THE DANGER OF THE FRENCH MINISTRY.
IT is very difficult, it is nearly impossible, for Englishmen to realise fully what is passing at this moment in France. They understand that a Republic has been established, that a Conservative party is in possession of power, that a Radical party exists, and that a Whig party is in process of solidification, but of the causes of the tension still apparent they understand nothing at all. In truth, they are not very easy to understand. M. Dufaure, Minister of Justice, an old legist, who is to English Whigs what Lord Eldon was to ordinary English Tories, a man of great age, a man who never pardoned an infrac- tion of law in his life, writes to his subordinates, the Public Prosecutors, to say that a regular Government is now esta- blished, and to ask them to report whether, in their judgment, the laws, and particularly the laws on the Press, work well, and instantly Paris is in a ferment. The Premier insisted at first on the suppression of the letter, and the sentences about the Press have been excluded from the Journal Officiel. The Party of Order consider it a direct breach of the agreement on which they support the Government. The Bonapartist denounce it as an atrocity. What does it all mean ? Nothing can be more guarded than the mean- ing of the Circular, even if we read it as all Frenchmen do, between the lines. The Public Prosecutors are told that the Republic exists and they are to help to cause it to be respected, but that would be the course taken in the event of any change of Government, and merely impresses on them that there has been such a change, and that they are to take official cogni- sance of the fact. They are also asked in guarded phrase whether, on the whole, it would not be as well that journalists should be tried before a jury, but that also seems to follow from the acceptance of a Republic. Finally, they are told, still more guardedly, that a deluge of photographs and pamphlets in the Imperial interest has been poured over France, and that it may be as well to avoid giving through the privilege of colportage the sanction of the Republic to the dissemination of the same. That is, no doubt, very silly, as the peasantry of France ought, under a Republic, to be allowed to buy or to receive as a present anybody's portrait ; but still it is in accordance with law, with custom, and with etiquette, and in the case of so new a regime, may be required as a hint that Imperialism is to be treated for the future as a hostile cause. There is literally nothing in M. Dufaure's Circular to which a Whig Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland would take exception, and yet there are Frenchmen who regard it as a portentous event, who think M. Dufaure has surrendered the cause of Order, who call him a Gambettist, and who are ready to accuse him of stirring up civil war. He has attacked Order by hinting that journalists may be oppressed, has menaced Conservatism by proposing juries, has persecuted " Bonapartism by suggesting that the Republic is the legal Government of France. He is declared to be almost as bad as M. Gambetta, who has made a dangerous and ferocious speech over the grave of M. Edgar Quinet. There never was perhaps a less dangerous man in France than M. Edgar Quinet. To praise him is for a French
Democrat as it would be for an English one to praise Hallam, if Hallam had happened to believe democracy the best form
of government. M. Gambetta said nothing except that democracy was in France just now in a good position, that it had to be extremely moderate, but that it ought to insist on universal, compulsory, and secular education. He had not deserted M. Quinet, but had sought his end by different means. He hoped for everything from the modera- tion of Democrats, and from a strong alliance between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie,—that is, from an alliance be- tween the masses of the French people and the classes possessed of capital. He did not say one word in praise of Red ideas, or even of making the Republic "social," and to mark his meaning by a phrase understood by all Frenchmen, he ad- dressed his audience not as "citizens "—the technical word which in France marks a Red orator—but as " gentlemen." Instantly there is a hubbub. M. Gambetta's speech is most violent. It has produced a bad impression. It has undone the effect of his Parliamentary moderation. Even the Times' Correspondent, who should know better, declares that he has done mischief, and seems to think that the safety of the new Government is compromised, because one of the prominent leaders who have combined to establish the Republic says that the employers and the employed must form an alliance for its support. What does it all mean ?
It means that the divisions of France—which are not divisions except in the political, literary, and military worlds, for seven- tenths of all Frenchmen are Left Centre, without regard for forms of government—are not divisions between parties so much as between creeds ; that there is a radical difference of ob- ject as well as method, and that good government from bad hands is not accepted cordially by any active politician. The Legiti- mists would accept what we in England would call liberty from Henri Cinq as the outcome of his policy with pleasure,
but would consider the same government, if octroye by M. Gambetta and actually carried out, an invention of the Devil. The Moderates, ci-devant Orleanists, or Right Centre would consider
democratic freedom under a limited Monarchy,or under themselves as managers of the Republic, a reasonable system, but democratic freedom under a democrat strikes them as menacing the very ex- istence of society. The true Left Centre or Moderate Libel-ads would, under the Republican Constitution, bear or delight in the separation of religion from education as an incident of the
regime ; but if proposed as an object, and one to be carried out by men who believe in it on other grounds than expediency,
they are half tempted to consider it a foretaste of the Com- mune. Each party not only seeks to be its own adminis- trator, which is natural and fair, but honestly believes that if
it is not its own administrator it will sooner or later be crushed by its dishonest adversaries. It holds, in fact, about all parties, except itself, the belief which British Protestants hold about the Society of Jesus. It is of no use contending with them except through laws of repression. Justice is a capital thing, but if a Jesuit gets justice, he will convert some poor man, and rob some rich one. Religious liberty is a principle, but if Jesuits get religious liberty, there will soon be no religious liberty to get. Tolerance is a wise policy, but if you tolerate Jesuits, you will very soon not be tolerated. That is the secret feeling of each party in France as regards another, and consequently each watches, analyses, and misreads every utterance of a leader among its adversaries. Extreme Con- servatives rage when M. Dufaure hints that a Republic is not an Empire, that under a Republic the Press should have a legal status, and that the duty of Public Prosecutors is to re- press impartially all assaults on the Constitution. They ex- claim, " He is a Republican !" as if they expected him to be something else. And moderate Conservatives are dismaydd when M. Gambetta, who has helped so much to found the orderly Republic, intimates that he has not abandoned the hope that the Republic will be Republican. They expected him apparently not only to be Conservative, but to enter the Conservative camp.
This sensitiveness or irritability of the Conservative parties would not signify much if it were not shared, and that in an exaggerated degree, by the Government itself. The Presi- dent and his advisers, if they would only be loyal to the new Constitution, could get on easily enough. They have literally nothing to dread from popular assault. Paris is quite quiet, and under a state of siege. The South is sowing its crops, and is under a state of siege. The Press is perfectly moderate in everything but personal abuse—it treats the President, for example, with as much reserve as English journals treat the Queen—and it is under a state of siege.
The majority of the people approve the state of affairs, and for those who do not there is an enormous army, in excellent other; commanded by men selected by the President himself, and as-against all etneutiers certain to act with promptitude and severity. Within the Assembly the Government has a majority, and if that majority disappears, a dissolution would renew it in a still more compact and devoted forta. The Government, however, is not content, for it shares, as we suspected, the prejudices, and the timidities, aird the unreasonablenesses of the Conservative parties. The President thinks M. Dufaure dreadfully Liberal! Perfectly sedate in his seat, and invested by the Republic with more than the power of a King, he cannot bear that the Constitution -which elevates him so high should be represented to France as what it is, a new and a definitive form of government. Crude assertions of that kind are to be kept in the background, even bye misters who may be trusted not to give them a democratic interpretation. The President of the Republic does not indeed dismiss M. Dufaure for acknowledging a Republic, but he orders him, at least, so the Moniteur affirms, not to men- tion it, except as a form of the Septennate. The Premier of course follows suit, and after hours of agitation the majority of the Cabinet decide that M. Dufaure has risked giving offence to the susceptibilities of Conservatives and of the Bonapartist party. The Republic exists, it is true, but its existence must be concealed among the strictest arcane of the State. The highest Tories in England will scarcely deny that this is childish, that M. Buffet's Cabinet, apart from its divisions, is a weak one, that this single trans- action has revealed an incompetence which must destroy all hope in the statesmanship of the new Government. Modera- tion is good always, and when M. Buffet refuses to dismiss experienced officials because they learned their experience under the Empire, he may be in the right, though he runs a risk, but moderation does not require that the very meaning of a new constitution should be kept back from the people who are to live under its provisions. As well might M. Buffet strike "the Republic" from the coin- age and substitute " the State." High Tories, as we say, will acknowledge this, and there is a substantial danger in such silliness. Wonderfully moderate as the Liberals have been, M. Buffet may wear their patience out. The Constitution has been made and the Cabinet selected by the self-abnegation of the Left. It has been all M. Gambetta can do to keep his followers quiet, and allay their inner suspicion that they are surrendering too much ; he is perpetually taunted with over- trustfulness, and now the Ministry, which is dependent on the Left for its majority, gives every distrustful adherent full excuse for saying that his distrust is warranted, and that M. Gambetta has been gulled. Not content with maintaining the state of siege in forty-three Departments, with suppressing all public meetings, with seizing provincial newspapers, with refusing per- mission to anybody to start new journals, with ordering chemists who happen to be Radicals not to lecture on the age of the earth, the first French Republican Cabinet interdicts its most Conservative Member from saying in print that Public Prose- cutors must accept the Republic, and see that the laws on the Press shall be carried out in the spirit of that acceptance. It openly avows that it accepts the Constitution which makes it a Government only as a name. We never venture to predict the course of events in France, but if this be the statesmanship which founds, reason, experience, and history teach but little.
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