M. DE FOURTOU'S DEFENCE.
THE "scene "of Monday in the French Chamber, in the debate on M. de Fourtou's election, is important, as revealing, what Englishmen so often forget, the depth of the moral chasm between the Republican and the Conservative parties. It is extremely difficult to Englishmen to believe that the Con- servatives of France are completely sincere in their horror of the Republic, that they honestly expect it to develop a Red Government, with the consequences which must, as they think, flow from that,—the confiscation of property, the proscription of religion, the abolition of all existing social arrangements. It is still more difficult to them to believe that Conservatives honestly think it their duty to manipulate elections, to intimi- date voters, to obtain majorities by any and every means short of a coup d'etat, or even through a coup d'etat, if they can rely on its success. And it is most difficult of all for Englishmen to believe that, holding these opinions, the Conservatives could ever think it politic, or even safe, to avow or publicly defend them. Yet all these things are clearly revealed in the speech delivered by M. de Fourtou, lately Minister of the Interior, in defence of his conduct during his own election. He is the last man in the world to have made an over-frank speech, or to have gone beyond his colleagues, or to have said a word which would have cost him the moral support of his own party. He is an astute, cynical man of the world, who has accepted Conservatism rather as the most convenient than as the truest form of political opinions ; who keenly desires party popularity, and who has by no means aban- doned the conviction that, as a Conservative, he shall yet reach power. Yet he boldly told the Chamber, raging at him for bribing and intimidating the electors of his district, that his only fault was that he had not done more, for that if he had performed " his whole duty," the Liberals would not have been seated on the official benches. What he con- ceives his whole duty to have been it is difficult to explain, for he gave a State grant to every Commune of his district, and arrested his principal opponent the day before the election on an imaginary charge ; but he evidently thought he had been weak, and should have used all possible pressure short of a coup d'etat. He does not mince matters in the least. A Government, he says, to exist in France, must either move onwards or resist, else there will be anarchy, ending in a Revolutionary Dictatorship. Resistance was needed in Decem- ber, and his duty was to assist in electing a Government of resistance. He did his duty, though not the " whole " of it, and he still adheres to his view of its necessity. He does not believe in the moderate Republic. Anarchy has been prevented hitherto by the barrier of the Conservative Senate but if the elections of January remove that barrier, then the authors of May 16th will be justified, for then the programme explained at Romans and Grenoble by M. Gambetta will be carried out, and " war declared on all Frenchmen who are not of the Republican faith." In other words, M. de Fourtou believes, or feels sure that his party believes, that the struggle of parties in France is not a struggle of ideas at all, but a civil war, in which the victors will, when their victory is complete, proscribe their adver- saries, break up existing institutions, more especially the Church, and speedily land the country in an anarchy from which escape must be sought under a Revolutionary Dictator. The safety of society is involved in the dispute, and must be defended by any means available. If universal suffrage decides for Conservatism, well and good, universal suffrage may be let alone ; but if it inclines to the Liberals, then it must be manipulated, whether by means under the law or beyond the law ; and if it is still misguided, recourse must be had to,—whatever is implied by the significant reference to the " whole duty " of a Minister of the Interior. It is war, in short, in which the General's duty is not to scruple or worry about legalities, but to win, by any means consistent with the rules observed in civil war, rules to which men of such opinions would give the widest interpretation. It is no defence in such a struggle for a Minister to have done less than he might ; on the contrary, it is an opprobrium. His duty is to do anything short of slay- ing which his position enables him to do, for if he does not, society may be thrown into anarchy, from which the only escape is a Revolutionary Dictatorship. In the face of an invading army, a statesman will not dwell too much upon legalities.
There can be no doubt that M. de Fourtou, cynically frank as he may be deemed, spoke the real opinion of his party, and especially of its leaders. They reckon in their ranks many free-lances, for they control society, and they have much to give ; but their main body, cleric or Voltairean, sin- cerely hold the opinions expressed by M. de Fourtou. They believe that the masses of the people, the seven millions who make up the suffrage, cannot in the long-run be trusted to protect society, or the Church, or morals, or anything what- ever that is established ; that they will, when fairly enthroned, confiscate wealth, and proscribe eminence, and prohibit worship, until in the resulting anarchy, society has prostrated itself at the feet of some new Caesar. They regard any Republic, however moderate, as a mere pause on the road to a Govern- ment of Terror, and hold all Liberals, however excellent in- dividually, to be mere tools, doing, consciously or unconsciously, the behests of a blind but diabolic force, whose object is a general overturn. Why they believe this may not be pre- cisely explicable, especially in a country where five men in six are proprietors, and in a way Conservative proprietors, of the soil ; but that they do believe it is certain, and believe it not as politicians believe in an idea, but as pious men believe in a faith imparted to them in childhood. It is true, not be- cause it is true, but because they have always believed it. To deny its truth is to be wicked, or if not wicked, foolish, to a degree which renders discussion futile and argument a waste of time or energy. French Conservatives fight for Conser- vatism as if it were Revelation, and deem hardly any means con- demnable through which the truth may be established, even though its establishment be against the judgment of those on whose devotion it ought to rest. Conservatism is truth, and it is no more wrong to compel electors to respect truth, than it is wrong to compel careless children to work out sums according to the rules of sound arithmetic. The children's benefit is the ultimate object ; but still even if they suffer, twice eleven is twenty-two, and they must be made first of all to concede that fact in their calculations. In employing force when needful, the preceptors, who know arithmetic, are not oppress- ing, but only using a rightful authority to overcome a per- fectly unrighteous, because senseless, obstinacy or stupidity.
It is this condition of mind which inspires in so many Repub- licans that permanent suspiciousness and occasional anger which sometimes amaze and sometimes disgust English observers. They know that Conservatives at heart all think what M. de Fourtou has had the moral courage to say. They know that if they obtained power they would act upon their convictions. And they know that to obtain power they will not stickle at many acts which, to men less convinced, would seem either shameful or illegal. And therefore they watch them with a suspiciousness which sometimes becomes unreasonable, and sometimes cruel. They think it dangerous to promote good Generals, if the Generals are of Conservative opinions, lest the Generals should put down the Republic, as only the prelude to anarchy. They remove experienced officials, if Conservative, lest those officials should compel electors to give Conservative votes. They weaken the inviolability of Judges, because Judges, if Conservative, may give a colour of legality to Conservative acts. They paralyse the Senate, because the Senate may be Conservative, and if Conservative, may prohibit Liberal legislation. They are afraid to trust to fair- play, because they are sure that the Conservatives, on their side, hate the Republic too much to obey any rules, whether those of fair-play or of the ordinary law. They are always expecting violence such as M. de Fourtou defends, and in that expectation promote measures of defence often not distinguishable from persecution, such, for instance, as compelling the priesthood to perform all secular duties. Of course, violence of this kind reacts, and the Conservative faith is deepened, until at last the parties hardly understand one another better than men of different faiths, races, or civilisation. All their instinctive ideas, the ideas which colons thoughts, are as different as their aspirations. Time alone can ameliorate this great evil in the situation of France, and we hope, and in part believe, that owing mainly to the influence of M. Gambetta, time will be allowed, but we do not feel so confident as many of our Liberal friends. It is true that the Republic is ideally by far the best Government. It is true also that the Republic has this time in practice worked well, has secured a civil order under which all ideas enter- tained by the nation may gradually be reduced to practice. Nothing stops France, if she wishes it, from establishing direct taxation, or abolishing the connection of Church and State, or making all education secular, or carrying out to logical re- sults the theory of the State's right to distribute the property of the dead. But we cannot blind ourselves, as some enthu- siasts do, to the fact that the Liberal party has not yet been fairly tried with power. It has been strong enough to make attack impossible, and therefore able to be tolerant, but it has not been strong enough to disregard resistance. The President has been a Conservative. The Senate has been Conservative. More than half the Generals and experienced men of the Bureaux have been Conservative.
The Premier has been Conservative. It is when all these barriers have been removed, when Marshal MacMahon has been succeeded by M. Grevy, and M. Dufaure by M. Gam- betta, and General Faidherbe is Minister of War, and all the Prefects are either Liberals or colourless men, and the two Chambers form in sentiment one Legislative Assembly, that the trial of the Liberals will begin ; that they will be called on to prove whether they will legislate as if legislating for the conquered, or as if legislating for a nation in which the majority rules, but the minority have rights. We are not so much afraid of what they will do, as of the temper in which they will do it, of their disdaining any victory which does not show them enemies not only beaten, but humiliated. A Roman was not content to execute a disobedient slave, he crucified him, to mark that he was not a citizen ; and a trace of that spirit is visible in the Liberal, as in all other French parties. The majority have a right to say the Church must live without State aid, but have no right to treat all Churchmen as if they were aliens or enemies. They have a right to put on an income-tax of any ex- pedient weight, but have no right to make it an engine levelled against the rich. They have a right to insist that officers of the Republic shall not denounce the Republic, but have no right to command that they shall proclaim it the ideal Government. They have a right to pay only secular school- masters, no right to decree that religious men shall never teach. We are afraid of their doing these extreme things merely to realise their own power, and though we do not, with M. de Fourtou, hold it lawful to do wrong acts lest Republicans should do them, we shall doubt, with him, of their moderation until we see them fairly on the throne. One would like to see the showman well away, before one believes completely in the mutual confidence of "the happy family."
Previous page
