The Constitutional Law further provided that the deputies should be elected to the Chamber for four years by direct manhood suffrage, which had been enjoyed in France ever since 1848. The laws relating to registration, which is Scrutin d’arrondissement and scrutin de liste. of admirable simplicity in France, were left practically the same as under the Second Empire. From 1875 to 1885 the elections were held on the basis of scrutin d’arrondissement, each department being divided into single-member districts. In 1885 scrutin de liste was tried, the department being the electoral unit, and each elector having as many votes as there were seats ascribed to the department without the power to cumulate—like the voting in the city of London when it returned four members. In 1889 scrutin d’arrondissement was resumed. The payment of members continued as under the Second Empire, the salary now being fixed at 9000 francs a year in both houses, or about a pound sterling a day. The Senate and the Chamber were endowed with almost identical powers. The only important advantage given to the popular house in the paper constitution was its initiative in matters of finance, but the right of rejecting or of modifying the financial proposals of the Chamber was successfully upheld by the Senate. In reality the Chamber of Deputies has overshadowed the upper house. The constitution did not prescribe that ministers should be selected from either house of parliament, but in practice the deputies have been in cabinets in the proportion of five to one in excess of the senators. Similarly the very numerous ministerial crises which have taken place under the Third Republic have with the rarest exceptions been caused by votes in the lower chamber. Among minor differences between the two houses ordained by the constitution was the legal minimum age of their members, that of senators being forty and of deputies twenty-five. It was enacted, moreover, that the Senate, by presidential decree, could be constituted into a high court for the trial of certain offences against the security of the state.
The constitution thus produced, the fourteenth since the Revolution of 1789, was the issue of a monarchical Assembly forced by circumstances to establish a republic. It was therefore distinguished from others which preceded 1876: Political parties under the new Constitution. it in that it contained no declaration of principle and no doctrinal theory. The comparative excellence of the work must be recognized, seeing that it has lasted. But it owed its duration, as it owed its origin and its character, to the weakness of purpose and to the dissensions of the monarchical parties. The first legal act under the new constitution was the selection by the expiring National Assembly of seventy-five nominated senators, and here the reactionaries gave a crowning example of that folly which has ever marked their conduct each time they have had the chance of scoring an advantage against the Republic. The principle of nomination had been carried in the National Assembly by the Right and opposed by the Republicans. But the quarrels of the Legitimists with the duc de Broglie and his party were so bitter that the former made a present of the nominated element in the Senate to the Republicans in order to spite the Orleanists; so out of seventy-five senators nominated by the monarchical Assembly, fifty-seven Republicans were chosen. Without this suicidal act the Republicans would have been in a woeful minority in the Senate when parliament met in 1876 after the first elections under the new system of parliamentary government. The slight advantage which, in spite of their self-destruction, the reactionaries maintained in the upper house was outbalanced by the republican success at the elections to the Chamber. In a house of over 500 members only about 150 monarchical deputies were returned, of whom half were Bonapartists. The first cabinet under the new constitution was formed by Dufaure, an old minister of Louis Philippe like Thiers, and like him born in the 18th century. The premier now took the title of president of the council, the chief of the state no longer presiding at the meetings of ministers, though he continued to be present at their deliberations. Although the republican victories at the elections were greatly due to the influence of Gambetta, none of his partisans was included in the ministry, which was composed of members of the two central groups. At the end of 1876 Dufaure retired, but nearly all his ministers retained their portfolios under the presidency of Jules Simon, a pupil of Victor Cousin, who first entered political life in the Constituent Assembly of 1848, and was later a leading member of the opposition in the last seven years of the Second Empire.
The premiership of Jules Simon came to an end with the abortive coup d’état of 1877, commonly called from its date the Seize Mai. After the election of Marshal MacMahon to the presidency, the clerical party, irritated at the The Seize Mai 1877. failure to restore the comte de Chambord, commenced a campaign in favour of the restitution of the temporal power to the Pope. It provoked the Italian government to make common cause with Germany, as Prince Bismarck was likewise attacked by the French clericals for his ecclesiastical policy. At last Jules Simon, who was a liberal most friendly to Catholicism, had to accept a resolution of the Chamber, inviting the ministry to adopt the same disciplinary policy towards the Church which had been followed by the Second Empire and the Monarchy of July. It was on this occasion that Gambetta used his famous expression, “Le cléricalisme, voilà l’ennemi.” Some days later a letter appeared in the Journal officiel, dated 16th May 1877, signed by President MacMahon, informing Jules Simon that he had no longer his confidence, as it was clear that he had lost that influence over the Chamber which a president of the Council ought to exercise. The dismissal of the prime minister and the presidential acts which followed did not infringe the letter of the new constitution; yet the proceeding was regarded as a coup d’état in favour of the clerical reactionaries. The duc de Broglie formed an anti-republican ministry, and Marshal MacMahon, in virtue of the presidential prerogative conferred by the law of 1875, adjourned parliament for a month. When the Chamber reassembled the republican majority of 363 denounced the coalition of parties hostile to the Republic. The president, again using his constitutional prerogative, obtained the authorization of the Senate to dissolve the Chamber. Meanwhile the Broglie ministry had put in practice the policy, favoured by all parties in France, of replacing the functionaries hostile to it with its own partisans. But in spite of the administrative electoral machinery being thus in the hands of the reactionaries, a republican majority was sent back to the Chamber, the sudden death of Thiers on the eve of his expected return to power, and the demonstration at his funeral, which was described as a silent insurrection, aiding the rout of the monarchists. The duc de Broglie resigned, and Marshal MacMahon sent for General de Rochebouet, who formed a cabinet of unknown reactionaries, but it lasted only a few days, as the Chamber refused to vote supply. Dufaure was then called back to office, and his moderate republican ministry lasted for the remainder of the MacMahon presidency.
Thus ended the episode of the Seize Mai, condemned by the whole of Europe from its inception. Its chief effects were to prove again to the country the incompetency of the monarchists, and by associating in the public mind the Church with this ill-conceived venture, to provoke reprisals from the anti-clericals when they came into power. After the storm, the year 1878 was one of political repose. The first international exhibition held at Paris after the war displayed to Europe how the secret of France’s recuperative power lay in the industry and artistic instinct of the nation. Marshal MacMahon presided with 1879: Jules Grévy president of the Republic. dignity over the fêtes held in honour of the exhibition, and had he pleased he might have tranquilly fulfilled the term of his Septennate. But in January 1879 he made a difference of opinion on a military question an excuse for resignation, and Jules Grévy, the president of the Chamber, was elected to succeed him by the National Assembly, which thus met for the first time under the Constitutional Law of 1875.
Henceforth the executive as well as the legislative power was in the hands of the republicans. The new president was a leader of the bar, who had first become known in the Constituent Assembly of 1848 as the advocate of the principle that a republic would do better without a president. M. Waddington was his first prime minister, and Gambetta was elected president of the Chamber. The latter, encouraged by his rivals in the idea that the time was not ripe for him openly to direct the affairs of the country, thus put himself, in spite of his occult dictatorship, in a position of official self-effacement from which he did not emerge until the jealousies of his own party-colleagues had undermined the prestige he had gained as chief founder of the Republic. The most active among them was Jules Ferry, minister of Jules Ferry. Education, who having been a republican deputy for Paris at the end of the Empire, was one of the members of the provisional government proclaimed on 4th September 1870. Borrowing Gambetta’s cry that clericalism was the enemy, he commenced the work of reprisal for the Seize Mai. His educational projects of 1879 were thus anti-clerical in tendency, the most famous being article 7 of his education bill, which prohibited members of any “unauthorized” religious orders exercising the profession of teaching in any school in France, the disability being applied to all ecclesiastical communities, excepting four or five which had been privileged by special legislation. This enactment, aimed chiefly at the Jesuits, was advocated with a sectarian bitterness which will be associated with the name of Jules Ferry long after his more statesmanlike qualities are forgotten. The law was rejected by the Senate, Jules Simon being the eloquent champion of the clericals, whose intrigues had ousted him from office. The unauthorized orders were then dissolved by decree; but though the forcible expulsion of aged priests and nuns gave rise to painful scenes, it cannot be said that popular feeling was excited in their favour, so grievously had the Church blundered in identifying itself with the conspiracy of the Seize Mai.
Meanwhile the death of the Prince Imperial in Zululand had shattered the hopes of the Bonapartists, and M. de Freycinet, a former functionary of the Empire, had become prime minister at the end of 1879. He had retained Jules Ferry at the ministry of Education, but unwilling to adopt all his anti-clerical policy, he resigned the premiership in September 1880. The constitution of the first Ferry cabinet secured the further exclusion from office of Gambetta, to which, however, he preferred his “occult dictatorship.” In August he had, as president of the Chamber, accompanied M. Grévy on an official visit to Cherbourg, and the acclamations called forth all over France by his speech, which was a hopeful defiance to Germany, encouraged the wily chief of the state to aid the republican conspiracy against the hero of the Republic. In 1881 the only political question before the country was the destiny of Gambetta. His influence in the Chamber was such that in spite of the opposition of the prime minister he carried his electoral scheme of scrutin de liste, descending from the presidential chair to defend it. Its rejection by the Senate caused no conflict between the houses. The check was inflicted not on the Chamber, but on Gambetta, who counted on his popularity to carry the lists of his candidates in all the republican departments in France as a quasi-plebiscitary demonstration in his favour. His rivals dared not openly quarrel with him. There was the semblance of a reconciliation between him and Ferry, and his name was the rallying-cry of the Republic at the general election, which was conducted on the old system of scrutin d’arrondissement.
The triumph for the Republic was great, the combined force of reactionary members returned being less than one-fifth of the new Chamber. M. Grévy could no longer abstain from asking Gambetta to form a ministry, but he had Gambetta prime minister. bided his time till jealousy of the “occult power” of the president of the Chamber had undermined his position in parliament. Consequently, when on the 14th of November 1881 Gambetta announced the composition of his cabinet, ironically called the “grand ministère,” which was to consolidate the Republic and to be the apotheosis of its chief, a great feeling of disillusion fell on the country, for his colleagues were untried politicians. The best known was Paul Bert, a man of science, who as the “reporter” in the Chamber of the Ferry Education Bill had distinguished himself as an aggressive freethinker, and he inappropriately was named minister of public worship. All the conspicuous republicans who had held office refused to serve under Gambetta. His cabinet was condemned in advance. His enemies having succeeded in ruining its composition, declared that the construction of a one-man machine was ominous of dictatorship, and the “grand ministère” lived for only ten weeks.
Gambetta was succeeded in January 1882 by M. de Freycinet, who having first taken office in the Dufaure cabinet of 1877, and having continued to hold office at intervals until 1899, was the most successful specimen of a “ministrable”—as Death of Gambetta. recurrent portfolio-holders have been called under the Third Republic. His second ministry lasted only six months. The failure of Gambetta, though pleasing to his rivals, discouraged the republican party and disorganized its majority in the Chamber. M. Duclerc, an old minister of the Second Republic, then became president of the council, and before his short term of office was run Gambetta died on the last day of 1882, without having had the opportunity of displaying his capacity as a minister or an administrator. He was only forty-four at his death, and his fame rests on the unfulfilled promise of a brief career. The men who had driven him out of public life and had shortened his existence were the most ostentatious of the mourners at the great pageant with which he was buried, and to have been of his party was in future the popular trade-mark of his republican enemies.
Gambetta’s death was followed by a period of anarchy, during which Prince Napoleon, the son of Jerome, king of Westphalia, placarded the walls of Paris with a manifesto. The Chamber thereupon voted the exile of the members of the families which Opportunism. had reigned in France. The Senate rejected the measure, and a conflict arose between the two houses. M. Duclerc resigned the premiership in January 1883 to his minister of the Interior, M. Fallières, a Gascon lawyer, who became president of the Senate in 1899 and president of the Republic in 1906. He held office for three weeks, when Jules Ferry became president of the council for the second time. Several of the closest of Gambetta’s friends accepted office under the old enemy of their chief, and the new combination adopted the epithet “opportunist,” which had been invented by Gambetta in 1875 to justify the expediency of his alliance with Thiers. The Opportunists thenceforth formed an important group standing between the Left Centre, which was now excluded from office, and the Radicals. It claimed the tradition of Gambetta, but the guiding principle manifested by its members was that of securing the spoils of place. To this end it often allied itself with the Radicals, and the Ferry cabinet practised this policy in 1883 when it removed the Orleans princes from the active list in the army as the illogical result of the demonstration of a Bonaparte. How needless was this proceeding was shown a few months later when the comte de Chambord died, as his death, which finally fused the Royalists with the Orleanists, caused no commotion in France.
The year 1884 was unprecedented seeing that it passed without a change of ministry. Jules Ferry displayed real administrative ability, and as an era of steady government seemed to be commencing, the opportunity was taken Revision of the Constitution, 1884. to revise the Constitution. The two Chambers therefore met in congress, and enacted that the republican form of government could never be the subject of revision, and that all members of families which had reigned in France were ineligible for the presidency of the Republic—a repetition of the adventure of Louis Bonaparte in the middle of the century being thus made impossible. It also decided that the clauses of the law of 1875 relating to the organization of the Senate should no longer have a constitutional character. This permitted the reform of the Upper House by ordinary parliamentary procedure. So an organic law was passed to abolish the system of nominating senators, and to increase the number of municipal delegates in the electoral colleges in proportion to the population of the communes. The French nation, for the first time since it had enjoyed political life, had revised a constitution by pacific means without a revolution. Gambetta being out of the way, his favourite electoral system of scrutin de liste had no longer any terror for his rivals, so it was voted by the Chamber early in 1885. Before the Senate had passed it into law the Ferry ministry had fallen at the end of March, after holding office for twenty-five months, a term rarely exceeded in the annals of the Third Republic. This long tenure of power had excited the dissatisfaction of jealous politicians, and the news of a slight disaster to the French troops in Tongking called forth all the pent-up rancour which Jules Ferry had inspired in various groups. By the exaggerated news of defeat Paris was excited Tongking. to the brink of a revolution. The approaches of the Chamber were invaded by an angry mob, and Jules Ferry was the object of public hate more bitter than any man had called forth in France since Napoleon III. on the days after Sedan. Within the Chamber he was attacked in all quarters. The Radicals took the lead, supported by the Monarchists, who remembered the anti-clerical rigour of the Ferry laws, by the Left Centre, not sorry for the tribulation of the group which had supplanted it, and by place-hunting republicans of all shades. The attack was led by a politician who disdained office. M. Georges Clémenceau, who had originally come to Paris from the Vendée as a doctor, had as a radical leader in the Chamber used his remarkable talent as an overthrower of ministries, and nearly every one of the eight ministerial crises which had already occurred during the presidency of Grévy had been hastened by his mordant eloquence.