Littell's Living Age/Volume 126/Issue 1624/The French Radicals
THE FRENCH RADICALS.
The speech delivered by M. Louis Blanc, and the manner in which it was received by his party, are both striking testimonies to the rigid discipline which M. Gambetta exercises over the Left. It is plain that the silence so long maintained by M. Louis Blanc has indeed been pain and grief to him. The thoroughness of the dislike which he feels towards the recent policy of the Republicans was visible in every word he said, and yet it is only now, at the eleventh hour, when the Wallon Constitution has long been voted, and all that remains for the Assembly to do is to work it out in detail, that he throws off the yoke and determines at all hazards to tell the Left what he really thinks of the compromise which their leader has persuaded them to accept. If we imagine Mr. Gladstone heartily disapproving Lord Harlington's policy on the most momentous constitutional issues, yet keeping silent session after session rather than embarrass the Liberal party, we shall get some notion of M. Louis Blanc's self-imposed restraint. The divergence between him and M. Gambetta does not relate to mere questions of strategy. It is, at all events in M. Louis Blanc's estimation, a radical difference of principle. He sees, as he thinks, the conquests of the revolution put in peril by M. Gambetta's love of finesse. The compromise which is offered seems to him utterly valueless. The institutions which he is called on to support are republican only in name. They are monarchical in their essence, with the sole difference that the crown is elective instead of hereditary. M. Louis Blanc has seen this detested cross between incompatible ideas maturing for months and even years, and all this time he has held his tongue. The action of the Left during and after his speech is another tribute to M. Gambetta's ascendency. The strain has been too great for M, Louis Blanc, and he has at length broken away, but carried scarcely any one with him in his protest. Appeals which must have gone straight to the heart of many members of his party failed to draw forth a single cheer. The Left were silent while he occupied the tribune, and silent when he left it. There were none of those triple rounds of applause or of those tempestuous hand-shakings which have so often been given to orators of lesser mark. Prudence has for the time quieted every natural impulse, and overrules every other consideration.
There is no need to insist upon the significance of this fact. Unseasonable violence — violence which alienated friends and encouraged enemies — has been the special characteristic of French Radicalism, and now not the Left Centre itself is more studiously moderate in tone and phrase. As yet, however, we know only that the change has taken place; the cause of it is not equally clear. Is it the result of conviction? Does this assent on the part of the advanced Republicans to a constitution of which M. Louis Blanc's description is scarcely an exaggeration, mean that they have at length awakened to the beauties of moderation? Have they discovered that there is more than they thought to be said for a carefully constructed balance of power in the constitution? It is not probable that such a revolution should have taken place, and as there is a much easier way of accounting for the facts it will be wiser to prefer it until further evidence appears. The Left may be silent under the provocation of adversaries and the apparent treachery of friends because they are persuaded that discretion is the only card that they can play with so much as a chance of success. In this respect circumstances have greatly favoured M. Gambetta. He may have built his own preference for moderate courses on the impossibility of founding a permanent constitution without the co-operation of the peasantry. Former republics have broken down in France for want of this indispensable condition. The peasantry are the mainstay of French industry and French prosperity, and if the Republicans are to go on frightening them into accepting the empire, M. Gambetta may well feel that he will succeed no better than those who have gone before him. But there is no need for him to try to draw his party along with him to this conclusion. There are more obvious dangers in view, fully sufficient to supply M. Gambetta with arguments by which to persuade the Left to remain silent under all provocation, and to "lie low." They have to deal with an executive which would be certain to act with prompitude and decision if those who compose it saw reason to fear any open resistance to their will, and with an Assembly which would give an unhesitating support to the executive if it saw its supremacy threatened. The efforts still made from time to time to reconstruct the old majority — the majority which overthrew M. Thiers and set up Marshal MacMahon in his room — prove that the elements of that majority have not wandered so far from one another that they might not be reunited by external pressure. The Right Centre and the more conservative section of the Left Centre have accepted the republic for the very reason which moves M.Louis Blanc to reject it — its unlikeness to all other French republics. The Left must know that any effort on their part to deprive the republic of this special feature would array all the conservative elements in the Assembly on the side of a government which should, at all events, not be Republican. The Assembly is in possession, and, though it has been brought to contemplate a surrender of its own sovereign power as a step not long to be deferred, the process might soon be undone if the whole Left were in the habit of speaking its mind as freely as M. Louis Blanc. The conservative majority would pronounce that the state of parties made a general election dangerous to the cause of order, and with Marshal MacMahon at the head of affairs, such a declaration would be irreversible by the opposition. Instead of living under a republic which they can at least hope to mould by degrees into something more worthy of the name, the Radicals would find themselves once more under the yoke of a provisional government which would in fact, if not in intention, be preparing the way for the empire.
It is a further and a very interesting question how long the Left can be expected to maintain this attitude. It is probable that the composition of the new Chamber will be decidedly more liberal than that of the present one. If the Republicans are not in a majority, they will at any rate constitute a very much more influential minority among the deputies. Will they be as prudent under the sun of returning prosperity as they have shown themselves in the winter of adversity? If they are not, their ultimate overthrow will once more become only a question of time. The essential conservatism of the French nation, its abhorrence of communism in any form, its determination that property shall be held sacred, its distrust of any party which gives an uncertain sound on this vital question — will make it impossible for any party to keep the control of public affairs in their hands for any long period, except on condition of recognizing these fundamental conditions. Will the French Radicals consent to retain power on such terms? If their recent moderation, or the moderation of many of them, is only the result of prudence, there must come a time when they will ask themselves whether a policy which is made up of an unlimited succession of sacrifices is worth pursuing any further. To restrain themselves in order to attain a given object is one thing; to restrain themselves when that given object is perpetually removed further off is another thing. Nothing but a change of conviction, a recognition that the purposes for which they wished to attain power are no longer dear to them, an admission that they too have learned something from experience, and are no longer the men they were, can be trusted to make them the really moderate politicians they have lately shown themselves. If this change had to be undergone by the whole of the existing Left there would not be much chance of its taking effect. Wholesale conversions of this kind are rare phenomena in politics. But the process may possibly be rendered easier by a contemporaneous change in the composition of the party. Hitherto the Left has been recruited almost exclusively from the representatives of the great towns. Rural Republicanism has scarcely been recognized as having any existence. The peasantry have rarely troubled themselves about politics, and when they have done so it has been to welcome a deliverer from the alarms excited by the republic. If this state of things should prove to have come to an end, as some observers of French society believe, a new type of Republican deputy may be returned, and the Left that we know may only form the extreme wing of a larger party. M. Gambetta's authority may in that case be maintained, not so much by the conversion of his present troops as by the reconstitution of his army.