THE FRENCH PRESIDENCY.
THE French Presidency has had a very curious and unexpected development which is well worth the attention of Constitution-mongers. It was fully intended when the office was originally established in 1871 that the President of the Republic should have the powers of a Continental Monarch, should possess a general initiative, and should set upon the two Chambers as a guiding and restraining influence. He chooses the Ministers, and they are responsible to him, he is supreme head of the Army, and though he has no veto, and no power of dissolving without the consent of the Senate, he can remonstrate with the Chambers in a Message, which, if he possessed the ear of the electors, would be more effective than any Premier's speech. The world, mindful of the history of France and of the instinct of Frenchmen for believing in persons rather than institutions, thought that the President would be, if not the real ruler, at least the most important person in the Republic. It turned out other- wise. M. Thiers, it is true, supported as he was by the confidence of Europe as well as by his own genius, was nearly a Monarch ; and had Marshal MacMahon been a sincere Republican, or even a little more confident in his own capacity for statesmanship, he might have consolidated the Presidency, and left it as strong as the rival institution in the United States. M. Grevy, however, who succeeded him, was only a selfish lawyer who thought that men could be " managed " but not controlled, and that the first con- dition of popularity in a President was self-effacement. When it became necessary to remove him, he being too like a mean kind of Eli, the Chamber discovered that although removal was not contemplated by the Constitution, that document gave them one irresistible weapon. The majority of Deputies could compel the Ministry to resign, and repeat the process until, the machine being brought to a deadlock, the President must either depart or strike a coup crelat. They used this power, M. Grevy resigned, and. from that moment the President became a constitutional Monarch, who could indeed choose Ministers, but could choose only such Ministers as the Chamber was ready to support. It was impossible to maintain them against the Chamber, and the Chamber, inclined like all Continental Chambers to make its power felt, dismissed Ministers on the smallest provocation, until a Cabinet which has lived two years is considered to have displayed unaccountable and unprecedented vitality.
After the fall of M. Gravy the degradation of the Presi- dency, or should we rather say the imprisonment of the Presidency in political etiquette s ? went on apace. M. Carnot, from whom great things were expected, chiefly because of his name, took a strictly constitutional view—in the English sense—of his position, and when in June, 1894, he was assassinated he was succeeded by a man with a weakness which, we would fain believe, is in England rather uncom- mon. Upright, thoughtful, and patriotic, M Ca,simir-Perier was still possessed by a certain form of egoism. His preoccupation under all circumstances was his personal dignity. He would have faced bullets without trembling, but slights, not to say insults, made his life a burden to him. His Ministers, says the correspondent of the Times who also reported the facts at the time, detected his weak- ness of temperament, and as each of them hoped for the succession they strove by studied slights, all of the same kind, to drive him to resignation. It took them six mouths to succeed, but they succeeded. M. Hanotaux concealed important telegrams from the President, and when interrogated replied that they were confidential ; while General Mercier, when asked why he had moved eighty thousand troops nearer to the frontier, answered, with exquisite insolence, "These are Army affairs, not civilian matters." M. Perier could have sent both their dismissals, and would have been supported, but he saw further possibility of injury to his amour propre, and at once retreated into the shelter of private life. His successor was a stronger and a more vulgar man Good- tempered, thick-skinned, and. utterly unscrupulous, M. Felix Faure, who had won his election by the arts of Sixtus Quintus, concealing always such ability as he had under a mask of bonhomie, endeavoured to restore the power of the Presidency by endless conciliations. He mixed with the people, he affected in the Dreyfus case to share all their prejudices, he flattered the Army, and he in- trig-uedwith the Nationalists, always with the hopethat some crisis would. arrive in which he could demand for the Presidency more power, and, above all, more deference and dignity. Had he been an able man he might have succeeded, for Frenchmen, who are not Royalists, still thinlr a dignified Executive indispensable to France ; but he was essentially only a Lord Mayor as satirists represent that personage ; he was secretly distrusted by all parties ; and when in February, 1899, he died. in a way still con- sidered inexplicable, the Presidency was so discredited that it seemed. as if the Republic could hardly last. The Nationalists, who intend to set up either a throne or a dictatorship, looked. much the strongest party ; and diplomatists in particular expected either a revolution or a military regime. M. Loubet, who succeeded, and who goes straight, has lifted the Presidency out of that slough, steadily supporting a strong and really Republican Ministry ; but even he has not raised the great post to the height which its builders in- tended it should attain. His character rather than his intellect attracts the confidence of the people, and he is the referee rather than the rnler or the guide of France. He has shown much capacity in choosing able men ; but nobody expects from his initiative a great foreign policy, or a solution of the social difficulties which so alarm the statesmen of to-day. Still less does he insist on that financial reform which the ablest politicians in France hold to be indispensable to the future safety of the State, and. which can come only from large reductions of expendi- ture, which would irritate all the interests, or from an increase in direct taxation, which would make all the propertied classes in France long for a change of regime.
Whether the Presidency will recover itself, and become again one of the greatest of European offices, will depend upon events. We have little doubt that the majority of Frenchmen, and especially of Frenchmen devoted to the Republic, wish that it should, or that if M. Loubet possesses, in addition to his unquestionable weight of character, a ray of political genius, he may carry through the necessary changes. He is quite capable, for instance, of dismissing a Ministry and appointing one from among men who have not been sent up to the Assembly, and that act alone, if it were successful, would make the President the first authority in France, the man to whom every future Minister would defer. But the Presidency is still terribly hampered by three difficulties, of which the first two do not exist in the United States, and. none of which was clearly foreseen by M. Thiers, who perhaps relied un- consciously upon his personal ascendency. The President is not chosen by the people, but by men who dread the election of a man of genius, or of any man capable of restricting their power and relegating them to a position of comparative inferiority. "Plain men" always dread any one they cannot entirely understand, and. that fear is in France reinforced by the burning jealousy which induces Marshals to risk losing a campaign rather than a rival should win a battle. Then the Chamber has always the right of breaking the President's weapons in his hands by dismissing his trusted Ministers and forcing him to select inferior, it may even be distrusted, men. The Deputies have left M. Waldeck-Rousseau in the Premiership for two years, but it has been at their own discretion, and with no thought of M. Loubet's reliance on his opinion. And, lastly, the President cannot by commanding a Dissolution make a legal appeal to the people to decide between him and his opponents. That power is the security of an English Premier, and- it was refused to the President in 1871, mainly, we think, from a fear lest it should be so frequently used as to reduce the Assembly to a nullity. Still, France is the country of surprises, President Loubet is a brave man devoted to the Republic, and when the next grand crisis arrives and Monarchy seems imminent we may see grand changes suddenly swept through a Republican Assembly sitting as a constituent power which will restore to the Presidency the vigorous initiative, and with it the dignity, which Thiers thought he had secured. It is quite certain that oven now no Minister declines to discuss with the President any proposal to which the latter may object. If he did he would be dismissed, with the full approval, if not of the Chamber, at least of the electors of France.
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