France in the Nineteenth Century

by Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer

Thus ended all chances for Henri V. The Orleans princes, having concluded a compact with him as his heirs, felt themselves bound in honor to refuse to accept any compromise which "the head of the family" did not approve.

It can be easily imagined how provoked and disappointed were all those who had rallied to the king's party. There remained nothing to do but to strengthen the Republic and to provide it with a permanent constitution. A Committee of Thirty was appointed to draw up the document. The constitution was very conservative. It has now been in force nineteen years, but it has never worked smoothly, and the object of the extreme Republicans, who have clamored for "revision," has been to eliminate its conservative elements and make it Red Republican. It is impossible for a people who change their government so often to have much respect or love for any constitution.

The Marshal-Duke of Magenta had accepted the presidency without any great desire to retain it; nevertheless, he established his household on a semi-royal footing, as though he intended, as some thought, that there should be at least a temporary court, to prepare the way for what might be at hand. M. Thiers had been a bourgeois president; the marshal was a grand seigneur. M. Thiers' servants had been clothed in black; the marshal's wore gay liveries of scarlet plush, and gray and silver. When M. Thiers took part in any public ceremony he drove in a handsome landau with a mounted escort of Republican Guards, and his friends (he never called them his suite) followed as they pleased in their own carriages. But the marshal's equipages were painted in three shades of green, and lined with pearl-gray satin. They were drawn by four gray horses, with postilions and outriders. To see M. Thiers on business was as easy as it is to see the President at the White House. Anybody could be admitted on sending a letter to his secretary. To journalists he was always accessible, believing himself still to belong to their profession. But to approach the marshal was about as hard as to approach a king, and he hated above all things newspaper writers.

In 1873 the Shah of Persia came to Paris, and the marshal entertained him magnificently. He gave him a torch-light procession of soldiers, a gala performance at the Grand Opera, and a banquet in the Galerie des Glaces at Versailles. The Parisians regretted that the visit had not been made in M. Thiers' time, when society might have been amused by stories of how the omniscient little president had instructed the shah, through an interpreter, as to Persian history and the etymology of Oriental languages; but society had a good story connected with the visit, after all. During the state banquet at Versailles the shah turned to the Duchess of Magenta, and asked her, in a French sentence some one had taught him for the occasion, why her husband did not make himself emperor.

The marshal was content to hold his place as president, and the Duc de Broglie governed for him, except in anything relating to military affairs. On these the marshal always had his way.

The Duc de Broglie's government, which was all in the interest of the monarchical principle, became distrusted and unpopular. In one year twenty-one Republicans and six Bonapartists gained seats in the Assembly, while the Orleanist and Legitimist parties gained not one. By 1874 the cause of royalty in France was at a low ebb. In this year—a year after the downfall of M. Thiers—the Duc de Broglie was defeated in the Chamber on some measure of small importance; but his defeat turned him summarily out of office. The Left Centre—that is, the Republicans from conviction—was the strongest of the seven parties. The Republic seemed established on a basis of law and order.

According to the constitution, the president was chosen for seven years, with the chance of re-election; the Chamber of Deputies was elected for seven years by universal suffrage, but every year one third of its members had to retire into private life or stand for a new election. The Senate was chosen by a complicated arrangement,—partly by the Chamber, partly by a sort of electoral college, the members of which were drawn from the councils of departments, the arrondissements, and the municipalities of cities. As Gambetta said: "So chosen, it could not be a very democratic assemblage."

"Arrondissement," in the political language of our Southern States, would be translated electoral districts either in town or country. In the Northern States it would mean districts for the cities, townships in the country.

The Speaker, or President of the Chamber, at Tours, at Bordeaux, and at Versailles, until a month before the downfall of M. Thiers, had been the immaculately respectable M. Jules Grévy, who had entered public life in 1848. He had been deposed during the period when the Monarchists had strength and felt sure of the throne for Henri V., and he had been replaced by a M. Buffet. It was M. Buffet who became prime minister on the downfall of the Duc de Broglie. Marshal MacMahon by no means relished being governed by a cabinet composed of men of more advanced republican opinions than his own. But it is useless to go deeper into the parliamentary squabbles of this period.

Then began the quarrel of which we have read so often in Associated Press telegrams,—the dispute concerning the scrutin de liste and the scrutin d'arrondissement. "Scrutin" means ballot; "scrutin de liste" means that electors might choose any Frenchman as their candidate; "scrutin d'arrondissement," that they must confine their choice to some man living in the district for which he wished to stand. The Left disapproved the scrutin d'arrondissement, which gave too much scope, it said, for local interests to have weight over political issues. In our own country local interests are provided for by State legislatures, and in elections for Congress the scrutin d'arrondissement is adopted.