As the Legislative elections are conducted under the supervision of the Mayors, the object of such performances as these is obvious enough. At the same time with M. Duboscq, M. Davezac de Moran, Mayor of Siest near Dax, was also suspended by M. Floquet for the offence of allowing the meeting of the Monarchical Committees, at which M. Lambert de Ste.-Croix made his speech, to be held in his own house at Dax! 'If you think,' said M. Lamarzelle to the Minister, 'to frighten us with all this, you are mistaken. At your age Robespierre had got himself guillotined!' During the Legislative elections of 1889 'the school-teachers, the postmen, the gendarmes, the highway supervisors and the labourers, were ordered to vote against the Monarchist candidates.' M. Delafosse, elected in the Calvados, publicly stated this in the Matin, and without contradiction. During the same elections the curés were officially forbidden to advise their people to vote for 'friends of religion,' and those who did so advise were fined after the election to the number of 300!
M. Cornelis Henri de Witt is one of the most active and indefatigable promoters of what are known as the 'Conférences du Sud-Ouest.' These are meetings of the Monarchists organised on a systematic plan, which take place at brief intervals throughout the great Departments of South-Western France under the superintendence of a society of which M. Princeteau, a very influential and intelligent citizen of Bordeaux, is the President. M. Princeteau, like M. de Witt, is not only an indefatigable organiser, but an extremely popular and effective orator; and it is a curious proof of the efficiency of the Conservative machinery in South-Western France, that at the Legislative elections of 1889 the Radicals and the Socialists completely disappeared as parties from the contest in the Gironde. Thanks to the scrutin d'arrondissement, several seats from that department which ought to have gone to the Monarchists were kept by the Government; but upon the total poll the Monarchists and Revisionists show 84,376 votes against 83,108 given to the Government Republicans. Under the scrutin de liste the eleven seats for the Gironde would pretty plainly have gone in 1889 to the Monarchists. In 1885 M. Cazauvielle, the leading Republican deputy, received 89,153 votes, or 6,000 more than the Republican total in 1889. As in 1889 the total poll amounted to 167,484 votes, and in 1885 to 162,286, it is clear that the Republican strength fell off, and that the Monarchist strength increased in the Gironde between 1885 and 1889.
M. Princeteau told me that on July 14 he gave a fête in his grounds near Bordeaux to more than five thousand working people. While the fête was going on, a procession of Republicans with bands of music, bent on celebrating the fête of the Bastille, passed the grounds more than once with the obvious intent of drawing away some of his guests. This they completely failed to do. If the 'fête of the Bastille' was celebrated at Bordeaux as it was at Nîmes, this says as much for the good taste as for the sound politics of the Bordeaux workmen. At Nîmes on July 22, more than a week after the 'anniversary,' I found the city streets made perilous during the day and life made intolerable at night by such a clamour of chorus singers and such a clatter of fireworks as I had not supposed it possible could be got up beyond the domain of our own 'glorious and immortal' American Fourth of July. Several accidents were caused by 'serpents' and other fireworks, and when I asked a staid and sober citizen of this old Protestant capital why the law permitted such performances, he quietly answered: 'The law does not permit them. The authorities have formally forbidden them, but the authorities are elective, and they are more anxious to keep their places than to keep the peace.' To my question whether the extreme Radicals were very strong in Nîmes, he replied that nearly a fourth of the Republicans of Nîmes are avowed Socialists, mostly of the Anti-Boulangist Anti-Possibilist type. One of their candidates for a legislative seat announced his intention, if elected, to give some person, to be designated by his constituents, an order for one half of his legislative salary, to be drawn regularly, and applied 'by his committee to political purposes.' His political programme included the formal abolition of the Presidency, annual legislative elections, the nationalisation of the soil of France, the abolition of the regular army, the socialisation of all the means of production, gratuitous and obligatory education on the same lines for all the children of France, and through all the degrees of education, and the suppression of the right to bequeath or to inherit property of any kind,' On the latter point a rather intelligent Socialist with whom I made acquaintance while I was visiting the fine Roman Amphitheatre at Nîmes, and whom I took to be a skilled mechanic, was very explicit. He thought property a 'privilege' and therefore inconsistent with equality. He spoke in an oracular fashion, and he probably belonged to the class known among French workmen, not as 'sublimes,' but as 'les fils de Dieu.' 'Of what use,' he said, 'is it to abolish hereditary titles if you allow a man of one generation to give his son in the next generation the more serious advantage over his fellow of a property which he has done nothing and could do nothing to create?' I asked him if he agreed with St.-Just that 'opulence is an infamy.' He replied very seriously: 'Yes, I think if St.-Just said that he said the truth. Certainly I do not say that every rich man is infamous. That is another matter. But it is infamous that in a land of equality one man should have the means to give himself pleasures and execute achievements beyond his fellow-citizens.' He told me that he lived in Alais, where he said the Socialists of his type were much stronger than in Nîmes. The Legislative elections show that lie was right as to this. The Socialists carried the first division of Alais, throwing 7,205 votes against 2,425 Radicals and 4,218 Government Republicans. For the Government Republicans my friend of the Amphitheatre could find no words of contempt strong enough. 'They are all whitewashed Wilsons,' he said, and then he dilated with much eloquence on the case of a certain M. Hude,'a great friend of Rochefort' he scornfully exclaimed, 'who is a great friend of Boulanger. Ah! voilà du propre! he is a wine-merchant, of course he is fond of the pots-de-vin'(the French phrase for bribes taken to promote jobs), 'and thus, when the chemical officers go to verify the quality of his wines, he calls in the Prefect of Police to prevent it, because he is a deputy!' He was particularly bitter, too, on the conversion by the Republicans of more than a thousand millions of francs lying in the savings banks into 3 per cent. funds. 'What right had they to do this?' he said indignantly. 'It was a trick to enslave the depositors!'
In the first division of Nîmes the Socialists showed no great strength at the elections of 1889. The Monarchists far outnumbered them, but they threw votes enough to make the election very close, the Republicans numbering 6,598, the Socialists 1,519, and the Monarchists 8,174, so that the latter won the day by no more than fifty-seven votes. That they won it is due to the cordial co-operation of the Protestants with the Catholics on the question of Religious Liberty in support of a Catholic, M. de Bernis, who had twice been condemned to imprisonment for 'assisting' Catholic teachers thrown on the world by the 'laicization' of the schools of Nîmes! This co-operation began in 1885. The Protestants of the Gard have quite as much at stake in this conflict as the Catholics. The Protestant Seminaries are cut down like the Catholic. The appropriations formerly made in aid of new Protestant parishes are made no longer. No sums are allowed for Protestant missionary work in outlying districts. The Protestant Consistories have been deprived of their right to nominate candidates for examination as teachers. The Consistories and the Councils of the Elders are no longer allowed to receive and administer legacies for the relief of the poor, for hospitals or asylums. Formerly, where no manse existed in a commune, the Protestant minister was allowed a certain sum for lodgings. This has been stopped. In short, the Protestants, like the Catholics of France, find themselves treated by an oligarchy of irreligious fanatics as pariahs in their own country. The Protestants, like the Catholics, are driven into irreconcilable hostility against the Republic by a Parliamentary majority which treats all religious questions in the spirit of M. de Mortillet, Mayor of St.-Germain, and a Radical deputy for the Seine-et-Oise. In 1886 some speaker in the Chamber appealed in the course of his speech to the law of God. 'The law of God!' broke in M. de Mortillet; 'pray, what is God?'
The more completely this spirit of the Mayor of St.-Germian gets the control of the Republican party, the more obvious it becomes that the Republic must gravitate into Socialism.
As it steadily alienates from itself the vast multitudes of Frenchmen who are either religious men, or recognise the vital importance of religious institutions to the existing social order, it is compelled to court the alliance of the avowed enemies of the existing social order. This is strikingly illustrated in the political condition of the great Southern Department of the Bouches-du-Rhône. This department offers a most instructive contrast with the Calvados.
In the Bouches-du-Rhône, the Government Republicans were as badly beaten in 1889 as in the Calvados. But in the Calvados they were beaten by the Monarchists, and in the Bouches-du-Rhône by the Radicals and the Socialists.
In the Bouches-du-Rhône the Radicals and Socialists threw 52,989 votes, the Government Republicans no more than 7,218. Marseilles, the greatest commercial city in France, a city of 'Republicans before the Republic,' with traditions which give dignity to its democratic tendencies, repudiated the Republic of M. Jules Ferry and M. Carnot as emphatically as the Monarchical Morbihan. Even the Boulangists were nearly twice as strong, and the Monarchists were more than twice as strong in Marseilles as the Opportunist Republicans. The Boulangists threw there 13,123, and the Monarchists 14,445 votes. The strength of the Boulangists gives zest to a terse verdict upon the 'brav' général' which I heard delivered by a cocher in Marseilles on the eve of the famous January elections in Paris. Passing through one of the squares of the Mediterranean city, I observed two cochers engaged in an animated debate. One of them from his box exclaimed 'I tell you Boulanger is the only real man in France!' To which the other replied as vehemently, 'And I tell you that he is nothing but the dealer in a low political hell! c'est un croupier de mauvais aloi!' He may have picked up the phrase from the Petit Marseillais, which is one of the few really well-edited newspapers in France. But it was a notable phrase, and it expresses, I think, the opinion of the sincere Radicals and Socialists, not only as to General Boulanger, but as to the politicians, now his bitterest enemies, who were his original friends and 'promoters.' A very smart and outspoken Provençal Socialist who drove me on a delightful morning from the once royal and always delectable city of Arles to the majestic ruins of Montmajeur, and the unique and wonderful deserted fortress-city of Les Baux, set no bounds to his speech about the official Republicans. We met near Montmajeur a neat private carriage. 'That is the carriage of M——,' he said, as we passed on. 'He is an aristocrat—but I think he will be Mayor of Axles. We have had an aristocratic major who gave to the people, and a Republican mayor who took from the people. I prefer the aristocrat, till we can make an end of all majors and all this rubbish of governments.' At the Legislative elections the Monarchists of Aries threw 8,540 votes, the Radicals 9,858, and the Government Republicans none at all. Of course the Radical members support the Government—but on their own terms. As these terms grow more exacting, the strength of the Monarchist reaction increases, and as the Monarchists grow stronger the Radical exactions become more imperious. The most active and earnest Monarchist whom I met in Marseilles, M. Fournier, assures me that the Marseilles Radicals are more intolerant of the Opportunists than they are even of the Monarchists.
As one of the largest employers of labour in Marseilles, M. Fournier is in constant touch with the working population of the Bouches-du-Rhône. He is an earnest and devoted Catholic, and he has encouraged the foundation of a Christian Corporation among the people employed in his works. These works were founded half a century ago, in 1840, for the purpose of turning to practical results the interesting discoveries then made by M. Chevreuil, the famous centenarian dean of French science, as to the nature and properties of fatty substances. At the outset these works were taken up with the manufacture of stearine candles; but as in the case of the glass works of St.-Gobain, the chemical processes employed in creating one particular product were soon found to yield other very different and not less valuable results. I shall not attempt to enter into the mysteries of saponification and distillation, which cease to be mysteries when they are followed up from point to point through the extensive and orderly organisation of the Fournier Works; suffice it that at these works 600 men and 400 women are busily employed in turning every year 13,000 tons of African palm-oil, and of Australian, Russian, French, and American tallow into stearine candles, oleine, and glycerine. The output is enormous, amounting annually to 20,000,000 packets of candles of an average weight of 400 grammes a packet, to 3,300,000 kilogrammes of oleine, and to 1,200,000 kilogrammes of glycerine. How much of this latter product goes to the pharmacies and how much to the powder magazines of the world it is not easy to say. But it is easy to see that if the Bouches-du-Rhône get the better of the Calvados in the politics of France, there will be a serious falling off in the demand for altar lights and chamber candles, and a still more serious increase in the demand for nitro-glycerine!
The output of the Fournier Works represents about one-fourth of the whole stearine and glycerine production of France, and as paraffin has of late years largely taken the place of stearine in the famous Price Works in England, the Fournier Works are now doubtless the most important of their kind in the world. Thirty years ago the candles produced here were almost all exported; now the home consumption just about equals the exportation, a fact as to which the truly paternal Government of France takes pains to leave no doubt in the minds of the producers by taxing candles heavily as an 'article of luxury.' They are subjected to a régie like cigars, and to the octroi, and these imposts, M. Fournier tells me, now amount to about fifty per cent, of their value. A knowledge of this circumstance may, perhaps, divert the wrath of travellers in France from the hotel-keeper, who claps a couple of francs for bougies into your bill if you pass half a summer's day in his house, to the Government which concerns itself much more actively with squeezing percentages out of the industries than with balancing the national budgets of France. Must not all taxes be paid by the ultimate consumer? What with these taxes and with the higher wage of labour in France, the stearine works of Marseilles find themselves taken at advantage by the energetic manufacturers of Holland. In the Fournier Works the average workman earns a daily wage of from 3 frs. 25 c. to 3 frs. 50 c.; the average workwomen, who do chiefly the clean and even pretty work of moulding the candles, making them up into packets, in large, very well ventilated and well ordered rooms, earn an average daily wage of 2 frs. 50 c. Both men and women work about ten hours a day. The 'eight-hours' doctrine of the political Socialists finds no more favour here with the real working people apparently than elsewhere in France. In Holland and Belgium and at Roubaix the average wage is about one franc less for both sexes.
The Christian Corporation of the Fournier Works is organised upon the principles, but not exactly upon the lines, of the Harmel system. It is formed by a union of five religious associations among the workpeople, made up of the men, the married women, the young men, the young girls, and the children. Character and conduct are the conditions of membership, and under the direction of a General Council in which the employers take an active part, the Corporation has founded and administers for the common benefit a Consumers' Society which maintains an economical kitchen with refectories, a recreation hall with a bar, (not limited to soda water, lemonade, and tea), and a circulating library. The statutes of this Society leave the members a wide range of liberty, and the managers are chosen by the members. Of the profits five per cent first go to the reserve fund; dividends may then be declared of not more than ten per cent, on the capital stock of 10,000 francs, and the surplus, if any, forms a supplementary reserve. The economical kitchen is so well managed that it gives a customer (who must be employed in the works, but need not be a member of the Association) for 55 centimes, or a little more than fivepence, a bowl of soup, a large helping of meat and vegetables, half a pound of bread, and a third of a bottle of wine. A café-cognac (and the cognac good) may be had for 25 centimes more.
In August of last year, with the help of the owners of the works, a Musical Society was established, and the workpeople are furnished gratuitously with medical advice and medicines. To these, in the case of invalid workmen who have been for two years employed in the works, is added a weekly allowance of six francs during illness. The owners have also founded a savings bank which pays six per cent. on sums below 3,000 francs, and four per cent. on sums above that amount. These are open to all the workpeople employed in the works, whether members or not of the Christian Corporation.
In this fashion M. Fournier, and other devout and practical Catholics of the Bouches-du-Rhône are fighting the Republic by fighting the Socialistic Radicalism of which their department is the true headquarters, and to which the Republic has substantially surrendered. It is visibly an uphill fight in the Bouches-du-Rhône, and in South-Eastern France generally. But there is life in the convictions which nerve men to fight an uphill fight, and there is something in the fire and spirit of these militant Catholics of France which reminds one of Prudentius, the Pindar of Christian Spain, celebrating fifteen centuries ago the believers who upheld so manfully the rights of conscience against prætors and prefects bent on converting them to the beauty of 'moral unity'—quod princeps colit ut colamus omnes!
When two men ride on a horse the man who holds the bridle is the master, and the Radicals hold the bridle of the French Government. The Radical Department of the Bouches-du-Rhône represents the Republic. The Monarchist Department of the Calvados represents France. If the Republic wins, the history of France before 1789 will be wiped out as with a sponge, and with it all the great qualities of the French people must disappear. Without an Executive, without a Past, and without a Religion, France would become the ideal nation of the Nihilists.
If France wins, if she recovers the Executive unity and stability essential to her life as a nation, recovers the historic sense of her national growth into greatness, recovers for every man, woman, and child in France the simple human right to believe and to hope, then the Republic must inevitably vanish, for with all these things the Republic has made itself incompatible.
If these were only my own conclusions, drawn from all that I saw and heard and learned in France during the year 1889, I might hesitate to adopt them as adequate and final.
But how can I hesitate, when I find these conclusions of mine not obscurely foreshadowed as impending in 1872 by Ernest Renan, and re-affirmed as imminent in 1882 by Jules Simon?
'The edifice of our chimæras,' cried Ernest Renan in 1872,[9] 'has melted away like fairy castles in a dream.
Presumption, puerile vanity, insubordination, feather-headedness, inability to grasp many different ideas at a glance, want of scientific sense, simple and stupid ignorance, here is the summary of our history for a year!... The Opposition, which pretended to have revolutionary remedies for all possible ills, has found itself at the end of a few days as unpopular as the fallen dynasty. The Republican Party, puffed up with the fatal errors which for half a century have been current as to the history of the Revolution, and which imagined itself able to play over again a game won eighty years ago only through circumstances utterly unlike those of to-day, has learned that it was a lunatic taking visions for realities. The legend of the Empire has been slain by Napoleon III. The legend of 1792 has been done to death by M. Gambetta. The legend of the Terror (for even the Terror had its legend among us!) has been hideously parodied by the Commune.'
So cried M. Renan in 1872.
'Our worst disasters,' said M. Jules Simon in 1882,[10] 'have so far broken out only where great numbers of men are crowded together. Men begin with scepticism, from scepticism they go on rapidly to Nihilism, and from Nihilism to Social War. The labourer in the fields still has his faith; he still has his hope of another life; he has not yet unlearned the name of God. When he becomes a Nihilist we shall have the Commune in our cities, and beyond them the Jacqueries! It is impossible that the authorities should not see this. But the authorities obey the deputy, the deputy obeys the elector, and the elector obeys the agitator.'
'There will soon be only two parties left in France; the party of the dynamiters, and the party of the do-nothings. Whatever moderate Republicans are left must go over either to violence or to indifference. Is it France alone which is thus threatened? It is the world. The Communists and the Fenians were not produced in France. But France attracts them.
'The liberty you pretend to be establishing is oppression. The neutral education you propose is the suppression of the human heart, of the human conscience.
'This "clericalism" which you declare to be the enemy, and which, when you are pushed to the wall, turns out to be Christianity—this "clericalism" which you attack and mean to exterminate, tell me, is this the power which lays your Ministers prostrate before your Deputies, and your Deputies prostrate before their electors? Is it "clericalism" which is stirring up Labour against Capital? Is it "clericalism" which preaches and supports "strikes"? Is it "clericalism" which manufactures dynamite and blows up houses? Is it "clericalism" which is transforming your literature into ribaldry and your theatres into brothels? Is it "clericalism" which shuts up your schools? Is it "clericalism" which transforms all the actions and relations of life into matters of contract and of calculation? Do you imagine that Christianity, if it be your enemy, is an enemy as terrible as Nihilism? And what other end but Nihilism can there be of your "neutral" obligatory schools and your atheistic laws? Already you go in fear of the very phrase which recognises the duties of man to God! You think it dangerous, you think it equivocal! You do not know that when you recoil before the name of God you abandon the traditions of France!
'Nay, you will not even hear now of man's duties to his country! This is another "dangerous," another "equivocal" phrase! You talk now in your programmes about the "civic duties" of man, for when these are taught there will be no danger of confounding the Monarchical France before 1789, which we must learn to hate, with the Republican France which we must love and admire!'
Thus spoke Jules Simon in 1882.
The 'civic duties' of man brought France in 1792 to the 'Law of Suspects,' to the headlong and brutal demolition of the whole social edifice, to confiscation, and to the guillotine.
To what will the 'civic duties' of man bring France, and, with France, the civilization of Christendom, in 1892?