MARSHAL MacMAHON AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONISTS.
The inconveniences resulting from the present system of transmitting political intelligence from Europe to this country for the use of our daily journals are serious. An event of importance occurs to-day in London, Paris, Constantinople, or Rome; the same afternoon we read what purports to be an account of the event in our evening journals, and the next morning we are furnished with a few more details, accompanied often by a leading article hurriedly written and based, as a rule, upon no other information than that contained in the despatches. In twenty-four hours afterwards the event is almost forgotten; and by the time that the letters of correspondents on the spot, or the journals of the locality, can reach us, the incident has become an old story and the interest excited by it in the first place has faded away. This manner of dealing with matters of great importance would be lamentable, even if the information contained in the cable despatches were always correct, full, and uncolored by prejudice; but too often the despatches are models of what they should not be—that is, they are incorrect in matters of fact; marked by omissions of the truth and by suggestions of falsehood; and disfigured, in the majority of cases when the events reported have, or are supposed to have, some relation to the interests of the Papal See, by an ingenious perversion of the real and natural meaning of the incidents which they purport to describe. A heavy responsibility rests upon the conductors of our daily journals in this matter—a responsibility to which we should be glad to see them more sensitive than they now appear to be. They know well enough how it happens that the bulk of their cable despatches from the Continent of Europe is continually affected by an evident animus against the Holy See whenever there is an opportunity to display this feeling; they know well enough why it is that, whenever possible, a coloring hostile to the church, and calculated to excite Protestant or non-Catholic prejudice against her, is given to events.
The greater part of the European despatches of the New York journals is transmitted from London, being made up there chiefly from the despatches of the Reuter Agency, supplemented by the special despatches received by the leading London journals. The Reuter News Agency, which has its ramifications throughout all Europe, and is conducted with admirable skill and good management as a business enterprise, is in the hands of Jews; its agents have peculiar relations with the governments which stand in need of their services, and a system of mutual benefit is kept up between them; in return for the monopoly of official news and other similar favors on the part of the governments, the agents of the Reuter company transmit only such intelligence as is agreeable to the governments, and with such coloring as the governments wish. The relations existing between the Italian government and the Reuter Agency are understood to be especially intimate; and certain it is that from no capital in the world has more false and distorted news been sent forth than that which all the world has received from Rome since the Italian occupation of that city. As for the Continental despatches taken from the London journals and sent to New York, it should be remembered that not one of the London daily papers is in the Catholic interest, and that those whose despatches are most frequently sent to us—namely, the Times, the Daily News, and the Pall Mall Gazette—are inspired by a very lively hatred and fear of the church. We believe that the conductors of our own daily journals are for the most part actuated by honest motives. Their heads are sometimes deplorably at fault, but their hearts are generally right; and, with rare exceptions, they are free from the guilt of wilfully misrepresenting facts and designedly deceiving their readers. But too frequently they do permit themselves to be deceived or misled, in the manner we have explained, with respect to the true meaning and co-relation of political events on the continent of Europe.
The facts mentioned are, or should be, perfectly well known in the editorial rooms of all our journals; and it is certainly to be desired that our editors should cease to take their opinions at second-hand, and should begin to exercise their own good and honest judgment upon events as they occur abroad. If they were in the habit of doing this, and if they were furnished with cable information of a correct and uncolored character, they would not, we are certain, have fallen into the error of regarding the recent change of government in France as a wicked, base, and unprovoked conspiracy to destroy the republican institutions of that country, but would have recognized in Marshal MacMahon’s action the wise, absolutely necessary, and not too rapid determination of that ruler to save the republic, if possible, while it is still worth saving, and at all events to save France and society generally throughout Europe from the convulsion, anarchy, and destruction into which the revolutionists were so rapidly and surely dragging them. It is by no means certain that Marshal MacMahon will now succeed in the task before him; he may have waited too long. Nor are we concerned to prove that the motives of the Marshal-President in his dismissal of M. Jules Simon, and in his selection of his present advisers, were unmixed; but we are anxious to show to our readers that his action was necessary, and that the good wishes of Americans who reverence law and order, who detest red-republicanism and communism, who cherish religious liberty, and who dread and abhor tyranny, whether exercised in the name of many or of one, should be on his side. “I am conscious,” said Marshal MacMahon nine days after the dismissal of M. Simon—“I am conscious of having fulfilled a great duty. I have remained, and shall remain, absolutely within the bounds of legality. It is because I am the guardian of the constitution that I acted as I have acted. To attribute to me an intention of assailing the constitution is a misconstruction of my character. The country will soon comprehend that my sole aim is the salvation of France and of the government which she has given herself.”
We believe that these are sincere and honest words; and we shall have no difficulty at least in showing that Marshal MacMahon could not have acted otherwise than he did, unless he had been prepared to surrender the virtual government of the republic into the hands of men who are leagued together to destroy the rights of property; to degrade marriage; to enslave, if not wholly to overturn, the church; to cut her off from her connection with her earthly head; to reduce her prelates, if they were permitted to exist at all, to the condition of servants of the civil power; to exile her contemplative and teaching orders; to take from her the right of educating her children; and to drag France, ere long, into an alliance with the revolutionary associations in Germany, Italy, Belgium, Spain, and Russia, which dream of establishing on the ruins of religion and of society a new confederation from which God shall be banished, and over which Satan shall rule supreme. Comparatively few of the constituents of the Gambetta party in the French Assembly are aware of the designs of the leaders of this faction; but enough light has within the past few weeks been thrown upon their machinations fully to justify the President in making a firm stand against their further progress.
M. Jules Simon refused to aid the President in executing this determination; and M. Simon was removed to give place to a minister who would co-operate with his chief. So powerful had the Gambetta faction become in the Assembly that the whole of the cabinet followed M. Simon in his enforced retirement from office, and the President was for the moment left alone. The men whom he called to his aid, however, and who, indeed, had encouraged him to dismiss M. Simon, were prompt in taking up the fallen reins of office, and the government, without a day’s delay, began its work of preserving France from her worst foes. The task before them is a most arduous one, and it has been begun none too soon. Let us show how it became necessary that it should be undertaken at all.
The French Assembly was re-convened at Versailles on the 1st of May after the usual Easter recess. During the vacation events had occurred which made it probable that the long-threatened rupture between the Gambetta faction, or Extreme Left of the Chamber, and the conservative elements in the executive department of the government, could not be delayed much longer. The administration had indeed gone to the very furthest point of concession in endeavoring to satisfy the demands of the Left. The consent of Marshal MacMahon had been given to these concessions, but it was known that this assent had been extorted from him with difficulty, and that he was personally of the opinion that the more was given to the Gambettists the more would they ask, and that the true and safe course was that of steady and uncompromising resistance to their unconstitutional and revolutionary demands. The Left, by skilful management of the press in its interest; by the manipulations of the local public functionaries who had from time to time been appointed at its request, or whom it had been able to purchase; by adroit misrepresentations and exaggerations of the policy of the conservative members of the Assembly; and by the not infrequent maladroit utterances and acts of certain of the imperialist and monarchical members, had contrived to make an imposing show of their strength in the country as well as in the Assembly. It is no doubt true that, all other things being equal, a large majority of the French people would prefer a republic to any other form of government. But the republic which would satisfy them is not at all the republic which would satisfy M. Gambetta and his friends. The republic which the majority of the French people desire is a republic in which property would be safe; in which law and order would reign; in which God would be respected; and in which the church would be free. The republic of Gambetta would possess none of these characteristics; but Gambetta and his lieutenants had been allowed to assume the attitude of the especial friends and defenders of republican institutions, and many of their members in the Assembly owed their election to the votes of good Catholics and sober citizens. They now felt themselves strong enough to advance further, and to wrest from the administration a still greater share of power.
Marshal MacMahon was himself irremovable for three years longer, only four years of his Septennate having expired. But it might be possible, in the opinion of the Gambettists, to force him to accept a cabinet which should be dictated by themselves, and which would hand over to them the virtual control of the government. One of the members of the then cabinet, they believed, would be useful to them, and their plans involved his retention. What was the nature of the communications which are said to have taken place in secret between MM. Gambetta and Simon cannot at present be known. Nor can we unveil the mysteries of the correspondence which has been kept up during the last few years between the controlling members of the French Extreme Left and the revolutionary leaders in England and throughout the Continent of Europe. The operations of the secret societies are seldom brought to light until after their work has been accomplished—and not always even then. The once famous “International Society of Working-men” has ceased to exist for all practical purposes; but it, at the best, was only an engine invented and put in motion by men who still are laboring in the secrecy of Masonic lodge-rooms and in the caucus-chambers of hidden political organizations to accomplish the destruction of Christian society and Christian government. It cannot be doubted that a certain solidarity unites the socialists of France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Russia, Spain, and Portugal, and that they have the means of acting together. The Gambetta faction in France by no means stood alone in their recent attempt to gain the upper hand in the administration of the republic; they had the active sympathy and the moral support of their confrères throughout Europe.
Now, the great bulwark of the conservative republic in France is the Roman Catholic Church, the Roman Catholic faith, the Roman Catholic people. So long as the church is free and undisturbed in France—free to pursue her work of educating her children, preserving morality, and saving souls—the French people, of whom all but a small fraction belong to her, will remain tranquil and happy, and they would make short work of men who proposed to set up in France a communistic and atheistic republic. They are quite well contented with the republic as it at present exists, and are hopeful of its future; under it the church for the first time has been allowed full right of teaching; and the avidity with which Catholics availed themselves of the privileges conferred by the new university law sufficiently attests at once their intelligence and their zeal. Still, the Catholics in France, like the Catholics throughout the rest of the world, have a sorrow and a grievance; and French Catholics, like all other Catholics, claim the right to express this sorrow and to do what is in their power to redress this grievance. The earthly head of their church is a prisoner in his own city; he has been despoiled of his patrimony and plundered of his crown; his jailers threaten from time to time to deprive him of the little that is left to him; there is positive danger that the freedom of the election of his successor will be assailed, and that the church throughout the world may be subjected, through the malice of her foes at Rome, to the gravest perils. The French Catholics conceive that it is their right and their duty to protest unceasingly against this state of things, and to inspire their government to speak in their name—and, if occasion arises, to act in their name—for the purpose of protecting the Holy Father from further insults and oppression, and of seeking to bring about the peaceable restoration of his independence. In all this they are strictly within the limits of their constitutional rights as citizens of the French Republic.
Let us bring the matter home to ourselves. Suppose that a petition should be drawn up praying President Hayes to instruct our minister at Rome to represent to the government of Italy that nine millions of American Roman Catholics felt themselves deeply aggrieved and injured by certain acts of the Italian government towards the Pope, and that they considered these acts all the more unjustifiable because they were one and all in open and undisguised violation of the promises made by the Italian government to the whole Catholic world; suppose that this petition should be signed by every Catholic man and woman in the United States and sent to the President; would it be said, then, that we were exceeding our rights as citizens, and that we should be punished for our temerity? The President might do as he pleased with the petition; he might act upon it or cast it aside—that would be for him to decide; but could we, as citizens, be blamed and punished for exercising the right of petition in order to make known our feelings upon a matter which touches us so closely? Yet this is all that the French Catholics have done; and it is because of the solidarity of interests and of purpose, of hope and of fear, which exists between the revolutionists and socialists of Italy and of the other Continental nations that the Gambettists in France were spurred up to make this perfectly legitimate action of the French Catholics the pretext for a new and desperate assault upon the liberties of the church in France—an assault under cover of which, and aided by what seems to us very much like treachery on the part of M. Jules Simon, they hoped to compel Marshal MacMahon to capitulate to them.
The allocution of the Pope issued on the 12th of last March had moved to the very depths the hearts of Catholics in France, as it had moved the hearts of the Catholics of every other land. They felt that it was impossible for them to remain silent after hearing that most pathetic and powerful appeal; they wished that their reply should be as emphatic as possible, and that it should consist of acts as well as of words. They resolved to draw up addresses to the Holy Father; to organize pilgrimages to convey these addresses, with their gifts, to Rome; and to devise means whereby they could express to their own government their anxious wish that it would use its influence with the government of Italy in behalf of the restoration of the independence and freedom of the Pope. Each of these projects was entered into with commendable zeal; and early in April the Bishop of Nevers addressed a letter to Marshal MacMahon, asking him, in the name of his flock, to use the influence of France at the court of King Victor Emanuel and at other courts for the protection of the Pope and for the restoration of his rights. The marshal’s cabinet at this moment were greatly under the influence of M. Jules Simon, the President of the Council; they were imbued with the idea that it would not be safe for them to exasperate the Gambetta faction; and they persuaded the marshal to approve a letter addressed by the Minister of Public Worship to the bishop, in which entire disapproval of his appeal was expressed, with the remark that “the marshal, as a sincere friend of religion, saw with pain the clergy intervening in internal, and still more in foreign, politics.” The Gambettists were encouraged by this mark of weakness on the part of the government, and prepared to push their advantage. But the Catholics did not choose to take their views of duty from the dictates of a Council whereof M. Simon was the chief; and they continued to organize their pilgrimages and to draw up and circulate their addresses to the Pope. On the 19th of April the Bishop of Nevers, not at all disconcerted by the rebuke which he had received from the Cabinet, addressed a letter to the Mayor of the Nièvre, in which he explained to that official what, in his opinion, was the duty of all good Catholics occupying influential positions.
“The Pope being no longer free in Rome,” wrote the bishop to the mayor, “the result is that we ourselves are no longer free in our consciences, and we consequently should use all our influence to obtain a change in such an abnormal state of things, and the restoration to the sovereign of our souls of the independence which he absolutely requires in order to guide us. We must first instil these views in the minds of the population whose interests are confided to us. We must then concert together to cause similar convictions to prevail in the various councils of the country.”
On the 20th, at a cabinet council, the general petitions of the Catholics addressed to the government were taken into consideration, and it was proposed that, in order to silence the complaints of the Gambettists, who were declaiming violently that the circulation and presentation of such memorials would embroil France in a difficulty with Italy, the bishops should be ordered to forbid the further exposure of these petitions in their churches for signature. But the marshal on this occasion displayed a little more firmness and the matter was passed over without action. A few days before this an event had occurred in Italy that served to increase the distrust with which Marshal MacMahon already regarded the secret intentions of the leaders of the Left. In Benevento, near Letino, and again near Rome, the government had arrested a number of socialists who, it appears, were engaged in a conspiracy for the establishment of a Red Republic. The papers found on the persons of the arrested men were of the usual inflammatory character, and set forth, among other things, that “man ought not to be subjected to any tyranny, human or divine; that the principle of private property is the climax of infamy, because it creates inequality between men; that the union between men and women ought to be free; and that the state is the denial of the most sacred principles.” The chief leader of the band, who was arrested with about fifty of his adherents, was a young Milanese named Caffiero, a man of wealth and position; and an examination of his papers disclosed the fact that his association was only one of a large number of others spread throughout Europe, and that the names of some of the leading radical republicans of France appeared upon a list which was believed to enumerate the advisers and real leaders of the conspirators. On the 28th of April, however, the cabinet again induced the marshal to make another effort to conciliate the Gambettists, who had redoubled their agitation against the Catholic movement, which had by this time become very general throughout the whole country. On that day the Minister of the Interior issued a circular to all prefects, directing them to discourage the signature of the Catholic protests and petitions by not allowing them to be publicly circulated within their respective jurisdictions. The circular—to which Marshal MacMahon assented after much pressure—instructed the prefects to regard these petitions and protests as “an unjustifiable and illegal interference in the legislative and domestic affairs of a friendly foreign state,” and to do all in their power to suppress them. Gambetta himself could scarcely have said more; but the marshal was quite correct in his opinion that Gambetta would still ask for more. Meanwhile, the mot d’ordre to the Gambettists had gone forth to strike terror into the hearts of their opponents by public manifestations. The students of the Sorbonne were instigated into making violent assaults upon the Catholic universities; on the 1st of May five hundred students assembled in front of the Catholic university in the Rue de Vaugirard, where they insulted the Catholic students and professors by indecent harangues and by singing blasphemous parodies of a hymn to the Sacred Heart; dispersed by the police, they separated only to assemble again before the Jesuit school in the Rue de Shomond, where the same disorderly and disgraceful scenes were repeated until the police arrived and arrested the ringleaders of the mob. In all the cities where the Gambettists were sufficiently numerous manifestations against the church and her liberties were organized; and in some cases the zeal of the disciples so far outran the directions of the leaders that it was with difficulty the latter prevented the former from outrages which would have alarmed and disgusted the whole country.
Affairs were in this condition when the Chambers reassembled on the 1st of May. The Left lost no time in bringing forward their guns and forcing the fighting. M. Leblond was put up by them in the Chamber of Deputies to give notice of a question addressed to the government “as to the measures which it proposed to take to repress Ultramontane intrigues.” M. Jules Simon, hastening to comply with the demands of the men with whom, as it now appears, he was secretly in accord, at once replied that the debate on the proposed question could take place on the next day. The Catholic members of the Chamber seem to have already distrusted the sincerity of M. Simon. One of them—the eloquent and fearless Count de Mun—announced that he and those who acted with him insisted upon a clear understanding of the position of the government.
“We shall insist upon knowing,” said he, “whether the government accept the responsibility for the campaign that is being waged by means of impure calumnies against the Catholics of France. The patriotism of French Catholics cannot be called in question; it is above suspicion. In what we are doing—in what we wish to do—we are claiming but our rights. We demand, however, that the government, to which we give our support, should free itself from the responsibility for the attacks made upon us, which render our position intolerable.”
M. Simon seems to have perceived that matters were growing serious, and that he could not much longer continue to pretend to serve two masters; but he resolved to struggle still to maintain his position. On the following day, after M. Leblond had put his question and supported it by a harangue in which he urged that the government should at once proceed to repress by the most stringent means “the Ultramontane intrigues,” M. Simon addressed the Chamber in a speech highly disingenuous and full of double meanings. It was virtually an appeal to the Gambetta faction to permit him to remain in power in order that he might do their work; while at the same time it was an attempt to throw dust in the eyes of the Catholics by hypocritical professions of respect for religion and its rights. The government had been blamed, he said, for permitting Catholic newspapers to assail Italy; but the government could not prevent this; the law would punish the writers, if what they wrote was punishable under the law. On the other hand, the government would not tolerate any attack upon the Catholic religion—“which it sincerely respected”—and would protect the rights and liberties of Catholics. In fact, the church in France enjoyed to-day more freedom than at any previous time. But it was necessary to limit this freedom. For instance, the government “tolerates” the existence of Catholic societies so long as they are used only for the purposes set forth in their statutes, but it had interdicted the Catholic committees which were employed in political undertakings and which had “formidable ramifications.” Having gone thus far, M. Simon thought he might as well go a little further, and he proceeded to make a statement which was a direct insult to the intelligence of the whole Catholic world. “The Catholic petitions and the demonstration made by the Bishop of Nevers,” said he, “were based upon a fiction—namely, that the Pope is a prisoner in the Vatican”; “the law of guarantees has taken every care of the spiritual independence of the Holy Father”! And he then went on to condemn the petitions as “an interference in the internal affairs of a neighboring country,” and to remind the Chamber that the government had done all in its power to suppress these lawful manifestations of Catholic feeling. The government, he added, would continue to protect the clergy as long as they confined themselves to their spiritual duties, but would in the future punish them severely “if they encroached upon the civil power”—that is, if they continued to exercise their freedom and to discharge their duty by protesting against the acts of the Sardinian robbers, and by seeking to enlighten the public mind and conscience as to the real condition of the head of the universal church.
This speech of the President of the Council was a virtual surrender to the Extreme Left; but M. Gambetta was determined to force a more formal and complete capitulation. On the following day, May 4, he resumed the debate in a speech which he had carefully prepared, and which he delivered with great eloquence and animation. Its spirit is expressed in the sentence which was received with the loudest applause by the Extreme Left: “It is time that lay society should drive back the church to that subordinate rank which belongs to her in the state.” M. Gambetta, our readers will perceive, is very far in advance of M. Cavour. The Italian statesman dreamed of “a free church in a free state”; the French revolutionist demands an enslaved church in an atheistic and communistic state. Listen to him:
“The church has set citizens by the ears, alarmed France, and troubled Europe. It is always thus: the monarchy was often compelled to resist the encroachments of the church, but the republic must do more, for now the state is assaulted on all sides in the name of religion and her very existence is threatened. The Catholic leaders—ex-ministers, senators, and members of this Chamber—have exalted the Pope as the supreme ruler of France and of the world; when the Pope has issued an order they exclaim: 'Rome has spoken and must be obeyed.’ The Pope on the 12th of March commanded that an agitation in his favor should be everywhere set on foot; immediately we behold deputations of Catholic royalists calling upon the Minister of Foreign Affairs, convocations being held, and petitions circulated in spite of the feeble pretences of the government to suppress them. It will not do to say that the church in France must have the liberty which she enjoys elsewhere; she shall not have it, for the reason, among others, that here the church is bound to the state, and the state is responsible for the language and the acts of the bishops. No longer must it be permitted that the Pope may address himself directly to France, without having first obtained the sanction of the civil power, and without first submitting to it his bulls, briefs, and allocutions. No longer must the bishops be allowed to address themselves to mayors and prefects, conveying to the civil functionaries of the republic orders received from Rome. It is useless to say that only a few of the bishops have done these things; for these bishops represent the whole hierarchy, the church is unanimous, and its submission to Rome is complete. There is no such thing as resistance or opposition in the church; the old Gallican liberties have been swept away by the Syllabus and by the Vatican Council. The Pope must not be permitted again to usurp the rights of the state, as he has recently done in appointing one of his bishops chancellor of a French university and giving him the right of conferring degrees. I cannot understand how it happened that the papal instrument making this appointment was ever permitted to enter France! We must no longer endure these things; we must drive back the church to the place where she belongs. We need not fear that the people will not be on our side; if there is one thing more than another that is repugnant to France, it is the yoke of clericalism; and it cannot be too strongly said that clericalism is the enemy of the country.”
To this bitter harangue M. Jules Simon had no reply; he contented himself with declaring that he and the cabinet were not subject to the dictation of any power behind the throne, and that perfect harmony existed between the marshal and himself. He hastened to add that he would accept, in the name of the government, the order of the day proposed by M. Leblond, which was in these words:
“The Chamber of Deputies, considering that the recrudescence of Ultramontane manifestations constitutes a danger to the domestic and foreign peace of the country, calls upon the government to make use of the lawful means which it has at its disposal.”
This was adopted by a vote of 361 against 121; thus M. Gambetta won his victory, and, so far as M. Simon could pledge it, the government was pledged to carry out the demands of the foes of the church. This was on the 4th of May. Marshal MacMahon, it appears, hesitated as to his future course; but it appears also that he was conscious he had been betrayed into an intolerable position. He seems to have determined, from that moment, to dismiss M. Simon, and to appeal to the country to sustain him in his refusal to comply with the unconstitutional and tyrannical demands of the revolutionists; but, with what may seem to some an unwise timidity, he resolved to wait for some other act on the part of M. Simon which might be made the immediate ground for his dismissal.
He had not long to wait. During the next few days the sittings of the Chamber were characterized by great excitement and tumult. M. Simon was made the target of continual attacks; he was accused of having formerly belonged to the International Society, and of having been morally in league with the Communists who assassinated the Archbishop of Paris. He defended himself with vehemence, but his affiliation with the Gambetta faction became daily more apparent. He promised to draw up and send to the bishops a stringent circular, warning them that they would be held to a strict responsibility for all their future acts. The Committee of the Budget, on the 12th of May, reported in favor of according the sum annually paid for the support of the church, $10,626,199; but it accompanied this recommendation with the remark that it was now the duty of the government to revive and enforce a number of obsolete and almost forgotten laws which had been enacted, from time to time, by various governments which had desired to enslave the church. If these obsolete enactments should now be enforced, no French bishop could visit Rome without the consent of the government; no subscriptions for the Pope could be raised in France; no papal brief or bull could enter France, and no council or diocesan synod could assemble, without the consent of the government; and the ecclesiastical seminaries would be compelled to teach that the civil government is supreme in all things. M. Simon, it was understood, was about to enforce these unjust and virtually abrogated restrictions, and the Gambettists were in high feather. But their exultation was soon to be changed into disappointment and rage.
The Chamber of Deputies had before it a bill modifying the organization of municipalities, and another measure for the repeal of the law on the restrictions of the press which had been passed two years ago to secure social order. The cabinet had consulted upon these measures and had agreed upon the line which the ministers should take in opposing them. To this agreement M. Simon was a consenting party; it was well understood between him and the marshal that when these measures came up for decision M. Simon should explain that the government could not consent to them. But the new masters of M. Simon held him to the engagement he had made with them; and when these measures were brought forward M. Simon found it convenient to be absent from the Chamber, and the government was again betrayed. The patience of Marshal MacMahon was now exhausted; he was perhaps glad that M. Simon had so soon furnished him with a sufficient reason for his dismissal. Early on the morning of May 16 the marshal, having, it is said, passed a sleepless night, addressed the following note to M. Simon, and sent it to him without consulting with any of the other members of the government:
“I have read in the Journal Officiel the report of last night’s proceedings in the Chamber of Deputies. I observed with surprise that neither you nor the Keeper of the Seals put forward from the tribune the reasons which might have prevented the repeal of a press law, passed less than two years ago on the motion of M. Dufaure, and which you yourself quite recently wished to see applied in the courts of law. And yet it had been decided in several meetings of the cabinet, and indeed in the council held yesterday morning, that you and the Keeper of the Seals should undertake to oppose the motion for the repeal of the law.... In view of such an attitude on the part of the chief of the cabinet, the question naturally arises whether he retains sufficient influence to assert his views successfully, An explanation on this point is indispensable; for I myself, although not, like you, answerable to Parliament, have a responsibility towards France which to-day more than ever must engross my attention.”
M. Simon, upon receiving this note, saw that between his two stools he had fallen to the ground; but he made one more effort to again deceive the marshal. He repaired to the Elysée with a letter of resignation in his pocket; but before presenting it he asked the marshal if it were not possible that they should continue to act together. “No,” was the reply. “I have gone as far as I can possibly go in the wake of you and your allies; I shall go no further.” M. Simon then presented his letter of resignation, which was composed mainly of rather lame excuses for his absence from the Chamber on the two occasions complained of by the marshal. Immediately afterwards the other members of the cabinet resigned, in order to leave the marshal full liberty of action; and by the time the Gambettists had eaten their breakfasts they learned that they had overshot the mark, and that, instead of forcing Marshal MacMahon to accept their revolutionary programme, they had driven him to dismiss from his councils the man on whom they most relied, and in all probability to surround himself with men whom they could neither frighten nor purchase.
The excitement among all the members of the Assembly was great as the news spread; and a meeting of the Gambettists was called for the same evening, at which a line of action was laid down. One of the first things to be done, it was agreed, was to use the machinery at their disposal “in order properly to inspire foreign public opinion,” so that it might react upon France; and during the night “the republican leaders sent to foreign journals instructions to insert opinions upon the crisis” which would have the effect of alarming the marshal by holding up before him the threat of the displeasure of Germany and Italy. The London journals were especially inspired in this sense; and it was thus that our own journals, re-echoing this echo of the Gambetta caucus, gave their readers the idea that Marshal MacMahon had dismissed his cabinet in order to destroy the republic and to engage at once in a war against Italy for the restoration of the temporal sovereignty of the Pope. The session of the Chamber of Deputies on the 17th was excited; and M. Gambetta once more demonstrated the foolishness of those who, deceived by his affected moderation and calmness during the last two years, had believed that this fou furieux had become a decent and practical statesman. He moved the resolution which had been adopted at the caucus the preceding night, and supported it in a speech full of fire and venom. The resolution, which the Chamber accepted by a vote of 355 against 154, simply declared that “the confidence of the majority can only be enjoyed by a cabinet which is free in its action and resolved to govern in accordance with republican principles, which can alone secure order and prosperity at home and abroad”—words with which no one can find fault. But M. Gambetta, giving full vent to his rage at finding himself foiled at the very moment when he was dreaming of victory, declared that the dismissal of M. Simon had been brought about by the intrigues of “a secret influence with which no ministry could cope.”
“It is not true,” he cried, “that the President of the republic bears a responsibility over and above that of the ministry. We must recall him to an exact observance of the constitution, and deliver him from perfidious counsels. The country wishes to be rid of the nightmare of those men of reaction who show their livid faces at all moments of uncertainty. If the Chambers are dissolved we have no fear of the result, but the country may see in it a prelude to war. Criminals are those who would provoke it.”
No one thinks of provoking war save M. Gambetta and his friends, and they are the only criminals. Marshal MacMahon was not at all dismayed by this loud talk; on the same evening the new cabinet was announced. The Duke Decazes and General Berthaut, Ministers of Foreign Affairs and of War in the former cabinet, retained their portfolios; the Duke de Broglie was made President of the Council and Minister of Justice; M. de Fourtou, Minister of the Interior; M. Caillaux, Minister of Finance; M. Paris, Minister of Public Works; M. de Meaux, Minister of Agriculture; and M. Brunet, Minister of Public Instruction. The cabinet is a homogeneous and a respectable one; as long as it remains in office the country may be certain, at least, that order will be maintained and that the plots of the Reds will be frustrated. During the morning of the 18th the Gambettists were very busy in preparing to give battle to the new cabinet. But they found themselves again disconcerted by the firmness of the President, who, exercising his constitutional right, sent a message to both houses, adjourning their session until the 16th of June. In this message Marshal MacMahon explains that he has scrupulously conformed to the constitution. He appointed the cabinets of M. Dufaure and of M. Simon with the object of placing himself in accord with the majority in the Chamber; but neither of these cabinets were able to unite in the Chamber a majority capable of causing constitutional and proper ideas to prevail.
“I could not,” the marshal went on to say, “take a further step on the same path without making an appeal to the republican fraction which desires a radical modification of all our institutions. My conscience and my patriotism do not permit me to associate myself even distantly with the triumph of these ideas, which can only engender disorder and the humiliation of France; and so long as I hold power I shall use it within legal limits to prevent that consummation, for it would be the ruin of the country. But I am convinced the country thinks as I do. It was not the triumph of these theories which the country desired at the last elections, when all the candidates availed themselves of my name. If it were to be again interrogated it would repudiate such a confusion of ideas. I am firmly resolved to respect and maintain the existing institutions of the country. Until 1880 I can propose no modification, and contemplate nothing of the kind. In order to allow the excitement to calm down, I invite you to suspend your sittings for one month. You will then be able to discuss the Budget. In the meantime we will watch over the maintenance of public peace. We will suffer nothing at home tending to compromise it; and it will be maintained abroad, I am confident, notwithstanding the agitations which disturb a portion of Europe, thanks to our good relations with all the powers and our policy of neutrality and abstention. On this point all parties are agreed, and the new cabinet holds the same views as the old. If any imprudence in the language of the press compromises the concord which we all desire, I shall repress it by legal means. To prevent this I appeal to that patriotism which is wanting in no class in France.”
Violent were the scenes in both Chambers when this message was read, but they were cut short by the firmness of the new ministers. M. Gambetta attempted to speak; his voice was drowned by shouts of “Down with the Dictator!” In the Senate M. Simon essayed to deliver an oration, but the Duke de Broglie announced that no one could speak, as the President had adjourned the session. The houses separated in confusion, and the Gambettists occupied themselves during the next few days in issuing inflammatory appeals to the country. The new government began without delay the task of strengthening itself by the removal of disaffected prefects, sub-prefects, and other department officials, and this work has been carried out with the same thoroughness that is displayed in our own country after a radical administrative change.
All this is the prelude to an appeal to the country in the shape of a general election for a new Assembly. The people will be summoned to decide, not whether they wish a republic or a monarchy, but whether the republic shall be entrusted to the extreme radical party or to those who can and will save France from the ruin into which Gambetta and his crew would engulf it. The decision will be waited for with anxiety, but without fear on our part. The French people, we believe, are sound at heart, and have no wish to resign themselves into the hands of men who fear not God nor regard man save as a convenient tool for their own ends. Meanwhile, however, the utmost circumspection should be exercised by the new government. Prince Bismarck is enraged when he sees France strengthening herself; he is delighted when he beholds her weakening herself by internal dissensions. Thus growls of displeasure at the check given to the Gambetta party have already been heard from Berlin, and the German press has been instructed to represent that the new French administration intends “to restore the Papacy through the humiliation of Germany.” The Italian government, troubled with a bad conscience, indulges in similar anticipations; and the first duty of the Duke Decazes has been to reassure these cabinets and to point out that the French government wishes simply to devote itself to the domestic interests and safety of France. We believe that this is the plain truth. If Marshal MacMahon and his present advisers are sustained, France will be saved from domestic ruin, and her salvation will go far towards checking the revolution in other countries.
The time will come, no doubt, when France will again assert herself in European affairs, but with a wisdom gathered from her terrible reverses and humiliation. For those reverses she had no one but herself to blame. They were the bitter fruit of an overweening pride, and of the desertion of those eternal principles of justice and right, and of the faith that embodies them, close adherence to which alone makes nations truly great. France is coming back to her faith, and with her faith will return her greatness, her nationality, her life. Before, however, she can make her voice heard in Europe she must speak in clear, calm, and not discordant tones. She must be united in herself, one nation, one people, with one heart and one soul. It is this that Germany dreads of all things, and consequently the threats and intrigues of Germany and Italy will be exerted to the utmost in aid of Gambetta and his faction, who, indeed, have much strength of their own. While we are far from thinking that the contest will be an easy one, we have little doubt as to the final issue. The republic of order in France is the Catholic republic. The French nation is Catholic. All the real glories of France are indissolubly linked with the Catholic name. Her greatest disasters are as fatally linked with the party of which Gambetta is to-day the ostensible leader. It is time for Catholic France to gather herself together and arise in a strength that she never before had the opportunity of possessing. The way is open. She stands now quite untrammelled from alliances with any dynasty or name. Her fate lies in her own hands, and the honest soldier who has guarded so well her truest interests will not betray the trust placed in him by his countrymen.