M. FERRY'S ELECTION.
THE real importance of the election of M. Ferry to the Presidency of the Senate, which was finally accom- plished last Friday week, consists in the evidence it affords of the depth of the impression made by the Panama, scandals upon the average French mind. Two months ago,. M. Ferry was not onlyan unpopular but an impossible states-- man. The Chauvinists detested him as a man who wished. for a compromise with Germany ; the Radicals hated him. as one disposed to defy mob-rule ; and the body of the people reviled him as a statesman who had risked a great war with China, that he might conquer Tonquin, prin- cipally, as he himself cynically confessed, with the view of providing posts for the children of respectable men, He enjoys the unswerving enmity of M. Henri Rochefort, who declares, indeed, to an interviewer from the Morning Post, that the conquest of Ton quin was a financial speculation,. induced by some false reports of gold mines ; he was threatened by the populace when his name was pro- posed as a rival to M. Ca,rnot ; and he has never found in the ranks of Opportunist journalists any staunch adherents. As he admits himself, in his speech of Mon- day on accepting the Chair of the Senate, he was practi- cally "ostracised," and we could quote a dozen letters in which writers who regretted the fact, and writers who exulted in the fact, alike agreed in reporting him to be " politically dead." To-day he has now been elected by his enemies to the second position in France. We say by his "enemies "—though the word is too strong—because the majority in the Senate is Opportunist Republican ; has a great fear of quarrelling with the Radicals of the streets ; and has certainly no love for M. Ferry, who,. except upon Church questions, is a conservative Re- publican of a haughty type. Every ground of dislike however has given way before the necessity of finding a President who was at once a Republican, a competent man, and one absolutely free, not only from complicity in the Panama scandal, but from the splashes of mud' which that affair has thrown upon the whole governing party, its leaders, its journalists, and its ultra-friends. In this country we hardly recognise how wide the range of the mud-throwing has been, or how deep is the fear in Paris that M. Andrieux's threats are well founded, and that if he, or M. Charles de Lesseps, or even M. Arton, should ever tell all they know, the Republic itself may be disgraced. It is absolutely vital to reman the dismanned ship, and, consequently, we have M. Casimir-Prier, who is outside suspicion, as President of the Chamber in which he is accounted a Whig; M. Ferry, a moderate, who is clean as to money, whatever his transgressions in Colonial policy, as President of the Senate ; and M. Ribot, a moderate, whom nobody even thinks he could bribe, as President in Council. Moreover, a new man, M. Ca,vaignae„ has attained in the Chamber to a first-class position, chiefly because he does not steal, though there is doubt whether he can utilise it sufficiently to acquire strong numerical following. Character, in fact, has re- asserted its claim to be considered as well as ability ; and with an Opportunist Senate and Chamber, and a Radical Paris, power has been practically placed in the hands of men who are not only moderate, but suspected and dis- liked by the whole body of Extremists, as men who, in the event of social collision, would not hesitate to advocate the- use of force on the side of social order. This is a remarkable change, and allowing always. for- the chance that some grand event, such as a war, might distract popular attention, we see reason to believe that it will go much further. The Panama affair is by. no means over yet. The trials of the bribed Deputies- have not yet begun. The Panama Directors have only commenced making their revelations. The Panama; shareholders are still beguiled with the notion that, if they are only docile, they may yet save a great deal out of the ruin. M. Andrieux has not completed his collection of evidence, which is probably hampered by the ill-health of M. Hers; and the police have not found it quite convenient to discover the place where M. Arton, who has all the lists in his hands, lies in real or affected concealment. Gradually much more will come out, M. Charles de Lesseps already confessing to demands made on him for hundreds of thousands of pounds, "paid to save the milliard- X40,000,000—entrusted to ray charge ; " and every proved case will create suspicion as to a dozen more in which no proof exists. An Archbishop who had taken a Panama cheque would just now not be believed upon his oath of innocence. We may judge of the savage temper of Paris from a scene in the Chamber on the last day of February. It was with the utmost difficulty, it will be remembered, that M. Bourgeois, backed by the whole force of the Cabinet, obtained a vote against Anarchist writers ; but M. Boissy d'Anglas, who is hardly a serious politician, proposed that newspaper editors who puffed industrial schemes recklessly or "in bad faith "—that is, in fact, for money—should be made liable to five years' imprisonment, and the proposal was declared " urgent " by 335 to 571 It will probably not be carried, a great section of the Press being only kept alive by such puffs ; but three months ago the proposal would have been scouted, and M. Boissy cl'Angla.s would have been driven from public life by incessant attacks directed by men who are now, under fear of .public sus- picion, as silent as if they acquiesced. There is no reason to believe that the temper of the Provinces will be any more good-humoured. On the contrary, the peasantry are more suspicious than the Parisians, because they know less ; they, not the Parisians, subscribed the last Panama loans ; and they have a tradition that Paris is always taking advantage of them, or pocketing their money. Their decision will, in a fiercer way, be identical with that of the Senate,—namely, to choose, first of all, men who cannot be implicated in the Panama affair, to pay atten- tion to character as well as to ability to speak. Whether they will choose Deputies of the Ferry type may be doubtful, for there are not many of them to be chosen ; but that they will reject the present men, be the consequences what they may, we have no doubt whatever. Candidates will be sought for honesty first of all, and many an un- popular man will find, like M. Ferry, that his offences against the majesty of the people have been condoned. The next Assembly will, we may rely on it, be crowded with new faces, and with men whose peremptory mandate will be to expose corruption, and to insist that the regime of extravagance, which has lasted so many years, and which would have ruined any country less rich or less thrifty than France, shall 'nine at once to an end. The "ignorant impatience" of taxation is not the vice of France ; but to be taxed to the quick, in order that legislators may plunder, is more than even vine- growers can stand. The new Chamber, with new objects, new groups, and new combinations, will modify every- thing ; and almost certainly evolve a new Executive, of which M. Carnot can hardly be the head. He is innocent enough of bribe-taking ; but the popular feeling, we con- ceive, will be that, as Head of the State, be ought to have shown more firmness and more care; ought to have driven doubtful politicians from official place ; and ought not to have countersigned such decrees as those which sanctioned the late Panama loans. He must have known those loans were bubbles. Under the Constitution, Minis- ters are responsible to him as well as to the Chamber ; and popular feeling ascribes to the President even more power than he possesses. To the peasantry, M. Carnot is the Government; and as the Government has not prevented the loss of sixty millions sterling of their property, but has, in the general belief, either shared in the plunder or pardoned those who did share in it, the peasantry will instruct their Deputies not to re-elect M. Carnet. Unless we are greatly mistaken, the outcome of the scandal will be a new Chamber, a new Executive, and a new Presi- dent,—that is, politically, new heavens and a new earth in France.
The severity of the popular judgment is perhaps sur- prising in a country where many representatives appear to have held views so lax ; but, from the days when Cicero thundered against Verres, it has always been so. We can- not recall an instance in which the people have approved the powerful for taking bribes. The Russians, accustomed as they are to corruption, record with exultation the occa- sional instances when their Czars have punished it with cruelty ; in numberless cases opinion forced corrupt New Yorkers to commit suicide; and in France, under three corrupt Administrations, juries when once appealed to have practically never acquitted. In Ireland, where all is par- doned to "patriots," to be corrupt is still the unforgivable sin ; and we do not doubt that in County Clare, where, according to Mr. Justice O'Brien, law and civilisation have ended, a jury would unanimously convict a popular hero if they believed he had taken a bribe. The very bribe- takers in the French Chamber vote for punishment, and not, we fancy, altogether to conceal their own wrong-doing. The truth is, men cannot get rid altogether of their ideals, and public servants are expected, even by the corrupt, to reach a certain standard which a large section of the Opportunist party certainly has not reached. They will, therefore, be punished at least by supersession ; and though the Panama scandal will not destroy the Republic, it will, we begin to believe, destroy the Opportunist party.
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