On September 4th the Government of National Defence was established under General Trochu, with Gambetta in the important post of Minister of the Interior. The object of this government was to continue the war and repel the invading German army, and Gambetta's first advice was that, as that army was now advancing upon Paris, the government ought to leave the capital and organize the defences from some uninvested town. His advice was sound, but it was not taken. The government, however, sent a delegation of three of its members to Tours for this purpose, and on October 7th despatched Gambetta after them to enforce more energy into the work. . Paris being by this time invested, Gambetta left it by a balloon, accompanied by his friend M. Spuller, afterward editor of the République Française. As he mounted the basket he said, C'est peut-être mon avant-dernier panier, ," and it was nearly so, for the Prussian shot grazed the envelope of the balloon before it passed beyond their range. It fell near Amiens, from whence he reached Tours on the 9th. There was not a soldier in Tours when he arrived, but in a month he had an army ready for the field, and on November 9th it had won the battle of Coulmiers. From Tours he went to Bourges, from Bourges to Lyons, from Lyons to Bordeaux, whither the delegation had come from Tours, raising by indefatigable labors three armies of in all 800,000 men, negotiating loans for their maintenance, and even, with dictatorial assumption, but with what Von Goltz and others venture to describe as a true strategical genius, directing their military operations. It is impossible here to follow all the campaign in the Loire, or to touch on the controverted points of his policy. The only wonder is that his errors were not graver and more numer ous than they were. De Tocqueville says that a lawyer makes the worst of administrators; and here was a young lawyer taken fresh from his chambers, and set to govern all France without control during an extraordinary crisis. It will be admitted that he showed a genuine governing faculty, a marvellous power of work and mastery of details, a great readiness of resource, and a certain instinctive insight into the condition

If

of things. M. Jules Simon gives us an amusing description of how he found him in the Prefecture at Bordeaux, when he arrived on his mission from the Government of National Defence after the capitulation of Paris. Every room, he says, was packed with clerks; the great staircase bustled like a railway station when a train is about to start; deputations were standing to be received on the stair head; crowds were waiting outside to be addressed from the balcony. the dictator wanted to write a letter or circular he took refuge behind a screen, and when generals from the seat of military operations came to consult him he had to retire with them behind a door. Still, in all this atmosphere of confusion, he was working out his great schemes with the clearest purpose, and preserved a spirit so gay, that he was sometimes reproved for an unseemly forgetfulness of his country's griefs. He kept all in heart, and used to say that courage was a quality which ought to be inflamed rather than extinguished by re

verses.

It was a deep disappointment to him when Paris capitulated, and the government concluded an armistice with the Germans in order that the country might elect an assembly to conclude a peace. War à outrance would have still been his voice, for he entertained a passionate conviction of the immense reserve of strength which yet remained in France. He feared, also that this assembly might, under Prussian influences, restore the Empire, and he accordingly issued an ordinance declaring that no person who had held office under the Imperial Government should be eligible to the new assembly. This ordinance was recalled by his colleagues in Paris, Prince Bismarck having threatened to break off the armistice if one of its most essential provisions-that of freedom of election

were to be thus unjustly violated. M. Gambetta retired from office rather than assent to this course. Prince Bismarck asked with surprise how it was that he, the friend of despots and tyrants, should be standing up for liberty against M. Gambetta, the great champion of freedom. Many persons will share this feeling of surprise. But the truth is that M. Gambetta has never been a champion of freedom in and for

itself. His watchword is, Get the Republic, with freedom if possible, but by all means get the Republic. This is not the only occasion in his career in which he has made no scruple about depriving individuals of their political rights, and setting aside some of the most sacred and honored principles of liberty. But

it is worth noticing that on the present occasion he sacrificed these principles to a fear which turned out to be entirely illgrounded. An anti-Republican majority was, indeed, returned; but the Imperialists whom he dreaded, and whom alone he sought to exclude, were nowhere. His policy derives, therefore, as little justification from events as from principles. The majority of the new Assembly-elected on February 7, 1871-was composed of Monarchists, in great part old Legitimist landowners, who were chosen because the country desired, above all things, peace. Gambetta himself was returned for ten different constituencies, and he elected to sit for Strasbourg, thus staking his parliamentary existence on the integrity of France, and indicating how stoutly he meant to resist the cession of Alsace and Lorraine. When these provinces were ceded, and Strasbourg was no longer part of France, Gambetta, of course, lost his seat in the Assembly. He then went for a month to St. Sebastian for greatly needed rest; and it was during his absence there that the outbreak of the Commune occurred in Paris. He is sometimes blamed for his absence during that insurrection, and St. Sebastian" is one of the commonest cries with which his enemies try to interrupt his speeches. The insinuation is that he shrunk either from the responsibilities or from the personal dangers of his position. But M. Gambetta is no coward, either moral or physical, and nothing is more natural than that he should seek rest after the infinite labor of the previous six months, as soon as he got a brief respite from public duties through the disfranchisement "by an act of God" of the seat which he had patriotically and self-sacrificingly risked sitting for. He was not long out of parliament, however, for he was again sent to Versailles at the complementary elections in July.

He had already spoken with his immediate friends, whom he still gathered

about him on the Sundays, of the necessity of starting a newspaper, to be a more exact organ of their views, and the idea was at once adopted, and a capital of £5000 subscribed for the purpose by friends of the party. The first name they thought of for this new journal was La Revanche, then La Patriote, but the one, we are told, was considered premature, and the other too specific. Both names, however, reveal the ideas which held at the time the foremost place in the minds of this group of politicians. The great revenge was certainly a cardinal article of faith with Gambetta then, and what has once been an article of faith with a nature like his is probably never renounced, though it ought to be added that it does not therefore follow that M. Gambetta will be at all ready to plunge his country into war for the purpose. No one sees so clearly as he does that the work of France for many years to come is that of national reconstruction and regeneration, and it was he who said at Havre, so long ago as 1872, that

Not

our true revenge is the regaining of our hereditary qualities and the reformation of our national morale." The title ultimately chosen for their organ was La République Française, and Gambetta became its political director, Spuller its editor, and Challemel-I.acour, De Freycinet, and Ranc were among its leading contributors. Gambetta attended very assiduously to his editorial duties. a line of political matter was printed without passing under his eye; and even when he had undergone a hard day's work in the Assembly at Versailles, he yet never missed going through all the laborious duties of his editorial office in the evening. The success of the paper may be said to have been assured from the beginning, and one result was that in a short time its proprietors bought larger premises, in which Gambetta and his aunt came to reside, increasing their establishment by the cook and the brougham, which figured so much in the reactionary journals as indications of the luxurious indifference of the exdictator.

In the Versailles Assembly Gambetta spoke much more seldom than was expected; indeed, his enemies twitted him upon his taciturnity. But in the face of a hostile majority he felt that his best

policy was to wait and watch, if by any means he might save the Republic. He bore the personal attacks to which he was frequently subjected with much calmness, only demanding a Commission of Inquiry into the conduct of the Delegation at Tours and Bordeaux, and delivering his vindication once for all before that body. It need hardly be said that, while he may have committed blunders and faults, even his adversaries were obliged to acknowledge that his integrity and patriotism were beyond challenge. He perceived, however, that for the time the work of the Republican cause was not to be done in the Assembly so much as in the beaureau and on the platform; and his main efforts were directed-and very successfully to securing the cohesion of the Republicans within the house and creating a powerful public opinion in favor of the Republic outside. He showed himself, according to universal admission, a singularly good party manager, and convinced M. Thiers that he was not the fou furieux he had taken him to be. During the parliamentary vacations of 1871, 1872, and 1873 he delivered a series of speeches in various provincial centres, which carried his Republican evangel through the length and breadth of the land, and contributed immensely to win the minds of the peasantry to the Republic. In one of his speeches M. Gambetta took up a sneer which was cast at him, and said that he believed it not imperfectly described his position; he was indeed the commercial traveller of the Republic, who labored to make known its excellencies, to extend its connections, to establish its good will in the minds of all France." In the first beginnings of a business the commercial traveller has perhaps a more important work to do than the manager. That is

the kind of work M. Gambetta has hitherto been doing for the Republic, and he seems still to feel that the time has not yet come when he can serve it better by any other.

The speeches M. Gambetta delivered in the years now mentioned present us with a very good view of his political programme. To remove the prejudices and fears of the peasantry, he is at pains to show what the democratic Republic he preached to them did not mean.

In

the first place it was no socialist utopia; it was the enemy of such. The French Revolution had given a new sanction to individual property, and the form of government which was to complete the revolution would confirm that sanction and not weaken it. He said, moreover,

There is no social panacea, for there is no social question. There is a series of questions, but they differ in different places even in the same country, and must be solved each for itself, and not by any single formula." If he quelled the fears of the peasantry by these assurances, he satisfied the aspirations of the laboring classes-the dreaded proletariate-by others. For while he said that the French Revolution consecrates the principle of individual property, he said at the same time that it made property a moral as well as a material condition of the liberty and dignity of the citizen, and that it was therefore essential that there should be a wider distribution of capital and the instruments of labor among the masses of the people. How this is to be secured he has not declared.

He sought to remove a second misunderstanding. He said at Belleville, in 1873. "Democracy to-day says no longer All or nothing.' It says no longer If this government does not give us all we want, we will overturn it.' It says, 'Let us proceed gradually, and not make any tabula rasa, or take up all questions at once. He said, The ideal was the end, and not the beginning, of their work," that the better might be the enemy of the good, and that the true policy was a policy of results" or of opportunism. This was his second broad divergence from the Republicanism of the men of 1848, and it involved greater moderation of method, as the first involved greater moderation of doctrine. There was, he fully owned, a great work to do, but it must needs be done bit by bit, as the country was able to bear it. The Republic, he said, is not the end, but only a means; it is not the solution, but only a very essential prerequisite to the solution of the social and political problem of France. The work before France is to leaven legislation and manners with the ideas and doctrines of 1789, and especially with that greatest and highest idea of civil and political equality." And what is

equality? By equality he says he means no levelling, jealous, and chimerical equality," but simply the abolition of everything that remains of old castes and privileges, and the making of political rights, civil functions, education, and property legally open and accessible to all, so that every capacity in the nation may have a fair field. That would tend to give "power to the wisest and most worthy," which he declares to be the watchword of Democracy.

This is a work, however, which it will take, in his opinion, several generations to accomplish, and all that can be done now is to lay the foundation. For the present there are various minor necessities, such as securing the loyalty of civil functionaries to the Republic, and various general necessities, such as promoting material prosperity by economy, by public works, and in every possible way; but the two special requirements of the time are that every man in France be armed, and every man in France be educated. Those who have to do the work of citizens and patriots ought to begin by being soldiers and scholars. Without such training you cannot, in his opinion, create a truly free, brave, independent, and just people; and that is what the Republic must aim to do; but with it there is no limit to the possibilities in store for a race with such admirable capacities as the French.

Education is the theme to which he devotes his strength in these speeches. The country must at all hazards be saved from ignorance the double ignorance which is peculiar to France" -the absolute ignorance of its peasantry, and the more dangerous "halfignorance" of the towns. Ignorance, he declares, has been the cause of all their social crises; it has given all its strength to the Napoleonic legend; it has exposed the land to "constant alternations of despotism and demagogy." Primary education must be obligatory, gratuitous, laic; and secondary education is even more necessary than primary, and, like it, ought to be open to all. Books, libraries, academies, institutes, ought to be scattered everywhere. Science must descend to the humblest locality, and descend in its best.

Let all truth, let the highest truth, be taught in schools and colleges; for the highest NEW SERIES.-VoI.. XXXIV., No. 3

truths, he says, are those which young minds taken in most readily.

He

For this laicity is essential, for education on a modern democracy must be imbued with the modern spirit. With all my soul," he said at St. Quentin in 1871, "I wish to separate not only the Churches from the State, but the schools from the Church. That is for me a necessity of political order, and I will add of social order. The Pope had, in 1864, condemned all modern liberties, and it was, therefore, simply dangerous to the public safety to leave the education of the electors of the next generation in the hands of men who would train them in an aversion to the principles of the political system under which they dwelt, and over which they were ultimate masters. Gambetta's antipathy to the superior clergy has only increased with time, for he has found them constantly interfering at elections, and using the ecclesiastical organization in the interests of anti-Republican factions. has denounced them not merely as being un-democratic, but un-French, wearing a Romish costume, and taking their orders from a foreign power. On May 4, 1877, he proposed a question in the Chamber as to breaking off relations between France and the Vatican, and finished his speech by quoting a remark of his friend Peyrat, 'Le Cléricalisme, voilà l'ennemi." And at Rome, on September 18th of the same year, he made a speech, in which he said, “I have the right to say, pointing to those clericals served by 400,000 regular, beside all the secular clergy, those masters in the art of making dupes, and who speak of social peril, Le péril social, le voilà!" In this speech, he explained, however, that what he meant by clericalism was the spirit and power of the higher clergy, and that he had no thought in the world of attacking the inferior clergy, clergy, most of whom," he said, groaned under the yoke of clericals of high rank." This distinction is one of considerable importance for the understanding of Gambetta's policy. He knows that to attack the lower clergy would be to forfeit the support of the peasantry, among whom they live, and by whom their services are valued; but he believes likewise that it is possible to weld the lower clergy into complete

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solidarity with Democracy, while it is impossible to do the like with the higher. In the speech at St. Quentin in 1871, the first he delivered on the subject of the Church, this was the view he most prominently presented.

There was once (he said) in the ancient French monarchy a great clergy faithful to the traditions of religious and national independence. The Church of France had always held itself above Ultramontane pretensions, and by so doing had won the respect of the whole world. That Church has disappeared, because, under pretext of combating the principles of the Revolution, but in reality from an instinct of domination, the higher clergy have been-little by little at first, but soon exclusively-recruited from among the representatives of the Romish doctrine pure and simple. So that to-day there is really no longer a French clergy, at least in its superior ranks. There remains, indeed, to us a portion of the clergy who may give us evidence of those of ancient France. It is the low clergy. They are called so because, like slaves in the hands of their masters, they are entirely low. They are the most humble, the most resigned, the most modest of clergies. "It is a regiment," said a high cardinal in full senate; when I speak it must go." "I have never read without

a movement of indignation that infamous saying. Yes, I am a votary of free thought. I put nothing on a level with human science. But I cannot prevent myself from being possessed with an emotion of respect when I think of these men who are spoken of with so much hauteur. No, I am not cold to the deserving, humble man who, after having received certain ideas-very few, very incomplete, and very obscure-returns to the bosom of the robust and healthy rural populations, from which he has sprung, peasant and priest in one. He lives in the midst of them. He sees their hard and rude struggles for existence. His mission is to alleviate their sufferings, and he gives himself to it with his whole soul. In the dangers and perils of invasion I have seen them show themselves ardent and devoted patriots. They belong to the Democracy and they remain in it, and if they could yield themselves freely to their convictions more than one would avow himself a Democrat and a Republican. Well, ell, it is the clergy of the country that it is necessary to elevate, to liberate, to emancipate, to rescue from the role and the servitude which that cruel word, low clergy, denotes. So far from being the enemy of the clergy, our only desire is to see them return to the democratic traditions of their predecessors of the Grande Constituante, and to associate themselves like true Frenchmen in the life of a Republican nation.

This quotation may serve as a specimen of M. Gambetta's oratory, as well as

an expression of his policy on a question of surpassing interest in France. It leaves, however, little space to follow his subsequent career. The most important incidents in his public life after this period were the part he took in promoting the transition from the Provisional Republic of 1871 to the quasi-definitive Republic the Septennate of February, 1875; and, again, in promoting the transition from this to the definitive Republic of February, 1879. In the first he worked hand in hand with M. Thiers, who had come to learn that his fou furieux was as patient, and calculating, and disposed for compromise as himself. It was mainly Gambetta's influence that secured the adhesion of the Republican party to the Wallon amendment, the compromise which gave birth to the Septennate of MacMahon. Even men like M. Grévy remained inflexible to the last, and some went so far as to reproach M. Gambetta with changing his cue. Thinking that, as he said, the militant period of the Republic was now over, he gave a general support to the rule of the Marshal until the latter, fearing the growing Republican sentiment of the country, which the elections continued to manifest, violently dismissed M. Jules Simon from power on May 16, 1877, and gave signs of conspiring against the future of the Republic. He then bent all his energy against the Marshal, and on July 8th made a famous speech at Lille, in which he said that France would at the approaching elections say to the President, 66 Either submit or desist." For this he was prosecuted and condemned to imprisonment, which, however, his inviolability as a deputy saved him from undergoing. At length, in January, 1879, the Marshal succumbed, and the Republic being definitively established, in February M. Grévy was chosen in his stead, and M. Gambetta, who declined to stand for the presidency, was elected president of the Chamber of Deputies. Once again the Republic militant seems to have ended and given place to the Republic triumphant, which many think is only too bent on making its enemies its footstool.-Fraser's Magazine.