THE CRISIS IN FRANCE. T HE crisis in France has gone
precisely as we expected it would go. The Senators, finding that they had against them both the Executive and the populace, yielded, and in a most decorous form of words surrendered for ever their separate power of compelling Ministries to resign. They had, it will be remembered, deliberately censured the Government for removing an "investigating Magistrate" who, in the judgment of the Minister of Justice, exhibited a want of zeal in probing the great Railway scandal to the bottom. This, said the Senators, was an "interference with the course of justice" deserving of the severest reprobation. They expected that, thus censured, M. Bourgeois would either resign or throw out the head of his Minister of Justice to the wolves ; and no doubt this would have been the strictly constitutional course. M. Bourgeois, however, who is a aetermined man, resolved that before resigning he would appeal to the people, and accordingly obtained from the Chamber two successive votes of confidence. With these he said he was content, and could go on governing, and the Senate was therefore obliged either to give way, or by refusing to pass any Bills brought in by M. Bourgeois, to compel him to resign. The Senate gave way. M. DemoM was, on the morning of Friday week, authorised by the three groups of the Left Centre, who together possess a large majority in the Senate, to draw up a protest, in which the Senators affirm strongly their constitutional right "absolutely to refuse co-operation" with the Chamber of Deputies, but add that "the Senate does not choose to suspend the /legislative life of the country ; and, in spite of the attitude of the Ministry the Senate does not mean to renounce doing its duty." This declaration was accepted in the evening by 184 votes to 60. In other words, the Senate will go on as before, even though it has been deprived, probably for ever, of the greatest of its constitutional rights. Under a dignified formula it declines battle, and consents to occupy a lower place in the constitutional mechanism.
It is very natural that Radicals should rejoice, and Conservatives lament, over such a termination of the struggle, and that the Times' correspondent should describe it as a victory for the Socialists ; but it is possible that they are all three mistaken, and that the Constitution will be found to be rather more secure than it was before. Its weak place was the instability of the responsible Ministry, which has been changed, ever since the Republic was proclaimed, about once every fifteen months, the Cabinets, moreover, not replacing each other as they practically do in England, but being recomposed each time, often from what can only be described as "a scratch lot." Such Ministries cannot form great and homogeneous parties, or carry on any continuous policy, or risk the proposal of anything original ; and no Ministry, therefore, since 1872 has ever had an intellectual or moral hold upon the country. On the contrary, even great leaders like Gambetta have, through becoming Premiers, lost their reputations, so that the strongest men, who hope to become Presidents or Foreign Secretaries, now decline the Premiership. The position had, in fact, until Friday week, become nearly impossible, for the Premier bad to conciliate two co-ordinate Houses which differed widely in mental drift, especially upon all subjects connected with capital, labour, or taxa- tion. It was constantly necessary to whittle away pro- posals so as to offend neither House, and even to avoid necessary executive orders, lest one or the other Chamber should make them the ground of a vote of censure, and so throw out the Cabinet, with the result of producing an interregnum which became every year more lengthy and more detrimental to the material interests of the country. M. Bourgeois, with his rather rough decision, has at all events terminated this source of weakness. Administra- tions may still be short-lived because of the system of groups within the Chamber ; but at least the Premiers will only have one Chamber to conciliate, and if that Chamber approves, can pursue a steady course of policy. They can, for example, insist on exposing corruption without any danger that, when they have secured the support of the Deputies, they may be suddenly and perhaps unexpectedly decapitated by the vote of another body guided by other men, with, it may be, very different tendencies. The work of government is in fact simplified, and that change tends directly to produce a Cabinet competent to govern, instead of one competent only to manage. The necessity for endless compromise and wire- pulling is definitely reduced.
This change brings the Constitution of France much closer to the English model,-the Lords in England not claiming the power of unseating Ministries, and it will, if we mistake not, be speedily followed by another. The Cabinet has hitherto had no power, when outvoted by a momentary combination of groups often most hostile to each other, or when aware that the Deputies were out of harmony with the electors, of making, or even threatening, any kind of appeal to the people. There is no provision in the Constitution for a Referendum or plebiscite, and although a Dissolution is provided. for, it requires the previous authorisation of the Senate, which it has been hitherto understood the Senate would never give. It will, we believe, give it now. It is t.11 very well for the Senators to protest that they retain all their rights, but they have been beaten, they have shown that they cannot withstand the Executive when the Chamber agrees with it, and logic will compel them in future to act on that conclusive precedent. Whenever a Government dares to appeal to the people, they will be compelled to allow that appeal to be heard. Suppose, for example, that M Bourgeois adheres to his project of imposing a progressive income-tax, and after furious debating is defeated by a small majority in the Chamber, the Senate will be compelled to allow the appeal to the people for which M. Bourgeois would almost certainly ask. To refuse it would be once more, and under worse circumstances, to fight the Execu- tive and the populace acting together, — precisely the danger to which, as we see from the vote of Friday week, the Senate is consciously unequal. If the vete went against M. Bourgeois, he would, of course, disappear but if it went for him, he would be almost irresistil.ly strong, as strong, for example, as Lord Salisbury now is,. while the General Election is remembered. That would be quite a new position for a Minister under the Repub:ie,. and one which must tend, one would think, towards strong and stable government But, we shall be told, M. Bourgeois is a Radical e :th, Socialist proclivities. Will not all these changes tend, as- M. de Blowitz says they will, to a Socialist te:gitne iii France ? The answer to that question depends en- tirely upon the view the respondent takes of the comparative strength of the social forces in France. Our view is that the only grand conservative force in France is the mass of her people, five-sevenths of whom are possessed of property either in land or bonds, all of whom are desirous of profitable work, and the majority of whom are so content with their great institutions—such as- equality of rights before the law, division of property at death, universal military service, and the Codes—that in eighty years of revolution they have never permitted any one of them to be so much as seriously discussed. They will not, we believe, allow the smallest concession to be made to what its partisans mean by Socialism, though they will allow many measures which, like our own Poor- law and our own exemption of workmen from the Income- tax, may be described as in principle strictly "Socialist." They may also allow of experiments not yet tried in this country, such as the leasing of mines to corporations of miners instead of to individuals ; but those experimente will not assail or even undermine the institution of private property. Even here we make over gas and water, and shall probably make over the provision of intra-mural communications, to the body of citizens, and certainly Socialism is not in this country a predominant idea. We believe that in France the appeal to the people is a con- servative force, and the only one, moreover, which in a dangerous hour is strong enough to be irresistible ; and we hold, therefore, that in making this appeal easier, M. Bourgeois has made the Constitution of France more, and not less, conservative. He has not, of course, made revolution impossible, for be has not charmed away the danger from the Army, from foreign Powers, and from the people of Paris, but he has at once made Governments more stable, has rendered the Deputies and Senators less impervious to reason, and has provided the Constitution itself with a working safety-valve. He probably did not mean the half of that ; but he did mean to clip the wings of the Senate ; he has done so, and to the best of our judg- ment those will be the results.
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