FRENCH RADICALISM. T HE advent to office of a new French
Radical Ministry, composed, for the most part, of very able men under a chief of remarkable integrity and strength of character, suggests an inquiry into what French Radicalism in essence really is. We cannot, it is true, find the essential thing in this new Ministry, which has apparently come into power on a compromise version of the Radical pro- gramme which cannot be logically sustained, and which will work evil in the long run for the French Radicals. This Ministry, therefore, we venture to predict, will not last, and some variant of the Moderate Republican com- bination will once more take the helm with a composite following in the Chamber. But however that may be, an attempt to seize the essence of the Radical spirit 'in France is not without its interest What is French Radicalism, what are its sources, what its aims ? The question is not very easy to answer, since while, on the one hand, a section of Radicalism, as in the present Ministry, sways towards the Moderates, another section has made common cause with the Socialists, and that strange hybrid, the Radical-Socialist, personified by such men as M. Goblet and M. Millerand, has been brought into being. But there are certain broad features which mark the French Radical party, and which have marked it ever since it became a force in French politics.
French Radicalism is, of all the varieties of French political opinion, the one true heir of the French Revolu- tion. It is true that the Socialist party glories in the traditions of the Revolution, that it chants Revolutionary airs and adopts Revolutionary catchwords. But it does not and cannot embody the ideas of the Revolution, which were not Socialist at all. The Declaration of the Rights of Man not only does not contain one scintilla of Socialism, it expressly recognises and defends the right of private property, which it assumes should and will be the outcome of a man's personal industry. Neither can we say that French Imperialism is a true product of the Revo- lution save in a, very indirect way. Carlyle has treated Napoleon as the incarnate democrat, and it is true that, had it not been for the Revolution, there would have been no great Napoleonic career. But Napoleon so deflected the course of the Revolution into the channel of militarism and conquest that his cause cannot be accepted as the cause of the Revolution. The Moderate Republicanism and mild constitutionalism of which Tocqueville, e.g., was a conspicuous representative, may be closely related to the earlier stages of the Revolu- tion when it was still thought that a Constitutional Monarchy on the English pattern was possible for France, but that early stage of the great movement so soon passed away, and proved while it lasted so ineffectual, that we cannot accept it as representing the completed movement of the Revolution. By a process of exhaustion, there- fore, we arrive at the Radical party as being, on the whole, the true heir of the French Revolution.
Now, what does the Revolution as interpreted by Radicalism mean ? That is to say, what is the nature of the particular force which Radicalism represents as distinguished from the other forms of French political thought ? In the first place, there is the firm conviction that to France belongs the political initiative, that Paris is the real intellectual centre of mankind, that the progressive movement must inevit- ably be led by France. This is the dominant idea in M. Zola's "Paris," and M. Zola is a very good representative of certain aspects of French Radicalism. The tradition of '93 has never left its Radical votaries ; Paris is still glorified as a terrestrial New Jerusalem, with the "Social Contract" as its sacred volume, from which as a world-centre the fiery cross of an enlightened Repub- licanism goes forth to lighten the darkness of more benighted nations. The cynicism and disillusionment of the age has, it is true, greatly modified the religious fervour of the devotees of 1793, the crimes and virtues of that marvellous epoch being both impossible to the more practical and unbelieving men of to-day. Imagination cannot conceive M. Brisson or M. Bourgeois emulating the singular achievements of Mayor Petion ; the times are so different. But at the back of the modern Radical mind is, we take it, the same conception of the supreme claims of French democracy to embody the aspirations of mankind. For the genuine French Radical the Revolu- tion is still so stupendous a fact, that it almost forms for him the beginning of human history, while it is the fountain of inspiration from which we are all supposed to draw. On its practical side, the Radical conceives it as having destroyed everything that he thinks of as "feudal," and as having (as M. Taine has put it) given France over to a democracy of peasants and tradesmen better off and more intelligent than any other people in Europe. To carry to its supposed legitimate conclusion the work of the Revolution is for the French Radical the chief political task.
The foremost idea attaching itself to such a task is the notion of creating a perfectly secular lay society, from which not only the formal institution of the Catholic Church, but the very religious idea as understood in European civilisation, should be obliterated. No one can understand French Radicalism who does not realise the profound antagonism it displays to organised forms of religion, and in this respect it is the true and ideal heir of the Revolution. The writings of the philosophes of the last century still form the basis of Radical thinking, and the nearest approach to the religious conception they permit is a vague Deism which, in these days of hard scientific criticism, has scarcely been able to maintain itself alive. Gambetta's memorable phrase, uttered before the experience of responsible office had cooled down his glowing Ridicalism—Le clericalisme, voila l'ennemi- embodies the permanent conviction of the French Radical. It is true that the Moderate Republican is not very fond of the Church, but his notion of dealing with it is through the Concordat ; his conception is Erastian ; the prelates and clergy are to be "kept in their places." But the Radical wouid carry on a plan of campaign against the Church which would almost exterminate the forms of religion in thousands of French communes. When English people are told that French Radicalism is for the separation of Church and State, they think of Mr. Carvell Williams and the Liberation Society ; but this taild middle-class English Nonconformity, with its Puritan traditions, has nothing in common with the French Radical movement. It would be more to the point to glance at Chaumette and the Paris Commune of 1793, so far at least as the essential spirit of the true Radical faith is concerned. French Radicalism is, in short, the best political embodiment which can be found in any country of the modern anti-religious temper, and of the philosophy which discovers in mechanism and necessity the explanation of the universe. In seeking to separate the spheres of the secular and spiritual, the French Radical has really drowned the spiritual in the turbid waters of a, superficial secularism.
From this arises, as we think, the weakness and insta- bility of French Radicalism. It confronts the venerable in- stitution of the Church with a series of barren negations. Its fundamental view of life is shallow,—to a thinker it is impossible. Hence, too, the power which the Church still wields in the country of Voltaire and Condorcet. The mass of the French people, it is true, will not permit a great sacerdotal Order to rule over them, and they show in many ways their jealousy of Bishop and curd. They like to keep the clergy well in hand, and generally succeed in doing so ; but they cling to the Church, and they are not in the least likely to permit Radicalism to remake the French nation into a purely secular society. The knowledge that this is the case greatly aids the Vatican in its negotiations with the Republic. The Vatican can (for a consideration, it is true) make things very smooth for a Moderate Ministry ; but it can easily raise powerful forces against a Ministry which had shown that it was ready to make war, not merely against a few clerical recalcitrants, but against the forms in which the religious idea enshrines itself. Hence a French Radical Ministry must either be untrue to its own rooted beliefs, or it must begin, as the Brisson Ministry has begun, with a declaration of compromise which will weaken its own foundations.
As the essential spirit of French Radicalism is anti-religious, so is it also levelling, and herein it shows itself a true child of '93. No head must tower above the crowd, no antique claim must be admitted. This is, of course, also the attitude of Socialism, but, in spite of the Radical-Socialist rapproche- ment, the plans by which material equality is to be attained differ in these two camps. While the true Socialist thinks of all the means of production as being publicly owned, and a living wage being distributed by the State to all its citizens, the Radical thinks of a device by which the State can equalise, or tend to equalise, material possessions through a system of progressive taxation, without itself directly taking over industry. This seems to be the fundamental economic idea of the Radical party ; and if Taine is right in thinking that France is organised for the benefit of the peasant and the tradesman, it is conceivable that a system of progressive taxation which should hit the rich alone might be popular in a country dedicated to the idea of equality. Protruding heads would be cut down, a rough equality attained. But what would be the effect on France as a world-competitor ? She would retire more than ever into her shell, her enterprise would decline, her unremunerative capital would be diverted to other com- peting nations, her newly acquired colonies would be mere areas of barbarians and office-holders. Has French Radicalism, in its Revolutionary attachment to equality as viiwed on its material side, really thought out this great problem ?
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