France and the Republic / A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces During the 'Centennial' Year 1889

by William Henry Hurlbert

The steady development of these institutions during the last four or five years has led to the organisation by them of a complete general system of administration, provincial and national. The Corporations are grouped not by departments but by provinces.

Provincial assemblies are held, by which delegates are named to attend an annual general assembly at Paris. At the general assembly of 1889, held on June 24, 350 delegates were present, and the session of the assembly was opened by the delegation from Dauphiny, the chair being taken by one of its members, M. Roche, in virtue, as he explained to the crowded audience in the large hall of the Horticultural Society in the Rue de Grenelle, of his descent 'from a representative of the Estates of Dauphiny in 1789.' The work of the assembly was divided between four committees, one on moral and religious interests, one on public interests, one on commercial and industrial interests, and one on agricultural and rural interests.

From this it will be seen that the principles of the movement are being systematically applied to the whole field of active life in France. The general maxim of the organisation is the sound, sensible, and military maxim, of St.-Vincent de Paul, 'let us keep our rules, and our rules will keep us,' and I think there can be no doubt that the French freemasons, and the fanatics of unbelief generally who have launched the government of the Third Republic upon its present course, will find this new Christian organisation of Capital and Labour a troublesome factor in the political field.

We have seen what came in Germany of the Cultur-Kampf, and there are curious analogies between the work and the spirit of the Catholic Clubs in France to-day, and the ideas of Monseigneur von Ketteler, which gave vigour and vitality to the great 'party of the Centre,' in the contest with the Chancellor. Where the giant of Berlin had the wisdom to give way, the pigmies of Paris are likely to persist until they are crushed. For they have burned their ships, as the Chancellor never burned his, and they are dogmatists, while he is a statesman. He sought to control and use the Catholic Church in Germany. Their object is, as one of the ablest Republicans in France, Jules Simon, long ago told them, to supplant a State Church of belief by a State church of unbelief. In America and in England when men talk of 'religious freedom,' they mean the freedom of a man to profess and practise his own religion. What the Third French Republic means by 'religious freedom' is freedom from religion. Their legislation has tended, ever since 1877, not indirectly nor by implication, but directly and avowedly, to establish in France a state of things in which, not Catholics only, but all men who profess any form of religion, shall be treated as Protestants were in France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, or as Catholics were in Ireland under William III. This is the meaning of M. Gambetta's war-cry 'Clericalism is the enemy.' The phrase was his, but the policy was announced by his party long before he invented the phrase in 1877. It was distinctly formulated in 1874 by a Republican leader much better equipped for dealing with such questions than M. Gambetta, who was the Boanerges not the Paul of the French gospel of unbelief.

On September 4, 1874, M. Challemel-Lacour, in a remarkable speech, laid it down as a fundamental principle of the Republican policy that the State should so control all the higher branches of education as to secure what he called 'the moral unity of France.' It was on this principle that Napoleon in 1808 had re-organised the University of France. M. Challemel-Lacour unhesitatingly called upon the Republicans to adopt it. If Catholics or Protestants or Israelites were allowed to found universities of their own and confer degrees and diplomas, what would become of the 'moral unity of France'? The duty of the Republicans was to protect and develop this 'moral unity.' So long as one Frenchman could be found in France who believed anything not believed by every other Frenchman, so long this 'moral unity' would be imperfect. The French Liberals of 1830 obviously made a great mistake when they put 'freedom of education' as a right of Frenchmen in the charter. M. Guizot, the great Protestant Minister of Louis Philippe, obviously made a great mistake when he established the principles of free primary education in 1833. The Republicans of 1848 obviously made a great mistake when they proclaimed 'freedom of education' as a Republican principle. The Jacobins of 1792 were the true 'children of light,' and they alone understood how really to achieve the 'moral unity of France,' M. Challemel-Lacour did not say this in so many words; but he did say in so many words that he objected to see any bill passed which should establish 'freedom of education,' and permit clerical persons to found universities, because, 'instead of establishing the moral unity of France, this newfangled liberty would only aggravate the division of Frenchmen into two sets of minds moving upon different lines to different conclusions. The young men educated in these universities,' he said, 'will become zealous apostles of Catholicism. The more ardour they put into their proselytism the more antagonism they will excite!' At this passage in M. Challemel-Lacour's extraordinary speech, according to the official report, a member of the Right broke in with the very natural exclamation, 'And why not? Is not that liberty? liberty for all?' To which M. Challemel-Lacour discreetly made no reply, but went on to say, 'Instead of establishing our moral unity, you will heap up combustibles in the country until shocks are produced and perhaps cataclysms!'

This is the doctrine of the worthy Lord Mayor in 'Barnaby Rudge' who querulously exclaims to Mr. Harwood when that gentleman came to him asking for protection against the Gordon rioters, 'What are you a Catholic for? If you were not a Catholic the rioters would let you alone. I do believe people turn Catholics a-purpose to vex and worrit me!' 'Moral unity' would have saved the good Lord Mayor a great deal of trouble. 'Moral unity' would have kept things quiet and comfortable throughout the Roman Empire under Diocletian, and throughout the Low Countries under Phillip II. and Alva, and throughout England under Henry VIII. The Jacobins of 1792 did their best to organise 'moral unity' in France with the help of the guillotine, and of the Committee of Public Safety and of the hired assassins who butchered prisoners in cold blood.

Here, at Reims, in September 1792, while Marat 'the Friend of the People' and Danton the 'Minister of Justice' were employing Maillard the 'hero of the Bastile' and his salaried cut-throats to promote public economy and private liberty by emptying the prisons of Paris, certain agents of Marat made a notable effort in behalf of the 'moral unity of France.' To this effort the melodramatic historians of the French Revolution have done scant justice. Mr. Carlyle, for example, alludes to it only in a casual half-disdainful way, which would be almost comical were the theme less ghastly. 'At Reims,' he observes, 'about eight persons were killed—and two were afterwards hanged for doing it.' The contest of this curious passage plainly shows that he imagined these 'eight persons' (more or less) to have been "killed" by the people of Reims, roused into a patriotic frenzy by the circular which Marat, Panis and Sergent sent out to the provinces calling upon all Frenchmen to imitate the 'people of Paris,' and massacre all the enemies of the Revolution at home before marching against the foreign invaders. That the 'people' of Reims thus aroused should only have killed 'about eight persons' really seemed to him, one would say, hardly worthy of a truly 'Titanic' and 'transcendental' epoch. There is something essentially bucolic in the impression which mobs and multitudes always seem to make upon Mr. Carlyle's imagination. Of what really happened at Reims in September 1792 he plainly had no accurate notion. He obviously cites from some second-hand contemporary accounts of the transactions there this statement, that 'about eight persons were killed,' because, as it happens, we have a full precise and official Report of the killing of all these persons, with their names and details of the massacre, drawn up on September 8, 1792, by the municipal authorities of Reims and signed by all the members of the Council General. Had Mr. Carlyle seen this Report, it would have shown him that Marat, Panis and Sergent knew what they were about when they sent out their famous or infamous circular, just as Marat and Danton knew what they were about when they organised the massacres of September in the prisons of Paris. The 'people' of Reims had no more to do with the killing of 'about eight persons' in the streets and squares of this historic city in September 1792 than the 'people' of Paris had to do with the atrocious butcheries at the Abbaye and Bicêtre and La Force and the Conciergerie. Mr. Carlyle ought to have learned even from the 'Histoire Parlementaire' of Buchez and Roux, which he seems to have freely consulted, that 'the days of September were an administrative business.'

What actually happened at Reims in September 1792 is worth telling. It does not prove, as Mr. Carlyle almost dolefully takes it to prove, that in the provinces the 'Sansculottes only bellowed and howled but did not bite.' It does prove that when they bit, they bit to order, and under impulses no more 'Titanic' or 'transcendental' than those which in our own time lead active politicians to invent lies about the character of their opponents, and to manufacture emotional issues on the eve of a sharp political contest.

The subsidised Parisian insurrection of August 10, 1792, prostrated the monarchy, but it did not found the Republic. It was the death knell both of Pétion and of the Girondists, who had been most active in secretly or openly promoting it. The Constitution having been torn into shreds, power became a prize to be fought for by all the demagogues and all the factions in Paris. The Legislative Assembly fell into the trough of the sea. The sections of Paris supported Marat in calmly laying hands on the printing-presses and material of the royal printing-office, and converting his abominable newspaper into a 'Journal of the Republic.' He was voted a special 'tribune of honour' in the hall of the Council. On August 19 he openly called upon the 'people' to 'march in arms to the prison of the Abbaye, take out the prisoners there, especially the officers of the Swiss Guard and their accomplices, and put them to the sword.' This was an electoral proceeding. The members of the National Convention were then about to be chosen. Under a law passed by the expiring legislature, electors of the members were first to be chosen by the voters on August 26, and the electors thus chosen were to meet on September 2, and choose the members of the Convention. It was in view of this second and decisive election day that Marat and Danton settled the date at which the great patriotic work of 'emptying the prisons' should begin, and it was in view of this day also that the circular already mentioned of Marat, Panis and Sergent was sent forth to all places at which a lively administration of murder and pillage would be most likely to conduce to the choice by the electors of deputies agreeable to the authors of the circular.

The electors for the Department of the Marne chosen on August 26 were to meet in Reims on September 2, and choose the Deputies for that department to sit in the Convention.