Poor Rosenthal at one time awoke from his stupor to babble of Catinetta la Marseillaise. He accused her of having stolen from him the crown of Sweden and given it to Bernadotte. He reproached himself for having left his geneological tree at Pirmasens, and wanted to go back and claim it. All my observations were useless, and I think he would have completely lost his reason if a good man, M. le Pasteur Diderich, had not taught him that all the crowns in the world are not to be compared with the crowns reserved for CONTEMPORARY LIFE AND THOUGHT IN the elect.

THE anticipations we expressed last January, immediately after the death of Gambetta, have been rapidly coming true. After a moment of confusion and bewilderment, which testified to the gravity of the loss sustained by the Republican party, moderate men recognized the imperative necessity of constituting a government worthy of the name and supported by a steady majority; and they turned naturally towards M. Jules Ferry, as the obvious chief of the only ministry possible or desirable at the moment. It was high time, for the sake of our Here ended Grandmother Françoise's foreign relations as well as our internal

upon the illness of M. Duclerc, and, later on, of M. Fallières, and upon the resignation of the ministers of war and marine, MM. Billot and Jaureguiberry, who refused to carry out the measures proposed against the princes holding military rank, had revealed the full extent of the danger arising from the want of a compact majority in the Chamber of Deputies. It was clear that the foreign policy of France was threatened with annihilation, and her internal administration and finance with total disorganization, and that, in a word, anarchy in an insidious but most perilous form was spreading, little by little, through the whole body politic. The Republican party felt the danger keenly enough to seek the remedy in the only quarter in which it could be found; they rallied round M. Jules Ferry.

policy, to put an end to the extraordinary disintegration of the ministry consequent state of confusion and disorganization into which things had been thrown by the illness first of M. Duclerc, and afterwards of M. Fallières, and by the absurd and odious "question of the princes." Prince Napoleon, with that want of seriousness and good sense which has always nullified his remarkable intellectual gifts, had been seized with the unfortunate idea of taking advantage of the death of Gambetta to placard a manifesto to the French people. Two courses were possible- either to treat the whole thing as a joke, or to expel the unseasonable pretender without further formality. M. Fallières, the minister of the interior, whom the illness of M. Duclerc had suddenly left head of the Cabinet, had decided on the latter course.. Unhappily M. Grévy, always a stickler for legality, and beset with judicial prejudices, refused his assent to a measure not provided for by the law; and M. Fallières was weak enough to institute unsuccessful proceedings against the prince, and to propose to the Chamber a bill for arming the government against pretenders. How came it that, while the public outside remained indifferent and even amused, the excitement in Parliament hereupon became so excessive and so universal, that M. Floquet could demand the expulsion of all the members of former reigning families, and that the most fantastic Orleanist conspiracies were invented or imagined? The phenomenon can only be understood by those who know the excitability of the French temperament, and the atmosphere of idle gossip, of barren agitation and unreflecting terrors, in which many French deputies live and breathe. There was also, among those who were most eager for the proscription of the princes, a certain amount of calculation. They knew that the Senate would refuse to concur in any violent measures, and they hoped to make use of this opportu nity for discrediting the Senate and charging it with Orleanist proclivities. Happily the business lingered, and every one had time to recover from the first burst of emotion, and to perceive its ab-like Gambetta, a tribune of the people surdity. The Senate threw no acrimony into its opposition to the bill sent up by the Chamber; and if in the end it rejected the measure, it was not till it had clearly shown that it recognized the right of the government to protect itself against any pretender who should go so far as to placard his aspirations.

This period of barren and absurd agitation was not quite without its use. The

This was the result we foresaw and hoped. M. Ferry was the only statesman at all equal to the difficult inheritance left by the death of M. Gambetta the direc tion of the Republican party. He has not, of course, the captivating eloquence, or the extraordinary personal fascination, of M. Gambetta, nor has he the national popularity springing from an heroic episode; it is even probable that he has neither so wide a conception of European policy, nor so high an electoral genius; but his inferiority in some points is largely compensated by his superiority in others. He has character. He has always known what he wanted, and said what he thought right, without troubling himself to flatter the passions either of the country or of the Chamber. He has political courage, and that in the highest degree. He commands the respect of those who are opposed to him at least of such of them as are capable of impartiality. He has a very cultivated and a very open mind, free from intellectual prejudices; he is inaccessible to fear or favor; he is a patient listener; he readily accepts the opinions of competent men, and knows how to leave a large initiative to colleagues or subordinates whose value he has tested. If he is not,

if calumnious stories are told against him among the people of Paris, because he had the courage to speak sound reason during the siege of 1870-he has ac quired a solid and well-founded popularity amongst thinking men, and especially throughout the whole educational body, by the energy with which he has carried out the triple reform of primary, secondary, and higher education. In public in

M. Freycinet, who tried to unite the Left Centre with the Radical Left and the Extreme Left a fatal system, which ended in giving to the Extreme Left an importance quite disproportionate to their members, and still more disproportionate to their capacity.

struction he has made himself a name claims for the ministry, so long as it enand a place independent of all political joys the confidence of the majority, the fluctuations and superior to all parties. right of directing Parliamentary business, Thus he did wisely in resuming, on his and of emancipating itself from the hin return to power, the portfolio of public drances perpetually thrown in its way by instruction; for whatever future may await the bungling initiative of private memhim as president of the Council, his ser- bers, and by their interference in matters vices in the matter of education will al- of administration. Thanks to the absoways surround him with sympathizers and lute clearness of the situation he has thus keep a door open for his return to office. produced, and to the conviction that if he The very nature of M. Ferry's political could not govern under these conditions opinions renders him eminently fitted to he would not govern at all, but would be the director and moderator of the Re- either dissolve or resign, M. Ferrypublican party. The party is divided by alone, so far, among the ministers of the two very marked tendencies in opposite republic - has been able to form a madirections, which find their adherents jority composed of homogeneous cleamong very different shades of opinion. ments, taken exclusively from the RepubThe one group holds that the immediate lican Left and the Republican Union need of the country is an energetic gov- that is to say, from the moderate party ernment, knowing its own mind, directing and fortified by the declared hostility of the deliberations of Parliament, and giv- the Extreme Left. This is the very oppoing a vigorous impulse to the administra- site of the hybrid system attempted by tion of affairs; the other group would make the whole duty of the government consist in obedience to the Chambers, and the whole duty of the Chambers in obedience to the electoral body. They put forward, under the name of Liberalism, a sort of soi-disant American system, which, in an old and centralized country like France, can mean nothing but universal disorganization and the surrender of public affairs to the most ignorant and violent classes of the community. On the other hand, the former group contains a certain number of men of strong centralist views, who bring to the work of a republican government the habits and principles of despotism. There were many who, however unjustly, feared in M. Gambetta a possible tyrant; and some of the friends who surrounded him undoubtedly urged on him an absolutist policy. M. Ferry has the immense advantage of possessing, to begin with, a mind profoundly liberal, moderate, and flexible, and an honest respect for public opinion, while he has also a keen sense of the duties and requirements of government. It is to his credit that he did not condescend to take office without clearly indicating the terms on which he accepted it. In his relations with the president of the republic - unhappily too much under the influence of his son-in-law, M. Wilson - he has vindicated for himself complete freedom of action; in his relations with his colleagues he has for the first time established those rights of general direction and control, without which the name of prime minister is a mockery; in his relations with the Chambers he

It was on these principles that M. Ferry constructed his government. He chose two very capable men who had formed part of M. Gambetta's cabinet M. Waldeck-Rousseau and M. Raynal - for the ministries of the interior and of public works; he appointed to the post of foreign affairs M. Challemel-Lacour, a senator and an old friend of Gambetta's, who, as ambassador, had already held a diplo matic post; he gave the ministry of justice to M. Martin Feuillée, an able member of the Gambettist party, and the ministries of finance and agriculture to two members of the Left, M. Tirard and M. de Mahy. We shall speak later on of the ministries of war, of marine, and of commerce.

From a Parliamentary point of view the choice of these ministers was irreproachable. But it is the misfortune of the existing situation that the choice of ministers is made to depend too much on party considerations, and too little on the competence of the men and on the foreign relations of the country. M. Hérisson was made minister of commerce. He had held the post of public works in the late ministry, and his incompetence there had been notorious. It is not less so in his present position. Nobody knows his opinions on free trade, protection, and tariffs. But he is a member of the Radi

cal Left, and in keeping him M. Ferry | adopted. M. Thibaudin is supported by has secured a few additional votes. In the Radicals with all the more eagerness finance, there was but one man capable of because little sympathy is believed to exextricating the treasury from the embar- ist between him and M. Ferry; and his rassment into which it had been thrown presence thus acts with double force as by M. Freycinet's reckless undertakings an element of discord and of weakness in in the matter of public works - M. Léon the Cabinet. Say. M. Ferry would have liked nothing Such are the fatal consequences of better. But M. Léon Say has many ene- that miserable "question of the princes," mies; his relations with the Rothschild which the Ferry ministry received as a family have awakened the envy and dis- legacy from its predecessors. By one of trust of more than one jealous democrat. those odd inconsistencies not unfrequent Instead of M. Say, the post was conferred in politics, the government found itself on M. Tirard, a financier of irreproacha- powerless against Prince Napoleon, the ble probity, but apparently not very expert solitary offender and the cause of the at figures, for his first budget contained whole difficulty, while the Orleans princes, an error of a hundred millions, -a mis- who had done nothing at all, were detake not likely to be soon forgotten. prived, not indeed of their military rank, Finally, and worst of all, the unhappy but of their employment; and this was "question of the princes" made it impos- done after the definitive rejection of the sible for M. Ferry to give the ministries law which was to have authorized the minof war and marine to the two men who istry to take measures against them, and should naturally have been called to them, by means of a legal provision which had General Campenon and Admiral Cloué. hitherto been exclusively reserved for At the head of the marine he was obliged cases of misconduct. I am not, however, to put a naval engineer, M. Brun -a sen among those who are excessively indig ator and a distinguished man, but an in- nant at this measure. I think a great valid, without authority over the officers, mistake has been made in conferring miliand without the energy of character nectary appointments on the Orleans princes; essary for the control of a most difficult and it appears to me that, even since the department, in which there is a strong carrying out of this measure, the memtendency to the perpetuation of abuses, bers of former reigning families have enand which at the present moment has to joyed in France a toleration which has deal with some of the gravest questions, never been accorded to pretenders in any on account of the impulse lately given to other European country. But it is imposthe colonial policy of the country. At the sible not to be scandalized at the illogical War Office matters were still worse. It and arbitrary manner in which they have was necessary to retain General Thibau- been treated during the last ten years. din, as the only person who could be got First they are loaded with favors; then, to accept the post after the resignation of without any fault of their own, they are General Billot, though he was the object treated as suspects. It is useless to say of almost universal dislike amongst mili- that the republic of 1883 is not the repubtary men, whether on account of his pre- lic of 1874. Theoretically it is the same; vious conduct in the administration of the and it is bound to act on the theory; for infantry department of the War Office, or a government without continuity, and because, during the campaign of 1870–71, whose past is no guarantee for its future, when he was a prisoner on his parole in cannot possibly create either confidence Germany, he made his escape, took ser- or security. vice again in France under the name of Commagny, and thus gained his rank as general. M. Ferry was forced to endure the presence of M. Thibaudin in his Cabinet; but it was not possible that there should exist between them those cordial relations and that unity of action so imperatively necessary at a moment when the law of recruitment was just about to be passed a law which threatens the whole intellectual and artistic activities of France, and on which even her military future will be staked, if the system of a universal three-years' service should be

This vexatious question, however, was soon forgotten; and indeed the excitement it produced had been confined within a somewhat narrow circle. Its principal inconvenience was the dissatisfaction it created in the army. There were other questions which caused the government more serious embarrassment.

First came the religious question, which had quieted down in the matter of the non-authorized orders only to blaze up again more fiercely than ever in the matter of primary education. In suppressing religious teaching in the schools, the mis.

Whilst the clerical question thus threatens to become a source of embarrassment to the government, and perhaps to deprive the republic of the sympathies of some of the electors, social questions are forcing themselves upon the more thoughtful and far-seeing minds. The masses of the population naturally look to the republic for an amelioration of their condition. But this amelioration depends only in part on the law, and on the degree of liberty enjoyed by the citizens; it depends principally on social and economic conditions with which the form of government has nothing whatever to do. The republic meanwhile allows free course to the most violent socialistic or anarchist propaganda; it even allows the adherents of revolutionary ideas to associate and organize themselves. I, for my part, see no immediate danger arising from any such propaganda; but the weakness of the government, togetber with a prolonged industrial crisis, might turn a remote contingency into a present peril. After the attempts at Monceaux les Mines and at Lyons, and the proceedings which resulted in the conviction of Prince Krapotkin and some other revolutionists, some few persons

take had been made of substituting for it | fused throughout all the lessons; and he the teaching of morality and civic duty. would reduce the proposed instruction in The opposition regarded this as an at- the duties of citizenship to the explanatempt on the part of the government to tion of the essential facts of social life replace the old catechism by a free-think- and of the machinery of administration. ing republican catechism of its own. A It may be questioned, however, whether manual of moral and civic instruction, the teachers are sufficiently intelligent to composed by M. Paul Bert, in which the give this sort of moral instruction out of supernatural was openly denied, and mo- their own heads. And it looks a little narchical institutions were held up to rid-like retreating before the attacks of the icule, confirmed them in this opinion. clericals. The French clericals skilfully turned these mistakes to their own advantage. They obtained from the Congregation of the Index at Rome the condemnation, not only of M. Paul Bert's manual, but also of those of M. Compayré and of Madame H. Gréville, which are absolutely irreproachable from a religious point of view. Bishops and clergy flung themselves at once into the contest, and forbade Catholic parents, under the threat of excommunication, to place these impious_books in the hands of their children. True, the proceedings of the court of Rome and the clergy were odious enough; the thing was clearly a political intrigue and not a religious question; and it is not to be endured that a foreign authority should interfere in a matter of public education in France. But none the less it was embarrassing for the government. There are amongst the bourgeoisie and the working classes many good Republicans who do not care to quarrel with their priest, and who care a good deal about their children's first communion; and it would be at once deplorable and dangerous to stir up throughout the whole of France an antagonism between the schoolmaster and the curé. M. Ferry is alive to this dan-seriously believed in the creation of a ger; and while energetically undertaking dynamite party in France. A few demathe defence of the schoolmasters while gogues, more or less sincere, even procuring the condemnation of the bish- thought the time had come for a noisy agiops by the Council of State for the abuse tation in the streets; and, profiting by the of their authority, and even threatening uneasiness among the population of Paris them with the suspension of their sti- due to the crisis in the furnishing trade pends in case of a repetition of the offence last winter, they attempted to organize while vigorously denouncing in the tumultuous demonstrations for the 9th, Congrès des Instituteurs the insolent in- 11th, and 18th of March. But the worktervention of Rome in the internal affairs men of Paris remained absolutely indifferof France he has shown the greatest ent. On the 9th and the 11th a few handanxiety to appease these irritating hostili- | fuls of roughs alone responded to the ties. He advocated the suppression of direct moral instruction, and the substitution of an indirect moral influence dif

• One curious incident serves to show the intolerance

- or, at least, the puerility-of a certain class of persons. The committee of the French Academy which chooses the books proposed for the Prix Monthyon had put down a work by Madame Gréville. It was struck out, because her manual had been put into the Index.

appeal; and on the 18th, when it was known that the government had resolved firmly to put down any attempt at disorder, not a single rioter showed his face in the streets. Since that time the revolutionary party has kept pretty quiet; it cannot so much as find an audience for its meetings. The social danger is thus held at arm's length for the present by the