English Pharisees and French Crocodiles Part 17

No one says to himself, "The Prime Minister is not a fool; he ought to know what he is about; and even if he were a rogue, is it not to his interest to serve his country to the best of his ability?"

Why, even the schoolboy goes into politics nowadays.

I warrant that there is not a single man, in France or England, who does not believe himself perfectly capable of criticising the acts of his Prime Minister, and very few, who do not feel equal to filling his place, if, for _the good of their country_, they were called by their fellow-citizens to fulfill these arduous duties.

There is a great virtue, a virtue eminently English, which we French do not possess; respect for the man who is down. Yet it is not that we lack magnanimity; but we also have our contrasts. Generous, of a chivalric character, with a repugnance for any kind of meanness, we yet insult the fallen man and even bespatter the memory of one who has gone to the grave. We consoled ourselves for Sedan by singing "_C'est le Sire de Fiche-ton-Camp_." On the death of M. Thiers, a celebrated Bonapartist journalist exclaimed that he could jump for joy over the tomb of him who had just liberated his country. Open the newspapers of to-day, and you will still see Gambetta's memory insulted.

In England, they would have forgotten that Gambetta was a party man, and have remembered only his eloquence, which that of Mirabeau alone could have eclipsed, and which made him one of the brightest ornaments of contemporary France.

When Mr. Bright left the political arena for a world from whence jealousy is banished, and subscription lists were opened for erecting a statue to him, the Conservatives sent their contributions as well as the Liberals; they forgot the Radical, and remembered but the orator and the philanthropist. At the death of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, it was Mr. Gladstone, the political enemy of the Tory chief, who p.r.o.nounced the panegyric of that ill.u.s.trious man in the House of Commons.

This is a sentiment that is found, it is interesting to notice, in all cla.s.ses, even down to the English rough. When two men of the lower cla.s.ses fight, and one of them falls to the ground, the other waits until his adversary is up again, before returning to the attack. Do not imagine, however, that this sentiment is born of magnanimous bravery, for this same man, who respects his fallen adversary, will, as soon as he reaches his hovel, seize his wife by her hair, knock her down, and literally kick her to death at the first provocation.

In the latter case, there is no combat; there is correction administered by the master to his slave.

If the English have more respect than we for the man who is down, it is because they forget much more quickly than ourselves. Does this prove that they have less intelligence or more generosity? No. They are less impressionable, that is all. The trace disappears more easily, because the impression is less deep. I think this is one of the most remarkable differences between the two peoples.

In France, it is not an unwise act that ruins a political man--it is, above all things, a phrase blurted out in a moment of exultation. An act is forgotten sooner or later; but an unfortunate phrase sticks to a man, and becomes part and parcel of him, his motto, written on his forehead in indelible characters, and which he carries with him to the grave.

Take the case of M. Emile Ollivier. Since the fall of Thiers, we have had no minister, with the exception of Gambetta, whose political talent could be compared to that of the Liberal minister of Napoleon III. And yet, M. Emile Ollivier little knows his compatriots, if he thinks it is possible for him ever again to enter the political arena. To this very day, the ma.s.ses ignore that it was he who proclaimed war with Prussia, but there is scarcely a child who does not know that he said "he contemplated the coming struggle with a light heart." M. Ollivier is, and will remain to the day of his death, the _light-hearted man_.

Ridicule kills in France, and M. Ollivier is ridiculous. It is all over with him.[11]

M. Jules Favre was a great orator, and for that reason one of the ornaments of his century. This is forgotten. He signed the disastrous conditions of peace dictated by Prince Bismarck. That might have been overlooked. But he had said beforehand that "not one inch of territory, not one stone of any French fortress, would he yield." This sentence was his political knell.

General Ducrot was a brave soldier. On leaving Paris to go and attack the Prussians, he was so ill-advised as to declare that he would return "dead or victorious." However, he was still more ill-advised to come back alive and vanquished. Here was another only fit to throw overboard.

Our history is full of similar incidents; actions pa.s.s away and are forgotten, words remain. Ask any ordinary Frenchman, not well up in the history of France, who Mirabeau was. He will tell you that Mirabeau was a representative of the people, who one day exclaimed at the _a.s.semblee Const.i.tuante_: "We are here by the power of the people; nothing but the power of the bayonet shall remove us."

The history of France might be written between inverted commas.

Louis XIV. has gone down to posterity with the formula: "_L'Etat c'est moi_"; and Napoleon III. with that device, suggested by the irony of fate: "_L'Empire c'est la paix_." Lamartine is the man who, outside the Hotel de Ville, cried: "The tricolor flag has been round the world; the red flag has only been round the Champ de Mars." Thiers said: "The Republican form of government is the one that divides us the least."

Gambetta: "Clericalism; that is the enemy."

And to parody a celebrated proverb, I might say that French politics may be summed up in the words:

_Acta volant, verba manent._

CHAPTER XXIV.

LORDS AND SENATORS.

The existence of a hereditary House of Lords is a standing insult to the common sense of the English people.

England is governed by the eldest sons of the aristocracy.

Now, all who have had much to do with youth are perfectly agreed that, as a rule, the eldest son is the least intelligent in each family.

The first born is a _ballon d'essai_.

Moreover, the eldest son of the aristocrat is the sole heir to his father's t.i.tle and estates. He knows that the fortune cannot escape him.

And so, at school, he does no work; he leaves that sort of thing to his younger brothers, who will have to make their way in the world. When he leaves school or college, his chief subjects of preoccupation are Jews and jockeys.

It is needless to add that, in the House of Lords, the proportion of Conservatives to Liberals is overwhelming.

Consequently, when the Liberals are in power, the House of Lords is a dangerous inst.i.tution, which may at every moment hinder the working of the governmental machine; and when the Conservatives are in power, the House of Lords is a useless inst.i.tution, because its approbation can be relied upon in advance by the Government.

Does it not seem as if any second chamber must necessarily be dangerous or useless?

There is an episode of French history which, to my mind, has been forgotten much too soon.

It teaches a great lesson on the usefulness of Upper Houses.

It was under the Second Empire.

The French Senate was then, intellectually speaking, a body of men superior to the House of Lords, since they were picked men--chosen by the Emperor, it is true, but still chosen. With the exception of Sainte-Beuve, these senators of the Empire were more or less Bonapartists; cardinals, archbishops, marshals, generals, literary men, all men of importance. The duty of the Senate was to watch over the Const.i.tution, and to stop any bill, pa.s.sed by the Chamber of Deputies, that might have endangered the existence of the actual form of Government.

Well, in July, 1870, the Franco-Prussian war broke out, and, on the 4th of September, in the same year, the Chamber of Deputies deposed the Emperor, and proclaimed the Republic.

Here was a grand opportunity for the senators of showing their power, and of earning the 30,000 francs that they each received from their master.

Yet what happened?

Not one voice was raised by the Senate against the act of the deputies.

Better still: n.o.body thought of taking the trouble to dismiss them officially. In presence of the strong will of the people, they packed up their traps quietly, and, to the best of my recollection, even forgot to go to the counting-house to receive their month's pay.

Poor senators! they seemed to have the measure of their power in stormy times to an inch.

In presence of the will of the nation, strongly manifested, the House of Lords would be as powerless as the French Senate was in 1870.

A strange application of that great English principle, "the right man in the right place," is the existence of this same Upper House in England!