers had to hear mass. This last step involved the maximum of reaction, for it was to do in the person of the Chief of the State what has long marked out any subordinate official as an object of suspicion ? The existence of the Concordat makes it inevitable that the President should take his tormal share in giving the birettas to new Cardinals ; but M. Grevy had earned great if passing favour with Republicans by reducing the function to the smallest possible dimen- sions. It was transferred from the chapel of the tlysee to the drawing-room, and became scarcely more imposing than the ceremonial with which a footman hands a depart- ing guest his hat. On Tuesday, everything was done in the old fashion. Official carriages conveyed the Cardinals, the Ab-legates, and. the Noble Guards, escorted by a squadron of dragoons, to the t 1ys6e. The court of the palace, the corridors, the state apartments, and the chapel were lined with troops. M. Carnot took his place at a prie-dieu in front of the altar, with the Ab-legates on one side and the Noble Guards on the other. After the mass, the Ab-legates read the Papal briefs creating the Cardinals, and the President placed the biretta on the head of each of the new Princes of the Church, while the Introducer of Ambassadors in- vested him with the red mantle. The whole account reads like a page from the chronicles of the Second Empire, and must have been as gall and wormwood to nearly every one who has helped to govern France for the last ten years. So far, then, the President and his Ministers have done their part. But the present French Cabinet stands in the singular position of having no supporters of its own. It lives on the crumbs that are occasionally thrown to it by the Opportunists, the Moderates, or the Radicals. The success of the new policy must consequently depend, in the first instance, on the extent to which it can unite the Re- publican Party. It was probably inevitable that M. Ferry should be put up as the mouthpiece of the Opportunists. No man in France is so hated by his opponents, whether Conservative or Radical ; but then, he is so indisputably the most prominent figure among the Opportunists, that if he had been left out, the Government could have felt no real confidence that the Opportunist contingent had been secured. Never had an orator a more difficult part to play. The Opportunist group touches the Radicals on one side, and the Moderates on the other ; but its connec- tion with the former has been far more intimate and of far longer duration, and in the present position of affairs, it is of great importance, from the point of view of Ministerial strategy, that this connection should, if possible, be maintained. It would have been useless, therefore, for M. Ferry to attempt to repudiate his past. Individual politicians may do public penance, but a party leader has to show that it is circumstances and not conviction that has wrought what to unobservant eyes looks like a right-about-face. Accordingly, M. , Ferry confessed nothing and repented nothing. He only promised to do quite differently for the future. He more than any man ha:s been the author of a religious war,—who, then, is so well qualified as he to be the author of a religious peace ? Unfortunately for M. Ferry's purpose, this offer made all self-control impossible for three parts of the Chamber. The Right will accept no peace that does not consent to undo the past. The Extreme Left will accept no peace that modifies the future. The Radicals will accept no peace that comes to them from the hands of M. Ferry. Probably this last feelin,, was secretly shared by many who would not confess to it. ''What business was it of M. Ferry's to offer any terms whatever ? Does he think that he is Minister ? Does he expect to be Minister again ? The mere vision of such a contingency seemed enough to drive a large part of the Chamber out of their senses, and when M. Ferry left the tribune, it must have been with a depressing suspicion that his effort, clever and courageous as it undoubtedly was, was only a clever failure.
Two days later, this suspicion was changed into certainty. The Right and the Left had had time to consider M. Ferry's offer, and by the mouths of the Comte de Mun and M. Clemenc,eau they severally delivered their replies. It is quite possible that M. de 3ilun's speech would have been the same in substance if M. Ferry's had been different. Whether the Right really desire a religious peace, is at least open to question. But M. Ferry had given M. de Mutt an excellent excuse for rejecting his offer. Amendment presupposes repentance. You come into the tribune,' said M. de Mun, with the declaration that, whatever Emperors and statesmen may do, you will not go to Canossa. But if you withdraw nothing and regret nothing, what is the foundation of this religious peace which you offer us ? It must be your own political past.' And taking this as his text, M. de Mun proceeded to build up an indictment of really terrible severity. You have forgotten,' he said, Article 7. You have forgotten the expulsion of the religious congregations, despite the remonstrances of old Liberals like M. Dufa.ure and M. Jules Simon, of great lawyers like M. Rousse, of 1,800,000 humbler petitioners. You have forgotten the 250 Magistrates you were compelled to dismiss because they would not execute your decrees, and the 128 Law Courts whose decisions you had to set aside. You have forgotten the crucifixes torn from the school walls, the Teaching Orders banished from the schools, the Sisters of Charity dragged from their place beside the pillows of sick men. There are thousands of Christian hearths in France where your name is never mentioned without a tear. There are men in this Chamber—I myself am one of them—who have been forced to send their children across the Channel that they may receive the education their parents wish to give them, and when our children ask why they are exiles, we can but name you by way of answer. And with such a past as this, you tell us that you have nothing to repent of.' If there was not much doubt what reply M. de Mun would give to M. Ferry's speech, there could be none at all as to the reception it would meet with from M. Clemenceau. To him, religious peace is a dream, a delusion. The Church is not a doubtful friend who may be won over, but an enemy who must be crushed as the sole condition of living in safety. It is the old, the approved doctrine of the Continental Radicals,—the doctrine that underlies the whole policy of the French Republic so far as M. Clemenceau has dictated it, the doctrine that has suggested and given meaning to the honours recently paid to Giordano Bruno at Rome. The interest of M. Clemenceau's speech lay not in what he said, but in the fact that he should have said it after M. Ferry had spoken. He not only justifies the religious past of the Republic, but demands that the religious future shall exactly reproduce it.
On Tuesday, M. Ribot gave excellent advice to all parties alike. He had no difficulty in showing that they were all unreasonable. What he failed to do was to indi- cate any means by which, so long as they remain un- reasonable, a modus vivendi can be arranged between them. And when all had been said, the Government could only remain silent. As it cannot speak without alienating a friend, and nothing it could say would con- ciliate an enemy, it is perhaps the best thing that it could do. It can only fall back upon the ceremony in the Elysee chapel, and hope that the Catholic opposition may at all events be weakened by the spectacle of a President on his knees. But Republican concentration, is as far off as ever.
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