THE TOURS MANIFESTO.
WE do not apologise for recurring so often to the steps of General Boulanger's progress, for his success or failure involves the whole immediate future of the Con- tinent, and possibly also the destinies of this country. If Germany dreads his accession to power, the expected Euro- pean war will be at hand ; and if he turns to attack Great Britain, all our internal quarrels will be lost in the absorb- ing necessity of self-defence. He has sustained recently a blow in the legal " dissolution " of the Patriotic League, which was his bodyguard ; but the Government has not yet ventured to strike at him personally, and he has, we conceive, made an advance in his great " speech " of Sunday at Tours, a most important and explicit manifesto. Many, perhaps most, observers in this country still mistake, as we conceive, the General's position. They think that he is aspiring to an immediate and formal dictatorship ; but that is not the case. He is aspiring to an immense position, the Presidency of the Republic, still fettered by law, but released from legislative control ; but he is not asking for autocracy. He probably thinks that if he won _a campaign against either Germany or England, and so restored the prestige of France, the Presidency would develop into a throne, though, being a sonless man, he might resist the temptation ; but at present he is seeking the temporary office. His view, in fact, is that the Re- public should continue, but that the Executive should be strengthened by direct election, and by freedom to act within the law ; that the Legislature should be weakened by the loss of executive control ; and that quarrels between the two should be averted by the free use of the " Referen- dum," or appeal to the people. on specific subjects. To make his proposals succeed, he must draw to himself large sections of both the Reactionary and the Republican Parties, and at Tours on Sunday he issued a manifesto—it was not a speech, but a written document, probably prepared by M. Naquet—in which he seeks this end with what appears to us decided skill. In the first place, for the benefit of Republicans, he repudiates the charge that he is either Monarchist or Csesarist. He admits into his Republic all Csesarists and all Monarchists who will accept it honestly " when it is made habitable," even though they do not believe in it ; but for himself, he says explicitly that he has " faith in the Republican idea," and " trusts that its insti- tutions will be harmonised with those of that thoroughly democratic society which constitutes France." He cannot prevent those who disbelieve in Republicanism from giving him their suffrages, but " he has never asked for them, and never shall." They are working for Monarchy, and deceive themselves, for it is the Republic which will emerge. Those Reactionaries to whom he appeals are those who believe in Monarchy or Csesarism, but who " clearly see that an Im- perialist or Royalist demonstration, supposing it could be brought about, would leave the nation as divided as at present, perhaps more divided, and making their love of country override their love for a particular form of govern- ment, they come to the Republic on the sole condition that the Republic shall be habitable, and freely sanctioned by the people, directly consulted." It would be difficult for assurances to be more distinct. If they are believed—and they are in accord with all the General's personal interests —they will draw to him all that large section of the people which abstains from the polls because it dislikes the Republic but distrusts Bonapartism, and is absolutely determined not to accept the system of privilege which, as its members conceive, is embodied in the idea of Legiti- macy. They form a third of France, and their adhesion, if they would only come forward, would, with the forces he has already secured, enable the General to overwhelm the Parliamentary party at the polls. And, as we have seen, the tendency to believe the General is widely diffused among the electoral masses of France.
But then, will not the General have to pay for these adhesions in the loss of many of his Monarchical friends who have hoped against hope that he would play the part either of Monk or Ney ? Certainly he will ; but the payment will not be much. Even among the personal followers of the Bourbons and the Bonapartes many will still believe that General Boulanger can, as he says, be only " a catapult," an instrument to make a breach in the Republican wall ; but the majority of the Monarchists and Csesarists of France are not the devotees of a family. They only seek a throne because they dislike a Republic, because they desire security for property, which they consider attacked, and because they resent the per- secution to which, since 18V6, the Catholic Church has been exposed. These last-named number millions scattered throughout France, exclusive of a far greater number of women, and to conciliate them General Boulanger makes a great and original offer, the form of which deserves some study. Senator Naquet, a leader of the Patriotic League, the General's chief adviser, and some cynics say, his brains, accompanied him to Tours, and made a speech before the hero of the day. In this speech he declared that the religious question stood in the front of all things, that it could not be and ought not to be settled by a Parliament, but that it should be settled by " Referendum,"—that is, by a specific appeal to the whole people to declare whether they would or would not continue the Concordat. If they voted " No," the connection of the Church with the State would cease ; while if they voted " Yes," the most difficult of all questions would be settled for twenty years. These words are endorsed by the General, and, indeed, he apparently selected M. Naquet to utter them, as the Senator, being a Jew, an old Republican; and author of the Divorce Act, which is regarded by the Catholic Church as not only an outrage but an insult, cannot be suspected of wishing well to clericalism. If he is for religious liberty, then what clerical can fear ? " The Republic, as I conceive it," says General Boulanger, " ought to consecrate every liberty. It ought to repudiate the Jacobin inheritance of the present Republic. It ought to bring religious pacification to the country by an unlimited respect for all beliefs and all opinions. My friend Naquet- one of those who have come to me from the old Republican Party, who have come without any sacrifice of their pre- vious convictions, and, on the contrary, because they saw in the National Party the realisation of the principles of their whole life—my friend Naquet has told you what he thinks of the religious policy of the present Government, and how he pictures the Government of the future. Declarations of the kind from such a man are more signi- ficant than if they came from me, because he who pro- nounces them might be, more than I, suspected of cherishing hostile feelings with regard to religious liberty. You have heard him, and his words, I think, must have reassured the most hesitating." The remarkable cleverness of this policy can only be estimated by those who remember the bitterness of the anti-clerical feeling which rages among the Radicals of France. Any promise to protect the Church would have alienated them at once ; but they cannot object, on their own theories, to abide by the result of a mass-vote. Universal suffrage is sovereign in their view even over religion, and to universal suffrage the General appeals. At the same time, he contents the priesthood. They know that if they win the ple'biscite, they are safe for a generation as nothing but a plebiscite could make them ; and, rightly or wrongly, they believe that they are sure to win. They have maintained all through that the Chamber is more irreligious than its constituents ; and though they may be mistaken, no Deputy having ever lost his seat for insulting the Church, they are probably right upon the more general question. The peasantry, when it comes to the point, will neither be willing to do wholly without the " offices "—indeed, their wives and daughters would go mad with spiritual fears—nor to pay for them out of their own pockets ; and the vote for the Concordat is therefore assured beforehand.
The remainder of General Boulanger's speech is made up chiefly of abuse of those who govern, the charges or calumnies being, it will be observed, addressed to a single point. The Parliamentarians, says the General in effect, are corrupt self-seekers, " rulers sharing France, drawing their handfuls out of the Budget for themselves and their kinsmen, endowed with rich sinecures, and endangering the success of the Exhibition by refusing the dissolution of the Chamber and prolonging the electoral agitation." That reads vulgar to Englishmen ; but we question if in this country we quite understand either the depth of French suspicion on this subject, or the justification which exists for the distrust. The Ministers and Deputies who govern France are most of them poor men; they live in a society which of all others most allures men to expendi- ture; and they have the control not only of a vast patronage, immense contracts, and great colonial con- cessions, but of many of the richest banking and financing establishments in the country. The great financiers are willing to pay them salaries, the promoters of Companies send them cheques—vide the Constans incident this week —and every speculator who wants a permit for his Com- pany is willing to allot them shares. How far they yield to these temptations will never be accurately known, and many among them must be as clean-handed as English statesmen ; but General Boulanger does but embody the general public voice when he assails them all. The events of the hour lend sting to his accusations, and while all the ruined assail the Republic, those who perceive how the State has endeavoured to save the Copper Ring at the risk of millions properly belonging to the Bank of France, will not be among its friends.
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