No. 232.
Mr. Washburne to Mr. Fish.
Paris , May 19, 1874. (Received Jane 4.)
Sir: “Le ministère est tombé.” Such were the words that passed rapidly from mouth to mouth in Paris early on Saturday evening last, creating not a little astonishment and surprise.
The National Assembly had reconvened on Tuesday, the 12th instant. The matters that were to come immediately before it for discussion and action excited great interest throughout France. Nothing of public importance was done the first few days. On Friday the Duke de Broglie presented his great scheme for a second chamber, under the name of “Grand Conseil.”
* * * * * * *
The first real business that was to come on was the discussion of the constitutional laws. No immediate crisis was anticipated. On Saturday last the Assembly met as usual at 2 o’clock. The chamber was very full, there being more than seven hundred members present, but there was no particular excitement. Mr. Buffet rings his bell, and the members slowly crowd themselves into their narrow seats. One of the secretaries reads the journal of the previous day. After some unimportant business Mr. Batbie, the president of the commission on constitutional laws, slowly mounts the tribune, and, in the name of his commission, moves that the first reading of the electoral law should be made the order of the day for the following Wednesday. Upon this Mr. Thiry, a member of the extreme right, proposed to amend the proposition, by providing that the project for municipal laws should be made the order of the day for the same day, but that it should have priority in discussion. [Page 412] All this seemed to be a very simple matter, and one could hardly have supposed that a question of cabinet would come out of it.
Messrs. Raudat and Lucien F. Brun, members of the extreme right, did not oppose any objection to the setting down of the electoral law at the time named, but thought it more important to dispose of the municipal law first) but neither of these saw in this mere question of priority anything which was of any gravity, or which would necessarily bring about a division. Not so with the Duke de Broglie, the vice-president of the council and head of the ministry. Assured of his strength in the Assembly, and anxious for a vote of confidence, which he was certain the Assembly would give to his ministry, in a short and emphatic speech he placed the government in antagonism to the proposition of Mr. Thiry, giving priority to the discussion of the municipal law. In language not to be misunderstood, he made the proposition “une question de cabinet.” It was at that moment that the Assembly awoke to the supreme importance of the matter before them, and, in the language of the official report of the proceedings, a “mouvement prolongé” followed. The Assembly then proceeded to a vote upon the priority of the electoral law. At twenty minutes after 3 o’clock the president declared the result. Out of 698 voices, 317 voted in favor of the government proposition for giving priority to the electoral law, and 381 voted against it. It was amid profound agitation that this announcement, which was the death-knell of the ministry, was heard, it being hardly possible to believe that such a stupendous result, could have been accomplished so suddenly and unexpectedly.
The Duke Decazes, minister of foreign affairs, was not so stunned by the blow that he could make no sign, but, on the other hand, promptly mounted the tribune, and presented a law ratifying the postal treaty between France and the United States. This proposition was received with cries of “Trés bien, trés bien.” As soon as the minister of foreign affairs had descended the tribune the Duke de Broglie left the government benches, followed by ail his colleagues who had been present at the sitting. They proceeded at once to the palace of the prefecture, to place their resignation in the hands of the President of the republic. Their resignations were accepted, but with the request that they should retain their portfolios until a new ministry should be named. Thus fell the ministry of the 20th of November, 1873, and which was a continuation, with but little change, of the ministry of the 25th of May preceding, and which came into power upon the downfall of Mr. Thiers and the accession of Marshal MacMahon to the office. It may in fact all be called one ministry, as the Duke de Broglie was the leading spirit in both. Mr. Thiers was overthrown on the 24th of May, 1873, eight days less than a year ago. As Mr. Thiers was shown the door of the Assembly on that occasion, he quietly said to one of the men who headed the movement against him, “You are in for a year 5” and the present result shows how nearly correct he was. The expulsion of Mr. Thiers from power was only accomplished after a prodigious struggle, and by a most skillful grouping together of all the elements of opposition to his administration of the government. The majority by which he was upset, and which resulted in a complete change of the policy and “personnel” of the government, was only fourteen votes. The change once made, however, many members who had voted to sustain Mr. Thiers rallied round the MacMahon government, which has in all matters, where a vote would affect the ministry, had a reliable and compact majority of from sixty to a hundred votes, and this too in the face of a powerful, resolute, and apparently increasing feeling of hostility in the country toward the MacMahon rule. Though this [Page 413] present government, styled by the opposition the “government of combat,” has been constantly attacked by the radical press; and though a feeling of intense hostility has been gradually developing against it in the ranks of the extreme right and among the Bonapartists, yet when the pinch has come in the Assembly, by dint of heated appeals to save the country from what they call the horrors of radicalism,” a sufficient number of votes has always been obtained to save the ministry from overthrow. When in a recent dispatch, in speaking of the state of things likely to arise when the constitutional laws should come to be discussed, I expressed the opinion that the ministry would be sustained over all opposition, I but spoke the sentiment of the most intelligent men with whom I had conversed on the subject.
* * * * * * *
I am, &c.,