HISTORY OF

CONTEMPORARY FRANCE

CHAPTER I

THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY AND UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE I. Relative position of political parties at the fall of the first Broglie Cabinet. -Failure of the Goulard combination.-Formation of the CisseyFourtou Cabinet, 12th May, 1874-The Bonapartist Party.-Parliamentary Electorate, Municipal Electorate; first Reading of the Bill.— Universal Suffrage.-Union of the Centres.

II The Bonapartist danger.-The Lefts accept the Constituent Power.Second Reading of the Municipal Electorate Bill.-Constitutional proposals.-First Republican Victory; urgency voted on the CasimirPérier proposal.-First Reading of the Municipal Organisation Bill. III. The Comte de Chambord's Manifesto, 2nd July, 1874.-The Lucien Brun Interpellation.-The Cissey Cabinet beaten.-Message from the Marshal, 9th July, 1874

IV Ministerial Constitutional Programme.-Bill of the Committee of Thirty. -The Casimir-Perier motion discussed and rejected.--Adjournment of the Constitutional Debate.-The state of siege maintained.-The Assembly adjourns from the 5th August to the 30th November, 1874.

I

HREE years had passed since the National

cluded peace with Germany; it had repressed a formidable insurrection. It had then assumed the constituent power; but it had failed to give a Constitution to the country.

The Right Majority was rent between three monarchical parties. These divisions favoured the Republic, which existed in fact.

On the 24th May, 1873, the Right had overthrown M. Thiers, believing him to be the principal obstacle to the restoration of the Dynasty.

A year later, on the 16th May, 1874, the Duc de Broglie was set aside in his turn, and the National Assembly, powerless and disorganised, found itself face to face with the country.

M. Thiers' Government had been but a provisional dictatorship, specially entrusted with the liquidation of the results of the war.

Situation of

after the fall

The Cabinet over which the Duc de Broglie the parties presided had received from the Right a tacit of the Broglie mandate to bring about a fusion between the Cabinet. two Royalist parties and a conditional restoration of the Bourbon dynasty. But the Comte de Chambord, by his letter dated 27th October, 1873, had ruined his own chances and destroyed the hopes of the party of Parliamentary Monarchy; the votes of his partisans had contributed to the downfall of the Cabinet which represented that system.

In fact, the majority in the Assembly was now without a system, or, to speak more accurately, there was now no majority in the Assembly. The Duc de Broglie had been beaten by a coalition which comprised the Extreme Right, the Bonapartists and some Republicans, that is: all the parties which, either in the name of Divine Right, or in the name of Popular Right, refused to admit that the Assembly had the power of constitution. The Assembly was therefore driven to have recourse to the country, and to that Universal Suffrage by which it had been elected.

This was clearly explained by M. Thiers, with his habitual lucidity and logical precision, in a speech uttered on the 24th May, 1874. "Let us hope that, after recent experiences, the Assembly will accept, like ourselves, the

necessity of appealing to the country as to the supreme stacle arbiter of the disagreements by which it is divided. . . . From the moment when it offers no working majority, it can no longer govern, and, when it cannot do so, it has no longer the right to attempt it."1

But logic is not a law in politics, and Parliaments do not like the sound of the word Dissolution. The Right cherished a deep conviction that a special mandate of salvation had been conferred upon it by the country. Before again facing Universal Suffrage, it was anxious to limit the share of liberty and sovereignty which it was expedient to allow the People, from whom, and for whom, much was to be feared.

In order to postpone the inevitable event of a great electoral appeal, that strange régime of the Septennate had been invented, in reality a mere procrastination. Again, in spite of the ironical warnings of M. Thiers, men's eyes were closed to the natural consequences of the downfall of the Duc de Broglie, and, if a neutral combination was sought for in the constitution of the new Cabinet, it was in the hope that this would afford an ephemeral respite.

The most numerous and influential portion of the Left lent itself to this policy. The Left Centre, taught by its own evolutions, appreciated the monarchical feelings of the Right, anticipating that sooner or later-perhaps in a weak moment-the latter would yield a more or less frank adhesion to Republican institutions. Thus would it be possible to keep the old Republican party within bounds, and to guard against the frankly Democratic tendencies which, as each by-election showed, began to pervade the country. M. Laboulaye, one of the most active, most wily promoters of this double-faced policy, by which the bourgeoisie was playing its cleverest game,

1 Discours Parlementaires de M. Thiers, vol. xv., p. 636.

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had said, on the 23rd January, 1873, "The Government must be constituted. If we do not constitute it, our mandate comes to an end: we must hand it back to the nation. You are afraid to do so! and so am I. . . .”

Those tactics of the Left Centre had not alienated from it the members of the other Lefts, who approved its fidelity to the Republican formula. The more politic Republicans felt encouraged by the vote which had brought down the Broglie Cabinet, and by the reciprocal animosity of the two Rights. Gambetta and his friends, while still hesitating, were wondering whether "something could not be done" with this Assembly.

A the parties, who, only yesterday, were clamouring for rapid decisions and immediate sanctions, now met in a common desire for postponement and temporisation.

la spite of M. Thiers, who was rendered suspect by his personal grievances, the Lefts allowed the question Gambetta seized the opportunity of dissolution to rest. arded by d'Alton Shée's obsequies to make a first appeal to the "rallied." The ancient aristocracy beAvgs to France, and can still serve her. . . ." In the sure greck, we find the formula, “Athenian Republic." At Aeverre, on the 1st June, he placed himself and his party in mediately behind the Left Centre, which he o id "the front rank."

Ronapartists also believed that Time was working for them, they thought they could detect in the Parlia post if not la the country, the first symptoms of that ptain and anarchy by which the reconstitution of

ave Tagerial hierarchy might allow them to profit. The Legitimises had nothing to gain and nothing to ex awalbed orders from Frohsdorf. kore moderate Rights, the Right, the Chano era the Right Centre, they hoped by temporis aga a an influence which was beginning to fail

them. They thought that the Left Centre was not indifferent to the bait of "Conservative principles," and dreamt of retarding the fatal moment by a new Parliamentary combination, "the Union of the Centres."

But they were to be caught in their own meshes. Convinced that their doctrines were infallible and their assistance indispensable, they were to lose, by conceding step after step, the little ground that was left them. They ended by adhering to a system which they hated, without having stipulated for or obtained the price of

their adhesion.

In this period of French History, the drama consists in the slow suicide of the "ruling classes," under the latent or direct pressure of Universal Suffrage.

In the meanwhile, France needed a Government.

M. de

M. de Goulard was the man of the day; to Guard him the Marshal entrusted, on Sunday the 17th May, the task of forming a Cabinet.

M. de Goulard personified the "Union of the Centres." He had been a Minister under M. Thiers, but, having left him on the eve of the crisis of the 21st May, he had thus contributed towards the fall of the illustrious President. He had nevertheless remained his friend-everybody's friend, a kindly, prudent man. As he was suffering from heart disease, his family saw him with some alarm resume the burden of affairs. says M. de Meaux, somewhat maliciously, "the doctors declared that he had more chances of life in political work than apart from it."

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But,"

"It is to be

"It is very grave, very grave,” said M. de Goulard, deploring the fall of the Duc de Broglie. hoped that some of the Deputies of the Extreme Right will return to more conciliating sentiments, and that, on the other hand, some members of the Left Centre can be

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