When I asked M. Barthélémy Saint Hilaire the explanation of this custom, he answered: “Our kings were always provided with a military household, in which marine officers also figured. It is doubtless this precedent which has surrounded civilian republicans with a body of officers. The custom is due less to necessity than to a desire to show respect for the army and navy.”
This same military parade is seen at the senate and chamber. During a sitting of either of these bodies a company of infantry is kept under arms in a room adjoining the legislative hall, and when the president of either house enters the building, he advances between two files of soldiers presenting arms, and is escorted to his chair by the commanding officer.
This military element in the present government is as unnecessary as it is dangerous and pernicious. It is dangerous because it might be turned by an ambitious president against the very constitution he has taken an oath to defend. Two instances of this danger are afforded by the action of Napoleon I. on the 18th Soumaire and by that of Napoleon III. on the 2d of December, 1852. It is pernicious because it keeps alive in France that love for military display, and that thirst for conquest, which have been the curse of the country since the days of Louis XIV.
Another one of these monarchical growths which still flourishes under the republic is the excessive reverence and even awe which the public shows to its high officials. When President Carnot appears anywhere, his reception scarcely differs from that shown to Emperor William in the course of his numerous journeys. The president is allowed six hundred thousand francs for “entertaining and travelling,” and his balls and dinners at the Elysée, and especially his official tours through the country smack of royalty to an extraordinary degree. A year ago I had an opportunity at Montpelier to study one of these official visits in all its details, and I was astonished at the royal aspect of the whole affair. The conferring of decorations, the dispensing of money to deserving charities, the cut and dried speeches of the president and the mayors, the military honors,—all this is far removed from that “Jeffersonian simplicity” which Americans at least associate with a republic.
One of the most noticeable characteristics of these tours is the excessive manner in which “the republic” is kept to the fore. In his speeches while “swinging around the circle” President Carnot is continually informing expectant mayors and delighted citizens that “the government of the republic” is watching over their every interest, and he then hastens to thank them for the enthusiastic welcome which they have given to “the republic” in his humble person. The phylloxera has destroyed the vineyards of this or that region, but “the republican minister of agriculture” is successfully extirpating the injurious insect. The new schoolhouses of another city owe their magnificence “to the deep solicitude of the republic for the education of the masses,” while the recently constructed bridge over the river is the work of “the engineers of the republic.” In a word, the farmer and his crops, the mechanic and his house-rent, the schoolmaster and his salary, the wine growers and their plaster, the day laborers and their hours of work, and of course the politicians and their constituents, if the former be republicans, are, according to presidential oratory, the special care of the republic.
Nor is it President Carnot alone who thus proclaims the extraordinary virtues of the ever watchful republic. The ministers, who are continually indulging in brief tours into the provinces, doing en petit what M. Carnot does en grand, are even more assiduous than the president (because their political position is less secure,) in sounding on all occasions the praises of the republic.
Nor is this ringing of the changes on the word republic confined to the oratory of presidential and ministerial junketings. The obtrusion is brought about in many other ways. Thus M. Carnot is always spoken of in the newspapers and elsewhere as “the president of the republic.” M. Waddington at London is “the ambassador of the republic.” The district attorney is “the attorney of the republic.” An official bust of the republic is given the place of honor on the walls of the town council chamber, the public schoolroom, and the courtroom. A new bridge will have carved on its arches the monogram R. F. (République Française) while the same familiar letters stare at you from the fronts of all the public buildings erected since 1870.