FRENCH STATESMEN. T HE interest of a speech like the one
which M. Meline delivered on Sunday at Remiremont seems to us to consist, not so much in what he said, though that has an interest too, as in the fresh evidence it affords that neither of the two first results expected from the triumph of democracy in France has yet been realised. To one of these failures we have repeatedly alluded. It was fully expected, even by those who, like ourselves, regard democracy only as the greatest of experiments, that with monarchy and aristocracy both swept out of the path, France was certain to throw up men of genius. An intelligent people of thirty-seven millions must, it was thought, include many of rare and separate powers, and such men, " in the absence of prejudice," would rapidly come forward in politics and be eagerly acknowledged. It has not proved so. Either the country is passing through a cycle of mental infertility such as has occurred in many countries, or democracy dislikes mind in its representa- tives and refuses, since it possesses a veto, to allow to genius the necessary initiatory chance. France has pro- duced since 1871 a considerable number of "plain men" rather above than below the average in point of ability, but absolutely without what is called in literature, and shauld be called in politics, the " note of distinction." All careers are open, there are no prejudices of birth except against Jews, and " a competence " is not in France the antecedent necessity to a, politician which it is in England. There is, too, in France, or there is supposed to be, a certain readiness to recognise mental capacity, to clear the way for it, and to expect from it benefits to the com- munity. Nevertheless, in twenty-nine years, nearly a whole generation, no man of the first class has been evolved, or has asserted himself, so as to acquire what a historian would regard as separate political'rank. General de Galliffet is formidable from his nerve and his clearness of _purpose, and his colleagues are very worthy and able men, but very few of their names are known outside France, and within it if they were overthrown, though there might be much feeling for the policies they repre- sent, they would personally not be missed.. People wish the Waldeck-Rousseau • Cabinet to continue governing, but it is not for the sake of M. Waldeck-Rousseau. As to their opponents, their very names, if we except pt M. Ribot and M. Deroulede, are unknown to Europe, and of these two, one is a second-rate administrator, and the other a fantastic seeker after notoriety as well as power.
The second disappointment, though less perceptible, is still a grave one. It was hoped that with the disappear. ance of a Court and as aristocracy of any kind the personal ambitions, jealousies, and intrigues which have made up so much of the history of France would, at least in great:measure, disappear. There could, it was said, be no favourites, or cliques, or proscriptions of individuals under a Republic. The enormous weight of the democracy would crush such evils out, parties would be pulverised, and. men would be compelled, as it . were by unconscious selection from below, to think only of the country and its interests. Again it has not proved so. The _ castes were never more bitter, the classes never more divided, the parties never more incapable of fusion. The well-to-do and the masses are taking opposite sides even about a thing like the great Exhibition. The Reactionaries and the Radicals so hate one another that the admission of M. Millerand into the Cabinet is de- nounced, gravely denounced, as "a great political crime." In the terrible Dreyfus affair the Army and the civil power arrived within measurable distance of actual civil war. The personal pretensions are exaggerated, and are marked not only by the conceit of those who press them, but by an intensity of desire to remove or discredit rivals which can hardly be matched from any similar period of French history. Frenchmen of to-day are only enthusiastic in their hatreds. M. lifeline, for example, thinks himself slighted, and attacks the Ministry with an invective that seems to outsiders dictated by personal hate. He does not hesitate, for example, to try to relight the passions raised by the Dreyfus case, which seemed to be dying down, and accuses the Cabinet of having for motive the protection of Dreyfus and his friends. and of be- having infamously to all general officers. " Nationalism," with its desire for a saviour, says M. Maine, has been born of the " persecution" carried on by the present Govern. ment, which thereby fosters not fraternity, but the "fierce and sectarian Socialism, that revolutionary Collectivism which dreams only of extermination and spoliation, which makes a dogma of the conflict of classes, that is to say of civil war, which knows only how to destroy and is in- capable of organising, which retards rather than hastens on the emancipation of the working class, and which, if ever it were to triumph, would reduce the working man to slavery." This of a Government which has M. Waldeck-Rousseau, a calm Whig, as its head, and General de Galliffet as its bulwark and support. Yet M. Meline is the head of a great party, that of the Pro- tectionists, considers himself a champion of the Conserva- tive Republic, and in the opinion of a shrewd observer like M. de Blowitz may end by making himself for a time master of France. We question it, believing that the electors, as they show at all by-elections, are content so long as the Republic is in strong hands, and that they can be attracted only by a conqueror or a man of genius ; but we believe that, as his speeches prove, there is in France as yet no reconciliation. The cleavages between the parties are as deep as ever, and any one who seeks power has only to attack opponents with sufficient viru- lence to be at once hailed as a statesman and a leader.
Fortunately a truce of six months, has been un- officially proclaimed. There seems to be no doubt that, whatever foreign nations may' do, the people of France itself are greatly attracted by the Exhibition, that every man who can afford the journey intends to visit Paris, and that Paris in consequence will for the time be abnor- mally happy and good-humoured. It loves profit• almost as much as excitement. With Paris thus tranquillised, the Army in the strong hands of General de Galliffet, and the silent peasantry steadily returning Radicals, the National-. ists must perforce await a better opportunity. It is, however, well to remember that the furnace fires are only damped down, that men like M. Maine still think it possible to overthrow the Cabinet, and that this Cabinet, which seems to Englishmen so estimable, is regarded by its enemies on the spot as one of the most detestable which has ever held power. They will not be conciliated by a period of waiting, and when they move they will be led by men who, partly from genuine political passion and partly from wounded amour propre, will strike as unscrupulously and as hard as if they actually believed those in possession of power to be treacherous to France. Perhaps they do. It seems incredible, but as there are Americans who sincerely believe that the British are hostile to them in the interests of a gold currency,' so there are Frenchmen who are assured that their Govern- ment, for unrevealed reasons and in unknown ways, plays steadily the foreigners' game. Their reason, when they give it fair play. tells them that the charge is absurd, but what with prejudice, disappointment, and the kind of colossal ignorance which enables a grave French officer to state as his deliberate opinion that the British are wilfully causing famine in India, a kind of passion of credulity is born in them which seems to have no limit. Imagine a man like M. Meline declaring publicly that the present Government of France has for the motive of all its policy " vengeance for the verdict delivered at Rennes."
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