Is it possible that in the actual condition of France and of Europe such a system as this should last?
If France drifts or is driven into a great European war, one of two things would seem to be inevitable. If the French armies are victorious, the general who commands them and restores the military prestige of France will be the master of the government and of the country. If the French armies are defeated, the Government will disappear in a whirlwind of national rage and despair. 'In that event,' said a Republican Senator to me, 'in that event--which I will not contemplate--the princes of the House of France would be recalled instantly and by acclamation; we should have nothing left but that or anarchy.'
But putting aside the crisis of a great war, what other alternatives present themselves as the possible issues in peace of the system now dominant at Paris?
Of what weight or avail in the policy of the parliamentary oligarchy which calls itself the Third Republic are the counsels of men like M. Léon Renault, M. Jules Simon, M. Ribot, M. Léon Say, who have tried in vain to constitute in France the Conservative Republic of M. Thiers? M. Léon Say left his seat in the Senate before the recent elections and presented himself in the Pyrenees as a candidate for the Chamber, with the well-understood expectation of finding himself eventually put into the presidency of that body. This was to be a guarantee of the Conservative Republic!
Who actually fills that most important post?
M. Floquet, who first distinguished himself under the Empire by publicly insulting the Emperor of Russia in the Palais de Justice during the visit of that potentate to Paris, and who resigned his seat as a deputy for the Seine in March 1871 to share 'the perils and sufferings,' as he put it, of his constituents, the Communards of Paris! For this M. Floquet was arrested at Biarritz and locked up at Paris till the end of the year 1871.
How can France hope to find liberty within her own borders, or peace with honour abroad, under the domination of such men?
On December 19, 1888, during a discussion of the budget of 1890 in the French Senate, M. Challemel-Lacour, a Republican of the Republicans, who actually allowed the red flag to be hoisted instead of the tricolour on the Hôtel de Ville of Lyons while he was prefect of the Rhône, and who represented the Republic for a time as Ambassador in London, made a remarkable speech, in which he warned his colleagues of the fate which they were preparing for the Republic. He is one of the three Senators of the Bouches-du-Rhône, and one of the four Vice-Presidents of a body now controlled by the Government, and therefore virtually by the majority of the Chamber of Deputies. He is more than this. An elaborate speech of his, delivered in the Assembly on September 4, 1874, in which he denied the 'right to teach' as threatening the 'moral unity of France,' was the signal of the deliberate war against all religion afterwards proclaimed by M. Gambetta, and since prosecuted by M. Jules Ferry. Out of that speech grew the policy of the Third Republic. Yet what did he say in 1888? He plainly declared his belief that the policy of the Government was driving the Republic headlong to its ruin. He spoke as a Republican, passionately reaffirming his faith in the Republic, and his desire to see it solidly founded in France. 'I conjure you, therefore,' he said, 'to take order, that the Republic may once more become the reign of law; that all may be protected in their persons, in their property, in their faith, not only against disorder in the streets, but against moral disorder, moral anarchy, defamation, calumny, against the fury of an unbridled, uncontrolled, irresponsible press. It is time to arrest the threatening ruin which must affect the humblest lives, if our sad fate be to witness the catastrophe of liberty!'