Third French Republic

“ Last autumn the third French republic completed the second decade of its checkered existence, and has thus proved itself to be the most long-lived government which France has known since the advent of the great Revolution a century ago. No previous government has been able to stand eighteen years, so that the present republic has outstripped all its predecessors, whether republican, imperial, or monarchical, leaving even the most fortunate of them two or three years behind, and bidding fair to increase the distance indefinitely. ”

“ It is not in the interests of a dull and uncertain Republic that people may think it necessary to write; Europe cannot help seeing, and is not surprised to see, the impotent inaction of France on the field of Foreign Politics. Republics are doomed in Monarchical Europe before they are hatched, and they cannot escape their unavoidable fate; and the Third Republic of French Democrats, still lingering in 1882, is, on the one hand, kept alive by the mutual distrust, the deep internal divisions and secret rancour of Republicans, hating each other more than they love France. ”

“ Some people, reading the annals of forty-four years since the Franco-Prussian War, have been disposed to sneer at France. Some have called the country degenerate because of its small birth-rate, its fiction sometimes brutal, sometimes neurotic, its inefficient Parliament, its vindictive political and religious contests. Such critics should remember that the French Government is the result of tactical compromise in presence of the Monarchical Party. Nobody denies that it might be improved. ”

“ If there had ever been, a hundred years ago, such a thing as a French Republic, founded, as the American Republic of 1787 was founded, by the deliberate will of the people, and offering them a reasonable prospect of maintaining liberty and law, that Republic would exist to-day. That we are watching the desperate effort of a centralised parliamentary despotism at Paris in the year 1890 to maintain a 'Third Republic' is conclusive proof that this was not the case. ”

“ The Clerical Party was hand-in-glove with the Royalists and the Boulangists. It took advantage of governmental instability to try to undermine the Republic, but its own harmony of purpose was in due time diminished by the new policy of Leo XIII. That astute Italian diplomat was himself temperamentally an Opportunist. He conceived the idea of controlling France by advances to the Republic and by feigning to accept it in order to get hold of its policies, especially the educational and military laws. He realized, too, the harm done to the Vatican by the stubbornness of many French Catholics. ”

“ We have not to discuss the truth of those propositions, we have only to note the tendency of French policy; and in so doing it is useful to remark that the official belief of the Third Republic in the last period of the 19th century was that England was the enemy of French colonial expansion all over the globe, and that in the so-called scramble for Africa English ambition was the chief obstacle to the schemes of France. ”

“ The procedure of Leo XIII was thus a proof that the Vatican wanted to be on good terms with the Republic. The rapprochement with Russia was another proof that France, in spite of its troubles, was to be reckoned with in Europe. France and Russia felt it necessary to draw together in answer to the noisy renewal of the Triple Alliance. There had been tension in the spring of 1891, in which the French were not wholly blameless, as a result of the private visit to Paris of the dowager empress of Germany, the Empress Frederick. ”

“ From this it will be seen that the principles of the movement are being systematically applied to the whole field of active life in France. The general maxim of the organisation is the sound, sensible, and military maxim, of St.-Vincent de Paul, 'let us keep our rules, and our rules will keep us,' and I think there can be no doubt that the French freemasons, and the fanatics of unbelief generally who have launched the government of the Third Republic upon its present course, will find this new Christian organisation of Capital and Labour a troublesome factor in the political field. ”

“ It wanted also to insure its own continuation as long as possible, contrary to the wishes of advanced Republicans like Gambetta, who declared that the National Assembly no longer stood for the expression of the popular will and should give way to a real constituent assembly to organize a permanent republic.
The first endeavor of the Royalists was to bring about a restoration of the monarchy. The princes of the Orléanist branch were readmitted to France and restored to their privileges. A fusion between the two branches of the house of Bourbon was absolutely necessary to accomplish anything. ”

“ Apart from the pressure of patriotic considerations, it pleased the republican minority to have the government of France officially proclaimed a Republic, while the monarchists thought that pending their choice Of a monarch it might popularize their cause not to have it associated with the imposition of the burden of war taxation. From this fortuitous and informal transaction, accepted by a monarchical Assembly, sprang the Third Republic, the most durable régime established in France since the ancient monarchy disappeared in 1792. ”

“ Yet it must always be remembered that Democracy has until now never had a fair chance in France. The bright hopes of 1789 faded away ten years later amidst the glamour of military glory. As for the Republic of 1848, it scarcely outlived the troubles of infancy. The Third Republic, on the other hand, has attained to manhood. It has met and overcome very many difficulties; at the outset parts of two valued provinces and a vast sum of treasure were torn away. In those early days of weakness it also crushed a serious revolt. The intrigues of Monarchists and Bonapartists were foiled. ”

“ For, while the Americans had been hammering away at their Constitution, and making a new nation out of raw material, the French had risen against the tyranny of their king, and had declared France a Republic. And when many of the European countries joined together to fight France, and force them to take back their king, the French people looked to the sister Republic across the Atlantic for help. ”

“ Europe suppressed the intolerable adventurer, and France, for three-fourths of a century since, has been under an apprenticeship of experience, slowly learning the art of self-government by constitutional modes. Two monarchies, one republic, and a sham empire are the spoiled samples of her work. A third republic, now in hand, is promising better success. It rests with seeming stability on the support of the great class of peasant landowners, which the very miseries of her misgoverned past have created for France. Trained to pinching frugality by the hard conditions of the old regime ”

“ So great was the need felt by France for peace, repose, and independence, after these ten years of warfare and hard service, that in spite of her profound aversion for the Bourbons, their return was hailed with joy. The kingdom of 1814, a new usurpation of the sole, indivisible, indefeasable and inalienable sovereignty of the people, consecrated again the iniquitous principle of monarchy, against which the republican minority in vain protested. ”

“ France, without a disciplined army; France, ruined, reduced to a paper currency, torn by factions, by the civil war which we priests will let loose in the west and south—France will be unable to resist all Europe. But, in order to exasperate the foreign rulers, to excite their hatred, their fury, they must be made to behold the head of Louis XVI rolling at their feet! ”

“ When the nineteenth century opened France was no longer a monarchy, but a republic; and her armies were to occupy in turn every European capital, from Madrid to Moscow. In order to understand the marvelous transformations produced by the French Revolution and the wars of Napoleon, we must consider somewhat carefully the conditions in France which led to a great reform of her institutions in 1789, and to the founding of a republic four years later. ”

“ The revolution of 1848, which dethroned Louis Philippe and the house of Orleans, and established a republican government in France, was the signal for a general revolutionary movement throughout Europe. The Fifth Article of the new French Constitution stated, "The French Republic respects foreign nationalities. She intends to cause her own to be respected. She will never undertake any sin for the purpose of conquest, and will never employ her arms against the liberty of any people." ”

“ And France had to promote these designs, be drained of men under the First Empire, and be revolutionized under the Second, in order that the revolutionary contagion might be spread throughout Europe. War, coming to the aid of this work, led to the third invasion—the crowning achievement of the Third Empire.
The sole prejudice the French manifest in favor of the empire is that it maintained the honor of our army, and restored order. This is only true with respect to the Revolution. For the Revolution was absolute disorder. ”

“ Taking the history of France in its totality and in all its phases, the third estate has been the most active and most decisive element in French civilization. If we follow it in its relations with the general government of the country, we see it first of all allied during six centuries with the kingship, struggling pauselessly against the feudal aristocracy, and giving the prevalence in place of that to a central and unique power, pure monarchy to wit, closely approximating, though with certain often-repeated but vain reservations, to absolute monarchy. ”

“ France—the French people, that is—- had no more to do with the overthrow of the monarchy of Louis XVI., with the fall of the monarchy of Charles X., with the collapse of the monarchy of July, or with the abolition of the Second Empire, than with the abdication of Napoleon I. at Fontainebleau. ”

“ Yet an assemblage of the worst and most daring men from every faction, elected amidst massacres and proscription, the moment they are collected together, declare, on the proposal of Collot d'Herbois, a profligate strolling player, that France shall be a republic.—Admitting that the French were desirous of altering their form of government, I believe no one will venture to say such an inclination was ever manifested, or that the Convention were elected in a manner to render them competent to such a decision. ”

“ To the people who since antiquity has been subject to masters, it is so sweet, so intoxicating to put themselves in their places, to put the former masters in their place, to say to himself, they are my representatives, to regard himself a member of the sovereign power, king of France in his individual sphere, the sole legitimate author of all rights and of all functions!—In conformity with the doctrines of Rousseau the registers of the Third-Estate unanimously insist on a constitution for France; none exists, or at least the one she possesses is of no value. ”

“ He then proceeded to argue that the Third Estate, in other words the people of France with the exception of the nobles, formed a complete nation by themselves; that by them all useful work was done; and that the nobility was merely an excrescence, preventing the growth and development of national life. The Third Estate is, he said, a nation fettered and oppressed. What would it be without the nobility?—A free and flourishing nation. ”

“ Then, my friends, be sure of it, whatever the allied monarchs of Europe may do, whatever the plots of the royalists and priests, the Republic, the Revolution, France, will be saved without the sovereignty of the people having been violated in the person of a single one of its Representatives in the Commune or the Convention, even of those most opposed to new ideas ”

“ Whatever have been the changes of government in that great country—and many they have been, to be sure—we have seen a Convention, a Directorate, Consuls, and one Consul, and an Emperor, and the Restoration, and the Citizen King, and the Republic; Through all these different experiments centralization was the keynote of the institutions of France—power always centralized; omnipotence always vested somewhere. And, remarkable indeed, France has never yet raised one single man to the seat of power, who has not sacrificed his country's freedom to his personal ambition! ”

“ If the Senate and the Government succeed in putting about the impression that General Boulanger is no better than they are, they will no doubt weaken him with the people, but they will not strengthen themselves. This Third Republic is dying, not of any passion for the monarchy, not even of the Imperialist legend, which is very strong in the country—more because France was so prosperous under the third Napoleon than because France dominated Europe under the first Napoleon: it is dying of popular contempt. ”

“ They shall place under the charge of the French Republic all property belonging to the Sovereign or his adherents, and the property of every civil or religious corporation. The French nation will treat as enemies any people which, refusing liberty and equality, desires to preserve its prince and privileged castes, or to make any accommodation with them. ”

“ The House will recollect the first professions of the French Republic, which are enumerated, and enumerated truly, in that note. They are tests of every thing which would best recommend a government to the esteem and confidence of foreign powers, and the reverse of every thing which has been the system and practice of France now for near ten years. It is there stated that their first principles were love of peace, aversion to conquest, and respect for the independence of other countries. ”

“ But able-bodied men who were not included in the annual contingent formed a reserve force called the garde nationale mobile, each department organizing its own section. These gardes mobiles, though they were not effectively organized or exercised under the Empire, took part in the war of 1870-71.
The Third Republic.—The Third Republic had at first a provisional government, unanimously acclaimed by the people of Paris. It was accepted by France, exercised full powers, and sustained by no means ingloriously a desperate struggle against the enemy ”