THE LATEST INCIDENT IN FRANCE.
THE incident of Monday in the French Chamber is not a hopeful one for the future of the French Republic. It shows that on one subject at least and that, the maintenance of social order, the Government lies at the mercy of the Radical Extremists. The working men of Vierzon recently struck on a dispute with their employers about. wages. The Company refused to give way, and after a brief conflict, a portion of their men decided to return to work at the lower rates. This irritated the remainder, who assembled in vast crowds to attack the returning workmen, and prevent them from entering the factory by threats and hootings. The police looked on at first quietly, but the strikers at last resorted to stone-throwing, and one woman being particularly active, the gendarmes present, only three or four in number, proceeded to arrest her. She was rescued by force, and proceedings being taken against the rescuers, some of them were sentenced by the magistrates to terms of imprisonment. The incident was mentioned on Monday in the Chamber, and the Extreme Radicals were loud in their censure of the Government, which, they declared, instead of employing the public force " to,pro- tect the weak "—that is, the strikers—was always in reality on the side of the employers. They condemned the police, they
condemned the magistrates, and they condemned the Ministry of the Interior. M. Berrien, the head of that Ministry, and his
colleague, M. Demole, Minister of Justice, denied the accusation of partiality, and faced the Radicals boldly. They declared that the police had done nothing but their duty in maintaining ex- ternal order, they promised to continue maintaining it in future, and they called upon the Chamber to defend the Executive by a distinct vote. They could not, they said, accept the Order of the Day, which had been suggested as a compromise, as a sufficient reply to the demand for a Vote of Censure, but must ask for a definite Vote of Confidence. The Chamber refused to give one. According to the forms of French procedure, the proposal to return to the Order of the Day came first ; the Right saw a grand opportunity of embarrassing the Government, and when the vote was taken they joined the Extremists in a body. So heavy, therefore, became their majority, that it was.useless to call for a ballot, and the unlucky Ministers were summarily condemned by what in England we should call a show of hands. They at once sought an audience of the President, and tendered their resignations, which, however, they ultimately withdrew.
Clearly they were in the right, and it is hard to see how, under such conditions, the most elementary functions of government are to be performed in France. The Extreme Radicals for some time past have made of this question of strikes their stalking-horse, and insist upon retrying in the Chamber every case which comes before the tribunals. They declare that when workmen strike, even in vast combined bodies, they are " the weak," and that they ought to be pro- tected by the State against the employers, who are strong. If that, however, is too much to ask, as their saner spokesmen partially admit, then at least the State is to be " neutral,"— that is, to leave workmen and employers to fight out their battle undisturbed, the tribunals giving judgment only when their aid is sought by injured individuals. This demand is not only opposed to the entire administrative system of France, which is based upon the theory of the duty of the State to prevent disorder, but is contrary to the simplest principles of justice. It leaves the minority in any factory powerless and unprotected before the majority. Those who choose to work are deprived of their liberty because those who do not are the majority. The unhappy men who are willing to work, but whose heads are broken if they do, are in no posi- tion to commence lawsuits ; nor if they were, are they disentitled by their willingness to ordinary protection. To work is not a legal crime. They are taxed to support the police, they are required to obey police orders, and to refuse them protection is to refuse a right, and to justify them in defending themselves by force. It is to permit civil war, with this strange limitation, that if the employers hired guards to protect their men, and the latter so became the stronger, the workmen on strike would declare themselves oppressed, and call upon the Executive to protect them against illegal interference. Such demands are monstrous, yet when they are repeated in the Chamber, the Right, whose principles lead them to support order, assist their deadly enemies to pass what is morally a censure on the police and the Home Department for refusing those demands. The Government is quite paralysed, for it never can resist a junction of the Right with the Extremists ; the police and the magistrates become afraid to do their duty ; and the workmen throughout France are taught that, even when they resort to violence, the majority in the Chamber are—at least when it comes to voting—decidedly on their side. The Deputies will overthrow a Minister and risk the subversion of a Government, rather than vote that it is the duty of the public force to maintain the public peace. It is foolish to say the vote is accidental, for it is an accident which is perpetually recurring, which removes Ministers, and which throws the most necessary departments of the State into utter confusion. How are they to carry out the law, when merely for carrying it out their chiefs are liable to dismissal, and they themselves held up to the populace as violent oppressors ? It is no consolation to M. Berrien that he was overthrown by men stronger even than himself on the side of social order, and no protection to the police of Vierzon that those who condemn them think in their hearts that they acted with only too much impartiality.
It must be remembered that the official attitude of the Ministry in this affair is no cloak for secret partiality. A sincere impartiality is their direct and visible interest. They admit in the strongest way, and with almost painful repetition, that the workmen have a complete right to strike, to strike in combination, and to remain out of work as long as they please, even if supported by friendly contributions. The liberty of Frenchmen in this respect has now become as complete as the liberty of Englishmen. The old system has been entirely given up ; and if all the pitmen leave a pit at once, and sit sulking in their cottages, the Executive will not interfere. Moreover, the Ministry besides their natural desire for the artisans' vote, exist by virtue of a league with the Extremists, which any show of partiality would bring to an end at once. They do not want savage debates in the Chamber, votes which almost compel them to resign, or criticisms such as the labour journals pour upon them every day. They are inclined, when they can, to side with the majority, and never resist it without showing, as in the affair of Decazeville, that they feel themselves deplorably weak in the presence of the artisans. All they venture to do, or wish to do, is to maintain order, to let the minority have a little fair play, to protect men who wish to earn their living from being stoned into hospital for earning it. That is surely not an abuse of authority, if there is to be any justice in France at all ; yet for doing this they are punished with a vote which they had previously refused to accept, and which, in fact, compels them to resign. That vote may be cancelled so far as the present occasion is con- cerned ; but then, also, it may be repeated on the very next occasion. The Right and the Extremists are always masters if they act together ; and when the object is to annoy the Government, the Right have apparently no principles at all. They will vote for anybody or anything, if only they can thereby create confusion or spread general alarm. We cannot conceive how any Government is pos- sible in such circumstances, or how self-respecting men can be found to accept posts from which, merely for obeying the law, they can be ousted by a combination which, were the question one of making the law more respected, would be impossible. It is as if in this country Tories and Parnellites, otherwise implacably hostile to each other, voted habitually in concert to defend moonlighters, or to censure a Minister who declared that boycotting oppressed the minority, and could not be witnessed " with neutrality " by the police.
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