Littell's Living Age/Volume 125/Issue 1608/The Birth of a Republic

From The Saturday Review.

THE BIRTH OF A REPUBLIC.

The spectacle of brethren dwelling together in unity is commonly supposed to exert a soothing influence on those who witness it. But the unity of the Republican majority in the French Assembly is a unity which takes away one's breath. It is so overpowering, so demonstrative, so absolutely proof against argument, or abuse, or ridicule, that it is impossible either to criticise, or admire, or approve, or do anything else which implies judgment. We can only sit still and wonder. A fortnight since the breach between the fractions which compose the majority that has just done such great things seemed more impassable than ever. Each party thought itself betrayed. The Right Centre were indignant because the Left had amended their scheme; the Left were indignant because the Right Centre had abandoned their scheme as soon as it had been amended. Rage at the failure of a coalition which has cost immense trouble, and mutual suspicion of treachery, are not elements out of which it is easy to build a new combination. The prospect seemed at least as unpromising as it had ever been, and how unpromising that was may be read in the history of the last two years. Yet in a week the project of a new union had been agreed on, and in a fortnight it has been carried through the Assembly without the sacrifice of a single detail. The leaders of the Left and the Right Centre came to terms upon the composition of a Senate, and a compact majority was ordered out to reject every alteration in the Bill. No one was put to the trouble of considering whether this or that suggestion was an improvement. The coalition was as pitiless in rejecting improvements as in rejecting alterations which were not improvements. It was the right policy to follow, because, if license had been given to a single straggler, in no matter how unimportant an amendment, the inch would certainly have become an ell, and it would have been taken by a great many stragglers without license. The leaders on both sides had thoroughly appreciated the situation; the marvel is how they contrived to make all their followers appreciate it with equal accuracy. The Right were driven nearly mad by this unexpected unanimity on the part of their adversaries. They had only lately convinced themselves that the Right Centre were capable of such iniquity as accepting the Republic, and even when this conclusion was at last forced upon them, it was accompanied by the consoling hope that the Left would never be induced to accept the same kind of Republic. When the new Senate Bill was produced it was so clearly the work of the Right Centre that this hope must for the moment have become certainty. The Right had only to drag a few Radical commonplaces into the debate, and the Left would inevitably be thrown off the scent. The Left had never yet been able to resist throwing up their hats whenever universal suffrage was mentioned; was it to be believed that they would show more self-control now? Accordingly it was on this line that such fighting as there was took place. Legitimist after Legitimist, Bonapartist after Bonapartist, taunted the Left with having deserted their principles, with having first voted for a Senate selected by universal suffrage, and then contented themselves with a Senate elected by a very limited constituency. The Left either sat silent, or indulged in superior smiles, or playfully told the speakers that they were not in the least embarrassed by the inconsistencies thus pleasantly pointed out to them. M. Raoul Duval even introduced an amendment identical in substance with the very amendment which the Left had carried ten days before; but the Left had learned their lesson in the interval, and they voted as one man against their own proposal. The Duke of Rochefoucauld Bisaccia tried to draw them in another way. He declared that the Assembly was exceeding its powers, and that it had not been elected for the purpose of nominating life-senators. There was a time when such a speech from a Legitimist would have called vollies of applause from the Left, but the idea of limiting the powers of the Assembly had no longer any charm for them. They voted steadily against an amendment making all the Senators elective, and thus entrusted to the Assembly, which they have so often denounced as a usurper without even the excuse of capacity to govern, the business of choosing men who are to help to rule France for the terms of their natural lives.

This closed the sitting of Monday. By Tuesday, M. Raoul Duval and M. Brunet had prepared a fresh string of tempting amendments. The Senate Bill assigned to the Department of the Seine and the Department of the Nord the same number of Senators. Surely the Left would not refuse to give their darling Paris an exceptional distinction? So, perhaps, M. Brunet tried to persuade himself; but his proposal that the Seine should return six Senators instead of five was rejected without a word. Then came the most promising moment of all. If there is one point more than another upon which the Radicals might be supposed to be united, it is in detestation of the mayors appointed by the government. They are associated with the reactionary era of the Duke of Broglie, and they are still regarded as enemies who may prove dangerous at future elections. M. Raoul Duval proposed to cast a formal slight upon them. The electoral college which is to return the Senate is composed, among other elements, of delegates elected by the municipal councils, and M. Duval asked that mayors and deputy mayors appointed by the government should be declared ineligible for this purpose. He might as well have asked the Left to proclaim Henry V. They had agreed to swallow the whole Bill, and they were honourably resolved to strain at camels no more than at gnats. M. Brunet, undismayed by his former defeat, again tried to introduce the principle of proportioning representation to population; but this too was rejected. M. Raoul Duval next took up the cause of the poor but virtuous elector. The voting for the Senate is to take place in the chief town of the department. How is a Radical elector who has no money to go half across a department for the purpose of giving his vote? His poverty will force him to stay at home, and to leave the composition of one of the branches of the legislature to be settled by wealthy Conservatives to whom a journey presents no difficulties. The obvious remedy is to pay the elector's travelling expenses, and thus, in one respect at all events, put poor and rich on a level. M, Raoul Duval must have had a momentary hope that this argument would not be wasted, but it was wasted all the same. Even M. Duval must have despaired by this time; but he was still ready to oppose the clause of the Bill which provides that Senators shall be unpaid. But the Left, after surrendering so much else, were not to be prevented from surrendering this also, and the most Conservative clause perhaps in the Bill was passed like all the rest. By Tuesday evening there was only one chance left for the Right. The Bill provided that the seventy-five Senators chosen by the Assembly should be elected by an absolute majority of votes, without any restriction as to the persons to be chosen. M. Delpit proposed that they should be taken from a list of one hundred and fifty persons to be furnished by Marshal MacMahon, and this amendment, unlike all the others, was referred back to the Committee of Thirty. If this had implied a willingness on the part of the Right Centre to adopt it, the Left might have considered the compact at an end, and have retaliated on the Conservatives by throwing out the Bill on the third reading. But the reference to the committee proved a false alarm. The clause came back as it went. A division was then taken on the Bill as a whole, and it was carried by four hundred and forty-eight votes to two hundred and forty-one. Thus by Wednesday afternoon France had secured a Senate. In another sitting and a half she was to have a complete constitution. The Bill for the Transmission of Powers was taken up as soon as the Senate Bill had been disposed of, and was carried clause by clause in the same edifying manner. M. Raoul Duval tried to sow discord in this model majofity by proposing to insert a declaration that the sovereignty of the nation resides in the universality of the citizen; but the Left could hear this fine-sounding principle openly challenged in the tribune, and yet vote against its introduction into the Bill. An attempt was then made to shut out members of the families that have reigned in France from becoming presidents of the republic. This was evidently aimed at the Duke of Aumale, and if it had been carried there is no saying what might not have been the effect on the Orleanist section of the majority. This was the last test the Left had to endure, and they stood it nobly. By five hundred and forty-three votes to forty-one the Assembly rejected "this law of ostracism and distrust."

After the Left had yielded so much, they might have been allowed to date the new republic from the 24th of February. But the Right Centre was as unbending upon this point as upon every other. The Left are to have a republic — thus much is conceded — but they are neither to christen it, nor to fix its birthday, nor to determine what it shall be like, nor to have any hand in administering it. The republic of 1875 is to be the Consarvative republic; its anniversary is to be kept on the 25th of February, not on the 24th; it is to have a strong executive and a strong Second Chamber; its ministers are to be Republicans of the extremely mild type of M. Dufaure and M. Buffet. These are the terms on which the Right Centre have consented to unite with the Left, and it is the most extraordinary event in an extraordinary career that M. Gambetta should have been able to procure their acceptance. It is too soon to speculate on the future of this wonderful coalition; there are not even the materials for forming an opinion upon its past history. Two factions hitherto supposed to be irreconcilable, have agreed to take a house together. Each certainly wishes to be master, but which it is that expects to be master, and what grounds there are for such expectation, must for the present remain doubtful. All that can be said is, that as the Left have sacrificed most, they probably think that they have most to gain.