The year 1906 is remarkable in the history of the Third Republic in that it witnessed the renewal of all the public powers in the state. A new president of the Republic was elected on the 17th of January ten days after the M. Fallières president of the Republic. triennial election of one third of the senate, and the general election of the chamber of deputies followed in May—the ninth which had taken place under the constitution of 1875. The senatorial elections of the 7th of January showed that the delegates of the people who chose the members of the upper house and represented the average opinion of the country approved of the anti-clerical legislation of parliament. The election of M. Fallières, president of the senate, to the presidency of the Republic was therefore anticipated, he being the candidate of the parliamentary majorities which had disestablished the church. At the congress of the two chambers held at Versailles on the 17th of January he received the absolute majority of 449 votes out of 849 recorded. The candidate of the Opposition was M. Paul Doumer, whose anti-clericalism in the past was so extreme that when married he had dispensed with a religious ceremony and his children were unbaptized. So the curious spectacle was presented of the Moderate Opportunist M. Fallières being elected by Radicals and Socialists, while the Radical candidate was supported by Moderates and Reactionaries. For the second time a president of the senate, the second official personage in the Republic, was advanced to the chief magistracy, M. Loubet having been similarly promoted. As in his case, M. Fallières owed his election to M. Clémenceau. When M. Loubet was elected M. Clémenceau had not come to the end of his retirement from parliamentary life; but in political circles, with his powerful pen and otherwise, he was resuming his former influence as a “king-maker.” He knew of the precariousness Of Félix Faure’s health and of the indiscretions of the elderly president. So when the presidency suddenly became vacant in January 1899 he had already fixed his choice on M. Loubet, as a candidate whose unobtrusive name excited no jealousy among the republicans. At that moment, owing to the crisis caused by the Dreyfus affair, the Republic needed a safe man to protect it against the attacks of the plebiscitary party which had been latterly favoured by President Faure. M. Constans, it was said, had in 1899 desired the presidency of the senate, vacant by M. Loubet’s promotion, in preference to the post of ambassador at Constantinople. But M. Clémenceau, deeming that his name had been too much associated with polemics in the past, contrived the election of M. Fallières to the second place of dignity in the Republic, so as to have another safe candidate in readiness for the Elysée in case President Loubet suddenly disappeared. M. Loubet, however, completed his septennate, and to the end of it M. Fallières was regarded as his probable successor. As he fulfilled his high duties in the senate inoffensively without making enemies among his political friends, he escaped the fate which had awaited other presidents-designate of the Republic. Previously to presiding over the senate this Gascon advocate, who had represented his native Lot-et-Garonne, in either chamber, since 1876, had once been prime minister for three weeks in 1883. He had also held office in six other ministries, so no politician in France had a larger experience in administration and in public affairs.
On New Year’s Day 1906, the absence of the Nuncio from the presidential reception of the diplomatic body marked conspicuously the rupture of the Concordat; for hitherto the representative of the Holy See had ranked as doyen of the ambassadors to the Republic, whatever the relative seniority of his colleagues, and in the name of all the foreign powers had officially saluted the chief of the state. On the 20th of January the inventories of the churches were commenced, under the 3rd clause of the Separation Act, for the purpose of assessing the value of the furniture and other objects which they contained. In Paris they occasioned some disturbance; but as the protesting rioters were led by persons whose hostility to the Republic was more notorious than their love for religion, the demonstrations were regarded as political rather than religious. In certain rural districts, where the church had retained its influence and where its separation from the state was unpopular, the taking of the inventories was impeded by the inhabitants, and in some places, where the troops were called out to protect the civil authorities, further feeling was aroused by the refusal of officers to act. But, as a rule, this first manifest operation of the Separation Law was received with indifference by the population. One region where popular feeling was displayed in favour of the church was The Sarrien ministry. Flanders, where, in March, at Boeschepe on the Belgian frontier, a man was killed during the taking of an inventory. This accident caused the fall of the ministry. The moderate Republicans in the Chamber, who had helped to keep M. Rouvier in office, withheld their support in a debate arising out of the incident, and the government was defeated by thirty-three votes. M. Rouvier resigned, and the new president of the Republic sent for M. Sarrien, a Radical of the old school from Burgundy, who had been deputy for his native Saône-et-Loire from the foundation of the Chamber in 1876 and had previously held office in four cabinets. In M. Sarrien’s ministry of the 14th of March 1906 the president of the council was only a minor personage, its real conductor being M. Clémenceau, who accepted the portfolio of the interior. Upon him, therefore devolved the function of “making the elections” M. Clèmenceau minister of the interior. of 1906, as it is the minister at the Place Beauvau, where all the wires of administrative government are centralized, who gives the orders to the prefectures at each general election. As in France ministers sit and speak in both houses of parliament, M. Clémenceau, though a senator, now returned, after an absence of thirteen years, to the Chamber of Deputies, in which he had played a mighty part in the first seventeen years of its existence. His political experience was unique. From an early period after entering the Chamber in 1876 he had exercised there an influence not exceeded by any deputy. Yet it was not until 1906, thirty years after his first election to parliament, that he held office—though in 1888 he just missed the presidency of the Chamber, receiving the same number of votes as M. Méline, to whom the post was allotted by right of seniority. He now returned to the tribune of the Palais Bourbon, on which he had been a most formidable orator. During his career as deputy his eloquence was chiefly destructive, and of the nineteen ministries which fell between the election of M. Grévy to the presidency of the Republic in 1879 and his own departure from parliamentary life in 1893 there were few of which the fall had not been expedited by his mordant criticism or denunciation. He now came back to the scene of his former achievements not to attack but to defend a ministry. Though his old occupation was gone, his re-entry excited the keenest interest, for at sixty-five he remained the biggest political figure in France. After M. Clémenceau the most interesting of the new ministers was M. Briand, who was not nine years old when M. Clémenceau had become conspicuous in political life as the mayor of Montmartre on the eve of the Commune. M. Briand had entered the Chamber, as Socialist deputy for Saint Etienne, only in 1902. The mark he had made as “reporter” of the Separation Bill has been noted, and on that account he became minister of education and public worship—the terms of the Separation Law necessitating the continuation of a department for ecclesiastical affairs. As he had been a militant Socialist of the “unified” group of which M. Jaurès was the chief, and also a member of the superior council of labour, his appointment indicated that the new ministry courted the support of the extreme Left. It, however, contained some moderate men, notably M. Poincaré, who had the repute of making the largest income at the French bar after M. Waldeck-Rousseau gave up his practice, and who became for the second time minister of finance. The portfolios of the colonies and of public works were also given to old ministers of moderate tendencies, M. Georges Leygues and M. Barthou. A former prime minister, M. Léon Bourgeois, went to the foreign office, over which he had already presided, besides having represented France at the peace conference at the Hague; while MM. Étienne and Thomson retained their portfolios of war and marine. The cabinet contained so many men of tried ability that it was called the ministry of all the talents. But the few who understood the origin of the name knew that it would be even more ephemeral than was the British ministry of 1806; for the fine show of names belonged to a transient combination which could not survive the approaching elections long enough to leave any mark in politics.
Before the elections took place grave labour troubles showed that social and economical questions were more likely to give anxiety to the government than any public movement resulting from the disestablishment of the church. Progress of socialism. Almost the first ministerial act of M. Clémenceau was to visit the coal basin of the Pas de Calais, where an accident causing great loss of life was followed by an uprising of the working population of the region, which spread into the adjacent department of the Nord and caused the minister of the interior to take unusual precautions to prevent violent demonstrations in Paris on Labour Day, the 1st of May. The activity of the Socialist leaders in encouraging anti-capitalist agitation did not seem to alarm the electorate. Nor did it show any sympathy with the appeal of the pope, who in his encyclical letter, Vehementer nos, addressed to the French cardinals on the 11th of February, denounced the Separation Law. So the result of the elections of May 1906 was a decisive victory for the anti-clericals and Socialists.
A brief analysis of the composition of the Chamber of Deputies is always impossible, the limits of the numerous groups being ill-defined. But in general terms the majority supporting the radical policy of the bloc in the last parliament, which had usually mustered about 340 votes, now numbered more than 400, including 230 Radical-Socialists and Socialists. The gains of the extreme Left were chiefly at the expense of the moderate or progressist republicans, who, about 120 strong in the old Chamber, now came back little more than half that number. The anti-republican Right, comprising Royalists, Bonapartists and Nationalists, had maintained their former position and were about 130 all told. The general result of the polls of the 6th and 20th of May was thus an electoral vindication of the advanced policy adopted by the old Chamber and a repudiation of moderate Republicanism; while the stationary condition of the reactionary groups showed that the tribulations inflicted by the last parliament on the church had not provoked the electorate to increase its support of clerical politicians.
The Vatican, however, declined to recognize this unmistakable demonstration. The bishops, taking advantage of their release from the concordatory restrictions which had withheld from them the faculty of meeting in assembly, had met at a preliminary conference to consider their plan of action under the Separation Law. They had adjourned for further instructions from the Holy See, which were published on the 10th of August 1906, in a new encyclical Gravissimo officii, wherein, to the consternation of many members of the episcopate, the pope interdicted the associations cultuelles, the bodies which, under the Separation Law, were to be established in each parish, to hold and to organize the church property and finances, and were essential to the working of the act. On the 4th of September the bishops met again and passed a resolution of submission to the Holy See. In spite of their loyalty they could not but deplore an injunction which inevitably would cause distress to the large majority of the clergy after the act came into operation on the 12th of December 1906. They knew only too well how hopeless was the idea that the distress of the clergy would call forth any revulsion of popular feeling in France. The excitement of the public that summer over a painful clerical scandal in the diocese of Chartres showed that the interest taken by the mass of the population in church matters was not of a kind which would aid the clergy in their difficult situation.
At the close of the parliamentary recess M. Sarrien resigned the premiership on the pretext of ill-health, and by a presidential decree of the 25th of October 1906 M. Clémenceau, who had been called to fill the vacancy, took office. The Clémenceau ministry. MM. Bourgeois, Poincaré, Etienne and Leygues retired with M. Sarrien. The new prime minister placed at the foreign office M. Pichon, who had learned politics on the staff of the Justice, the organ of M. Clémenceau, by whose influence he had entered the diplomatic service in 1893, after eight years in the chamber of deputies. He had been minister at Pekin during the Boxer rebellion and resident at Tunis, and he was now radical senator for the Jura. M. Caillaux, a more adventurous financier than M. Rouvier or M. Poincaré, who had been Waldeck-Rousseau’s minister of finance, resumed that office. The most significant appointment was that of General Picquart to the war office. The new minister when a colonel had been willing to sacrifice his career, although he was an anti-Semite, to redressing the injustice which he believed had been inflicted on a Jewish officer—whose second condemnation, it may be noted, had been quashed earlier in 1906. M. Viviani became the first minister of labour (Travail et Prévoyance sociale). The creation of the office and the appointment of a socialist lawyer and journalist to fill it showed that M. Clémenceau recognized the increasing prominence of social and industrial questions and the growing power of the trade-unions.
The acts and policy of the Clémenceau ministry and the events which took place during the years that it held office are too near the present time to be appraised historically. It seems not unlikely that the first advent to power, after thirty-five years of strenuous political life, of one who must be ranked among the ablest of the twenty-seven prime ministers of the Third Republic will be seen to have been coincident with an important evolution in the history of the French nation. The separation of the Roman Catholic Church from the state, by the law of December 1905, had deprived the Socialists, the now most powerful party of the extreme Left, of the chief outlet for their activity, which hitherto had chiefly found its scope in anti-clericalism. Having no longer the church to attack they turned their attention to economical questions, the solution of which had always been their theoretical aim. At the same period the law relating to the Contract of Association of 1901, by removing the restrictions (save in the case of religious communities) which previously had prevented French citizens from forming association without the authorization of the government, had formally abrogated the individualistic doctrine of the Revolution, which in all its phases was intolerant of associations. The law of June 1791 declared the destruction of all corporations of persons engaged in the same trade or profession to be a fundamental article of the French constitution, and it was only in the last six years of the Second Empire that some tolerance was granted to trade-unions, which was extended by the Third Republic only in 1884. In that year the prohibition of 1791 was repealed. Not quite 70 unions existed at the end of 1884. In 1890 they had increased to about 1000, in 1894 to 2000, and in 1901, when the law relating to the Contract of Association was passed, they numbered 3287 with 588,832 members. The law of 1901 did not specially affect them; but this general act, completely emancipating all associations formed for secular purposes, was a definitive break with the individualism of the Revolution which had formed the basis of all legislation in France for nearly a century after the fall of the ancient monarchy. It was an encouragement and at the same time a symptom of the spread of anti-individualistic doctrine. This was seen in the accelerated increase of syndicated workmen during the years succeeding the passing of the Associations Law, who in 1909 were over a million strong. The power exercised by the trade-unions moved the functionaries of the government, a vast army under the centralized system of administration, numbering not less than 800,000 persons, to demand equal freedom of association for the purpose of regulating their salaries paid by the state and their conditions of labour. This movement brought into new relief the long-recognized incompatibility of parliamentary government with administrative centralization as organized by Napoleon.
In another direction the increased activity in the rural districts of the Socialists, who hitherto had chiefly worked in the industrial centres, indicated that they looked for support from the peasant proprietors, whose ownership in the soil had hitherto opposed them to the practice of collectivist doctrine. In the summer of 1907 an economic crisis in the wine-growing districts of the South created a general discontent which spread to other rural regions. The Clémenceau ministry, while opposing the excesses of revolutionary socialism and while incurring the strenuous hostility of M. Jaurès, the Socialist leader, adopted a programme which was more socialistic than that of any previous government of the republic. Under its direction a bill for the imposition of a graduated income tax was passed by the lower house, involving a scheme of direct taxation which would transform the interior fiscal system of France. But the income tax was still only a project of law when M. Clémenceau unexpectedly fell in July 1909, being succeeded as prime minister by his colleague M. Briand. His ministry had, however, passed one important measure which individualists regarded as an act of state-socialism. It took a long step towards the nationalization of railways by purchasing the important Western line and adding it to the relatively small system of state railways. Previously a more generally criticized act of the representatives of the people was not of a nature to augment the popularity of parliamentary institutions at a period of economic crisis, when senators and deputies increased their own annual salary, or indemnity as it is officially called, to 15,000 francs.
(J. E. C. B.)