The Arena. Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891

Since September 4, 1870, up to the present day, there have been no less than twenty-eight different ministries, which makes, on an average, a new ministry about every nine months. There were three ministries in each of the years 1873 and 1877, while in 1876, 1879, 1882, 1883, 1886, and 1887, there were two each. The longest ministry was the second, presided over by M. Jules Ferry, which lasted from February 21, 1883, to April 6, 1885, or a few weeks over two years. Gambetta’s famous ministry—called in derision “le grand ministère“—lasted two months and a half. M. de Freycinet, the present prime minister, has been in power four times since 1879, the first time for nine months, the second for six months, the third for eleven months, and the fourth since March of last year. Among the shortest ministries were those of M. Dufaure, from May 18 to May 25, 1873; General de Rochebouet, from November 23 to December 13, 1877, and M. Fallières from January 29 to February 21, 1883.

The persistency with which the reactionists refuse to recognize the legal government of France, is another source of weakness in the present institutions. When M. Carnot gives a reception at the Elysée Palace you never see a deputy or a Senator of the Right advancing to salute the president and his wife, and when he offers a grand state dinner to parliament, he does not invite members outside of the republican party because he would run the risk of receiving a curt regret.1 What is true of M. Carnot and the Elysée holds good also for all the ministers and other high functionaries: they are left severely alone by Monarchists and Bonapartists alike.

This sulking in the tent on the part of the reactionists has in it something worse than their simple absence from all official social ceremonies. The talents, experience, and patriotism of this élite are almost wholly lost to the country, and to the government. From the ministries, the judiciary, the foreign embassies, the prefectures, and the rectorships of the universities, they are necessarily excluded. The ancient nobility of the old regime with its wealth and traditions, and the younger nobility of the first and second empires; the blue blood bourgeoisée, especially of the provinces, and the aristocratic ladies of all classes, turn their backs, almost without exception, on the new order of things, and sigh for court and king or emperor.

In the provinces this detestation of the republic sometimes becomes ludicrous. In Montpelier, for instance, “polite circles” absolutely boycott the republican official world. The prefect has a palatial residence but does not dare to throw open his salons, for none of “the first families” would respond to his invitation. When the mayor of the city, before whom all marriages must be performed, is invited to the reception at the house, none of the reactionary coterie will have a word with him and none of their young men will dance with his daughter. I have heard similar stories from Pan, Castres, and Albi, and doubtless the same thing is true of many other cities. But royalists and Bonapartists would not feel too much out of place in the French republic, for it is astonishing, at least to an American, to see how many monarchical customs have been preserved by the present government. And this brings me to the consideration of a new source of weakness of the republic. I refer to its unrepublican features. A few examples will explain what I mean.

The “military household” is one of the imperial institutions which the third republic accepted and continued. The first president, however, did not revive it. “M. Thiers never had a military household,” M. Barthélémy Saint Hilaire, his private secretary and fidus achates writes me; “however, in order to honor the army, he had two orderlies.” But when Marshal MacMahon became president in 1873, it was only natural that he should surround himself with soldiers. At first the “Cabinet of the Presidency” consisted of three officials, one of them being a colonel. In 1875 this cabinet had grown to five members, two of them colonels, and one an artillery officer. In 1879 the “Cabinet of the Presidency” was reduced to two members with a colonel at its head, but was supplemented with a “military household”—the first appearance of this institution under the third republic—consisting of six officers, so that Marshal MacMahon had seven officers in all as his immediate attendants.

At this point M. Grévy enters the Elysée. He throws out the military member of the Cabinet of the Presidency, but increases by one his military household, so that there were as many officers at the Elysée under the lawyer president as under the marshal president. Nor has M. Carnot, the engineer president, departed from the example set by his two predecessors.

When I asked M. Barthélémy Saint Hilaire the explanation of this custom, he answered: “Our kings were always provided with a military household, in which marine officers also figured. It is doubtless this precedent which has surrounded civilian republicans with a body of officers. The custom is due less to necessity than to a desire to show respect for the army and navy.”

This same military parade is seen at the senate and chamber. During a sitting of either of these bodies a company of infantry is kept under arms in a room adjoining the legislative hall, and when the president of either house enters the building, he advances between two files of soldiers presenting arms, and is escorted to his chair by the commanding officer.

This military element in the present government is as unnecessary as it is dangerous and pernicious. It is dangerous because it might be turned by an ambitious president against the very constitution he has taken an oath to defend. Two instances of this danger are afforded by the action of Napoleon I. on the 18th Soumaire and by that of Napoleon III. on the 2d of December, 1852. It is pernicious because it keeps alive in France that love for military display, and that thirst for conquest, which have been the curse of the country since the days of Louis XIV.

Another one of these monarchical growths which still flourishes under the republic is the excessive reverence and even awe which the public shows to its high officials. When President Carnot appears anywhere, his reception scarcely differs from that shown to Emperor William in the course of his numerous journeys. The president is allowed six hundred thousand francs for “entertaining and travelling,” and his balls and dinners at the Elysée, and especially his official tours through the country smack of royalty to an extraordinary degree. A year ago I had an opportunity at Montpelier to study one of these official visits in all its details, and I was astonished at the royal aspect of the whole affair. The conferring of decorations, the dispensing of money to deserving charities, the cut and dried speeches of the president and the mayors, the military honors,—all this is far removed from that “Jeffersonian simplicity” which Americans at least associate with a republic.

One of the most noticeable characteristics of these tours is the excessive manner in which “the republic” is kept to the fore. In his speeches while “swinging around the circle” President Carnot is continually informing expectant mayors and delighted citizens that “the government of the republic” is watching over their every interest, and he then hastens to thank them for the enthusiastic welcome which they have given to “the republic” in his humble person. The phylloxera has destroyed the vineyards of this or that region, but “the republican minister of agriculture” is successfully extirpating the injurious insect. The new schoolhouses of another city owe their magnificence “to the deep solicitude of the republic for the education of the masses,” while the recently constructed bridge over the river is the work of “the engineers of the republic.” In a word, the farmer and his crops, the mechanic and his house-rent, the schoolmaster and his salary, the wine growers and their plaster, the day laborers and their hours of work, and of course the politicians and their constituents, if the former be republicans, are, according to presidential oratory, the special care of the republic.

Nor is it President Carnot alone who thus proclaims the extraordinary virtues of the ever watchful republic. The ministers, who are continually indulging in brief tours into the provinces, doing en petit what M. Carnot does en grand, are even more assiduous than the president (because their political position is less secure,) in sounding on all occasions the praises of the republic.

Nor is this ringing of the changes on the word republic confined to the oratory of presidential and ministerial junketings. The obtrusion is brought about in many other ways. Thus M. Carnot is always spoken of in the newspapers and elsewhere as “the president of the republic.” M. Waddington at London is “the ambassador of the republic.” The district attorney is “the attorney of the republic.” An official bust of the republic is given the place of honor on the walls of the town council chamber, the public schoolroom, and the courtroom. A new bridge will have carved on its arches the monogram R. F. (République Française) while the same familiar letters stare at you from the fronts of all the public buildings erected since 1870.

The practice is impolitic, to say the least. We have already seen how large and powerful is the body of enemies of the present institutions. It is a mistake thus to force them to admit, at every turn, that they are being governed by a regime which they detest. At a sitting of the Chamber of Deputies, the Minister of Foreign Affairs declares that “the government of the republic,” not France, is negotiating this or that matter. The Minister of the Interior is called upon to explain some rather high-handed measure against obstreperous agitators, and he informs the deputies that “the republic” will not permit laws to be broken with impunity. The Minister of Public Instruction presents a bill for the reorganization of the university system, and in his speech in its support dwells on “the solicitude of the republic for the education of the masses,” thus exciting the opposition of a third of the members of the Chamber. Some of the stormiest and most disgraceful scenes that have occurred in the Chamber of Deputies during the past twenty years are traceable to this foolish parading of the word republic. The republican party could cut the ground from under the feet of their opponents, and bring over thousands of fresh recruits to the new institutions if they would only speak less of the republic and more of France.2

Another grave error of the republic is its break with the Catholic Church. I have no space here to place the blame where it belongs. I wish simply to point out the lamentable fact that the whole powerful organization of Rome is arrayed against the present government of France. The danger from this source cannot be exaggerated. It has made the whole body of women enemies of the republic, and “a government which has the women against it is lost,” says Laboulaye. And if Cardinal Lavigerie and the Pope are, at the eleventh hour, coming around to the republic, is it to be wondered at that the Radicals declare that the Church is changing front for the purpose of capturing rather than supporting the republic?

Attacking the purse is quite as grave a mistake as attacking the religion of the thrifty, economical, and provident Frenchman. The financial policy of the republic is unpopular. The annual deficit and the increasing taxation are crying evils even more difficult to handle than are religious troubles, while conservative republican statesmen, like Senator Barthélémy Saint Hilaire, tell me that the national debt keeps on increasing at such a rate that the bankruptcy of France seems sure in the more or less distant future. The present tendency towards a high protective tariff is an attempt to bring money into the national treasury, and thus relieve the peasant and manufacturer not only from foreign competition, but from the disagreeable claims of the tax-gatherer.

The Alsace Lorraine imbroglio must, of course, be mentioned in any list of the dangers threatening the French republic. But it is not so dangerous as might appear at first blush, for, although it is quite true that a war with Germany, especially if it should terminate disastrously, would shake the republic to its foundations, and perhaps topple it to the ground, this same Alsace-Lorraine difficulty is, in home affairs, almost the only question in whose consideration all parties unite on the common ground of patriotism. A republican orator is sure to win the applause of the Right when he refers in eloquent terms to the “Lost Provinces,” “about which,” as Gambetta said, “a Frenchman should always think but say nothing.”

My picture is full of dark colors. But I do not think that I have exaggerated the faults and weaknesses of the third republic. But it should be borne in mind that in this brief paper I have dealt alone on the faults and weaknesses. If I were to go farther and examine the merits and strong points of the present government of France, I could easily prove that notwithstanding these faults and weaknesses, it is highly probable that the various royal and imperial pretenders, their children and their children’s children, will, live and die without ever being able to set up again in France the throne of the Capets or that of the Bonapartes.

LEADERLESS MOBS

BY H. C. BRADSBY

Office-holding politicians who have heretofore led the people, are leading them now, until we, the hapless voters, find ourselves confronted with the following so-called issues, or rather absurdities:—

Protection with reciprocity—Republicanism.

Free trade with incidental protection—Democracy.

The Democratic ex-President and the Republican President are in perfect agreement on the question of remonetizing silver and many sub-leaders and able party newspapers on both sides are in accord with these two successors of Washington, and the sub-lieutenants pass the word around, “Do not discuss the silver question, it is an immaterial issue.”

These are the anomalous conditions of American politics stated in all seriousness as they appear to a layman.

A professional politician, even the man who hopes for future office, understands that real issues are things to be avoided, because he would rather placate than antagonize, and he needs friends and supporters, both in the nominating convention and at the polls; and he is in his best form when he can campaign without a real issue and help select his adversaries “in buckram and Kendall green” to have it out with, on the stump. He knows that a plump, simple issue would reach the average voter’s comprehension, and compel him to a simple “yes” or “no” that might blast his hopes, destroy this happy equilibrium of voting parties, and the trade of politics might actually go out of fashion. Pricked by his fears of all real issues, he becomes a genius in inventing handy apparent ones that are usually glittering nothings—impalpable shadows about which he can talk so learnedly by the life-time, and say nothing and mean nothing. So rapidly has this expert developed in our land of politics that one man shouts, “I am for tweedle-dum” and the other answers defiantly back, “I am for tweedle-dee,” and the “campaign of education” is on, the jockeys mounted, the race begins, and as the cloud of dust rises, “the greasy caps” fill the air. “Spotted Free Trade” is ridden by the “Old Flag”; “Revenue Only” by the “Screaming Eagle,” and the excited voter stakes his future hopes on “Flag” or “Eagle,” most probably as did his father before him.

It seems this is the wretched outcome of the hundred years of American education in politics—making of every man not only a sovereign, but a possible candidate for President. What is it all but a roaring farce? If we could forget that this is real government coupled with all the pains and penalties which are the heritage of ignorance, and not mere child’s play, then even serious intelligence might smile though commiserating the follies of grown men. Have we finally reached the condition tending toward national political dementia, or is there no meaning whatever attached any longer to the name of statesman?

Let us look a little further into the absurdities over which American statesmen are so vehemently wrangling. Our government assumes the old time function of all governments to make and regulate the currency or money for the transaction of business—a mere convenience for the measure of values in buying and selling—in another way a thing performing functions similar to the yard-stick in measuring, and the great statesmen are wrangling over the problem of what particular material that convenience shall be made. And our nation, through Congress and the President, is ever tinkering, changing, altering, and reversing regulations concerning this “value measurer”—this convenient representative of property, and the basis of all commerce, gold, silver, copper, nickel, and paper to-day, and on this basis contracts and multitudinous transactions are based; then apparently that confusion and ruin may follow, an act of Congress may be passed to-morrow changing the whole thing by demonetizing one or remonetizing the other; and the government finally opens a junk-shop, and is engaged actively in the “second-hand” trade, or is in sharp competition with the rag-picker. And our great political educators fall to wrangling about a proposition, that could be paralleled only by some phenomenal crank beating up recruits for a new party upon a platform that all yard-sticks must be made of hickory wood, and he shall be deemed a counterfeiter who dares to use any other, and the length of the yard-stick must be flexible so that “a yard shall always contain a yard’s worth of cloth.” The children open a play store, and there the legal tender for all goods is pins, where the size of the pin or the exact composition it is made of are never considered. There is, to my mind, no question but the children should teach our great statesmen some of the fundamentals of common sense. These are specimens of the economic problems evolved from our hundred years of voting experiment—the ripened fruit of self-government. Books and papers are filled with discussions of whether both gold and silver should be legal tender for debts or only gold. And the rank sophistries that mark the flood-tide of a campaign discussion either of this or the problem of taxation are surely to be considered among the curiosities of our civilization. Just why men should range themselves on respective party lines on these questions and shut their eyes to evils that are eating their way to the heart of government and that unchecked must end in common ruin, passes comprehension.

The organization of a powerful party machinery with the authority to discipline recalcitrant or discordant members is a natural outgrowth of our universal voting. The active politicians and place hunters will control the machine, and when office, and place are made glittering prizes, then comes the inevitable scramble, the selfishness, trampling the weak by the strong, corruption, chicanery, the unspeakable crimes, and finally the Pandora’s box is opened, and the swarming evils darken the heavens. Inferior men with greatest cunning and least scruples soon push their way to the front; all sight of good government is eventually lost, the Washingtons and Jeffersons in time disappear with a constantly increasing ratio from public life, and the end is the great Leaderless Mob and bloody chaos. Even at best our politicians and party publications sing in unison, all struggling to the same end, victory at the polls and the elimination, as far as possible, of real issues. Their quadrennial platforms are ever coming nearer and nearer together—not omitting a plank expressing “profound sympathy” with the poor, persecuted people of some part of the Old World. A large majority of the Democracy are openly in favor of free trade and free silver, while the average “favorite son” is only in favor of “reform” in tariff, and hence you can find men in favor of a prohibitory tariff calling themselves Democrats; while many of the lay members of the Republican party are the earnest advocates of free trade and free silver. If our statesmen do not use words to conceal ideas, then there is no question but that the rank and file, those caring nothing about the offices personally, are in advance of their leaders and party publications. Unfortunately the average voter studies the science of politics—good government,—only when thumb-screwed by bad legislation. When happy and revelling in plenty, this cunning thrift of politicians is good enough “statesmanship” for pretty much all of us; then we can really admire the brightness of the great “Magnetic” when he says, “Boys, I am a model high tarriffite, and in favor of reciprocity;” even the vitriolic ravings of the iridescent—sparkling phrases without ideas, torchlight jeremaids about the poor Southern negro, are all brilliant statesmanship; so long as the waters are smooth and prosperous, plenty is coming to everybody. But when the pinch of misgovernment comes in the form of the gaunt wolf then the people rise up, and without a “statesman” to lead, without a newspaper to educate, but with a holy wrath, crush out these official puppets. For at least sixteen years the unbiased intelligence of the Democratic party (not politicians) has been urging party leaders to take the bold stand for free trade. During the same time the Republican voters have urged their leaders to declare for “protection for protection’s sake.”

In 1888 the Republican Convention boldly challenged Democrats to the open issue of protection absolute versus free trade. The best voters on the other side were eager to pick up this gauge of battle, but their leaders, covert protectionists, and makeshift office seekers, bade them nay, and a Democratic “stump speech” in that campaign was a curiosity. Part first would demonstrate the infamy of all “protection” taxes; part second would demonstrate that the orator was in favor of “protection” to a certain degree. Thus handicapped, the Democratic office seekers fought out the long campaign and lost as they deserved. Happily for the country, because that victory convinced every Republican in the land, except the man of Maine, that the people wanted prohibitory tariffs, all foreign commerce destroyed, and that they honestly believed there was such a thing as “home markets” to be regulated by statute. And the “three Bow Street tailors in Congress” proceeded in all sincerity to carry out what they, in their simplicity, judged to be the instruction given by the people at the polls. The “great secretary” alone of the “smart” men of the land, understood the people in the ‘88 election better; he, it seems, well understood that “protection” carried to prohibition was the yawning grave of any party responsible for it without providing some loop-hole of escape in the burial ceremony, and this unequalled politician in the nick of time startled the country with the cry of “Reciprocity”—spotted free trade. His messmates turned upon him with objurgations deep, yet he had saved them from themselves, by the bold dash of a “plumed knight.” Had he been in the Kansas senator’s place, Kansas would have been again cajoled and humbugged into silence, and possibly have given an increase on its 82,000 Republican majority.

Mr. Blaine was constantly defeated in his ambition to be President. General Harrison was successful and fills the place that ex-officio makes him leader. He is nominally the party captain, while in truth there is more real power in one hand of his armor bearer than there is in the loins of the Executive. Now the author of the bill increasing taxes thinks he is on the road to the White House by campaigning Ohio on the beauties of protection—with reciprocity or “free trade in spots” left out entirely,—Blaine’s happiest invention and the only thing that will save “the Napoleon” if saved at all, from crushing defeat this Fall in his own State. The Democrats have put up against him Governor Campbell with the plankless platform of the “McKinley bill,” and an internal discussion on the silver question. Thus the two parties of that great State are marshalling in battle array their lines under banners that might be labelled “Tweedle-dum” and “Tweedle-dee.” The last Democratic President was a product of the long successes of the Republican party and its mistakes, chief among which was the covert act demonetizing silver in 1873. It brought its train of wrong and disaster to our nation; while the people were unconscious of the cause, yet they could feel the pangs, and results ripened in 1884 in the election of the Buffalo mayor. As President and as ex-President he is the natural party leader, but he has endorsed the monstrous act of 1873 in regard to silver, the very mistake that chiefly made him President, and now should that bar forever the door of the White House to his re-entry therein, the result would not be one of the seven wonders of the world.