TOPICS OF THE DAY.
M. GAMBETTA IN BELLEVILLE.
SINCE Robespierre declared that Atheism was aristocratic, there has hardly been a speech uttered in Paris so adroit as that delivered by M. Gambetta on Friday week to the artisans of Belleville. To understand its full merit, however, not only as a speech, but as a manifesto, its readers must recall some peculiarities of M. Gambetta's position. He has been for some months past an object of suspicion and even denun- ciation to the more extreme Radicals of his following, who maintain that he has either modified his opinions in the direction of Conservatism, and intends, as he ascends, "to cut off his tail,"—that is to break with the Irreconcilables, —or that in the recent negotiations for compromise he has made unworthy concessions out of personal ambition. He has, they say, used the influence derived from his past achievements to induce the Left to accept a Republic which is only a Monarchy in disguise, or at all events, a Republic which Monarchists could use to set up a throne ; and to secure this end has surrendered principles of the last importance,—prin- ciples which he himself had hitherto maintained to be vital. He has voted for a Senate, the only use of which must be to check the realisation of the popular will. He has admitted into that Senate seventy-five nominees of the existing Assembly, who, it is known, will be chosen from members unlikely to obtain seats, and who can therefore scarcely be said to be even indirectly representative. He has allowed the Chambers to choose the President, which is the function of the people ; he has assented to a long Presidential term, instead of demanding frequent elections ; and he has accepted as first President a man who, whether honest or otherwise, is certainly not a Republican. Above all, he has agreed to a right of revision, which the Monarchists may employ at any moment to upset the Republic. As M. Gambetta does not desire to see the allegiance of the masses of Paris transferred to some more extreme candidate, as he desires to maintain the unity of his party, and as he resents the imputation of incon- sistency, it was necessary for him to convince Belleville, the representative quarter of the workmen, that he had abandoned nothing it was possible to retain. That of itself was not difficult, as he had abandoned nothing of his own ideas except to secure points still more important to his end, and was acting moreover under irresistible pressure from the Army of Paris ; but he had to make that evident, and yet not explain in plain words that he knew a Bonapartist COUP d'e'tat to be imminent, and also not frighten too painfully those Conservatives who watch every sentence he lets fall in the hope that they may be able to say, "Ah, this is what the Republic means when the mask is taken off !" and who are irritated by the bare fact that he addresses Belleville. To say that M. Gambetta performed this almost impossible task completely is to say too little, for he not only performed it, but, though speaking to an audience of French Ultras, he performed it in such a way as to increase his reputation with all thoughtful men throughout Europe as a moderate constitutional statesman. As Robespierre succeeded in showing that Atheism was aristo- cratic, using that grotesque though true argument to secure attentive hearing, so M. Gambetta succeeded, by declaring his astonishment at the democratic character of the new Constitu- tion, in showing that the Senate, the indirect method of electing the President, and the right of revision were, if rightly used, guarantees for the reality and the permanence of the Republic.
There was a Senate, he admitted, and a Senate which had been intended as a counterpoise to democratic ardour, but in framing that Senate the Monarchists of all sorts had fallen into their own trap. The seventy-five nominees ought not to have been there—it was a concession he was obliged to make, and one to be regretted—but the majority of the Senators were to be elected by the backbone of French Democracy, by the 36,000 Communal Councils of France :—" The Senate is to be composed of 300 members, of whom 225 will be chosen by the electoral body, and the other 75 by the Assembly. The four elements of the electoral body are the deputies in each department,—that is to say, the most authoiised repre- sentatives of universal suffrage ; the councilors-general and councillors of arrondissement,—that is to say, the local ex- pression of the suffrages of diverse groups of citizens ; and lastly, the delegates of each commune. Now I entreat you to observe what an admirable instrument of order, peace, and democratic progress this intervention of the Commune in the great political concerns of France is susceptible of becoming. I could not for a long while believe in the possibility that an Assembly, the most Monarchical and the most—what shall I say I—the least laical that France ever had, would ever be- brought to constitute a Second Chamber based upon the most democratic element in France, the Communal spirit,—in other words, the 36,000 Communes of France. The Communes which heretofore have been held in tutelage, and were severely excluded from the domain of polities, cannot now elect a single municipal councillor, without scanning his political opinions and considering whether he would be fit to elect a senator. These Communes, formerly but inert and. isolated molecules, are now aggregated, cemented, and endowed with cohesion, force, and life, constituting a veritable moral personage, speaking collectively in the name of all the Com- munes of France. The Commune, which, while deprived. of political life, was careless or indifferent, will now be stimu- lated to inquire not only into general politics, but the character of the men who are to represent their opinions. And their political education does not finish at home. Oh no Each delegate will go either on the railway, in his own vehicle, or, perchance, on foot,—where ? To the canton ? No, the canton leads too local a life, and is not a sufficiently developed centre. To the chief town of the arrondissement ? No, that is a centre more administrative than real. He will go to the chief town of the department, where he will meet all the delegates, and.
interchange ideas with them Could a better system of propagandism and proselytism for universal suffrage be in- vented?" The Senate will not be a Senate in the old sense. It wilt be the Grand Council of the French Communes. The peasantry. and the townsfolk have only to work together, only to choose- vigorous and, above all, young men for Senators, to give up the notion that a Senator ought to be a passed celebrity, and the democracy of France would triumph in the last strong- hold of Conservatism. The country Communes of France. will be awakened to political life, and to wake men to political life is to ensure the triumph of the democracy. It is easy to understand how an explanation like this delighted Belleville, but its real merit is not rhetorical. M. Gambetta may prove to have foreseen more than all the trained statesmen of the Orleanist Benches. It is perfectly true that while the Senate must contain seventy-five passed celebrities all more or less Conservative, the scheme of election makes it easy for the Communes, whose delegates will outnumber all other electors, to place the men they approve in the majority, and make the Senate as strongly Liberal as the Chamber of Deputies can be, and possessed of far more control over the Executive, to which it can, under the Constitution, refuse a dissolution, and which, after 1880, it will, with the Chamber, be able to appoint. Why should the stream rise higher than its source, or the Senator be so strongly opposed to the elector who returns him ? It is perfectly possible that in 1880 the two Houses, both thoroughly liberalised, may appoint M. Gambetta President, and a true Republic, in the most Liberal sense, come into existence in France, without bloodshed and without coups d'etat. The mere fact that this is possible will induce the Left to try to work the Constitution, and to keep the compromise intact, at least until the elections have been completed and the new double-headed Assembly is fairly at its work. Then if they are the majority, they will at least be able to say with M. Gambetta to all enemies,—" We are the Law, and you only the law-breakers." Our only dread is that the Monarchists, seeing their weapon broken in their hands, may make a last desperate effort to avert the Republic by establishing the Empire.
M. Gambetta gives nearly the same answer to the remaining charges. He believes that the indirect election of the Presi- dent prevents him from attacking the Chambers in the name of the people, that is, in the name of a power anterior to and higher than the law. "Elected for a limited period, obliged to register the decrees of the Assemblies and to promulgate the laws they make, responsible to them if he breaks the fundamental laws of the country, he is a President, not a Monarch in expectation, nor a prince contriving how to don the Cwsarian purple." Springing from the Assembly, he cannot claim a mandate higher than its own, a curious but real correlative advantage of the Parliamentary system. As to the right of revision, without it M. Gambetta would never have voted for the Constitution. Why should the right of revision be of advantage to the Monarchists only,—to the Conservatives who, when they had every chance and all power, could neither unite nor effect anything ? What was to bring them fresh accessions of strength? The revision, when it comes—and it cannot come till 1880, for till then
Marshal MacMahon retains the initiative in Constitutional reform—must be in accordance with the will of the people at that date, and that will M. Gambetta expects to be Repub- lican. So do the people of Belleville, and the result of their conviction will be just that access of patience which French Reds have hitherto so sadly lacked. Indeed the meeting itself and its welcome of M. Gambetta is proof sufficient of a change of tone. Time was when, if a Radical leader with M. Gambetta's antecedents had ventured to say to a constituency like his what he ventured to tell Belleville, he would have been overwhelmed with insults, hissed out of his party, perhaps torn from the tribune and flung into the street. The best sign we known for the future of Democracy in France is that its purest or most ultra-members will now, at last, listen to an accused representative before they dismiss him from their ranks.
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