M. GAMBETTA'S ADDRESS TO FRANCE.
MGAMBETTA'S speech at the reopening of the s Assembly, which the Chamber has ordered to be placarded in each of the 36,000 Communes of France, must be Studied with an eye to its real, and not its momentary, object. It is not a speech intended to convince, or even to instruct the Deputies, and still less an oratorical effort, but rather an in- formal Message from the informal President of the Republic to all French electors. M. Gambetta is extremely anxious that the next Chamber should be even more homogeneous than the present, that it should be, if possible, entirely Republican, and should contain a majority steadily determined to maintain his form of Republicanism, and to follow him as a leader. If such a Chamber is returned, he has determined, it is said, to accept office without waiting for a vacancy in the President's chair. To this end it is necessary for him to attract his own party, and the "Republicans of the morrow," as they used to be called, who are now Conservatives, but not Reactionaries, and the Irreconcilables of the great. cities who are not avowedly Socialist. This end is pursued with great skill, sometimes even with that finesse, not always scrupulous, which so markedly differentiates M. Gambetta from the majority of French politicians and all French orators. Besides his great capacity both for oratory and for administration, and his deep comprehension of the latent feelings of the French majority, M. Gambetta has much of the Italian practical sense, and with it something of that Italian quality which we can only describe by the rather feminine word " designing- ness," and which, though a flaw in his nature, according to English ideas, constantly helps him with the parties he has to influence or control. Some of the turns of expression in this address are most felicitous instances of diplomatic rather than
oratorical skill. The drift of the whole is to declare with all official weight, always great with the French peasantry, that
this Parliament (" under my leadership," being under 400d all through) has established the Republic (which you triqlted for, and which was endangered in 1877), and that Republic has
succeeded. It "has refounded the naval and the military machinery of France." It has " restored " the roads and canals and commenced vast public works, especially those of inter-
communication, and those necessary to clevelope new maritime cut rep ?ts. It has restored the finances, and so fostered in- dustry that each Budget sees a large remission of'taxation. It has fused and reformed the Postal and. Telegraphic ?Jet- vices, totally recast the Customs' tariff, and passed a " long series of business laws.' It has re-established the right of public meeting, is now enfranchising the Press, and is about to concede the right of professional association. • It will, before it separates, complete the reorganisation of the Army and the immense works necessary for the national defence,— works, we may explain, which include that amazing one, the new external enceinte for the defence of Paris.
All this, which is addressed to the whole body of electors, is true, and recognised by all the world, which in particular is never tired of admiring the financial success of the Republic, finance having been the Republican weak point, and it is well that the peasantry should hear that it is true from the lips of the leader they most trust ; but it is not, of course, the subject on which M. Gambetta displayed art. He had nothing as regards prosperity to do but state the facts, and im- plicitly credit them to himself. Assisted greatly, no doubt, by his restraining power with the Democracy, and by his wide knowledge of the requirements of the great Services, acquired during his dictatorship, but still more assisted by the new spirit of self-sacrifice in France, a succession of able men have been able to utilise the immense resources of the country, to fill its Treasury to repletion, to impose extra taxation to the amount of twenty-five millions sterling a year, to restore discipline, which is now even too severe, to create a Reserve Army of 500,000 men, to plan a territorial army of double that number, and to restore and extend all the great fortifica- tions of France. Paris in particular is now pronounced, by
great experts, unassailable. Those achievements will be remembered at the elections, and will conciliate all true patriots ; but it is not about them that M. Gambetta expects opposition or is sincerely anxious. He wants to disarm or crush clerical opposition, to attract the army, to say some- thing pleasant to Belleville, to reassure Germany, and to re- move the peasants' fear that lie is essentially warlike. He there- fore tells the army, still a great factor in Fr•etnch politics, though it no longer votes,—" Alongside the industrial and economic machinery, the Deputies have taken a jealous interest in recon- structing and refounding the military and naval machinery of France ; they have taken a special interest in the men charged on land and at sea with the custody and employment of that vast machinery. The situation, both in active service and as pen- sioners, of all the officers and soldiers has been improved ; that of the non-commissioned officers has been, and is still, the subject of their constant solicitude." In plain English, M. Gambetta and his party offer not only to keep up a great and well-organised army, which is necessary for the country, but to make it comfortable, which may not be so necessary. In England, the sentence would awaken every Radical jealousy ; but in France, not only will every soldier be pleased, bat every family will feel that the heavy burden of conscription has been slightly lightened. On the subject of peace he is even more rase: He does not give any pledges at all, b it only affirms that as he is Democrat and France is Democratic, there can be no reason for alarm! " In spite of assertions re- posing on no foundation, the whole world knows that the foreign policy of Prance neither masks secret objects nor adventures, This is a guarantee which resides in the very form of the Republican Government, in which all depends on the national sovereignty and on a democracy, in the bosom of which external peace, dignified and well sustained, is at OACO the means and the object of democratic progress." Every peasant will understand that to mean that M. Gambetta wishes peace ; whereas, it is nothing but an assertion, pro- bably not believed by himself, and certainly disproved by his-
tory, that democracies are specially pacific. Should an opportunity of war arise, nothing is easier than to say that there are exceptions to the general rule, and that this war is the road to a lasting peace. We do not believe that France can wholly avoid war, and can understand that M. Gambetta frets under the peasants' desire for peace ; but in his apparent assent to their view, and real reservation of independence, there is as much artfulness as statesmanship. In the sentence uttered to catch Belleville, promising " institutions more and more Liberal and Democratic," the art is, perhaps, legitimate ; but in those on education, the most burning of all the electors' controversies, finesse degenerates into direct misrepresentation. M. Gambetta describes the Edu- cational Laws, which include the Decrees dissolving the Orders engaged in education, thus :—" After restoring in their integrity the too long disregarded rights and laws of the State, you have insured the education of all French youth. By em- bodying for the first time in the law an absolute respect for liberty of conscience, you have thoroughly remodelled higher and intermediate education, richly endowed the three branches of public instruction, and thereby pre- pared a splendid crop of men for the future." Educa- tion is made universal, and there may be a splendid crop of men, as there was for a time in many a Pagan State ; but it is folly to say that the crop will be increased by the exclusion of religious teaching, and untrue to declare that it was accomplished for the sake of liberty of conscience. The Decrees terminated liberty of conscience. A large number of the fathers of France, and three-fourths of the mothers desire their sons to be educated by men devoted to the religious cul- ture, which in France means men in orders, and they can no longer be so educated. That is not religious liberty, but liberty to be irreligious, and is only condoned in this country because the majority hold Catholicism and irreligion to be about equally bad.
We have never been opponents, or even, to any great ex- tent, critics of M. Gambetta, who restored the honour of France, who has exhibited great abilities for organisation, and who has exercised a most beneficial influence in restraining the ex- tremists. We admit him to be, for the time, not only the only possible leader of French Republicans, but probably the most effective they could choose. But it is as neces- sary to study M. Gambetta under white light as to study Prince Bismarck ; and there are shades in his mind which exercise on us a distinct repulsion. We do not care much about his finesse. He has an Italian intellect, with its breadth, and fervour, and subtlety, and like every other original man, must be taken as he is ; but there is some- thing more than subtlety in a man of M. Gambetta's opinions leaving an impression that he is for peace, when he is for well-considered war, and something politically base in trailing before the Extremists that red-herring of the Monkish Orders.
It is telling them to attack the weak, that they may forget the strong. We should say it was morally base, too, but that we have never been able to be certain whether M. Gambetta, like so many French professionals, honestly hates the Clericals, or whether, like M. Bismarck, he only assumes a hatred which would vanish, if the Clericals were popular or submissive to himself. M. Gambetta can never be fairly judged till he has ruled France without a dictatorship, and for a considerable period ; but while we should expect much from that rule, and especially the rehabilita- tion of France as a Liberal force in the politics of the world, we cannot conceal from ourselves that there are elements in his character which must be watched with some distrust. We long to see a great Republican at the head of France, but not a great Jacobin. Jacobins can govern, but they do not found.
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