THE PROSPECTS OF FRENCH CONSERVATIVES. T HE formation of a Conservative
Party in France goes steadily forward, in spite of the many difficulties with which the process is necessarily attended. Indeed, these difficulties promise to count for less than we were prepared to expect. Though in no country in Europe are the natural forces that make for Conservatism stronger than they are in France, the obstacles in the way of their effective action seemed at one time almost insuperable. We have often pointed out that any real amendment of the political situation requires a distinct act of toleration on the part either of the Republic or of the Con- servatives. Either the Republic must consent to treat its adversaries as fellow-citizens, and trust to time and fair dealing to induce them to lay aside their pre- judices in favour of Royalty ; or the Conservatives must frankly accept the Republic as it is, in the hope of being able, by honest co-operation with it wherever co-operation is possible, to transform it into a government under which all Frenchmen who value substance above form may be content, if not rejoiced, to live. The obstacles in the way of either of these steps being taken seemed about equal. The Radicals, who have been the real rulers of the Republic, were able to say with truth that, though to be a Conservative might in theory be compatible with being a Republican, the two characters were never found united in practice. The Royalists were equally able to retort that the Republicans, while they found fault with the Conservatives for holding aloof from the Republic, took care not to make it a Republic that Conservatives could possibly accept. The two contentions had an equal basis of truth, and so long as they thus balanced one another, they were equally doomed to remain sterile.
At length, however, there are signs of the approach of a better state of things. The Conservatives have not, indeed, succeeded in inducing the Royalists to make the first advance, but they have given some definite indications that they are prepared to make it without them. A Cardinal Archbishop and a leading member of the Right in the Chamber have severally announced that the time has come when the Republic must be accepted as the per- manent government of France. Cardinal Lavigerie has spoken at Algiers ; M. Pion has made a declaration in the Soleil. Cardinal Lavigerie has exceptional rights to speak on behalf of the French clergy. He is the Archbishop of an important See ; he is associated with those missionary enterprises which even Radicals admit to be among the most fruitful means of spreading French influence abroad ; he has come straight from Rome, and may be supposed to know the mind of the Pope. And what he said about politics in his speech comes to this. When the will of a. nation has been unmistakably declared, and the form of a Government has nothing in it contrary to Christian principles, and when grave dangers can only be averted by an unreserved recognition of this Government, the time has come to declare the experiment complete, to put an end to the divisions which have so long. kept Frenchmen apart, and to sacrifice all that honour and conscience permit to be sacrificed in order to ensure the safety of the country. That is a very significant declaration. It marks, in intention at all events, the close of the period of warfare, and the definite recognition of the Republic by a high ecclesiastical authority. When we remember the hostility that the actual Government of the Republic has consistently shown towards the Church, such a step on the part of a. Cardinal Archbishop implies very great courage, and a, very strong sense that the situation is one which demands courage. In the first instance, of course, the Cardinal's speech has been ill-received on both sides. The Royalists, who are at once the least numerous and the best organised section of the Right, are furious, and the more so that it coincides with a fresh effort on the part of the Comte de Paris to rally his supporters. He has been making Royalist speeches in Canada, and he has, it is said, despatched instructions to his friends in France to lose no opportunity of proclaiming the Monarchy as the sole means of salvation for France. The Radical Journals are quite as angry with Cardinal Lavigerie as the Royalists can be. They regard his speech as only a Jesuitical device. His professions of readiness to recognise the Republic ought to make him, and the clergy who follow in his footsteps, objects of additional suspicion. The Re- public will have none of them ; its doors are for ever closed against Catholics who do not begin by disavowing their religion. The reason why Cardinal Lavigerie has chosen the present moment as an opportune occasion for his declaration, is probably his conviction that, as the Figaro puts it, there are now in France a great number of Conservatives and very few Monarchists. If the Church continues to identify herself with one section only of Conservatives, and that a small and declining one, she will lose her best, and perhaps her last, chance of regaining her hold over the French people. She has made this mistake for a good number of years, and if she is to change her course to any purpose, she must do so promptly. M. Pion, who approaches the question from the political side, comes to an identical conclusion. He sees that what is wanted. to make Conservatism a political as well as a social power, is the formation of a Conservative Party which shall appeal to the French electorate against the Radicals. But the electorate does not want another revolution. It is content with the Con- stitution it has, and rather than risk the upsetting of it, it will endure a great deal of misgovernment. M. Pion is quite aware that the only condition which can make the party he desires possible is the acceptance of the existing order of things. There must be no hostility, either overt or secret, against the Republic, but simply such resistance as is necessary to the fashion in which the govern- ment of the Republic is carried on. There is abundant room for action of this kind. M. Pion is not the least inclined to condone the mistakes either of the Chambers or of the Administration. He maintains that the military law and the educational law are intolerable in their present form, and he is precise in his suggestions as to the points in which they need amendment. He insists that the acceptance of the Republic by the Con- servatives shall be repaid by the abandonment of that attitude of hostility or contempt towards religion which one Republican Government after another has con- sistently assumed. These demands will at once be met by counter-demands on the part of the Radicals. Indeed, the defeat of Ministers last Wednesday on a trumpery question of giving railway-passes to monks and nuns engaged in charitable work, was probably due to a Radical whip. And we greatly doubt whether Ministers will have courage enough to withstand the. Radical oppo- sition. At least, if they have, they are not likely to do more than reject pressure on both sides, in the hope of getting the military and educational laws accepted as a permanent compromise. If they take this line, the new Conservative Party will have no choice but to oppose them ; and in that case, the effects of the movement of which Cardinal Lavigerie and M. Pion are the advanced guard, will be but slightly visible in the present Chamber or under the present Cabinet. But the next General Election will show the quiet progress which the new ideas will have made, and will probably replace the Conservatives in the position they occupied in 1885. The remarkable ad- vance they then made was the result of a general Conserva- tive reaction. It was taken advantage of by the Royalists afterwards, and for that reason, and also because of the sub- sequent identification of the Royalists with General Bou- langer, there was no repetition of the Conservative victory in 1889. But between now and 1893 there is time for the new Conservatives to make a considerable impression on the country. If they dissociate themselves from the attacks which Royalists and Bonapartists make from time to time on the Republic, and give a steady support to the Government on every occasion when it is attacked by the Radicals, they will be in a position to appeal to the electors with a force they have never commanded, so long as it remained uncertain whether to vote for them was not tantamount to voting against the Re- public. There will still be serious difficulties to be surmounted in the combination of Monarchical and Radical hostility, in the timidity of the Moderate Republicans, and in the indifference with which, in a majority of instances, French Conservatism regards political action. But in conquering their own inability to dissociate the Republic from Radicalism, the new party will have mastered the worst difficulty of all ; and that they have conquered it, cannot, in view of what Cardinal Lavigerie and M. Pion have said, be questioned any longer.
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