M. Goblet, the French Minister of Education, has been making
a speech to his constituents which is interpreted by M. Clemen- ceau and the Radicals as a declaration in favour of their views of the policy of the future. He asserted that the majority to be returned at the general election must be a majority for a policy, and not a majority for any particular Minister. There were three points especially on which it was necessary that the next Government majority should be at one,—Colonial policy, reli- gious policy, and economic or financial policy. He indicated that the Colonial policy should be a policy not of expansion, but rather of cautious withdrawal from dangerous enterprises ; that the religious policy should go in the direction of disestablish- meat ; and that the financial policy should be one of thrift and economy. This looks very like the pot-au-feu policy of M, Clemenceau, and so it is interpreted by the followers of M. Cl6menceau. Even M. Jules Ferry in his speeches is compelled to lay it down clearly that the Colonial policy is not to be pushed farther,—that France has gone as far as she intends to go in Colonial expansion. But on religions questions M. Ferry is more Conservative than M. Clemenceau, and thinks that he has done enough in former years to irritate the friends of religion and to gratify the fanatics of unbelief.
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