a single argument or even an appeal to any positive law; it is a continuous storm of invective, occasionally marred by breaches of good taste, or pompous evocations of Cato and Thraseas, but at times also rising to a truly Archilochian vigor, and admirably calculated to make the defenders of legality wince under the sting of its shafts. Nor ought it to be forgotten, when we incline to censure such violent and unjust attacks as these against existing law, that France has never ceased to be in a chronic state of revolution for the last hundred years, even at times when a dynasty or a republic appeared most firmly rooted. The frequent use and abuse of the bar in France for political purposes, an "irreconcilable" opposition to the fundamental law of the country, nay, a revolution of the 4th of September, which overthrew the regular Government in presence of a conquering enemy, ought therefore hardly to be judged with the same severity with which it would be treated in England; and, in fact, M. Gambetta never incurred any blame from his countrymen for adopting so clamorous a mode of obtaining notoriety. He succeeded, moreover, completely, and five months later was elected Deputy in opposition to M. Thiers, who did not number half his young adversary's votes. Nevertheless, if such theatrical débuts have their advantages, among which we may rank foremost that of leading rapidly to success, they have also their disadvantages; they leave no time for quiet preparation. A year had scarcely gone by when M. Gambetta found himself a member of the Government; a little later he was even at its head. And what were the intellectual qualifications he brought to so responsible a position? An indifferent classical and legal education, scanty acquaintance with business either public or private, and consequently a very imperfect and altogether insufficient knowledge of men-a thing not to be acquired by social intercourse only. The tradition of 1792 was to stand in place of all this. The war of extermination, in fact, of which M. Gambetta became the soul, was nothing more than the performance of the programme of 1792. Perhaps, had he but perused Camille Rousset's book on the Volun

teers of 1792, he might have thought twice before he drove the raw recruits from the provinces into a hopeless struggle; but it was so much less trouble to cling to illusive legend than to consult matter-of-fact history. In his opinion it was a general call to arms that saved France in 1792, and it was by a general call to arms that she was again to be saved in 1870. He had a far easier task before him than Carnot; for he found a well-organized country where no reforms were requisite either in the administration or in the army. He had only to pull the wires of official machinery, and in a few days, by means of prefects, sub-prefects, and mayors, the whole of France's carefully registered youth was on foot, bound for the various military dépots, just as in an ordinary annual recruitment. The process was even an easier one in this case, inasmuch as no exceptions were made, and examination therefore became superfluous. His desire was likewise to organize victory" after the pattern of his great predecessor; in this, however, he signally failed. The fact that not one of the Generals ventured to disobey the dictator's orders, though all murmured sotto voce, foreseeing that their poor young soldiers were doomed to certain defeat, shows how firmly that French centralization is established which Napoleon I. created. It moreover gives us a key to the persistency with which M. Gambetta, instinctively perhaps more than consciously, clung to the tradition of a strong centralized power during his whole career. And here is the point where error became culpable. Assuredly it was passionate love of his country, not personal ambition, which actuated Gambetta; yet this patriotism was combined with a degree of overestimation of his own powers which went beyond all bounds. If, before we undertake a grave responsibility, each of us incurs the moral obligation of asking himself, quid valeant humeri, quid ferre recusent? how much more imperative is this necessity when an empire is at stake, when thousands of lives may be sacrificed? Gambetta never thought of putting so simple a question to himself.

He was full of self-confidence. Of strategy or tactics he knew nothing, of administration and organization little

or nothing; yet his self-confidence never abandoned him-his genius would suffice to supply the deficiency of knowledge of all kinds and his genius failed him; his armies were defeated, thousands and thousands of young lives sacrificed, unutterable sufferings caused-and France was not saved.

But her honor was, say some. Let us see how far this is true. Till now a nation has never been thought to have forfeited its honor by avowing that it was defeated after its regular army had been destroyed, or by being forced to relinquish, instead of conquering, a province. Neither Russia after Sebastopol, the loss of Bessarabia, and the mortification of being excluded from her own seas; nor Austria after Solferino and Sadowa, and the loss of Venetia and Lombardy deemed themselves dishonored, nor were they considered dishonored by others, although-especially in the latter instances-the vanquished had not one victory to register on their side. Was France really dishonored by Sedan and the loss of Alsace? None but Frenchmen have ever called in question the valor of the French troops; none certainly are less disposed to do so than the enemies of France, who have borne witness loudly to the staunch bravery of the French in every encounter. Neither individuals nor nations incur dishonor through misfortune, provided they do all they can to resist their adverse fate; and this France surely had done. The prevailing feeling throughout the country, if we except Paris, shut up and deluded by false reports, was to the same effect. The Sauveur de l'honneur' legend was not concocted till three or four years later, partly as a weapon against the Government, partly as a soothing balm to wounded national pride, just as the legend of Napoleon, who was held up to execration in 1815, only sprung up toward 1820. In both cases the nation was actuated by a very natural feeling in accepting the legend and making it its own; but in both the origin of the legend was artificial. It is astonishing to see how quickly contemporary history can be forgotten. By whom was the madness of the resistance after defeat in 1870 denounced and deprecated? Was it only by Bonapartists and Legit

imists, by

Moderates and prudent

men such as Thiers and Jules Simon? Was not Was not "the dictatorship of incapacity" loudly censured by Republicans of the purest water, like George Sand and Lanfrey? Did not the entire nation proclaim by the February elections its abhorrence of war, its contempt for what is now termed the country's honor, its fervent wish for peace?

In one sense, however, this fruitless, hopeless, nay, all but criminal, resistance has been of great benefit, not only to France herself but to the rest of the world; for it has contributed more than anything to postpone the probability of a new war. This may at first seem paradoxical; but I am persuaded that all who know France well, and are not led away by words and appearances, will side with me. One of the causes, the principal cause indeed, of the war of 1870 was the fact that France had entirely forgotten what war really means. It was fifty-five years since the last invasion had taken place, and but few survivors still remained who, having seen it at a mature age, were able to exercise any influence on the decisions of the Government. Undoubtedly the prevailing impression was, that French arms were invincible, and that the war would take place on the enemy's territory. Neither of these convictions can any longer be entertained, and the present generation of Frenchmen is awake to the possibility of defeat, and even of invasion, in case of a war of retaliation. On this account, too, they are cautious to avoid any step that may lead to war as long as they consider their chances of victory doubtful, whether it be as regards numbers or alliances. Whoever has once witnessed the horrors of an invasion is loath to advocate war; and the generation to whom that lot has fallen in France must have time to die out before war can again be seriously thought of; only the young generation born toward 1870 might again have le cœur légér enough to dream of it. Now, if peace had been concluded at Ferrières, only a relatively small portion of France, a few frontier departments alone, would have seen what war is, and had an idea of its mitigated horrors; for the campaign would have remained a strictly military one, and

would hardly have affected the rest of the nation beyond wounding its pride. By prolonging resistance against all hope, two thirds of the country became the scene of war. Amiens and Rouen, Orleans and Le Mans, underwent the humiliation of the conqueror's presence, and those departments even which were spared invasion had to send their sons to the seat of warfare to witness its cruelties, many to perish on the battlefield or to languish in the enemy's prisons, more still to bring home with them mortal wounds and incurable dis

eases.

Thus it was that Gambetta exhibited warfare in all its ghastly reality; not a glorious struggle fought by professional soldiers at a distance from home-before Sebastopol or at Solferino-but war in the heart of the country, waged by the youth of all classes almost under the very eyes of their parents, with its terrific cortège of burning villages and ransomed towns, its hardships and its atrocities-a thing not so easy to be forgotten by the generation who witnessed it. Neither will it be forgotten that Metz was still in the hands of a French army when the negotiations took place at Ferrières, and would in all probability have remained French; nor will they forget that the Commune would not have been possible without the protracted siege of Paris and the absence of the regular army. That both these circumstances would have greatly facilitated a war of revanche, no one can doubt; and indeed, had peace been concluded in September, 1870, Europe would most likely have seen a new war between France and Germany ere this. As fate would have it, Gambetta undoubtedly has largely contributed toward rendering hatred to Germany in France more popular; but it is no less certain that he succeeded in rendering war unpopular.

II.

The most effective and most beneficial part of M. Gambetta's career was the period from 1873 to 1877, when he fought for the Republic which M. Thiers had founded, and which the Conservatives were foolishly menacing. Both by his talents and by his temperament he was eminently qualified to attack and to

destroy; his indomitable courage, his inexhaustible strength, his wonderful popular eloquence, placed him at the head of the resistance against the attacks which the Republic was called upon to sustain during those four years. His speeches at that time ought not to be read in the collection of them he was imprudent enough to publish the argumentation in them is poor, the composition loose, the style careless, the repetitions so frequent as to become tautologies, the invective is often of doubtful taste; as for originality of ideas, we seek for it in vain. What rendered these now unreadable speeches so powerful at the time of their utterance, was the fire, the spontaneousness, the strength of conviction, the wonderfully striking antitheses which he hurled to the multitude, and which became their watchwords. better example of demagogic oratory than his, never a worse one of statesman's eloquence. Moreover, as is usual in such cases, his individuality lent its support to his oratory. He had but to present himself before a numerous, not too cultivated audience, to take it by storm. I say not too cultivated an audience;" for men of a refined mind were on their guard from first to last against the fascination of the man as well as of the orator, from whom they had nothing to learn.

Never was there a

Be that as it may, this eloquence won over a large, still hesitating portion of the population to the side of the Republic. For we must not be led astray by the majorities who even at that time voted for the Republican candidates, and which have gone on increasing eve, since. Many of these votes were givenr as French electors are accustomed to give them, in favor of the established Government, whatever might be its form, or out of opposition to the Conservative attacks against it, which made them quite as uncomfortable as revolutionary attacks could have done. Besides, the already numerous abstentions, which have since augmented to the proportion of two thirds, on an average, of the voters, added to the by no means despicable minorities, might really have induced the Conservatives to believe that the majority was on their side. Their mistake was, not in appealing to the country, but

in appealing to it in behalf of a Monarchy which had yet to be defined, instead of a Republic which existed; for in the latter case they would have had the whole of that silent majority with them. Had they all been true Conservatives at heart, instead of the partisans they were, their policy would have led them to rally frankly to the Republic, as MM. Dufaure, Rémusat, Montalivet, C. Perier, and others did. They might then have hindered M. Thiers from leaning too strongly toward the Left; and by so doing they would have saved the Republic as it was, they left it to Léon Gambetta to do; and he did save it, but, in doing so, perverted it.

The Government has continued to be in the hands of the same class in France from 1789 to 1877. Even before the great Revolution it was the higher bourgeoisie which held most of the civil offices, and many of the most eminent statesmen were financiers and members of the bar. This element became decisively predominant from 1789, and under the first Empire there already began a fusion of the ancient nobility with the old middle-class families which, till 1877, had been the ruling class in France. This ancient bourgeoisie was not distinguished by wealth alone; much oftener their claim to consideration consisted in family tradition, in a refined education, or the tenure of office through many successive generations. All this was to undergo a change after the victory of 1877. The reign of the new layers of society (les nouvelles couches) announced by Gambetta was to commence, and he it was who chiefly promoted their accession to power. Himself the son of a grocer, he lent a willing hand to procure Government posts and seats in Parliament for all half-educated grocers' sons, while their fathers became his electoral basis. Even he, with his almost unlimited influence, was of course unable to do away with the entire staff of the admirably organized civil service, which has enabled France to indulge in the perilous luxury of six successive political revolutions and invasions during a period of eighty years without its foundations being shaken; still he introduced quite enough of the new element to neutralize the old one, and completely to alter the charac

ter of the French bureaucracy, let alone the Parliament, elected and then purified" under his inspiration nay, almost under his dictation. Thus one might assert that French democracy in reality dates only from 1877, and that it was Gambetta who led it to victory and power. For the words "French democracy" must not be understood to mean the reign of workmen and laborers, any more than Athenian or Roman democracy signified the sovereignty of slaves; their real meaning is the reign of the lower middle-class of tradespeople-the pork butchers of Aristophanes, and the tailors and glovemakers" of Goethe, and of their aspiring descendants. These naturally find their leaders in men who are just a degree above them in thought and education, sufficiently superior for them to feel a thrill of flattering satisfaction at being able to understand them, sufficiently near their own level to make them feel that they belong to the same class, which after all is still peuple enough to feel the power of demagogic eloquence, which an audience composed of more disciplined thinkers is less disposed to appreciate. Hence the envy and distrust of this lower middle-class toward those whose thoughts they feel themselves unable to enter into; they are ready to admit Pericles and Cæsar on condition that they descend to their own level, and not without constant suspicion of them on account of their aristocratic origin; but the real men for them are Cleon and Marius-the neque litteras græcas didici flatters them as much now as it did two thousand years ago, because it is a species of justification of the reign of utilitarian half-culture. And even with their idol they were exacting. When Gambetta once ventured to select a man of refined education and superior talent, if not of high birth, M. J. J. Weiss, to fill a post for which he was eminently qualified, he met with violent opposition, and was even forsaken in the hour of need by many of his aherents, to punish him for thus betraying their common interests. It is known, on the other hand, how contemptuously they look down upon the laboring multitude from the height of their relative superiority and worldly prosperity, and do more in reality to

well

excite their hatred and envy than an aristocratic Government could do. The last five years have shown this sufficiently; nor is it to be wondered at if none of the 300,000 Farisian workmen— the drunken slaves" who had given him so rough a reception at Bellevillefollowed the tribune's hearse to the grave, while the political parvenus were indulging in the luxury of reasserting their patriotic sentiments without incurring the obligation of acting up to them.

However, what gave so great an importance to the revolution of 1877 was not merely that a new class had acceded to government in place of the one which had been ruling France for three previous generations, but also that this revolution was the first one in eighty years which had succeeded in shaking the edifice which Napoleon I. contill structed, and which then had weathered all storms successfully. During the four years that Gambetta ruled France, absolutely though irresponsibly (1878-1881), there was not a single national institution but was either threatened or actually altered in substance. Even the new Republican Constitution of 1875 was menaced with a revision, and the Senate which it had instituted with abolition. The independence of the judges-which the Restoration, the Government of July, the Second Republic, and the Second Empire had respected-was destined to destruction by the introduction of removability; public instruction was turned topsyturvy by repeated reforms which entirely changed the traditional character of the national education; the army, whose strong organization neither its crushing defeats, brought about by superiority of numbers and skill, not by bravery, had impaired, nor the reforms introduced by M. Thiers's Government had essentially altered, began to regard its future with uncertainty and misgivings since Gambetta announced the intention of exacting the three years' military service in 1878. The finances, which, thanks to M. Thiers, had been set to rights in a wonderfully short time, are now again completely entangled, the annual budget overstepping three milliards, and the floating debt amounting to the same sum-a circumstance which might give

rise to serious complications at a moment of general disturbance. Above all, uncalled for and gratuitously vexatious warfare has been waged against the Church, the whole gravity of the consequences of which has not yet appeared; for till now it is the regular clergy alone which has suffered, and on this point the majority of Frenchmen are indifferent; but the secular clergy also has been threatened by M. Paul Bert, and those who know France welland I mean by France not Paris alone but the provinces likewise-cannot fail to apprehend that the question would be viewed in a different mood by the country, were bishops and curates to be molested.

The way in which Gambetta used his unlimited power was no less mischievous than the objects he pursued. For four years he remained an unchecked master, and he showed himself in peace the same man who during the war had made heroes or traitors of France's best generals at his pleasure, reviled the gallant troops who had done their duty so manfully, treated the enemy as a horde of barbarians, the neutrals as cowards, magnified insignificant advantages into great victories, and in short only acknowledged the spasmodic inspirations of his caprices and passions. Now it was the enemy within that he attacked-first applying himself to purify the staff of officials from high to low, for no garde champêtre was appointed, no débit de tabac granted without being first submitted to his approval; then turning to Parliament, and forcibly annulling nearly all the Conservative elections, even a minority being deemed troublesome. Even when President of the House he lost sight of the necessity of self-control, and he was unable to moderate his own language, neither could he refrain from interrupting Conservative orators from the Speaker's seat. For if Gambetta had but few of the intellectual qualifications of a statesman, he had still less of a statesman's temperament. The former is proved by his despatches when Prime Minister; the latter by his attitude in the Chamber of Deputies, and, more than all, by his fall from power. Had he really changed since then, as many assert ? Men rarely change at the age of forty-four, either morally or intellect