English Pharisees and French Crocodiles Part 16

The English newspapers love to fill their columns with the sayings and doings of French Anarchists, so as to try and prove to their readers that France "is still navigating on a volcano," although they know very well that our revolutionary mountains are incapable of bringing forth even a mouse, as the ridiculous failure of the proposed Anarchist demonstration at Victor Hugo's funeral proved. The English know perfectly well that in the year 1867, thanks to the inopportune meddling of the police, there was a riot, in Hyde Park, which was likely to have proved very serious. The English know all this; but the pot always had a trick of calling the kettle black.

Our lower orders are a thousand times more intelligent than the English ones; and when the French police force cease to be the symbol, the instrument, of an arbitrary power, in order to become, in some sort, the protection of the people, our workmen will astonish the world with their good behavior, as they did on the day of our immortal poet's apotheosis.

The Frenchman is impressionable, excitable; but he is gentle, and easy to govern. The Parisians never raised any riots that could not be traced to the want of tact, or the malice, of the Government; and we all know that if M. Thiers had not been so bent upon putting down a small revolution, he would not have stirred up a large one; the Commune would have been nipped in the bud at the b.u.t.tes-Chaumont on the 18th of May, 1871. The harmless folk who were looking after the famous cannons would have been only too pleased to go home.

A nation does not learn the proper use of freedom in a day. It does not understand at first sight that obedience and respect for the law are two virtues indispensable to everyone who wishes to get on tolerably under a democracy; it is for the Government to teach it its lesson. To do this properly, an authority is wanted which shall be vigilant, while making itself felt as little as possible.

This liberty should be the monopoly of no one, but the privilege of each and all. Every time our police officers pounce upon a red flag and tear it up, every time they suppress a Catholic school, or force open the doors of a convent, the fruits of many a month's lessons are lost. We go back; but the cause of the white or red flag is advanced.

Why is Roman Catholicism perfectly powerless in England, politically speaking?

Because Protestant England allows the Romanists to open as many churches, schools, and convents as they please.

All that England demands from those who live on her hospitable soil is respect for her laws. Monarchs exiled by their subjects, and Communists, Nihilists, Socialists, exiled by their monarchs, may jostle one another in her streets any day; the individual liberty of the revolutionary subject being held as sacred as that of the ex-monarch.

Our neighbor's eccentricities are but the natural fruit of liberty; and these same eccentricities, which amuse us so much, in England pa.s.s unnoticed. Everyone does as he pleases, and thinks it quite natural that others should do the same. I have seen young girls on tricycles make their way through a crowd, without an unpleasant remark or a joke being indulged in at their expense. The men made way, and allowed them to pa.s.s without remarking them more than if they had been on horseback.

Do not fear the abuse of liberty; among an intelligent race, good sense will always take the upper hand.

Liberty is sure to lead to a few excesses; but it does not suffer because of them.

Take England again.

English religious liberty is in no wise in danger because the law tolerates, nay, protects, the rowdy proselytes of the Booth family. True religion may suffer, but not religious liberty.

The right of a.s.sociation is not in danger because a _philanthropic_ club has been formed at Ashpull, in Lancas.h.i.+re, by men who subscribe to defray the costs when one of their number is fined for ill-treating his wife.[10]

No, no, these eccentricities do but prove the vital force of England.

There is no need to penetrate deeply into French and English life, to study the tempers of the two nations. The streets of London and Paris furnish the observer with ample materials every day.

In the month of April, 1891, I was one day on the top of the Odeon omnibus. In the Boulevard des Italiens some repairs were going on, and at the corner of the Rue de Richelieu there was such a crowd of carriages as to cause a block. The question then arose, who was to pa.s.s first, those who came from the Madeleine or those who came from the Bastille. An altercation soon arose between the drivers, and that in a vocabulary which I will spare my readers. Meanwhile, the string of carriages lengthened, and the matter was becoming serious. At last up comes a police officer who gets the situation explained to him, forthwith enters into a discussion with the drivers, and tries to make the Madeleine party understand that it is their place to give way. He might as well have talked to the pavement. A hubbub uprose on all sides enough to make one's hair stand on end. Everybody was in the right, it seemed, and the poor police officer, tired of seeing his parliamentary efforts so fruitless, withdrew, saying: "Very well, then, do as you please; I'll have nothing more to do with it" (_sic_). About a quarter of an hour later, we turned into the Rue de Richelieu.

And now here is a scene which you may witness every day in any part of London.

In every spot where the traffic is great, you will see a policeman. He is there to regulate the circulation of the vehicles, and protect the foot pa.s.sengers who may wish to cross the road. In the discharge of this duty, all that he has to do is to lift his hand, and, at this gesture, the drivers stop, like a company of soldiers at the word "halt!" Not a murmur, not a sign of impatience, not a word. When the little acc.u.mulation of foot pa.s.sengers has safely crossed, the policeman lowers his hand, and everything is in motion again.

How many times, as I have looked on at this sight, which to the English appears so natural, have I said enviously to myself: "If these English people are free, if they are masters of half the world, and of themselves into the bargain, it is because they know how to obey!"

I know the favorite explanation of these striking contrasts: the temperaments are different; the blood does not circulate in English veins with so much impetuosity as it does in French ones. This is true, though only to a certain extent. But be not deceived; it is the difference which exists between the education of the two races that is the real solution of the problem.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE HUMORS OF POLITICS.

Ah! what I envy the English is that security for the morrow, which they owe to a form of government no one, so to speak, thinks seriously of questioning.

The Englishman is the stanchest monarchist, and at the same time the freest man in the world, which proves that freedom is compatible with a monarchial government. There is no French Legitimist more royalist than he, there is no French Republican more pa.s.sionately fond of liberty; nay, I will go so far as to say that, in France, people would be treated as dangerous demagogues, who demanded certain liberties which the English have long possessed under a monarchy, and to defend which the most conservative of them would allow himself to be rent in pieces.

At first sight, the theory of government in England appears to be most simple; two great political parties, each having its leader, whose authority is uncontested, and who takes office amid the acclamations of half the nation. Is the country threatened with danger, party spirit vanishes, Liberals and Conservatives disappear; the _Englishman_ is supreme.

All this appears as simple as admirable. I will show farther on, however, that if there is fixity in the form of the government, there cannot be any consistency in the politics of the country.

Things are forgotten to such an extent in England that I have rarely seen a Liberal paper revert to the fact that Lord Beaconsfield, the ill.u.s.trious leader of the Conservative party, began his political life in the ranks of the Radicals, or Conservative papers remind people that Mr. Gladstone, the leader of the Liberals, began his brilliant career in the Conservative ranks. At all events, I never saw anyone reproach these great statesmen with having turned their coats. Lord Derby, who was Minister for Foreign Affairs under Lord Beaconsfield, was Colonial Minister in Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet. _Punch_ had a caricature on the subject, and there was an end of the matter.

Such proceedings would excite contempt or indignation in France; but to judge them in England from a French point of view would be absurd.

In France, political convictions rest on the form of government. In England, everyone, or almost everyone, is of one mind on that subject; Conservatives and Liberals both will have a democracy, having for its object the material, moral, and intellectual progress of the people, with a monarchy to act as ballast.

The only difference that I see in the history of the two parties, during the last fifty years, is that the Conservatives willingly sacrifice their home policy to the prestige of a spirited foreign policy, while the Liberals pay more attention to internal politics, to the detriment, perhaps, of foreign ones.

Here it should be added that, when an Englishman accepts the task of forming a ministry, it is, in the eyes of his partisans, out of pure abnegation, to serve his country, and, in the eyes of his opponents, out of pure ambition, to serve his own interests.

The difference which separates a Monarchist and a Republican in France is an abyss that nothing can bridge over; the difference which separates a Liberal and a Conservative in England is but a trifling step.

So the candidate for Parliament, who rehea.r.s.es, _in petto_, the little speech that he means to address to the electors, winds up with: "Gentlemen, such are my political convictions, but, if they do not please you, let it be well understood between us that I am ready to change them." Or: "Gentlemen, I used to be a Conservative, and at bottom I am a Conservative still, but Mr. Gladstone has appointed me a Civil Commissioner at a salary of 2000 a year, and I consider that a statesman who chooses his servants so well ought to be supported by all sensible men. Besides, in my new capacity, it is not a party that I am serving, it is my country."

To speak seriously, I really see very little either in the so-called Liberal or Conservative principles that can cause an Englishman to be anything more than the partisan of a certain group of men.

Under the circ.u.mstances, it is not surprising that English politics should, above all things, consist in doing in Office what has been valiantly fought in Opposition; it is a school of incisive, pa.s.sionate debate--nothing more. The following incident, which is as instructive as it is amusing, is sufficient proof of this:

When Lord Beaconsfield deftly s.n.a.t.c.hed Cyprus from the "unspeakable"

Turk, in 1878, and, presenting it to John Bull, asked him to admire the fine catch, John's Liberal sons turned up their noses, declared that the honesty of the proceeding was dubious, and vowed the place was not fit to send British soldiers to. "It would hardly be humane to send our convicts there," they said; "not even flies could stand the climate."

Two years later the Tories went out of office, and the Liberals came to power. What happened? You think, perhaps, that the Liberals promptly restored the island to the Turks with their compliments and apologies.

Catch them! Better than that. No sooner were the Tories out of office than the yachts of three leading Liberals might have been seen sailing toward Cyprus, which, it would seem, a simple change of ministry had changed into a health resort. In the beginning of May of the current year, the Liberal Government gave orders to the military authorities of the army of occupation in Egypt, to send to Cyprus all the sick soldiers, who were in a fit state to be transferred--not to finish them up, but actually to hasten their convalescence.

Ever since every householder has enjoyed electoral rights, each general election has placed the Opposition in power; and the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of Mr. Gladstone's new _couches sociales_ is not likely to change this state of things, which is, indeed, very easy to account for.

The necessarily guarded speech of those in office does not catch the ear of the ignorant mult.i.tude so readily as the irresponsible talk of the Opposition. The man in power has to defend a policy, the other attacks it right and left; it is he who has the popular _role_. "Ah!" say the crowd, "smart fellow that! if we could only have him in Office, things would be done in a proper manner! What has become of all the fine promises of the ministry?"

So they make up their minds to vote for the man who comes to them with fresh promises, and to throw overboard the one who has not been able to keep his.

If the Government has engaged in war, the Opposition proves to the people what a disastrous, or, at the best, what a useless war it was; if the Government has been able to maintain peace, the Opposition proves to the people that it was at the price of national honor. The Opposition is always in the right.

To think that men of talent should lower themselves so far as to flatter the populace with such plat.i.tudes to obtain their favor! How sad a sight is this vulgarization of politics! And people often wonder how it is that, in democracies, the great thinkers, the genius of the nation, refrain from buying the favors of the people at the price of their dignity! Unhappily, this is the fate of democracies; they can but seldom be ruled by the genius of the nation, by men who would not be appreciated by the ma.s.ses. No system lends itself better to the reign of unscrupulous mediocrity, for no other system obliges its chiefs to come and humble themselves before the ignorant populace, by giving them acrobatic performances in order to obtain their suffrages.

Under a democracy, everybody goes into politics, and everybody requires to be pleased.

The literary man, the scholar, the artist, all are criticised by more or less competent judges; but the statesman, who is there that does not criticise him? Who does not take upon himself to judge him without appeal? Who does not drag him in the mud? Who does not cry, "Stop thief!" when he is bold enough to buy a dozen railway shares, like the smallest shopkeeper in the land?