M. de Witt represents the Canton of Castêl Moron in the Council-General of the Lot-et-Garonne, and he is Mayor of the Commune of Laparade. At the Legislative elections of last year, he contested the representation of the Nérac district with M. Fallières, the Minister of Public Instruction, and was defeated, receiving 6,484 votes against 8,967 given to the Minister. M. Fallières 'on the stump,' speaking with the authority of a Minister of 'Public Instruction,' actually assured the electors that to vote for M. de Witt was to vote to 're-establish seignorial rights, and to bring on a German or Cossack invasion!' One result of this was, that M. de Witt was burned in effigy near Tonneins after the election!
After the election of M. de Witt as Mayor of Laparade, he was accused before the tribunal at Marmande of 'corrupting' the electors of the commune. The accusation rested on 'conversations,' but the tribunal sentenced M. de Witt to a fine of a thousand francs, and several of his electors to smaller fines. They all appealed to the Court at Agen, where the case was pleaded by M. Piou, deputy for the Haute Garonne and one of the ablest barristers in Southern France.
It throws an interesting light on the present condition of political life in France, that M. de Witt, though the sentence of the tribunal at Marmande was not sustained, had eventually to pay a fine of 500 francs on the ground that he had been guilty of 'excessive charity' to an old man of 80, named Sauvean, who had long been a pensioner of his family! The wonder is that his commission as Mayor by the choice of his fellow-citizens was not revoked by the Ministry at Paris. Under the Third Republic this is no uncommon thing.
Early in the year 1889, M. Duboscq, Mayor of the commune of Labrit in the Landes, one of the many out-of-the way and charming places which in that part of France are associated with the memory of Henri IV., gave a dinner to M. Lambert de Ste.-Croix, the distinguished Monarchist leader, who died not long ago. For this offence—M. Lambert de Ste.-Croix having just then exasperated the Republicans beyond measure by a vigorous speech made at Dax on the Adour—M. Duboscq was actually suspended from his office by order of M. Floquet, now the President of the Chamber of Deputies! In reply to a question on the subject put by a deputy, M. Lamarzelle, M. Floquet calmly replied that lie had suspended M. Duboscq because, 'being a functionary of the Government, he had departed from the reserve proper in his position by inviting an opponent of the Government to dinner!' The Mayors of these communes, be it observed, are elected by the people, not appointed by the Government! So that under the practice of the French Republic, as represented by the present President of the Chamber, a Radical Mayor of Newcastle who should ask Mr. Gladstone to dinner ought to be 'suspended' at once by Lord Salisbury! This is municipal liberty in France under the Third Republic.
As the Legislative elections are conducted under the supervision of the Mayors, the object of such performances as these is obvious enough. At the same time with M. Duboscq, M. Davezac de Moran, Mayor of Siest near Dax, was also suspended by M. Floquet for the offence of allowing the meeting of the Monarchical Committees, at which M. Lambert de Ste.-Croix made his speech, to be held in his own house at Dax! 'If you think,' said M. Lamarzelle to the Minister, 'to frighten us with all this, you are mistaken. At your age Robespierre had got himself guillotined!' During the Legislative elections of 1889 'the school-teachers, the postmen, the gendarmes, the highway supervisors and the labourers, were ordered to vote against the Monarchist candidates.' M. Delafosse, elected in the Calvados, publicly stated this in the Matin, and without contradiction. During the same elections the curés were officially forbidden to advise their people to vote for 'friends of religion,' and those who did so advise were fined after the election to the number of 300!
M. Cornelis Henri de Witt is one of the most active and indefatigable promoters of what are known as the 'Conférences du Sud-Ouest.' These are meetings of the Monarchists organised on a systematic plan, which take place at brief intervals throughout the great Departments of South-Western France under the superintendence of a society of which M. Princeteau, a very influential and intelligent citizen of Bordeaux, is the President. M. Princeteau, like M. de Witt, is not only an indefatigable organiser, but an extremely popular and effective orator; and it is a curious proof of the efficiency of the Conservative machinery in South-Western France, that at the Legislative elections of 1889 the Radicals and the Socialists completely disappeared as parties from the contest in the Gironde. Thanks to the scrutin d'arrondissement, several seats from that department which ought to have gone to the Monarchists were kept by the Government; but upon the total poll the Monarchists and Revisionists show 84,376 votes against 83,108 given to the Government Republicans. Under the scrutin de liste the eleven seats for the Gironde would pretty plainly have gone in 1889 to the Monarchists. In 1885 M. Cazauvielle, the leading Republican deputy, received 89,153 votes, or 6,000 more than the Republican total in 1889. As in 1889 the total poll amounted to 167,484 votes, and in 1885 to 162,286, it is clear that the Republican strength fell off, and that the Monarchist strength increased in the Gironde between 1885 and 1889.
M. Princeteau told me that on July 14 he gave a fête in his grounds near Bordeaux to more than five thousand working people. While the fête was going on, a procession of Republicans with bands of music, bent on celebrating the fête of the Bastille, passed the grounds more than once with the obvious intent of drawing away some of his guests. This they completely failed to do. If the 'fête of the Bastille' was celebrated at Bordeaux as it was at Nîmes, this says as much for the good taste as for the sound politics of the Bordeaux workmen. At Nîmes on July 22, more than a week after the 'anniversary,' I found the city streets made perilous during the day and life made intolerable at night by such a clamour of chorus singers and such a clatter of fireworks as I had not supposed it possible could be got up beyond the domain of our own 'glorious and immortal' American Fourth of July. Several accidents were caused by 'serpents' and other fireworks, and when I asked a staid and sober citizen of this old Protestant capital why the law permitted such performances, he quietly answered: 'The law does not permit them. The authorities have formally forbidden them, but the authorities are elective, and they are more anxious to keep their places than to keep the peace.' To my question whether the extreme Radicals were very strong in Nîmes, he replied that nearly a fourth of the Republicans of Nîmes are avowed Socialists, mostly of the Anti-Boulangist Anti-Possibilist type. One of their candidates for a legislative seat announced his intention, if elected, to give some person, to be designated by his constituents, an order for one half of his legislative salary, to be drawn regularly, and applied 'by his committee to political purposes.' His political programme included the formal abolition of the Presidency, annual legislative elections, the nationalisation of the soil of France, the abolition of the regular army, the socialisation of all the means of production, gratuitous and obligatory education on the same lines for all the children of France, and through all the degrees of education, and the suppression of the right to bequeath or to inherit property of any kind,' On the latter point a rather intelligent Socialist with whom I made acquaintance while I was visiting the fine Roman Amphitheatre at Nîmes, and whom I took to be a skilled mechanic, was very explicit. He thought property a 'privilege' and therefore inconsistent with equality. He spoke in an oracular fashion, and he probably belonged to the class known among French workmen, not as 'sublimes,' but as 'les fils de Dieu.' 'Of what use,' he said, 'is it to abolish hereditary titles if you allow a man of one generation to give his son in the next generation the more serious advantage over his fellow of a property which he has done nothing and could do nothing to create?' I asked him if he agreed with St.-Just that 'opulence is an infamy.' He replied very seriously: 'Yes, I think if St.-Just said that he said the truth. Certainly I do not say that every rich man is infamous. That is another matter. But it is infamous that in a land of equality one man should have the means to give himself pleasures and execute achievements beyond his fellow-citizens.' He told me that he lived in Alais, where he said the Socialists of his type were much stronger than in Nîmes. The Legislative elections show that lie was right as to this. The Socialists carried the first division of Alais, throwing 7,205 votes against 2,425 Radicals and 4,218 Government Republicans. For the Government Republicans my friend of the Amphitheatre could find no words of contempt strong enough. 'They are all whitewashed Wilsons,' he said, and then he dilated with much eloquence on the case of a certain M. Hude,'a great friend of Rochefort' he scornfully exclaimed, 'who is a great friend of Boulanger. Ah! voilà du propre! he is a wine-merchant, of course he is fond of the pots-de-vin'(the French phrase for bribes taken to promote jobs), 'and thus, when the chemical officers go to verify the quality of his wines, he calls in the Prefect of Police to prevent it, because he is a deputy!' He was particularly bitter, too, on the conversion by the Republicans of more than a thousand millions of francs lying in the savings banks into 3 per cent. funds. 'What right had they to do this?' he said indignantly. 'It was a trick to enslave the depositors!'
In the first division of Nîmes the Socialists showed no great strength at the elections of 1889. The Monarchists far outnumbered them, but they threw votes enough to make the election very close, the Republicans numbering 6,598, the Socialists 1,519, and the Monarchists 8,174, so that the latter won the day by no more than fifty-seven votes. That they won it is due to the cordial co-operation of the Protestants with the Catholics on the question of Religious Liberty in support of a Catholic, M. de Bernis, who had twice been condemned to imprisonment for 'assisting' Catholic teachers thrown on the world by the 'laicization' of the schools of Nîmes! This co-operation began in 1885. The Protestants of the Gard have quite as much at stake in this conflict as the Catholics. The Protestant Seminaries are cut down like the Catholic. The appropriations formerly made in aid of new Protestant parishes are made no longer. No sums are allowed for Protestant missionary work in outlying districts. The Protestant Consistories have been deprived of their right to nominate candidates for examination as teachers. The Consistories and the Councils of the Elders are no longer allowed to receive and administer legacies for the relief of the poor, for hospitals or asylums. Formerly, where no manse existed in a commune, the Protestant minister was allowed a certain sum for lodgings. This has been stopped. In short, the Protestants, like the Catholics of France, find themselves treated by an oligarchy of irreligious fanatics as pariahs in their own country. The Protestants, like the Catholics, are driven into irreconcilable hostility against the Republic by a Parliamentary majority which treats all religious questions in the spirit of M. de Mortillet, Mayor of St.-Germain, and a Radical deputy for the Seine-et-Oise. In 1886 some speaker in the Chamber appealed in the course of his speech to the law of God. 'The law of God!' broke in M. de Mortillet; 'pray, what is God?'
The more completely this spirit of the Mayor of St.-Germian gets the control of the Republican party, the more obvious it becomes that the Republic must gravitate into Socialism.
As it steadily alienates from itself the vast multitudes of Frenchmen who are either religious men, or recognise the vital importance of religious institutions to the existing social order, it is compelled to court the alliance of the avowed enemies of the existing social order. This is strikingly illustrated in the political condition of the great Southern Department of the Bouches-du-Rhône. This department offers a most instructive contrast with the Calvados.