CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICANISM IN FRANCE.
IT would be difficult to exaggerate the dangers to the French Republic from the Bonapartist side, though those dangers may have been postponed by recent events, but it is very easy to exaggerate them from the Radical or Communist side, and public opinion in this country is very apt to do it. Men who distrust Frenchmen altogether, or who detest Republics every- where, regarding Republicanism as a sort of contagious mania, or who sigh for the brilliancy and laxity of a Cfesarist regime, all say, that as everything else is logical in France, the Republic must be logical also ; that the essence of Republicanism is that all must be done by, as well as for, the masses ; that therefore the masses sooner or later will be enthroned, and that they will upset property, religion, and the modern system of social life. They will at the very least tax the rich till riches dis- appear, prohibit public worship, and institute some system of divorce which will be equivalent to the abolition of Christian marriage. These are the doubts or beliefs spoken or unspoken of the English upper classes, and it seems to us that those who entertain them, though justified by the history of the first Revolution—which, it should never be forgotten, was not only a revolt but also an aspiration towards everything untried—forget the main facts of the modern situa- tion. In the first place, as regards France at large, where is the proof that the "masses" entertain any of the subversive ideas so generally attributed to them ? Prima' facie they are most unlikely to do so, for the majority of them, five in seven, are owners of property more or less important to them, are extremely acquisitive and industrious, strive tenaciously for their rights, and have always displayed an exaggerated fear of political disorder. They have twice elected despots, twice sanctioned the abolition of Republics, and never sent up since 1800 a " dangerous " popular Assembly. They are not very pious, it is true, but they are Catholic if anything, and very indisposed to pay for the rites which yet they must secure, if not for themselves, at least for their wives and children. As to marriage, they not only do not actively desire free divorce, but after having enjoyed the privilege for twenty-seven years, they allowed it to be replaced by the only law in Europe which absolutely disallows it. The South, it is true, has ideas which are called " Communistic," but it is rather a communal system like that of Switzerland which the South desires than confiscation, and it has never elected Repealers, or ordered its representatives to vote for taxes on the rich, or resisted the annual conscriptions. It is, politically, no more disorderly. than South Wales. Then the cities, where no doubt Socialist feeling exists, are no more opposed to Repub- licanism than to Imperialism or Monarchy, and are no more powerful under one system than the other ; they are, in fact, apart from Paris, almost powerless. There are outside the capital but four great cities in France, and Marseilles, Lyons, Toulouse, and Bordeaux are held by garri- sons against which it is impossible for them to struggle, unless they can compel the three powers in the State to grant them a sort of Federal organisation, to which an immense majority of Frenchmen are opposed. The Republic will no more create a National Guard than the Monarchy would. There is Paris, no doubt, but Paris has recently received a tremendous lesson ; it has no power of overcoming the troops except by surprise, and between the Government and that surprise lie fifteen miles of roads defensible by artillery. Of course the troops may " fraternise with the people," that is, mutiny ; but they have never done it, for in 1848 they had no order, and in 1852 they obeyed the Head of the State, and they are not likely to do it for a cause which thay detest, and in alliance with men who call them butchers, and threaten them with vengeance for 1871. The opinion of the French Army is always a doubtful point, discipline being much stricter than Englishmen suppose ; but that the Army, if ordered, would kill Communists is not doubtful at all. Physical force and mass opinion appear to us to be both on the side of Order as against the Communists, if not as against the Imperialists; and unless supported either by force or opinion, what can the Anarchists do ? Make riots ? So they can riot against an Emperor, or a Monarch, or a Marshal-Interregnum, and with this special ground for hope, that they may use
individual assassins who, as against a Republic, are com- paratively powerless. A man cannot shoot an Assembly from a garret window; and if a President is killed, the Assembly is sovereign of France, with an obligation to elect another. If it is Mob terror which is dreaded by our respectables, the Republic diminishes its chances on two sides, while on no side does it visibly increase them. It lessens the chance of assas- sination, and it leaves open the chance of removing real grievances—such, for instance, as the desperate position of French artisans when out of work—by constitutional, or rather, by legal means. Englishmen forget the sort of place England would be without a Poor Law and after a bad harvest.
But it is said the people at the head of the State must ultimately be Reds. Why ? when the Reds are not—as for attacks on property they certainly are not—in the majority ? The Left, we are told, must have its Ministers under a Republic, and that is true ; but so long as the electors are Conservative, so long may the Ministers of a Republic be Conservative too. The representatives of the majority will, in fact, in a country like France be more con- servative under a Republic than under any other form of government, and for this very evident reason. The Conserva- tive Republicans will no longer be ostracised. Half the Radical Deputies, and the most influential and best educated half, are only Radical because they are Republicans, are only classed by opinion and their votes with Anarchists on account of their com- mon dislike for personal government, whether exercised by a Napoleon through Prefects and Generals, or by a Bourbon through Generals, Prefects, and a Parliament. The Republic once conceded, they are as Conservative as their neighbours, and as much inclined to form a party of Order. Till the Republic is established M. Dufaure votes for it, and therefore votes with Radicals, and cannot be a Minister; but when it is established he is the most Conservative of men, votes with Conservatives, and can be trusted with power. The reservoir of possible Con- servative statesmen is in fact widened, not narrowed, by the pro- clamation of the Republic. What difficulty, for example, would the President find in forming a strictly Conservative yet Repub- lican Cabinet ? MM. Buffet, Dufaure, De Cissey, Leon Say, Renault, and the Duc d'Decazes would be regarded in England as cautious Tories, yet they all can if they choose work honestly and faithfully under a Republic which excludes no one content to acquiesce. No doubt questions of a more burning kind, especially ecclesiastical questions, will by and by come to the front, and divide statesmen irreparably ; but if the party which would separate Church and State has the majority, it can work by legal means, and if it has not, it has no illegal means which it would not possess under either the Monarchy or the Empire. It has no need either to make riots or to elect men for Minis- ters who would attempt to carry out a programme leading to anarchy.
But, we shall be told, the Army will be less willing to obey a Republic than either a Monarchy or an Empire, and the means of resistance to disorder will therefore be greatly weak- ened, but that plea as advanced shows not a little mental confusion. The general allegation is that the Republic is distasteful to the Army, and that is inconsistent with this particular reproach,—that the Army will not fight Com- munism. If the Army hates Republicanism, a fortiori it hates Republicanism in its most anarchic form, and its penchant for Monarchy or Imperialism is only another motive for being antagonistic to Communist insurgents. Its private opinion might conceivably leave a chance to Monarchists or Imperial- ists, whom it is assumed to like, but could leave none to Com- munists, whom it is assumed on this theory to hate extremely. As a matter of fact, we believe the French Army to be exactly like the French people—hostile to the White Flag, under which a plebeian could not rise ; distrustful of the Orleans dynasty, under which France, with some prosperity and brilliant intel- lectual life, had not sufficient dignity ; amenable to the influ- ence of Napoleonic tradition, provided an able Napoleon is ready to take the throne ; but disposed to accept the Republic if it will only march. There is, no doubt, one contingency in which the officers might declare the Republic impossible,—the contingency of the Left injuriously assailing the Army, declaring it un- necessary, or depriving its chiefs of their position in the country; but why should the contingency occur? The Spanish Repub- licans made that blunder, and are paying for it in defeat ; but where is the sign that the French Republicans are disposed to imitate them? Their chief was the last man who fought for France. They have contended for the right of soldiers to re- tain their votes ; they have supported every grant demanded for the reorganisation of the Army ; they have granted the terrible
Bills which change France into a camp ; they have accepted as first President the soldiers' favourite Marshal ; and finally, they, of all men, have warned the world that the prestige of the French Army must be rehabilitated in the eyes of the world by the revindication of the captured provinces. There is nothing in their policy as a party to which the most captious soldier could object, while they alone of all the parties allow to the soldier the chance of rising to the headship of the State. At all events, take what view we like of their opinion, it is not friendly to Com- munism, which, therefore, has no more illegal chance to day than it had before the 25th of February. Of legal chance in a country of proprietors, where every man hoards, where repudiation is never mentioned, and where an Assembly, elected byuniversal suffrage, puts on £20,000,000 of new taxes in one year, votes a Sinking Fund of £8,000,000, and regards a deficit with the horror of a Peelite—it never had the least. When will Englishmen learn that France is a country of small shop-keepers, peasant- proprietors, renders, and timid folk who like to save ?
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