TOPICS OF THE DAY.
M. GAMBETTA ON DISSOLUTION.
THE prevalent English notion of M. Gambetta as a meteoric political phenomenon of fierce and ardent nature, kindled into sadden flame by violent collision with the atmosphere of calamity and war, but incapable of cold logic, of statesmanlike reticence, of intellectual sobriety, and steady self-restraint, is so deeply rooted in England, that no English newspaper has taken the pains to give his speech on dissolution in full, or even in full outline, and that it is doubtful enough whether, if it did, the political part of the English public would take the trouble to read it. We venture to say that if that speech and the manner of its reception were adequately reported in England, it would work a complete revolution in the political estimate formed of M. Gambetta in Parliamentary circles ; and that the imperturbable equanimity with which he endured interruptions of the most persistent and incredibly inexcusable kind, without once indulging in a passionate retort on his opponents, were evidences of self-command and sobriety of mind such as few English Parliamentary orators could display. As for the speech itself, it was the one sole effort of rigid political reasoning in the debate. M. Gambetta had evidently set himself to avoid all attacks and recrimina- tions, except so far as they were necessarily involved in his demonstration that the country had always anticipated an early dissolution of an Assembly which it had never intended to make Constituent, that it wishes earnestly for dissolution now, and that the reason why it wishes for dissolution is that it sees the prolongation of political suspense to be in the highest degree detrimental to French interests, and yet that the one thing which about half of the present Assembly most earnestly desires is the prolongation of suspense, solely on the ground that it delays what this party thinks an even worse evil, the definitive adoption of the Republic. Considered as a speech intended to establish these propositions, M. Gambetta's speech was all but demonstrative ;—grant him his assumption of the number of signatures to petitions for Dissolution which are to pour into the Assembly during this week, and it was quite demonstrative. And beyond the evidence of the propositions he undertook to prove, he did not go. The British Parliamentary orator will look in vain for any excuse for the violent and intolerable interruptions,—sometimes occurring between every sentence of his speech,—which the Journal Officiel records. The true explanation is the French intoler- ance for unwelcome facts, much more than any utterance of unwelcome criticism. Let us follow in brief outline the course of M. Gambetta's reasoning.
The debate had begun, it will be remembered, by reports on some petitions for dissolution more than a year old, never reported on till last Saturday, and then reported on, of course, in very severe terms by the majority of the various Committees to whom they were submitted. For instance, M. Raoul Duval, read the report of a Committee which affirmed that the petitioning organised " with the evident aim of agitating the country, and of diminishing as far as possible the authority of the Assembly, is evidently the work of the same men who, by all the means in their power, had delayed the summoning of the Assembly up to February, 1871." It was immediately after the reading of these reports that M. Gambetta addressed the Assembly. He began by observing that he was well aware to what precautions of language, to what moderation of words the situation made for him by his honourable colleagues condemned him. The delay in bringing the subject of dissolution before the Assembly had not been the fault of the Radicals, for already, in August, 1871, a party of the Left had called upon the Assembly to dissolve itself, on the ground that the special object for which it was elected was already fulfilled. Others had demanded at the same time a partial renewal of the Assembly. Both demands had been deliber- ately shelved for more than a year without even appearing on the orders of the day, although, as the Journal Officiel shows, the demand that they should be placed on the orders of the day had been five times made. And even now the discussion was taken indirectly on petitions a year old, rather than on a pro- ject of law proposing the dissolution which was actually before the Deputies. He remarked on the attempt made to impute the rapidly rising wish for dissolution to the love of agitation and disorder, insisted that, as every one knew, the popular motive was of the precisely opposite kind, the wish for definite cer- tainty, for extrication from a condition of perpetual crisis, which could only be effected by the declaration of the one find power in France, the sentence of a universal suffrage to which, every one would bow. It was desirable to recall, first, what- the people expected of the Assembly, before it was called together ; and next, what they now thought of its proceedings. As to what was expected of it, there was absolute proof that. by the people, in general, and by the party of the Right in particular, it was regarded as summoned for the purpose- of determining on peace or war—and if peace, then on the terms of peace—and expressly not for any constituent purpose.. M. Gambetta quoted, amidst much excitement, the Second Article of the Convention signed with Germany for an armistice, and when taunted with tracing up the rights of the Assembly to the will of the invader, calmly remarked that the very words of the second Article were textually reproduced in the decree calling together the electors. Not only was the purpose for which the Convention was summoned special, but it was felt all over the country that with a. large number of Departments occupied by the enemy, without the time to give decent notice of the elections to all of the Departments, without the possibility of print- ing the list of electors or properly verifying the results—for in forty-three Departments postal and telegraphic communica- tion was interdicted—an impossibility so well admitted that when the Assembly met at Bordeaux, the principle was adopted to verify all elections against which no protest was made after a certain delay for telegraphic protests to be received,—with a vote taken, moreover, from less than half of the electoral population of France, the Assembly could only pretend to do the special work allotted to it, and then give way to one more regularly elected. M. Gambetta added that so little did the elections made under the difficulties to which he had referred seem to express the wishes of France, that out of 132 or 134 elections which have taken place subse- quently to fill up vacant places,—elections in which appeal had been made to nearly three-quarters of the electoral population of France, to some departments three times in succession, to others twice, to many once,-115 deputies have been returned wholly opposed in politics to the views of the deputies returned in February, 1871. M. Gambetta went on to show that the Right themselves before the elections had strongly insisted on this view of the strictly limited duties and rights of the Assembly. He quoted from the Gazette de France, amidst the consternation and continual interruptions of the Right, the most emphatic declaration that an Assembly summoned in so- terrible a hurry, for so special an object, could not undertake the duties of a constituent assembly, since the vote by which it was elected was destitute of " sincerity, liberty, and universality." No sooner was it evident that the Assembly regarded itself as sovereign, and competent to set up a monarchy or establish a constitution, than a movement of surprise ran through the country, and the reply was given in municipal elections where a great majority of Republicans were returned. Again, in the elections of the Councils- General, a great majority of Republicans were returned. In the local elections, this return of Republicans was quite a new thing, and could only be interpreted in one way as a most emphatic protest against the monarchical tendencies and the pretensions to sovereignty of a majority in the Assembly.
And now it had come to this, that the Assembly thus chosen, and thus shown not to represent the majority in the coun- try, had fallen into a condition of periodical crisis and re- curring quarrel with the Government, which made the events even of the next day uncertain. The whole country was alarmed with these constantly repeated squabbles, and with the stilt more alarming rumours which sprang ont of them, and regarded a dissolution and the appeal to universal suffrage as the only final solution. Petitions for Dissolution, which M. Gambetta asserted would carry at least a million signatures, were being organised universally in the country, and would be brought to the Assembly within another week. There was an Assembly once which had dissolved itself on petitions not pro- fessing to number more than 175,000 signatures, and yet the present Assembly, half of which affirms that it must have a " Government of Combat " in order to succeed in bringing the country over to its' side, will take no account of numbers far in excess of that. The country had been powerfully moved by the President's Message, and was profoundly determined- to to support him against the proposed "Government of Combat. The national prosperity depended on putting an end to this state of incessant crisis, which dangerously affected the interests of capital,—such rumours as that concerning General Ducrot s suspected coup de'tat being, for instance, a heavy blow to all commercial enterprise in France,—and even the Conservative Minister of Justice, M. Dufaure, had himself in former years de- clared that a country could not be prosperous when such rumours got abroad, and however false, were everywhere repeated in panic from mouth to mouth. Finally M. Gam- betta quoted the striking language of the Count de Monta- lembert to the Assembly of 1849, an Assembly not placed in nearly so questionable a position by its antecedents as the present Assembly. Speaking of the doubt whether or not the Assembly represented the people, he said—" Do you know what to discuss such a doubt means ?—it means to establish it. Well, then, do not discuss it—dissipate it. And in order to dissipate it, you have but one means,—an appeal to the Sovereign Judge, to the Supreme Tribunal, to universal suffrage :—one of two things is certain ; —either you represent the actual spirit of universal suffrage, and then you will be re-elected ; you will return renovated by fresh contact with universal suffrage to take up your work again ; or you do not represent it, and you will not be re-elected, and then one may ask, 'By what right do you remain here ? ' " Such is a sketch of M. Gambetta's speech. Nor was there a needless fact or taunt in it. It showed that neither the people nor the Monarchists themselves intended the Assembly to go beyond the tether assigned to it by circumstances and the decree which convened it ; that as soon as it was found that it did intend .to transgress that limit, there were the most marked expressions of popular sentiment in a direction exactly opposed to that of the majority of the Assembly ; that that majority itself was diminished by almost every vacancy which occurred, by more than eleven-twelfths of them, at least ; that the country had been excited to the last degree by the battle between the Assembly and the President, and wished above everything that the state of suspense, so fatal to commerce and tranquillity, should be ended; that there was the strongest possible precedent for yielding to a much less external pres- sure than we now see applied ; and that the advice of the most illustrious of the Ultramontane statesmen, the great Liberal Catholic, Count de Montalembert himself, was strong for disso- lution in a case far more susceptible of doubt, far less clear than the present. What could be replied to such arguments ? No reply was made, for none was possible. But the speech itself, singularly free as it was from bitterness and taunts, was in certain parts interrupted at almost every instant for the pur- pose of the most superfluous sneers and recriminations. For our own parts, though we have often read more eloquent speeches of M. Gambetta's, we have never read one more clear, more free from oratorical ornament, more sagacious in conception, more moderate in execution, more completely free from the charge of either violence or arrogance. It would be well for the French Parliament if " the Sons of the Crusaders " could debate as calmly and keep as close to the subject as their mortal and hated foe.
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