French & English

Of the three words, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” an Englishman usually accepts the first as a noble aim for nations, whilst he smiles at the two others.[26]

“Liberty” is a sacred word in England, its birthplace and its home. We all know what we mean by it, and I need not attempt a definition, still it may be well for us to think how it is that the English all believe themselves to be free, whilst in France it is only the republicans who think that of themselves. The monarchists, still a large and influential body, believe themselves to be all victims of oppression.

The answer may be given in a brief sentence. The English believe themselves to be free, simply because they have got into the habit of accepting the decision of a majority in the House of Commons, even when it is against themselves. The decision is always accepted, though frequently with the intention of getting it reversed at a future date.

The French reactionary classes have not this feeling of respect for the decisions of the Chamber of Deputies. They have not got into the habit of it, perhaps they never will, and they chafe under every adverse decision, which seems to them a distinct act of tyranny.

“There is nothing sacred in a majority,” they say. To this an Englishman can only answer that in the working of free institutions it has been found a convenience to accept the decisions of majorities, at least provisionally.

The French reactionaries have neither acquired this habit nor are they likely to acquire it, so the feeling of being oppressed must remain with them, particularly as they are not likely to procure the abolition of universal suffrage.

A resemblance between France and England is much more likely to be brought about in another way. Considerable numbers of people in the English upper classes are already feeling a hatred for Mr. Gladstone comparable in intensity to that which their French equals had for Gambetta. Mr. Gladstone himself gave the signal for combat by opposing “the masses” to “the classes” in words that will be long remembered. Mr. Morley said of the House of Lords that it must be “either mended or ended,” and that expression also is one not likely to be forgotten. Now if we suppose the case, not absolutely impossible, of these two democratic English leaders, at the head of a strong majority in the House of Commons, legislating in the sense indicated broadly and generally by the expressions just quoted, would the English “classes” have a heartfelt respect for the new laws? Judging by present signs of the times, it seems by no means unlikely that the sentiments of a defeated English upper-class minority would resemble those of the same defeated class in France. A contest of classes is a bitter contest, and England, as yet, has had but a slight experience of it. How much the Irish question has become, in England, a class question, may be seen by the frank acknowledgment of Mr. Gladstone that “the classes” are against him. Besides the majority in the House of Commons which is against Home rule (in the present year, 1888), Mr. Gladstone enumerates as its opponents “nine-tenths of the House of Lords; nine-tenths at least of what is termed the wealth of the country and of the vast forces of social influence, an overwhelming share (in its own estimation) of British intellect, and undoubtedly an enormous proportion of those who have received an academical education in England.”[27] If Mr. Gladstone hopes to overcome these great social powers, it can only be by the popular vote; and if he conquers by that means, then he will have established the state of things which exists in France, where the upper classes are overborne by numbers. It is easy to apply Mr. Gladstone’s own phrases, with a slight change, quite truly to the French. “Nine-tenths of the nobility, nine-tenths at least of what is called the wealth of the country, and of the vast forces of social influence, an overwhelming share (in its own estimation) of French intellect, and undoubtedly an enormous proportion of those who have received a clerical education”[28] are hostile to the Republic in France. And what in consequence? The consequence is that these classes entirely deny the existence of liberty in that country, although voting is perfectly free, and laws are always passed by a majority.

A close study of French feeling (and of English feeling as it is gradually assimilating itself to French) has led me to the following conclusion: Government by majority is considered to be a state of liberty only so long as opposing forces are so nearly balanced that the minority of to-day may hope to become the majority of to-morrow. A minority lives on hope, when it has no hope it becomes bitter and considers itself the victim of tyranny. To understand English liberty as it flourished in the last generation, we must remember that it meant for the “classes” the kind of liberty a gentleman and his wife enjoy in their own house. They may have disputes between themselves, sometimes one has the upper hand and sometimes the other, but whichever rules for the day there is no insubordination amongst the domestics, and, if there were, the two would unite to repress it.

In a word, by “liberty” people really understand liberty to govern others. The most conspicuous example of this interpretation is given by Leo XIII., who says that he can enjoy no sense of freedom in Rome until he is permitted to govern all the other inhabitants of the city.

Whether it can be called “liberty” or not, the kind of government which has succeeded in establishing itself in England and France is exactly the same in both countries. It is cameral government, the rule of a single chamber, the most modern form of absolutism, especially when the chamber delegates all its power to one man. The French Chamber has been so clearly aware of the power such a man would wield that it has shown an extreme jealousy of personal government ever since MacMahon’s unsuccessful experiment. It would not permit even Gambetta to become a potentate. It perceived the fine governing faculties of Jules Ferry and put him aside. Nobody with a despotic temper has a chance of remaining prime minister. The meddling disposition of Wilson was supposed to be creating an occult personal power at the Elysée, so he was expelled from that palace, even though his expulsion involved that of a good president. The same jealousy of personal power removed General Boulanger from the War Office. The longer cameral government lasts in France, the more evident it becomes that the Chamber means to have its way in everything and to suppress all inconvenient individualities.

We have not to go far back in English history to observe the same tendency in the House of Commons. The English Chamber has dealt with Mr. Gladstone in the French fashion. The dissentient Liberals caused his downfall with no more regard for his splendid reputation than if they had been so many French deputies. They had, no doubt, a perfect right to act independently, but it was an assertion of the power of numbers in the House of Commons against the authority of genius and renown.

“In spite of appearances,” said Mr. Frederic Harrison on the 1st of January 1886, “and conventional formulas, habits, and fictions to the contrary, the House of Commons represents the most absolute autocracy ever set up by a great nation since the French Revolution. Government here is now merely a committee of that huge democratic club, the House of Commons, without any of the reserves of power in other parts of the constitution which are to be found in the constitutions of France and the United States.”

America lies outside of our present subject, but with regard to France there is little to be said for “the reserves of power in other parts of the constitution.” They look very reassuring on paper, in reality their effect is feeble. It is plain that President Grévy had the clearest right to stay at his post, and he had no desire to abandon it. He had been guilty of no crime or misdemeanour, he had been invested with authority for seven years. What was that authority worth when it came to a contest with the Chamber? Dissolution? The senate dared not help him to dissolve. When that saddened and broken old man followed his luggage out of the courtyard of the Elysée the world knew that there was only one real power in France.

The inference from these events in the two countries is that the tendency of this new thing, cameral government, may at first be to create a powerful despot with the support of the chamber, but that after longer experience an elected chamber will become wary and keep very much on its guard against eminent persons, however eloquent, and will be jealous of them and keep them down. This watchful jealousy in a chamber may turn out to be the best of all safeguards for national liberty—it saved France from the authority of Gambetta, a man of a most despotic disposition—but it is unfavourable to an esprit de suite in policy or to a vigorous policy of any kind, either at home or abroad, as we may all see by the ephemeral French cabinets, in which mediocrity and obscurity appear to be positive recommendations.

Political liberty is seldom without some kind of effect on religious liberty. A political revolution may be associated with a religious change in one of two ways. It may proclaim the right to real liberty of thought, or it may substitute a new orthodoxy for an old one. The first was done in France in 1789 by the Declaration of the Rights of Man; the second was done twice over in England—once by erecting a new Anglican orthodoxy, and a second time by erecting a new Puritan orthodoxy, the ultimate effect of the last being the establishment of religious freedom for various classes of Protestant dissenters, but not for unbelievers. “The denial of the truth of Christianity,” says Professor Dicey, “or of the authority of the Scriptures by ‘writing, printing, teaching, or advised speaking,’ on the part of any person who has been educated in or made profession of Christianity in England, is by statute a criminal offence, entailing very severe penalties. When once, however, the principles of the common law and the force of the enactments still contained in the statute-book are really appreciated, no one can maintain that the law of England recognises anything like that natural right to the free communication of thoughts and opinions which was proclaimed in France nearly a hundred years ago to be one of the most valuable Rights of Man.... Freedom of discussion is, in England, little else than the right to write or say anything which a jury, consisting of twelve shopkeepers, think it expedient should be said or written. Such liberty may vary at different times and seasons from unrestricted license to very severe restraint.”