THE DEATH OF M. JULES FERRY. T HE whole career of
M. Ferry illustrates a difficulty which impedes the path of every strong man who tries to serve the democracy, and which, every now and then, leaves the democracy without strong men to serve them. They are not fickle as is so often said, being rather per- sistent in attachments—witness Mr. Gladstone—but they are impatient of independence. There never perhaps was a more convinced Republican in France than M. Ferry, and he was convinced on points which the Extremists hold to be vital ; yet it was the Republican Extremists who, in 1885, sent him into retirement, and that with such an out- burst of hatred as drove him from office for eight years, and ultimately caused his death. It was not that they doubted his fidelity to their cause, or his earnestness in it ; but that he differed. with them upon points of policy. M. Ferry was always a Republican, exposed himself under the Empire to threats of imprisonment, and. remained to, the hour of his death passionately devoted not only to that cause but to that party. Moreover, he loved it as Extremists love it, as much because it gave scope for his hatred of religion in any organised form as because it was founded on the idea of the sovereignty of the people. M. Ferry held. Clericalism to be the true enemy. He defied and annoyed his chief political friend and patron, M. Thiers, by making a civil marriage; and in 1880, he carried out his theory of " laicising " the State, after the Senate had refused to help the Chamber in doing it, by a series of decrees, one expelling the Jesuits, and another closing all strictly religious schools, which, though they irritated the Right, made him a sort of oracle with the Radicals and the Parisian mob. They soon, however, deserted him. M. Ferry held that order was essential to a Republic; and the Bxtremists, though they bad forgiven him for helping to crush the Commune, felt almost instinctively that if they ever rose, he would be a terrible obstacle in their way ; that he would use military force, and would be pitiless in repression. Further, he held. that, while France was waiting for the revanche, she must come to some modus vivendi with Germany ; and he made an agreement with Prince Bismarck, the essence of which we take to have been this : If the Prince would support France in seeking to acquire dependencies beyond sea, France would not attack Germany by surprise. The Prince, like a sensible man, agreed ; and M. Ferry, defying Italy, seized the great Principality of Tunis, which France still retains, and has converted into a French Colony of the usual type. The Extremists submitted, but they hated him all the harder. They have never been able to endure Colonial expansion, partly because it consumes conscripts, and partly because it is sup- posed to delay internal progress, and. to turn the mind of the people from schemes of social regeneration. They therefore denounced M. Ferry as a friend to Germany, a man who could tolerate the enemy of France, a "perfidious diplomatist," and a self-seeking politician ; and when his next exploit failed, they satiated their revenge. M. Ferry had resolved to found a rival Empire to India in Asia, and an immense massacre of converts in Tonquin, followed by the murder of a French officer, gave him an excuse for seizing Tonquin, which, had he remained in power, he would have followed up by the subjugation of the whole Empire of Anarn, and the conquest of Siam, thus annexing all the territories between India and China. It was Gambetta's idea originally ; but M. Ferry had made it his own also, prompted, it is said, in part by a singular hatred, or rather jealousy, of Great Britain. The Chinese, however, took the alarm ; they despatched a force to defend their vassal, and in a way which has never been fully explained, but which suggests either panic or disease among the French engaged, they, at Langeneon, hurled back Colonel nigrier and his expedition. French bulletins are so full of concealments, that the Colonel's account of his repulse —which was serious, but not irreparable—created in Paris the impression of a great disaster, to be followed by a war with China ; M. Cl6menceau exclaimed : "We must put a stop to this ; " and M. Ferry, after a short debate, was driven almost contemptuously from power. He remained out in the cold for eight years, un- forgiven by the Extremists—one of whom, perhaps madman, in 1887, shot at him in the streets and bruised his heart severely—and was denounced almost every week by some one or other of their organs. Nobody doubted either his politics or his honesty or his varied and greatly needed powers ; but he had taken a line of his own, and intended to defend it, and the democracy would not pardon him. He would offer no apology for himself, or retractation of his views ; and as to his political friends, it may be doubted if his haughty aloofness, and contempt for feeble compromises, had, left him any who were willing to share his fate. At last, the lamentable disclosures of 1893, andthe resignation of M. Le Royer as President of the Senate, opened a career to M. Ferry once niore. The Republic had 'been almost dismanned by the Panama scan dela; no one need apply for the ppst who was even suspected of dishonesty ; and the better Republicans of the Senate, after glancing at M. Constans, whom the Extremists hate as much as M. Ferry, seated the latter in their chair. That killed him. His heart had been seriously injured by Aubertin's bullet in 1887; he had twice suffered from cmgina pectoris ; and the immense emotion caused. by his pardon, his elevation, and the congratulations which showered in from those who had deserted him, finished the mischief, and after a painful appeal for air, "more air," in search of which he wandered through his house for hours, he died. A national funeral was voted. to him by his whole party, only the Right j resisting, on the ust ground that he was an avowed enemy to religion ; and. his colleagues poured out eulogies over his coffin which are most of them apologies for his courage in daring to take his own course. They forgave him, in fact, everything except his leadership, and the manners which till the latest year of his life indicated that he held. and intended to act on opinions of his own. We cannot hold him up as an example, for his whole con- duct towards the Church showed him to be one of the fanatics of negation, who are as dangerous as Inquisitors ; but he was an honest man and. a strong.
The deep sensation caused by M. Ferry's death was greatly aggravated by the conviction, now coming home to all classes, that the Republic is seriously in want of men. M. Constans is the strongest left ; and. it is very doubtful whether the Senate, in face of the libels, true or false, which the Extremists circulate about him, will venture to appoint Boulanger's conqueror to the presidency of their body. The acquittals in the recent trials will do no good to the Government, for opinion, justly or unjustly, declares the verdicts to be either unjust or a mere result of the want of technical proof ; and M. Andrieux, the former Prefect of Police, still holds the keys of the pillory. M. Ribot, who is absolutely honest himself, still shrinks front striking at the corrupt with revolutionary vigour, and is therefore the object of an attack which there is no room to doubt will in the end be extended to M. Carnot himself. A new Government is becoming almost imperative, and where is it to come from ? or the strength that should be behind it ? If a new Premier—say, M. Constans—trusts the Moderates and the Right, the Republicans will overthrow him, or kill him with slander and stories from Tonquin ; and if he trusts the Opportunists, he will be beaten by their want of moral foothold. Nobody not a Member believes in that party any more. The country wants new men, and if the existing rumours of Dissolution prove true, it will send up a crowd of them, probably without leaders or discipline, and in a temper which will startle Europe. Frenchmen with an Augean stable to cleanse are always revolutionaries of one sort or another, and though they do their work effectually, they usually throw out the ploughs, and sometimes the horses, along with the muck. It is perfectly useless to prophesy about France, where a man may start up in a day, or an idea may upset everything in a week, and. where nothing is stable except society, which rests immovable on its foundation of small proprietors; but if there is not internal trouble coming, the omens are all decep- tive. M. Carnot does not move ; the Chamber is almost in a condition of anarchy—M. Tiratd, the Minister of Finance, was this week withheld from knocking a Member down only by physical force—society believes nobody to be clean of either treachery, blackmailing, or bribe-taking; and the masses are convinced that, of all rascals in his- tory, the representatives who now govern them are the most thievish. That is not a situation which the most impatient and sensitive of peoples is likely to bear long ; and France and. Europe will both be fortunate if they find a way out by some drastic application of constitutional means. They may, for the mob of Paris is still chained up by the garrison, and. Revision is not unconstitutional ; but they will have to find somebody to lead. them, aui heaven and the Radical newspapers are acting together to kill all the somebodies out.
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