France and the Republic Part 11

'"The figure of our Saviour Christ, set up there in very special circ.u.mstances, and with a solemn ceremony in which more than 30,000 spectators took part, was clandestinely thrown down and taken away the night before last. It is impossible for me to imagine that the authorities can have ordered such a thing to be done.

'"I must request you, Mr. Prefect, to order an inquiry to be made into this inexplicable affair, and to cause the authors of the act to be prosecuted according to law. Please accept the a.s.surance of my respectful regard.

'"[Ill.u.s.tration] AIME VICTOR-FRANCIS, '"Bishop of Amiens."

'To this letter, written by the highest ecclesiastical authority of the chief city of his prefecture--will you believe it?--M. Spuller, who is after all not a perfectly illiterate person like Pet.i.t, actually made no reply!

'But the cotton-velvet bagman of blasphemy three days afterwards, reading in the papers the letter of Bishop Guilbert, burst into print with this incredible but most instructive effusion, addressed to his friend the Prefect:

'"Amiens: Nov. 15, 1880.

'"Mr. Prefect,--I find this morning in the journals of the bishopric the text of a letter addressed to you by the Bishop of Amiens in regard to the suppression of the Catholic emblem placed at the entrance of the general cemetery of the Madeleine.

'"It was by my order, and my written order, that the Christ of the Madeleine was removed. The only failure to comply with my orders was that the operation was performed in the evening after the cemetery was closed, instead of in the morning as I had directed.

In acting thus, I have shown great tolerance; for, in virtue of Article 13 of the Law of the 7th Vendemiaire of the Year IV., circ.u.mscribed in its application, but not abrogated by the Law of the 18th Germinal year X., as is shown by a ministerial decree of the 7th Fructidor following: 'No sign special to any religion can be raised, fixed, and attached in any place whatever, so as to strike the eyes of citizens, except in an enclosure intended for the exercises of this religion, or in the interior of private houses, in the studios or warehouses of artists or merchants, or in public edifices destined to contain monuments of the arts."'

'Then followed a dozen pages of similar twaddle, meant to show that the mayor of Amiens was a most tolerant prince, in that he had not ordered the destruction of every cross set up on a private grave!

'Of course all these laws of the First Republic were long ago shot into s.p.a.ce under the Consulate and the Empire, and of course, even if they had not been shot into s.p.a.ce, a consecrated cemetery is an "enclosure intended for the exercises of religion." But what did that signify to M.

Pet.i.t, who, in a public speech the year after, boasted that he "had not been married in church, and that his children had never been baptized."

'Did all this give the man any right to destroy and carry away a costly piece of artistic work, the property of the city?'

Obviously, it is as absurd to expect peace and order in France under a republic in which men like M. Pet.i.t, and M. Spuller, and M. Dauphin, and M. Goblet are leading friends of the Government, as it would have been to expect peace and order in the England of the seventeenth century, when churchwardens--as at Banbury, for example--went about breaking at night into the churches confided to their care, and smashing the statues of the saints and defacing the glorious monuments of the past.

After considering all these humours and graces of the most recent French Republic, as set forth by the senatorial mayor of Amiens, for the edification of Picardy and France, it was interesting to walk with Mr.

Ruskin from the Place de Perigord up the 'Street of the Three Pebbles,'

past the theatre and the Palais de Justice, to the south transept of that glorious cathedral which has not as yet been taken down by night, under the senatorial mayor or his friends the ministers, M. Spuller and M. Yves Guyot. Why should this 'Parthenon of Gothic architecture,' as M.

Viollet-le-Duc calls it, be left standing when the Calvary of the poor at Amiens is cast down and sawn in pieces?

For surely Mr. Ruskin, who has written many true and eloquent things, has written nothing truer than these words with which he brings to a close his remarkable paper called the 'Bible of Amiens':--

'The life and gospel and power of Christianity are all written in the mighty works of its true believers, in Normandy and Sicily, on river-islets of France and in the river glens of England, on the rocks of Orvieto and by the sands of Arno. But of all, the simplest, completest, and most authoritative in its lessons to the active mind of Northern Europe, is this on the foundation-stones of Amiens. Believe it or not as you will--only understand how thoroughly it was once believed--and that all beautiful things were made and all brave deeds done in the strength of it--until what we may call "this present time," in which it is gravely asked whether religion has any effect on morals, by persons (senatorial and other) who have essentially no idea whatever of the meaning of either religion or morality.'

CHAPTER VI.

IN THE SOMME--_continued_

AMIENS

Where party names are taken from persons, there we may be sure that the people are either losing, or have never had, the political instincts which alone can make popular government a government of law and order.

The Englishmen who are readiest to proclaim themselves 'Gladstonians,'

whatever may be their other merits, are hardly perhaps the most devoted champions either of the British const.i.tution as it is, or of strictly const.i.tutional reform. In France to-day, the Republican party is made up of clans, each taking the name of its chief. There are Ferryists and Clementists, as there were Gambettists; and the Government of the day is putting forth all its strength to check the drift over of what I suppose I may without impropriety call the Republican residuum into Boulangism.

Here in Amiens the tide seems to be too strong for the authorities at Paris, and for that matter throughout the department of the Somme. At the election nearly a year ago, on August 19, 1888, of a deputy to fill the vacancy caused by the death of a Royalist member, M. de Berly, General Boulanger came forward as a candidate and was elected by an overwhelming majority. There are 160,400 electors in the department. Of these, 121,955 voted. General Boulanger received 76,094 votes, and his Republican compet.i.tor, M. Barnot, only 41,371, General Boulanger having been elected at the same time for the Nord and the Charente-Inferieure.

General Boulanger resigned his seat and his Republican followers cast their votes for a Royalist, General de Montauban, who was elected. In the arrondiss.e.m.e.nt of Amiens, with 57,527 registered voters, General Boulanger had a majority, in 1888, of 15,274 voters, the whole vote thrown there being 42,609. Yet, in 1881, on a total registration of 47,923 voters, the Republican candidates for Amiens, M. Goblet and M.

Dieu, were elected by a combined majority of 7,094 votes. If the Boulangists carry Amiens, therefore, at the legislative election this year, it may be taken for granted, I think, that M. Goblet and his friend the senatorial mayor have not educated their fellow-citizens into very staunch and trustworthy supporters of the Republic.

M. Fleury, the editor-in-chief of the Conservative _Echo de la Somme_, who made a pretty thorough canva.s.s of the department before the election of August 19, 1888, gives me some curious details as to that election.

The monarchists, both royalists and imperialists, gave a general and tacit, and in many cases an overt and active, support to General Boulanger, their object being the same as his--to bring about a repeal of the existing law of 1884, which was pa.s.sed to prevent any real revision of the const.i.tution in a sense hostile to the existing republican form of government. Of course if the people of the Somme had really cared anything about the Republic as a form of government, they ought to have defeated General Boulanger. It is the opinion of M. Fleury that the people of the Somme, and indeed of Picardy, not only care little or nothing about the Republic as a form of government, but actually and by a considerable majority prefer some monarchical form--probably, on the whole, the Empire.

They are not in the least likely to express this preference at the polls, because, in common with the vast majority of the electors throughout France, they have been born and brought up to take their form of government from Paris. So long as the government at Paris--be it royal, imperial, or republican--controls the executive, the people of the provinces are extremely unlikely to make an emphatic effort of their own to be rid of that government. If Louis Philippe, in 1848, would have allowed Marshal Bugeaud to use the force at his command in Paris, the Republic improvised in February of that year would have been strangled before birth, to the extreme satisfaction of an enormous majority of the French people. This was afterwards overwhelmingly shown by the election of Louis Napoleon, when General Cavaignac, with all the advantage of the control of the machinery of government at Paris, could secure only a relatively insignificant popular vote at the polls against the representative of the imperial monarchy. I spent the winter in Paris two years afterwards as a youth, during my first tour in Europe, and I there heard an American resident of Paris, well known at that time in the world of French politics, Mr. George Sumner, a brother of the senator from Ma.s.sachusetts, relate in the _salon_ of M. de Tocqueville a curious story of the days of February, which strikingly ill.u.s.trates the disposition of the French provinces at that time to take whatever Paris might send them in the way either of administration or of revolution.

The king refused to let the Marechal Duc d'Isly restore order (as there is no doubt he could easily and quickly have done), on the ground that he had received the Crown from the National Guard in Paris, and that he would not allow it to be defended by the line against them. The recently published letters of his very popular son, the Duc d'Orleans, prove that, had that prince been then living, he probably would never have allowed this scruple to stand in the way of averting a social and political catastrophe. But the duc was in his untimely grave, and the control of events fell most unexpectedly into the hands of a few men who had no concerted plan of action, and, indeed, hardly knew whether they were awake or dreaming. 'They proclaimed a republic,' said Mr. Sumner, 'because they did not know what else to do;' but they were in a state of utter bewilderment at first, as to how they should get the republic accepted by the provinces. A happy thought struck M. Armand Marrast. In those days the French railway system was little developed. Most of the mails from Paris were carried through the country by malles-postes and diligences, and every evening an immense number of these coaches left the central bureau for all parts of France. M. Marrast sent into all the quarters of Paris and impounded, in one way or another, the services and the paintpots of every house and furniture painter upon whom his people could lay hands. These were all set to work upon the mail coaches. The royal arms, with the Charter and the Crown, were painted over, and the vehicles which, from Paris, carried to all parts of France the news of the proclamation of the Republic carried everywhere also an outward and visible sign of the establishment of the new government in the words 'Republique Francaise' brightly blazoned upon their panels.

I recalled this story to Mr. Sumner years afterwards in New York, and he a.s.sured me not only that it was literally correct, but that he had been consulted himself about it by M. Marrast at the time. This particular device could not now be used as effectively. But, with the telegraph wires and the telephones in its control, any government which may get itself installed to-morrow in Paris would certainly have tremendous odds in its favour, from one end of France to the other. The immense increase of the French public debt under the republican administration since 1877 has correspondingly increased, all over France, the number of people known as _pet.i.ts rentiers_, who, having invested their savings, in part or wholly, in the public securities, will be as quick to acquiesce in any revolution which they believe to have been successful at Paris, as they are slow to promote any revolution, no matter how desirable otherwise a change in the government may seem to them to be. So long as it is not shaken out of the public offices at Paris, the government of the Republic may probably count upon this vast body of quiet people, as confidently as the Empire counted upon it twenty years ago, or as the monarchy or the dictatorship might count upon it to-morrow, were the king or the dictator acclaimed in the capital.

M. Fleury cites one of General Boulanger's most active supporters, M.

Mermieix, as saying to him during the election in 1888, 'with a few millions of francs, the liberty of the press and of public billsticking, and three thousand rowdies, I can change the government of this country in less than a year.'

The remark is slightly cynical. But the extreme anxiety of the government of the Republic to get General Boulanger either into a prison or out of Paris certainly goes far to justify the boast of M. Mermeix.

'I told General Boulanger at Doullens,' said M. Fleury, after going thither in company with him from Amiens, 'that he was sure of his election. My reason was that while I saw little real enthusiasm for him at Amiens, none at all indeed among the middle cla.s.ses, and no open display of any on the part of the workmen, I found the peasants for him almost to a man. They crowded about his railway carriage. They insisted on shaking hands with him, many of them kissed his hand (that ancient form of homage lingering still in their traditions), they fired off guns, and, above all, the women held up their children to be kissed by him. This settled the question for me. When I saw him kissing the little girls, I knew that he had captured the mammas, and the mammas govern the rural regions of Picardy.

'At Doullens I said to him, "You may be sure of your results now. You will win by twenty-five thousand majority." He was very modest about it; but, though he certainly is not a great politician, he seemed to understand the meaning of this unquestionable popular interest in him and his progress. I could not help, however, calling his attention to the evidence it gave of what I believe to be the profoundly monarchical instincts of the peasantry in this part of France.'

'How did he take it?

'Oh! he said nothing, but smiled in a way which might mean anything. Of course his idea of a republic of honest men means, and can mean, nothing but a republic with a chief who is beyond the reach of deputies and contractors.'

'That,' I said, 'seems to have been simply Lafayette's idea, in 1792, of an American republic for France, with a hereditary executive; or, in other words, a French edition of the English "republic with a crown."'

M. Fleury replied, that this is rather the aim of the monarchists than of the Boulangists. One of General Boulanger's lieutenants, M. Mermeix, already cited, told him frankly that the Boulangists want a sort of consulate stopping short of the Empire--a strong republic with a nationally nominated chief, freedom of conscience, freedom of education, no more parliaments, a simpler public administration, and the cutting out of the financial cancer which is destroying the resources of France.

The coalition now existing between the royalists, the imperialists, and the Boulangists, in view of the elections of 1889, obviously rests upon the conviction, common to all these parties, that the Republic, as at present const.i.tuted, is so far committed to a policy of reckless public expenditure and of deliberately irreligious propagandism that its leaders cannot, if they would, either readjust the national finances or let the religious question alone.

A man of much ability and of very high character, who has filled important financial posts under the Empire in this part of France, tells me that there has been no real balancing, now, of the public books for several years, because the members of the Cour des Comptes whose duty it is to get this done have found it impossible (and so reported) to get all the necessary accounts from the Ministry of Finance. As no Conservative members are permitted to sit on the Committee of the Budget, even such a monstrous thing as this pa.s.ses unchecked by the Chamber. No wonder that he should tell me, M. Bethmont, one of the members of the Cour des Comptes and a Republican, is of the opinion that nothing can make matters straight again in France but an Emperor with a Liberal const.i.tution, or, in other words, a revival of the Ollivier experiment of 1870.

I tried in vain to get from M. Fleury some definite notion of the political programme of General Boulanger. As I have been constantly a.s.sured that the General formed his programme from his observation of the inst.i.tutions of my own country during the short time which he spent in America, as one of the chosen representatives of France during the centennial celebration of the crowning victory of Yorktown, in 1881, I have long been not unnaturally curious to ascertain precisely how he proposes to 'Americanise' the actual government of France. But on this point I can get no more light from M. Fleury in Picardy--though M.

Fleury spent some time with the General as a not unsympathetic ally--than I have been able to get from any of the General's most devoted partisans in Paris. In Picardy as in Paris, Boulangism seems to represent a destructive--or, if the phrase be more polite, a detergent--rather than a constructive force. It is not the less worthy of consideration, perhaps, on this account. But on this account it appears to me more likely to play a subordinate than a leading part in the political movement of these times. It is rather a broom, if I may so speak, than a sceptre which the 'brav' general' is expected to wield. In conversation with M. Fleury, another of General Boulanger's intimate and confidential lieutenants, M. Turquet, formerly an Under-Secretary of State in the Ministry of Fine Arts, who ran for a seat as deputy in the Aisne in 1885, summed up the programme of Boulangism as 'a programme of liberty.' 'I mean,' he said, 'real liberty, such as exists in America, not our Liberalism, which is spurious and archaic. Our actual republicans of to-day are Jacobins, sectarians. Their only notion is to persecute and proscribe, and they are infinitely further from liberty than you royalists are, for you have at your head a prince who has a thoroughly open mind. The form of government, after all, signifies little. The real question is not whether we shall have a monarchy or an empire, an autocracy or a democracy. It is whether we shall have liberty.'[3]

[3] M. Turquet ran in September in the first arrondiss.e.m.e.nt of the Seine against M. Yves Guyot, and there was no election. At the election in October the Government proclaimed M. Yves Guyot elected by a small majority.

'I answered him,' said M. Fleury, 'that what he said was very fine, and that the friend of Fourier, Victor Considerant, had said it before him.

What I wanted to know, however, was, what the Boulangists proposed to do with the Catholics, the believers, in France should the General get into power.'

'We shall begin,' said M. Turquet, 'by suppressing the budget of worship. We shall do this to satisfy the blockheads who are a noun of mult.i.tude.

'But we shall restore, in another shape, to the clergy the indemnity which is certainly due to them. We shall give the bishoprics either a fixed sum, or a revenue proportional to the population of each bishopric, so that the people may receive gratuitously the offices of religion. This is a public service, and it shall be remunerated as it ought to be. As to the Religious Orders, they shall have full liberty to const.i.tute themselves, to educate children, to care for the sick and infirm, so long as they keep within the limits of the common law. All property in mortmain shall be suppressed. A community of teachers, for instance, may own the college necessary for the students, but not a forest adjoining that college.'

To M. Fleury's natural question how the college should be maintained, M.

Turquet replied, 'You know as well as I do, that wealth no longer consists in real estate alone. You can now carry in your pocket a fortune in bonds payable to the bearer. The Religious Orders may own these, like other people. A dozen of us in the Chamber hold these views.

You seem to think us Utopianists. But General Boulanger will make it possible for us to apply these ideas!'

If General Boulanger and M. Turquet really imagine these views to be 'American,' it would be instructive for them to look into the masterly protests of the Catholic Archbishop of New York, against the doctrines of Mr. Henry George as adopted and expounded by Father McGlynn. The Catholic Church in the United States holds its own property, real and personal, and manages it to suit itself. It would be interesting to see an attempt made in the legislature of an American State, to carry through a law like the decrees issued in France in 1881, forbidding curates and vicars to receive legacies left to them for the benefit of the poor in their parishes, or to distribute to the poor sums left to the Bureau of Public Charity, with an express proviso that they should be distributed by the clergy of the place.