THE CRISIS IN FRANCE.
ONCE more Constitutional Government in France has been assailed from above. M. Jules Simon, the head of a moderately Liberal Ministry in full possession of a majority, has been dismissed, with a curtness scarcely used in dismissing a servant ; and a Reactionary Ministry, presided over by the Due de Broglie, and having for Minister of the Interior the notorious M. Fourtou, whose very name signifies interference with elections, has been appointed, in the teeth of an immense majority of the Deputies. The storm has probably been brew- ing for a long time. The Marshal-President, whose ideas of politics are the ideas of an old soldier, has never liked M. Jules Simon, and has recently considered him far too liberal for his post. He has not been content, as was expected on his appointment, to be nominally Liberal, but has removed many Monarchists and Bonapartists from office, has replaced them by moderate Republicans, has allowed the Chamber to express its anti-Catholic feeling, and has, only a day or two since, expressed openly his belief that in abolishing the law which deprives journalists accused of libel of the right of appeal to a jury, the Chamber would advance the cause of freedom of thought. He has, in fact, been too Liberal for the Marshal ; and the group of Reaction- ists who always surround him, moved by some occult in- fluence—believed in Paris to be Ultramontanism, but quite as likely to be mere panic—on Wednesday induced the Pre- sident not only to write a severe censure to the Premier, but to announce that he himself is not responsible to Parliament, but only to France. M. Jules Simon of course resigned, writing, however, in reply an extremely moderate letter, and M. Gambetta next day proceeded to take a vote -of the Chamber. In a speech said to have been full of more than his accustomed fire, he denounced the Reactionists, "who display their livid faces in all times of hesitation," and demanded that the Chamber should pass this Order of the Day :—" The Chamber, deeming it incumbent on it in the present crisis, and in fulfilment of the man- date it has received from the country, to recall that the preponderance of Parliamentary power, working by Ministerial responsibility, is the first condition of the government of the country by the country which the Constitutional Laws aimed at establishing, declares,—That the confidence of the majority can only be accorded to a Cabinet free in its action and resolved to govern according to &publican principles, which alone can guarantee order and property at home and peace abroad." The Chamber acceded by 353 to 154. It was after he had heard of this vote that the President, in open defiance of it, appointed a Ministry in which M. de Broglie is Premier and Minister of Justice and M. Fourtou Secretary of the Interior,—that is an avowed "Ministry of combat," a Ministry as hostile to a is, even of the " ironclad" kind, as to responsible Government of any sort. And this extreme step has been taken without any pressure, for the Senate would have retained any restrictive laws on the Press or on Municipalities which the Marshal deemed essential, and without any concert with that Left Centre which has always hitherto shown itself so ready to support the Executive authority. It is, in short, a civil coup d'e'tat.
Fortunately it is not as yet a military one, and there is still time for calmer and less arbitrary counsels to prevail. Marshal MacMahon, in dismissing a Ministry supported by a majority, and appointing a Cabinet rejected in advance by nearly two- thirds of the Chamber, has, no doubt, violated the spirit of the Constitution,which accords him immense executive authority, but requires him to govern in accord with the Assembly, to whom as well as to himself, the Ministers are responsible, but he has not violated the letter. He has a legal right under the Con- stitution to appoint and dismiss Ministers, and if the Senate will concur, to appeal to the people through a dissolution. It is evident from the selection of M. Fourtou that this is what he intends, and if he will submit with cordiality to the result of the election, he is only to be blamed for unwisdom in choosing such a time for so extreme a measure. His course will then be to propose some measure sure to be rejected, and then dissolve, M. Fourtou doing his very utmost to influence the elections and return a Chamber in harmony with the ideas of the Right, and a Chamber which in 1880 would re-elect the Marshal. It is quite conceivable that this, which is a legal, though high-handed course of pro- cedure, is the one which the President intends. He trusts M. de Broglie and M. Buffet, and both statesmen have repeatedly shown their inability to comprehend the cur- rents of popular opinion in France, and may very well believe that with the Church energetically at their back, with the Marshal at last resolved to exert his personal hold over opinion, and with a Ministry of combat in power, they can make sure of securing a Conservative Assembly. They are deceived, we believe, and will secure a far more Radical Chamber than at present, but they may think otherwise, and may have persuaded the Marshal to try an experiment which, however violent and ill-advised, is not illegal. In that case, Marshal MacMahon will only waste many weeks in useless removals of officials and un- necessary elections, to find himself face to face with a situa- tion before which he must perforce either submit to Liberal advisers or resign. This is we say, his possible course, but it is also possible, and as probable, that he has resolved on another course, that he is determined at all hazards to make Conservatism dominant, and that even if he takes a dissolution he will not abide by its result, but if it is unfavourable, ;ill strike a military coup d'e'tat. That means a temporary restoration of the Empire. The Marshal, though popular with the Army, does not belong to the order of men who found thrones, and has never betrayed any trace of unscrupulous ambition. He could not, as he has himself admitted, proclaim the Comte de Chambord, for the Army would not bear it ; and he could not proclaim an Orleans Prince, after the sdbmission of the family to the head of their House. There would remain the Prince Imperial, and it is to the Prince Imperial that the Marshal, if ultimately he violates the Constitution, will be driven by the logic of events. No other claimant who would consent to be seated by the Army has a strong following in France. We can hardly belieVe that the Marshal, who for four years has shown himself so loyal, can even in thought have faced such a contingency ; but his unexpected action shows that new influences have been brought to bear upon his mind, and that his apparent concessions to the majority concealed a deeper irritation than the public of Europe believed.
The outlook should not strike us with despair, for the Republicans, for the first time in their history, have in M. Gainbetta a competent leader, but it is undoubtedly most menacing. A riot in the streets would now once more place France in revolution, and Paris is evidently in that temper which in Paris has so often preluded riots. We have a Polignac Ministry over again, headed by a man with a hereditary talent, displayed for three generations, for failure in great enterprises. The people are excited beyond bearing, the rulers stubborn beyend justification, and the moderate Liberals almost inclined to say that with such rulers it is im- possible to keep terms. They grow excited, not unnaturally, under what seems to them oppression,—under the resolve Of their rulers not to let any Constitution work unless it works towards a predetermined and unpopular end. Their idea, pro- bably erroneous, that Clericalism is at the bottom of it all, will only intensify their irritation, for the wave of anti-clerical feel- ing, often most intolerant in degree, has not subsided in France. Under such circumstances, and in France, a riot is always on the cards, and a riot, Suppressed, as it would be, by military force—for whatever the division of opinion in the whole Army, the garrison of Paris is not Liberal, the scission between the soldiers and the populace being too deep—would almost necessitate and certainly presage a change in the form of Government. Absolute tranquillity is, of course, therefore the duty of every Republican, but what is the responsibility of a President who, with war raging in Europe and his own country tranquil, forces those who elected him to con- sider whether abstinence from revolt is dictated by any but prudential reasons?
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