CHAPTER VI

THE DEATH-THROES OF THE ASSEMBLY

I. The summer vacation, August 1875.-The Conservative policy of M. Buffet becomes marked.—Ministerial dissensions.-Instructions from the Comte

de Chambord.-M. Rouher's speech.-M. Thiers at Arcachon.-Letter from Gambetta to the Democrats of Lyons.

II. Last Session of the National Assembly.-The Legislative Electoral Law.— Gambetta breaks with the Right Centre.-M. Buffet reconstitutes the majority of the 24th May.-The law of the 30th November, 1875, is passed. -Electoral Districts.

III. Election of Life-Senators.-First Ballot; the Right and the Left neutralise each other.-Compact between the Extreme Right, the Bonapartists and the Left.-The 75 Life-Senators.

IV. Death-throes of the Assembly.-The Committee of Pardons.-Proposal of Amnesty.-Martial law and the régime of the Press.-Relative position of the parties.-Last days of the Assembly.--Dissolution. V. Criticism on the National Assembly.

Holidays.

I

OW that the Constitution was voted, the Assembly had but to go. This was intimated from every quarter. No "Long No "Long Parliament" ever seemed so insupportable as this Constituent Chamber during the last months of its existence. The Dissolutionist campaign, so ardently led from the first, had gradually made its way into public opinion. During the five years that the Assembly had lasted, it had seen and done so many things! It had been the prey of so much outside criticism, so many internal divisions! Breathless, exhausted, it sank under the weight of unpopularity which its own struggles, and even the services it had rendered, increased day by day.

And yet, there were still some urgent laws to complete and some accounts to settle.

In the modern régime, everything ends in a public debate. Work in earnest only begins after much dirty linen has been washed in the light of day.

After the discussions and votes which had marked the two first Sessions of 1875, so many obscurities concealed the past, so many complications overshadowed the future, that a general liquidation, before the dispersion of the Assembly, was inevitable.

This took place during the Parliamentary vacation (August-November, 1875). Men knew that they would only meet again to part; the end had come, everything could be said and a "clean breast" made.

The

The Ministry, by its composition and the Ministerial respective tendencies of its members, repreSituation. sented that state of latent hostility and undefined bitterness, which was that of the Assembly. It existed with difficulty, shaken between the roughness of M. Buffet and the palliatives of M. Dufaure. The Marshal and the Conservative parties held back the Vice-President of the Council, who wished to be allowed to leave, and, on the other hand, the Left accepted everything in order to maintain in the Cabinet the two members who belonged to it. On either side, the worst was feared.

The ill-jointed machinery creaked at every step. M. Bardoux, Under-Secretary of State for Justice and the most conciliatory of men, made, on the 17th August, at the prize distribution of the Henri IV Lycée, a speech in which the recent law on Higher Education was lightly criticised in passing. President Buffet thought this intolerable, and forbade the publication of the speech in the Journal Officiel. M. Léon Say wrote: "It is evident that M. Buffet wishes to get rid of Bardoux, and that when he has found a door for that purpose, he will

push us through it in our turn. Consequently, it is clear that we had better choose our own door if we do not wish it to be chosen for us."

M. Buffet accepted the challenge at Dompaire on the 19th September, and confirmed his rupture with the Left Centre. "We have thought it our duty to put an end from the first to a most dangerous equivocation, by showing, both by our words and actions, that the vote of the constitutional laws in no wise implied the renunciation of a clearly Conservative policy, nor even the adoption of a policy which, if it is not yet a Revolutionary policy, might open the way to the latter and serve as a preparation and a transition."

It seemed as if the Vice-President of the Council took pleasure in destroying with his own hands the fragile edifice which he had raised.

M. Léon Say did not choose to leave this provocation unanswered. A week later, he gathered together, in his château of Stors, all the mayors of the neighbourhood and returned the ball to M. Buffet in these words: "No Government in France can be a lasting one which does not gather around it the Liberal party; that is, the moderate men who have always condemned excesses, but who have not turned away from Liberty on account of the crimes committed in its name; the men who represent, in a word, the modern Idea, and who, reduced to silence. under two Empires, can give great strength and great prestige to the new Government."

M Buffet and

M. Buffet was angry in his turn. Following M. Leon Say. his own precedent, he forbade the reproduction in the Journal Officiel of a speech which had already appeared in the newspapers. The incident was

a lively one. M. Léon Say held firm, and had the advantage of good humour. M. Buffet took everything tragically. . . . He had to give way and to content him