THE LAST OF THE FRENCH CHAMBER. T HE Session of the
French Chamber closed on Monday, and all that can be said of its end is that it became it as little as its life. The last Parliamentary appearance of the Cabinet was an exhibition either of remarkable stupidity or of very clumsy cunning. An extraordinary credit had been voted at the last moment for the Navy, and it only remained for the Senate to give it its formal approval. But the Presidential Decree which closed the Session was read in the Chamber at 9 o'clock, and it was not till half-past 10 that the Minister asked the Senate to take up the Vote of Credit. The Vice-President pointed out that as the Decree proroguing the Legislature had been read in one Chamber, it was out of the power of the other Chamber to proceed to business, and the Minister, after formally contesting the accuracy of the Vice-President's ruling, submitted, and withdrew the vote. If the Cabinet really thought that a Legislature could be prorogued by halves, it argues singular ignorance of Parliamentary procedure. If, on the other hand, the Vote of Credit was intentionally postponed to a moment when it could not be legally adopted, it argues an equally singular willingness to play fast and loose with great national interests. The only explanation is that Ministers thought it politically expedient to profess zeal for the Navy, and financially inconvenient to find the money. By bringing forward the credit just too late, they hoped to combine the advantages of zeal and discretion.
It is not the Session only that has come to an end. The Chamber itself has run its course, and now has only the formal dissolution to look forward to. It is difficult to recall the feelings with which the last General Election was awaited. The Republican Party were then supposed to be in secure possession of power. The only symptom that pointed to a different conclusion was the increasing number of abstentions at by-elections ; but there was nothing to show that this expressed anything more dangerous than indifference, and in indifference the French Radicals had again and again found their best opportunity. A standing army of ardent pro- fessional politicians, and a crowd of voters too timid or too uninterested to question what this army did, had always been the Jacobin ideal. The last General Election gave the lie to these customary calculations. It returned a Chamber in which two-fifths of the Deputies were Conservatives pledged to make a change, if not in Republican forms, at all events in the spirit in which Republican forms had been worked. The consternation produced by this result was extreme. The Republicans had believed in the existence of Reactionaries, but never in the possibility of a Reaction. They had thought that a few old-fashioned Royalists would here and there succeed in returning an old-fashioned Royalist Deputy, and that, at all events as long as M. de Cassagnac lived, the supply of Bonapartist swashbucklers would never quite die out. But that Royalists and Bonapartists would combine to return a solid minority amounting to more than a third of the Chamber, was a thing on which they had never calcu- lated. The true way of dealing with this unlooked-for state of things was obvious enough. The lesson was easily read. So long as the great body of the electors were con- tent with the management of public affairs, neither the Royalist nor the Bonapartist propaganda had a chance. The French peasant has no sentimental desire for a Restora- tion. He associates the Bourbons with all the abuses of the pre-Revolution period; the name of Napoleon still recalls to him the catastrophe of Sedan. But when the last General Election came, he had ceased to be content with the management of public affairs ; and in this frame of mind the Reactionary canvassers found him, The division between Royalists and Bonapartists—the standing weak- ness of the Monarchical Party—for the moment helped them. It forced them to look for a ground on which they could work in common without compromising their several convictions. They found this in a Conservative Opposi- tion, not to the Republic, but to the actual Republican Government ; and this discovery not merely enabled them to work in the same field, it also enabled them to reap an unexpected harvest. Conservatism with no special brand affixed to it was just what the peasant wanted. It gave him the required assurance that in voting for the Opposi- tion candidate, he was not helping to bring about a. Restoration.
But the feeling which had made the Right a compact party two hundred strong, might equally have been used to build up the Republic. The very greatness of the Reactionary success made it less easy to conceal the essential difference between Royalists and Bonapartists, and in proportion as this difference became visible, the Conservative electors might be expected to see that they had, after all, been voting for one of the Restorations they dreaded. Some- thing of this alarm was shown in the by-elections, and if the Republicans had been wise, it would have been shown more and more. But in politics the Republicans were determined homoeopathists. The electors complained of Radicalism, and the remedy offered them was a further instalment of legislative and administrative Radicalism. The three Ministries which succeeded the elections were those of M. Brisson, M. de Freycinet, and M. Goblet ; but the policy of all was the same combination of Opportunist men and Radical measures. Every fresh evidence of Conservative strength was treated as demonstrating the need of a more resolute advance in the direction of Jacobinism. Ministers and Deputies alike disregarded the Conservative sentiment which they had only to open their eyes to see all around them, and tried to please an imaginary Radical sentiment which existed no doubt in their own supporters, and in that still more advanced section of opinion to which they were constantly drawing nearer, but outside these groups was only an object of dread and aversion. There was an interval,, indeed, when things seemed about to mend, and M. Rouvier made a real if timid attempt to give a more Conservative tendency to the course of French politics. But it failed,. partly from the hostility of the Right, but still more from M. Rouvier's inability to carry his own party with him. A French Minister has to reckon not only with his Parlia- mentary supporters, but with his permanent stag; and his permanent staff is not, as in England, gathered in the- capital, and so immediately under his eye, it is distributed over all France. Further than this, it has been recruited, if the party has been long in power, from a class who are more prejudiced and less manageable than his Parlia- mentary supporters. It is probable that M. Rouvier was genuinely anxious to relax the hostility the Government had consistently shown to the Church and to Church- schools. But any directions he might give in this sense had to be expressed in very general terms, so as to avoid calling attention to them in the Chamber ; and the best hope he could entertain of seeing them carried out lay in the ability of subordinate officials to read between the lines, and in their readiness to execute his orders in a sense even more favourable to religion than the words might seem to. justify. But the subordinate officials on whom this responsibility devolved were for the most part Radicals of the narrowest and most intense type. Their whole aim and pleasure lay in the persistent execution of the very policy the Minister wished to modify. Consequently,. whenever M. Rouvier made a conciliatory speech in the- Chamber, a Member of the Right was able to quote some action of a Prefect or Sub-Prefect which pointed the contrary way, and what was worse, it was not in M. Rouvier's power to disown frankly what his subordinate had done. At least, it was not in his power without completely breaking with the Republicans in the Chamber, and thereby courting instant defeat.
For the Right were not really mollified by M. Rouvier's partial conversion. On the contrary, they viewed it simply as a proof that the Republic was on its last legs, an• encouragement to combine with the Extreme Left in a common effort to make Parliamentary government of the constitutional kind impossible. The result, therefore, of M. Rouvier's attempt was only to hurry on the crisis. So long as the experiment of a Moderate Ministry had not been tried, there were many Frenchmen probably who hoped that salvation might yet be found in this direction. After that experiment had been tried and had failed, there was no longer room for any such expectation. It was then that General Boulanger's opportunity came. A chance presented itself of dropping all constructive opposition, and bringing all the discordant elements of hostility to the existing order of things into a temporary alliance for the futherance of a purely negative and destructive purpose. Royalist, Bonapartist, Conservative Republican, Advanced Republican, can all support General Boulanger, provided that they are willing to run the risk of seeing the Republic as it is crumble to pieces. If they think there are worse things than the present Republic, their policy is without justification, for no one can possibly feel any assurance that some one of these worse things may not come to pass. But if they are convinced that any- thing that can possibly happen in France must be an improvement on the present Republic, there is no incon- sistency between their practice and their professions. They may be wrong in the methods they allow themselves to use, but not in the end they hope to attain by using them.
This is the strait into which the Chamber which met for the last time on Monday, has brought the country whose welfare it was elected to further. Will its successor be either better chosen or more fortunate ?
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