Littell's Living Age/Volume 125/Issue 1615/Royalists and Republicans

From The Saturday Review.

ROYALISTS AND REPUBLICANS.

The minister of commerce and agriculture is ordinarily one of the least political members of the French government, and the present minister was put into his post rather for what he was outside the Cabinet than for any special services which he was expected to render within it. But the speech which M. de Meaux lately made at a dinner at St. Etienne is in some respects the most interesting expression of political opinion that has been heard since the 25th of February. Everybody knew what M. Dufaure or M. Wallon would say, and M. Buffet was eminently successful in his attempt at saying nothing. But M. de Meaux represents the Right in the coalition majority, and it was at least possible that he would take the first opportunity that offered itself of bringing out in stronger phrases than M. Buffet could venture to employ the anti-republican character of the present republic. The opportunity has come, and M. de Meaux has not used it. Indeed, he has gone further, and has used it for a directly opposite purpose. Instead of copying M. Buffet, and avoiding all mention of the republic, he has described the vote on the Constitutional Laws as the substitution of a republican rule, clearly defined, and armed with regular weapons, for the republican rule which has been practically established since the fall of the empire. It may seem a small thing that a minister has brought himself to see and admit so patent a fact as this. But the recognition of patent facts is by no means a common virtue among French politicians, least of all among conservative politicians, and M. de Meaux deserves credit for breaking through the custom hitherto so strictly observed by the Right of shutting their eyes to everything which they do not like. M. de Meaux is perfectly frank as to his relation to the new republic. He does not profess to rejoice over the constitutional settlement at which the National Assembly has arrived. He took no part, he says, in bringing it about, because his "deepest and dearest convictions" did not permit him to do so; but when once the law had been passed, he was able to take part in giving it effect, because the law has itself taken care to respect all honest convictions, and has only shut the door on coups d'état and revolutions. "On ground which all have not chosen all can find room to sustain the cause of order and liberty," and all, whatever be their political preferences, ought to unite to protect French society against intrigues which compass its destruction.

This profession of faith is a tribute to the wisdom of those Republicans who consented to include in the new Constitution a clause providing for its revision. There was much to be said against the introduction of such a clause, and it must be admitted that the inconveniences arising out of it have not yet been fully tested. But against these inconveniences, great as they may prove to be, must be set the fact that the concession of the right of revision opened a way for the adhesion of royalists to the new republic which, without it, would have remained hopelessly closed. There are three degrees of comparison in the royalist section of French society — those who will admit of neither postponement nor compromise, those who will admit of postponement but not of compromise, and those who will consent to both. Those of the first degree are necessarily ranked as irreconcilables. If they are not at this moment striking a last blow for their king, it is only because their king and they alike see that such a last blow could do neither of them anything but harm. Those of the third degree have long been willing to co-operate in founding the republic. Their adhesion was secured in theory when M. Gambetta announced that all that the advanced Republicans demanded in an ally was a recognition that the republic was the only government that remained possible in France. This recognition was not incompatible with the conviction that the only possible government was in itself an extremely bad one, and only to be accepted as being immeasurably better than no government at all. But this concession on the part of the advanced Republicans did nothing for royalists like M. de Meaux. They are willing to accept the republic as the legal government of France, and in that character to pay it due respect and homage. But they will not put aside the hope that time and experience may yet bring Frenchmen to a wiser mind. They have no wish to see the republic overthrown by force or undermined by fraud. So long as the country retains its present temper they are Republicans, because the majority of Frenchmen are Republicans, an consequently the republic is the only government that can be maintained, except by the sword. But supposing that as years pass away they should see reason to think that the majority of Frenchmen have discovered their mistake, and that if the Constitutional Laws had to be voted again they would be cast in a monarchical form. they will not promise not to take advantage of this change of temper. Under the Republican Constitution, as settled by the vote of the 25th of February, there is no need for them to give any such pledge. They have only to admit that until this change of temper comes the republic exists by right as well as in fact. They are not asked to deny their honest convictions; they are only called upon to prove by their acts that no conviction of theirs, however deep or however clear, has any right to impress itself on the form of government until it has become the conviction of the great body of their countrymen.

The recognition of the right of revision has made it possible for men to be at once honest royalists and honest republicans, and in this combination M. de Meaux sees a prospect of overcoming the enemies which have proved too formidable for all former republics. On the day, he says, on which good citizens and men of order rise unanimously and march united the social danger will be averted. If M. de Meaux can succeed in communicating this belief to French Conservatives he will have been more instrumental than any member of the coalition Cabinet in closing the future against Republican excesses, and their inevitable complement, Imperialist reaction. In former revolutions the Conservatives throughout the country have been inactive either from despair or from interest. The majority of them have thought it useless to take any part in politics, and have preferred to sit by the stream in the hope that it would at length run itself out. The minority have welcomed the excesses into which this inaction has tempted the Republicans, because these very excesses made it easier for them to build upon the fears of their countrymen the particular Conservative government which best ministered to their own advancement. It would be idle to say that the danger to which M. de Meaux refers has ceased to exist. It is less formidable in many ways than it was, because the elements which compose it have been brought under visible control, and have no longer the power of getting the command of public afiairs by a single blow. It has been proved that the party of order is strong enough to reduce Paris to subjection, and to keep Lyons in order; and before the mob of the capital can hope to control the executive, it must not only reckon with the garrison, but march unopposed to Versailles. Still, though the elements of confusion are weakened, they are not uprooted. The workmen in the great French cities who in their hearts reject M. Gambetta's leadership, and look forward to the day when the Commune shall once more be proclaimed, may be counted by the hundred thousand. But formidable as this calculation may seem, it is only formidable so long as the numbers arrayed against these hundreds of thousands are forgotten. The Conservatives of France may be counted by millions. With one exception they have everything that the socialist workmen have, and in far greater abundance. They have means, and organization, and physical strength, and a motive for which to use all these advantages. What they have hitherto lacked is the resolution to fight, which springs from the confidence that will fight with success. All the schemes for reducing the power of the dangerous classes which have been concocted with so much ingenuity have been vitiated by one cardinal error. They have aimed at weakening the revolutionary element in the country, instead of at utilizing and making evident the immensely superior strength of the anti-revolutionary element. Nothing but wholesale massacre can effect the former purpose, inasmuch as the force which makes the socialist workmen dangerous is the force of resolute arms. But the gain to the Conservative cause will be just as great if the socialist workmen are brought to realize the hopelessness of insurrection by contemplating the power of their adversaries as if they arrived at the same result by contemplating their own weakness. This latter conviction it is within the compass of the party of order to convey to their minds. If the French Conservatives will understand that political supremacy belongs, and rightly belongs, to those who take part in politics, and that inaction in time of peace means helplessness in time of conflict, the republic of the future may be more or less Radical according to the course of events, but in no case will it be Red.