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point the Message, no less skilfully, opened the prospect of a period of temporising :

The Con

Bills raising constitutional questions of prostitutional found gravity were presented by my predecessor, Question who had been entrusted with them by an express decision from yourselves. You are in possession of them; you will examine them; the Government itself will study them carefully, and when the day comes on which you deem it suitable to discuss them, it will give you its deliberate opinion on each point.

Lastly the Message resumed the aggressive tone which had won the applause of the majority for its opening words.

But while you deliberate, gentlemen, it is the duty and right of the Government to act. Its task is, by daily industry, to ensure first of all the execution of the laws made by you, and to cause their spirit to penetrate the population, to impress on the whole administration unity, cohesion, consistency, to make the law respected in every place and at every time by giving it at every step organs which respect it and respect themselves; this is a stringent, often a painful duty, but, for that very reason, the more necessary to be fulfilled in the sequel of revolutionary times. The Government will not fail in this.

Such, gentlemen, are my intentions, which are indeed but to conform to yours. To all the titles which command our obedience the Assembly adds that of being the veritable bulwark of society, threatened in France, and in Europe, by a faction which imperils the repose of all peoples, and which hastens your dissolution only because it sees in you the principal obstacle to its designs. I regard the post in which you have placed me as that of a sentinel who watches over the maintenance of the integrity of your sovereign power.

This last phrase pledged the Marshal yet further, pledged him against the whole Left, by affecting to compare it with the revolutionary parties.

The Right proposed to make the new President the blind and docile instrument of its wishes and passions. "The Marshal is an honourable man,"

wrote M. Martial Delpit. "He accepts our trust from a sense of duty, and will carry out his mandate as a soldier obeys his orders." 1

Circular

Diplomatic

In order to fathom the whole policy of to the the Ministry, it is further necessary to Agents read the circular addressed by the Duc de Broglie on the 26th of May to the French representatives abroad. In this semi-confidential document the system was set forth; a whole body of considerations was addressed to the Powers, with the purpose of informing and reassuring them. We find in this first document issued by the Vicepresident of the Council, the theorist, the publicist accustomed to feel no doubt of his thoughts and to express them without circumlocution :

It was solely upon a question of domestic policy that the President and the Assembly found themselves at variance. The majority of the Assembly thought that energetic resistance should be offered to the progress of the revolutionary spirit testified to by the results of the last elections, and did not consider that the Cabinet formed by the President after these elections offered all the guarantees which were desired from this essentially conservative point of view. . . The new Government will therefore pursue in conformity with its origin a resolutely Conservative policy, that is to say, a pacific policy abroad and a temperate policy at home. While opposing an inflexible severity to any attempts which might be made by the revolutionary party in the direction of extending its influence by illegal methods, it will not for its own part abandon the strictest legality. No reaction is either meditated or will be attempted against the existing institutions; the constitutional laws proposed by our predecessors remain submitted to the judgment of the Assembly, which alone will settle the supreme question of the form of government, when it shall think fit.

There is a visible effort to minimise the disagreeable impression caused in Foreign Cabinets by the 1 Martial Delpit, Journal et Correspondance, 8vo, p. 267.

fall of M. Thiers. In the following extract the writer, going beyond the limits of a plea, appeals to the opinions and even to the interests of the Powers:

While thus explaining, in accordance with the reality of the facts, says the Duc de Broglie, the significance of this important event, you will not fail to draw attention to the fact that the question fought out in the National Assembly affected, not only the repose of France, but that of all nations. It is not in France alone that the revolutionary spirit is conspiring against public peace, and the very foundations of social order. No nation in Europe is exempt from this evil, and all have an equal interest in seeing it repressed. The position of France and the powerful influence which she exerts around her would render the triumph of the revolutionary party in our country a more serious matter than anywhere else, and the cause of Society in France is that of the whole of Civilization.

These documents explain the transactions of the 24th of May; they were a struggle between two doctrines. The intellectual conflict was defined in action. Politics took possession of the problem propounded by Literature, Philosophy, and Religion. Authority v. Liberty, this is the eternal dilemma; or yet again, Reaction v. Revolution; or again, in milder terms, Aristocracy or Democracy, resistance or movePolitical ment. The duel was keenly fought. In Systems consequence of the general exhaustion, this struggle was quite peaceful; it did not descend into the street nor into the camps; it remained enclosed within the precincts of parliament. This serious battle of doctrines, this drama of ideals, was entirely rhetorical. The only weapons were words.

A magnificent tournament was about to open, famous in parliamentary annals. Its result, no less unforeseen than logical, was to be the promulgation of a Republican Constitution; but how long and how

laborious was to be the birth of a new and unknown order carried by the country and the parliament within their own bosoms!

The Policy of

In spite of the trenchant tone and the 24th of apparent precision of language and proMay gramme, the policy of the 24th of May has not succeeded in cleansing itself of a reproach applied to it by adverse politicians, the reproach of equivocation. Firm in conduct, it remained timid and nebulous when confronted with the object aimed at. It was contradictory because it did not go to the bottom of things and did not venture to reveal the end towards which it tended.

What was this end? Certainly not the restoration of the Monarchy, they declared, and, in fact these words do not occur either in the official proclamations or declarations of the new Government. It is probable even that in a number of those distinguished intellects, and notably in the case of the Duc de Broglie, there existed a dominant conception which was in no way subordinate to the eventual form of government. The triumph of the doctrine would have appeared preferable even to that of the men or to that of a system of institutions.1

Restoration

But, after all, could a distinction be The drawn? Who did not know, who could not of the see, that the doctrine itself had no dearer Monarchy hope than those speedy realisations, veiled though they were beneath a silence so solemn

1 See the interesting discussion raised on this point in the articles which the Comte d'Haussonville has devoted to a review of the first volume of the present work, articles collected in his volume of Varia, Calmann Lévy, 12mo, pp. 301-37.

and so perfectly futile? The majority which had just overthrown M. Thiers, while invoking in the first place the necessities of the defence of society, was composed in great part of impatient monarchists, who, as masters of the parliamentary arena, were about to rush to a more complete victory and bind themselves without delay to the triumph and return of the dynasty. Nobody was deceived; in the excessive affectation of silence there was a reserve which was called timidity or candour according to the point of view.

The

Monarchical restoration was the first Religious course in the system; "Religious reRestoration storation," if the phrase can be used, was the second. The real subject of dispute was once again the French Revolution, and the principle of sovereignty.

An authorised speaker expounded at the Catholic Congress at Poitiers what was the logical outcome of the positions taken up by the majority of the Right: "The origin of social mischief is in the disturbance of the ideal of right. This disturbance proceeds from the proclamation of the direct, inalienable sovereignty of the nation. According to these principles, power no longer comes from God, its original source, but from the people, and is delegated by the people to its governors. That is the point, and that is what it was proposed to modify.

1 Congress of the Union des Associations catholiques ouvrières held at Poitiers in August, 1872. This Union had just been created in 1871 to develop and support the work of the Cercles ouvriers, founded on the initiative of Count Albert de Mun. (Mgr. Baunard, Vie du Cardinal Pie, vol. ii., p. 462.)

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