THE FRENCH INDEPENDENTS. G ROUPS are so common a feature of
French Parlia- mentary life, that the appearance of a new one seldom excites any interest. There is enough, however, that is distinctive about the latest addition to the list— the Independents—to justify rather more attention than is ordinarily paid to such arrivals. The Independents are a fraction of the Right, the point of difference between the two being the attitude that ought to be maintained towards the Republican form of government. The Independents hold that the time has come for the formation of a constitutional Opposition,—an Opposition, that is, which shall be directed against the Administration of the Republic, not against the Republic itself. They are not Republican by taste or c mviction ; they would doubtless prefer Monarchy if Monarchy were to be had. But political life is not, in their judgment, a matter of pure theory. The political best is the attainable, not the ideal best. They see, as, indeed, they cannot help seeing, that what more than anything else has made the administration of the Republic what it is, has been the refusal of the Right to dissociate policy from institutions. The Republican Government—so the Right has argued—has been arbitrary, intolerant, waste- ful; therefore let us do away, not with the Republican Government, but with the Republic. Unfortunately for the success of this policy, the country, though it shared in the dislike of the Republican Govern- ment, did not share in the dislike of the Republic. On the contrary, whenever it has had to choose, it has chosen, though by dwindling majorities, to keep both rather than lose both. To the pure Right this preference has been a matter of no concern. With them the form is more than the substance. They would rather live under a bad Monarchy than under a good Republic. With the Independents it is different. They are not prepared to acquiesce in being ill-governed, because to try to be better governed would involve a recognition of the Republic. They have come at last to see that the Right live in a world of the past and the future which has no connection with the actual world of the present, and that if they are to influence the present, they must recognise the difference between facts as they are, and facts as they would like them to be. The Independents are anxious not to break away from the party to which they have hitherto belonged. But it takes two to maintain a union as well as to make a quarrel, and we suspect that in this case the co-operation of one will be wanting. The Right will read the programme of the Independents with something more than indifference. Or, rather, they will not trouble themselves to read it. It is the work of men who have determined to accept the Republic, to be content with things as they are, to let the nation impose on them the institutions it happens to like. To the genuine Royalist, a man who accepts the Republic, no matter in what spirit, is as bad as a Republican.
Yet the Independent programme, when looked at with unjaundiced eyes, is in almost every particular a profession of thoroughly reasonable Conservatism. It is, in fact, just such a programme as the Republican Government, if it were wise, would long ago have put out on its own behalf. The object of the Independents is to help on the formation of a new Ministerial majority, and with that view to support necessary reforms without reference to the quarter from which they come. These reforms include financial economy, no new loans and no new taxes ; the repeal of the laws of exile ; liberty to the communes to set up Voluntary schools where they prefer them ; permission to ministers of religion to give religious instruction in elementary schools to children willing to receive it ; a rendering of the military law which shall secure the cultivation of the higher studies and the maintenance of the supply of clergy ; protection of agriculture ; and a careful study of questions relating to labour. With the exception of Protection, which is now the common property of all French parties, there is not a word in this that can be objected to, nor that is even strange to French ears. On the contrary, it is precisely what the wisest Republicans have for years past been urging upon their own party. Men as diverse as M. Jules Simon and M. Challemel Lacour have preached the danger to the Republic of intolerance and extravagance, the necessity of conciliation and public frugality. May we hope that now that these eminent Republicans have been reinforced by the Inde- pendents, they will by degrees gain strength in the Legis- lature, and either make the present Government what it ought to be, or replace it by another ?
Reasonable as this inquiry sounds, it is not one that can be answered with confidence. A Government administered on these principles would. command the confidence of moderate men of all parties, and no one who is not a fanatic doubts that moderate men form a majority of the French people. But a Government administered on these principles is not so easily had. It is not enough that the Ministers in Paris preach conciliation, and desire all their subordinates to practise it. What is wanted is some guarantee that these subordinates will do what their chiefs bid them. A Minister can but give general directions ; it rests with the subordinates to put them into effect. A subordinate does not reply to the Minister with an express refusal to be conciliatory. If he has to reply at all, it is with profuse assurances of his determination to carry out his superior's wishes. But in each particular case, he has to decide for himself what conciliation means, and in all probability his reading of the term is very different from that which would be accepted at Paris. He is ignorant, prejudiced, and perhaps brutal, and such a man can hardly be conciliatory if he will. But in all probability he does not wish to be conciliatory. He is himself a legacy from days when merely to talk of con- ciliation marked a man as a traitor to the Republic ; and the people to whom he is to show himself conciliatory are not Royalists and Catholics in the abstract, but men with whom he has been at bitter enmity all his life. Consequently, the directions of the Minister are not obeyed, or obeyed very imperfectly, or obeyed in great things and disobeyed in those small things which really do more than anything else to make a government popular or unpopular. It may be objected that self- interest will always make an official anxious to do what his chief tells him ; but in the present case, this general rule is qualified by two considerations. In the first place, the subordinate, even if he is convinced that the Minister means what he says, is not at all sure that he will long be in a position to say it. He looks to the efforts of the Extreme Left to make it impossible for a Moderate Minister to keep both his opinions and his office, and it must be admitted that for the most part he does not look in vain. It is so long since the Republic paid auy heed to Thiers's counsels, the Left Centre has so long ceased to have any place in French politics, that disbelief in any real and permanent change of Republican policy is very natural and very obstinate. In the second place, conciliation, if it makes for his immediate in- terest, does not make at all for his ultimate interest. It is not by any process of natural selection that he got his present post. There are many men in the town or in the district who are far more respectable as to character and far better fitted to do the work. They were passed over, and he was appointed because he was able and willing to recommend himself to the Radical Government, while they were not. His chance of keeping his place, or of seeing his son succeed to it, depends on the continued exclusion of these men. If anything happened to make them eligible for such a post as his, the present occupant would have but a poor chance of retaining it. Con- sequently, he may really be consulting his own advantage by what looks at first sight like a rash defiance of autho- rity. He may be wise in building his hopes on the failure of the experiment rather than on his ability to profit by it. This is the more true because he is in a position in which he can very effectively contribute to its failure. The greatest danger it has to encounter is the popular disbelief that the Republic can be other than what it is. It is this feeling that, more than anything else, is the backbone of the Royalist Party in France. The rank and file of that party care very little about the principle of Monarchy. They are Royalists because they think that good govern- ment is only possible under a Monarchy. Conciliation would gradually disabuse them of this belief, and by bringing them round to the Republic, would further strengthen the moderate party among Republicans. The absence of conciliation will only make Royalists more dis- trustful of the Ministers who have promised it, and more unwilling to listen to any similar pledges in the future. This is one among the obstacles by which the new party will be confronted, and to surmount it will make large demands on their patience and discretion.
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