No. 89.
Mr. Washburne to Mr. Fish.
Paris, December 22, 1876. (Received January 8, 1877.)
Sir: A protracted and somewhat perilous ministerial crisis was ended last week in a manner more satisfactory than was generally expected.
At the very beginning of the session it became apparent that the ministry would find it difficult and troublesome to secure a working majority in the two houses, one of which is truly republican, while the other is conservative and reactionary. During the interval which elapsed between the adjournment of the regular session and the call of the extra session, a certain feeling had arisen in the Republican party against the ministry, particularly against its able and veteran chief, Mr. Dufaure.
The objections brought against them were of a general nature. Mr. Dufaure and his colleagues were accused of too much indulgence toward public functionaries, who were kept in office all over France notwithstanding their open hostility to republican government and republican institutions. The weakness complained of here may to a certain extent be justly charged; but it must be borne in mind that the French have an army of public officers, that their administration, though highly complicated, is very orderly, that the great majority of the men qualified for public offices were trained under former governments and are therefore more or less tinctured with monarchical tendencies.
It could not be expected of a man having the long experience of Mr. Dufaure that he would approve any measure tending to remove at once hundreds and thousands of able public functionaries to make room for impatient and inexperienced Republicans. He and his colleagues resisted this move, and thereby laid the foundation of the opposition which has just brought him down.
[Page 133]Two side questions had grown in the mean time and under the skillful management of politicians had taken something like the shape of party cries. The first was, amnesty for the communists not yet prosecuted; the second, funeral honors to the free-thinkers and infidels, members of the Legion of Honor.
In relation to the first point it must be known that there are yet in Paris some 40,000 people living under the apprehension of being called on at any moment to account for their direct or indirect participation in the commune. After five years this is certainly a very painful and anomalous situation for so large a class of people, and the cry for amnesty was there opportune and humane, but the promoters of that move insisted upon its being universal, and to this Mr. Dufaure refused to consent. He introduced in the house a bill which would have ended numerous prosecutions, but which maintained the right of the government to pursue and to bring to justice a certain class of offenders. This bill was voted down at first by the house, and the subject was referred to a committee; it reported another bill, which was carried, notwithstanding the opposition of Mr. Dufaure.
Though he had opposed it in the house, the prime minister, in deference to public opinion, made up his mind to support this bill in the senate. But that body rejected it, and thus within a few days, and on the same question, Mr. Dufaure was defeated in the house for not being liberal enough and in the senate for being too liberal. He immediately resigned, and all the members of the cabinet followed suit.
Some hopes, however, were entertained that the cabinet might still be retained, and in order to reach that end the government withdrew a bill it had introduced in relation to the second vexed question, the funeral honors to be rendered by the military to free-thinking members of the Legion of Honor, whose bodies were to be interred without religious ceremonies. By this bill, which the majority of the house opposed bitterly, no military honors were hereafter to be rendered to such men; its withdrawal, however, did not conciliate the majority, who declared in caucus that nothing but a parliamentary ministry in full accord with the sentiments of the majority of the house, and determined to carry out its wishes, would have its support. This showed decisively that the ministry could not remain in office. But on the other hand it was no less certain that a more liberal cabinet would not secure the support of the senate.
Combination after combination was attempted in order to overcome this difficulty. For a time they all failed. Neither the Duke d’ Audiffret Pasquier, Mr. Duclerc, M. de Marcère, nor Mr. Grevy, nor Mr. Dufaure himself, could succeed in bringing together men of enough standing and popularity to secure in both houses a working majority; and one after the other they had to give up the difficult and embarrassing task.
The President then called on Mr. Jules Simon, whose stanch and enlightened Republicanism would certainly conciliate the majority of the house, and whose persuasive manners, tact, and moderation were such as to give no umbrage to the Conservatives of the senate. Mr. Simon succeeded; he convinced his friends of the Left of the necessity of making some concession, and the cabinet, haying yielded to the Republican programme of the majority, remained in office, with the exception of Mr. Dufaure, against whom the move was directed, and M. de Marcère, who had become obnoxious to his colleagues. Mr. Jules Simon took the ministry of the interior, with the presidency of the council, and Mr. Martel, a moderate Republican, late vice-president of the National Assembly, received the ministry of justice.
[Page 134]Is this a solution? Many people here fear it is not, and I must confess that I share these doubts.
Two men have been removed, but the situation in one most important respect is unchanged. The two houses are still as divided as they were before, and nothing indicates that one of them will yield to the other. So far from that, it is well known that on the question of the budget the conflict will be reopened between the senate and the house, with little prospect of coming to a peaceful end. The senate will certainly insist upon the right of amending the appropriation bills. As for the house, Mr. Gambetta, in a private and interesting conversation I had with him some time ago, informed me that it could not admit such a claim.
You can see from this that there still remains some cause of uneasiness, and that it is possible the President may be compelled to resort to the dangerous remedy of dissolving the lower house.
But even this extreme measure may be of no avail, for there can be no doubt that a new election would return a still larger majority of Republicans.
Mr. Jules Simon, however, is a man of such ability, and his power of persuasion is so great, that he may be able to conciliate the hostile elements of the two houses. He has already shown, in entering upon his duties, how adroit and skillful he is, by a declaration which has given satisfaction to both Republicans and Conservatives. No other man, I believe, could have achieved such a tour de force.
The antecedents of this distinguished man are so well known to the world that a bare reference will recall them. He has always been a liberal Republican, and at the same time of a wise and moderate spirit.
The bent of his mind and his personal associations have alike kept him far from extremes, but he has constantly and unflinchingly cherished a system of political principles deeply rooted in the solid ground of philosophy which engaged his early and enthusiastic study, and which gave him fame before he entered the field of politics. He was one of the famous five who for a time constituted the whole opposition during the empire, and who became the nucleus of the party that came into power on the 4th of September, 1870. He was a member of the government of national defense, and was by it commissioned to go to Tours, where the preliminaries of peace were opened with the Prussians, in order to bring to terms Mr. Gambetta, who had refused to be bound by the armistice agreed to in Paris. This was a delicate task, but he performed it with singular tact, and to the advantage of his country. Soon after, he entered the ministry, to which he was called by Mr. Thiers, of whom he is the friend and admirer.
I will not go into detail in regard to his valuable services to his country as minister of public instruction and subsequently as a parliamentary leader. They are familiar facts, and are illustrations of the profound and liberal ideas which pervade his writings and made him famous as a philosophic and political author before the world knew him as a statesman. * * *
The cause of the continuance of this prolonged ministerial crisis, as abundantly appears in the brief account I have given you, is to be found in the irreconcilable elements which control respectively the senate and the lower house, and the difficulty informing a ministry which would have a reasonable chance of permanence lay in the impossibility of harmonizing the views of a senate conservative by a small majority and a house largely republican, controlled by able leaders, many of whom represent the most advanced thought of their party.
The framers of the present constitution attempted to organize a parliamentary [Page 135] government modeled in this feature upon that of England, the executive head being beyond the reach of legislative change, while the cabinet and the actual administration should mirror the fluctuations of opinion among the representatives.
Without here discussing the merits of their system, or the jars in its working which experience is fast disclosing, I will mention one practical effect, which will illustrate a question recently discussed in Congress, the feasibility of members of the cabinet being present in the two houses.
In France, the ministers being responsible to the national legislation, and liable to be questioned every day, are compelled to devote most of their time and attention to the sessions at Versailles, and they have very little to do personally with the administration of the various departments. In fact, it is difficult to find them there. The same result would be produced at Washington were our Cabinet ministers required to attend the sessions of Congress, and, from what I have observed of the effect upon the business that is transacted under the names of the ministers, it seems to be more promptly and efficiently done in our own way, the Secretary being actually in his department to superintend or be consulted at all times.
As I close, the long-dreaded conflict is beginning. Yesterday the senate, by 229 against 45, replaced in the budget the appropriation for military chaplains, which the house had stricken out. The government has not yet made known its opinions on this constitutional question, which threatens to become a much vexed one. The papers are full of comments on the subject this morning.
I am, &c.,