France: History (2) - Encyclopedia

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After the scourge of war, the horrors of conscription, and the despotism which had discounted glory, every one seemed to rejoice in the return of the Bourbons, which atoned for humiliations by restoring liberty. But questions of form, which aroused questions of sentiment, speedily Bourbons. led to grave dissensions. The hurried armistice of the 23rd of April, by which the comte dArtois delivered over disarmed France to her conquerors; Louis XVIII.s excessive gratitude to the prince regent of England; the return of the migrs; the declaration of St Ouen, dated from the nineteenth year of the new reign; the charter of June 4th, concde ci octroye, maintaining the effete doctrine of legitimacy in a country permeated with the idea of national sovereignty; the slights put upon the army; the obligatory processions ordered by Comte Beugnot, prefect of police; all this provoked a conflict not only between two theories of government but between. two groups of men and of interests. An avowedly imperialist party was soon again formed, a centre of heated opposition to the royalist party; and neither Baron Louis excellent finance, nor the peace, nor the charter of June 4th which despite the irritation of the migrs preserved the civil gains of the Revolutionprevented the man who was its incarnation from seizing an. opportunity to bring about another military coup detat. Having landed in the Bay of Jouan on the 1st of March, on the 20th Napoleon re-entered the Tuileries in triumph, while Louis XVIII. fled to Ghent. By the Acte additionnel of the l2rldof April he induced Carnot and Fouch the last of the Jacobinsand the heads of the Liberal The opposition, Benjamin Constant and La Fayette, to side Hundmd with him against the hostile Powers of Europe, occupied Days. in dividing the spoils at Vienna. He proclaimed his Mai~b intention of founding a new democratic empire; and French policy was thus given another illusion, which was to be exploited with fatal success by Napoleons namesake. But the cannon of Waterloo ended this adventure (June 18, I8f 5), and, thanks to Fouchs treachery, the triumphal progress of Milan, Rome, Naples, Vienna, Berlin, and even of Moscow, wa to end at St Helena.

The consequences of the Hundred Days were very serious France was embroiled with all Europe, though Talleyrand clever diplomacy had succeeded in causing divisio:

over Saxony and Poland by the secret Austro-Anglc French alliance of the 3rd of January 1815, and th Coalition destroyed both Frances pol~tical independence an national integrity by the treaty of peace of November 20th she found herself far weaker than before the Revolution, and i:

the power of the European Alliance. The Hundred Day divided the nation itself into two irreconcilable parties: on ultra-royalist, eager for vengeance and retaliation, refusing t accept the Charter; the other imperialist, composed of Bona partists and Republicans, incensed by their defeatof whor Branger was the Tyrtaeusboth parties equally revolutionar and equally obstinate. Louis XVIII., urged by his more ferven supporters towards th~ ancien rgime, gave his policy an exactl contrary direction; he had common-sense enough to maintaij the Empires legal and administrative tradition, accepting it institutions of the Legion of Honor, the Bank, the University and the imperial nobilitymodifying only formally certai] rights and the conscription, since these had aroused the natioi against Napoleon. He even went so far as to accept advice fron the imperial ministers Talleyrand and Fouch. Finally, as th chief political organization had become thoroughly demoralized he imported into France the entire constitutional system o England, with its three powers, king, upper hereditary chambef and lower elected chamber; with its plutocratic electorate and even with details like the speech from the throne, th debate on the address, &c. This meant importing also clifficultie such as ministerial responsibility, as well as electoilal and pres legislation.

Louis XVIII., taught by time and misfortune. wished not ti reign over two parties exasperated by contrary passions am desires; but his dynasty was from the outset implicated in th struggle, which was to be fatal to it, between old France am revolutionary France. Anti-monarchical, liberal and anti clerical France at once recommenced its revolutionary work the whole 19th century was to be filled with great spasmodi upheavals, and Louis XVIII. was soon overwhelmed by th White Terrorists of 1815.

Vindictive sentences against men like Ney and Labdoyr were followed by violent and unpunished action by the Whit Terror, which in the south renewed the horrors of St Bartholome~ and the September massacres. The elections of August 14 1815, made under the influence of these royalist and religiou:

passions, sent the C/sombre introuvable to Paris, an unforeseer revival of the ancien rgime. Neither the substitution of thi due de Richelieus ministry for that of Talleyrand and Fouch nor a whole series of repressive laws in violation of the charter were successful in satisfying its tyrannical loyalism, and Loui:

XVIII. needed something like a coup detat, in September 1816 to rid himself of the ultras.

He succeeded fairly well in quieting the opposition betweel the dynasty and the constitution, until a reaction took placi The Con- between 1820 and 1822. State departments workec stitulional regularly and well, under the direction of Decazes partys Lam, De Serre and Pasquier, power aiternatin~ rule, between two great well-disciplined parties almost ir the English fashion, and many useful measures were passed the reconstruction of finance stipulated for as a condition 0:

evacuation of territory occupied by foreign troops; the electora law of February 5, 1817, which, by means of direct electior and a qualification of three hundred francs, renewed the pre ponderance of the bourgeoisie; the Gouvion St-Cyr law 01 1818, which for half a century based the recruiting of thf French army on the national principle of conscription; and ir 1819, after Richelieus dismissal, liberal regulations for the press under control of a commission. But the advance of the Libera movement, and the election of the generalsFoy, Lamarque Lafayette and of Manuel, excited the ultras and caused th dismissal of Richelieu; while that of the constitutional bishop Grgoire led to the modification in a reactionary direction ofth~ electoral law of 1817. The assassination of the duc de Berry I second son of the comte dArtois (attributed to the influence o~

i Liberal ideas), caused the downfall of flecazes, and caused th - kingmore weak and selfish than everto override the charter and embark upon a reactionary path. After 1820, Madame dt I Cayla, a trusted agent of the ultra-royalist party, gained great influence over the king; and M. de The r Villle, its leader, supported by the kings brother, ~8

soon eliminated the Right Centre by the dismissal of the duc de Richelieu, who had been recalled to tide over th crisisjust as the fall of M. Decazes had signalized the defeal - of the Left Centre (December 15, 1821)and moderate policy i thus received an irreparable blow.

Thenceforward the government of M. dc Villlea clever statesman, but tied to his partydid nothing for six years bul promulgate a long series of measures against Liberalism and thc The suspension of individual liberty, the re-establishment of thi i censorship; the electoral right of the double vote, favlourinf taxation of the most oppressive kind; and the handing over i of education to the clergy: these were the first achievement~ of this anti-revolutionary ministry. The Spanish expedition, ir which M. de Villles hand was forced by Montmorency and F Chateaubriand, was the united work of the association 01

Catholic zealots known as the Congregation and of the autocratic powers of the Grand Alliance; it was responded toas at Napler and in Spainby secret Carbonari societies, and by severely repressed military conspiracies. Politics now bore the doubk imprint of two rival powers: the Congregation and Carbonarism, By 1824, nevertheless, the dynasty seemed firmthe Spanish War had reconciled the army, by giving back military prestige I the Liberal opposition had been decimated; revolutionary conspiracies discouraged; and the increase of public credit and material prosperity pleased the whole nation, as was proved by the Chambre retrouve of 1824. The law of septennial elections tranquillized public life by suspending any legal or regular manifestation by the nation for seven years.

It was the monarchy which next became revolutionary, or the accession of Charles X. (September 16, 1824). This incon~ sistent prince soon exhausted his popularity, and Ch.sles X remained the fanatical head of those migrs who had learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. While the opposition became conservative as regards the Charter and French liberties, the king and the clerical party surrounding him challenged th~ spirit of modern France by a law against sacrilege, by a bill for re-establishing the right of primogeniture, by an indemnity of a milliard francs, which looked like cofjipensation given to thi migrs, and finally by the loi de libert et damour against th press. The challenge was so definite that in 1826 the Chamber of Peers and the Academy had to give the Villle ministry a lesson in Liberalism, for having lent itself to this ancien rgime reaction by its weakness and its party-promises. The elections de colre et de vengeance of January 1827 gave the Left VIcfo,~ ol a majority, and the resultant short-lived Martignac the conministry tried to revive the Right Centre which had stifutioni supported Richelieu and Decazes (January 1828). ~

Martignacs accession to power, however, had only meant personal concessions from Charles X., not any concession of principle: he supported his ministry but was no rca] stand-by. The Liberals, on the other hand, made bargains for supporting the moderate royalists, and Charles X. profited by this to form a fighting ministry in conjunction with the prince d~ Polignac, one of the migrs, an ignorant and visionary person, and the comte de Bourmont, the traitor of Waterloo. Despitt all kinds of warnings, the former tried by a coup detat to put intc practice his theories of the supremacy of the royal prerogative:

and the battle of Navarino, the French occupation of the Morea, and the Algerian expedition could not make the nation forgel this conflict at home. The united opfosition of monarchisi Liberals and imperialist republicans responded by legal resistance, then by a popular coup detat, to the ordinances of July 1830, which dissolved the intractable Chamber, elimiThe MI nated licensed dealers from the electoral list, and On muzzled the press. After fighting for three days against the troops feebly led by the Marniont of 1814, the workmen, driven to the barricades by the deliberate closing of Liberal workshops, gained the victory, and sent the white flag of the Bourbons on the road to exile.

The rapid success of the Three Glorious Days (les Trois Glorieuses), as the July Days were called, put the leaders of the ~epul,n- parliamentaryopposition into an embarrassing position. can and While they had contented themselves with words, Orleanist the small Republican-Imperialist party, aided by the parties. almost entire absence of the army and police, and by the convenience which the narrow, winding, paved streets of those times offered for fighting, had determined upon the revolution and brought it to pass. But the Republican party, which desired to re-establish the Republic of 1793, recruited chiefly from among the students and workmen, and led by Godefroy Cavaignac, the son of a Conventionalist, and by the chemist Raspail, had no hold on the departments nor on the dominating opinion in Paris. Consequently this premature attempt was promptly seized upon by the Liberal bourgeoisie and turned to the advantage of the Orleanist party, which had been secretly organized since 1829 under the leadership of Thiers, with the National as its organ. Before the struggle was yet over, Benjamin Constant, Casimir Prier, Lafitte, and Odilon Barrot had gone to fetch the duke of Orleans from Neuilly, and on receiving his promise to defend the Charter and the tricolour flag, installed him at the Palais Bourbon as lieutenant-general of the realm, while La Fayette and the Republicans established themselves at the Hotel de Vile.

An armed conflict between the two governments was ~hO:pe. imminent, when Lafayette, by giving his support to Louis Philippe, decided matters in his favor. In order to avoid a recurrence of the difficulties which had arisen with the Bourbons, the following preliminary conditions were imposed upon the king: the recognition of the supremacy of the people by the title of king of the French by the grace of God and the will of the people, the responsibility of ministers, the suppression of hereditary succession to the Chamber of Peers, now reduced to the rank of a council of officials, the suppression of article 14 of the charter which had enabled Charles X. to supersede the laws by means of the ordinances, and the liberty of the press. The qualification for electors was lowered from 300 to 200 francs, and that for eligibility from boo to 500 francs, and the age to 25 and 30 instead of 30 and 40; finally, Catholicism lost its privileged position as the state religion. The bourgeois National Guard was made the guardian of the charter. The liberal ideas of the son of Philippe Egalit, the part he had played at Valmy and Jemappes, his gracious manner and his domestic virtues, all united in winning Louis Philippe the good opinion of the public.

He now believed, as did indeed the great majority of the electors, that the revolution of 1830 had changed nothing but the head of the state. But in reality the July monarchy The was affected by a fundamental weakness. It sought bourgeois monarchy, to model itself upon the English monarchy, which rested upon one long tradition. But the tradition of France was both twofold and contradictory, i.e. the Catholiclegitimist and the revolutionary. Louis Philippe had them both against him. His monarchy had but one element in common with the English, namely, a parliament elected by a limited electorate. There was at this time a cause of violent outcry against the English monarchy, which, on the other hand, met with firm support among the aristocracy and the clergy. The July monarchy had no such support. The aristocracy of the ancien rgime and of the Empire were alike without social influence; the clergy, which had paid for its too close alliance with Charles X. by a dangerous unpopularity, and foresaw the rise of democracy, was turning more and more towards the people, the future source of all power. Even the monarchical principle itself had suffered from the shock, having proved by its easy defeat how far it could be brought to capitulate. Moreover, the victory of the people, who had showfi themselves in the late struggle to be brave and disinterested, had won for the idea of national supremacy a power which was bound to increase. The difficulty of the situation lay in the doubt as to whether this expansion would take place gradually and by a progressive evolution, as in England, or not.

Now Louis Philippe, beneath the genial exterior of a bourgeois and peace-loving king, was entirely bent upon recovering an authority which was menaced from the very first on the one hand by the anger of the royalists at their failures, and on the other hand by the impatience of the republicans to follow up their victory. He wanted the insurrection to stop at a change in the reigning family, whereas it had in fact revived the revolutionary tradition, and restored to France the sympathies of the nationalities and democratic parties oppressed by Metternichs system. The republican party, which had retired from power but not from activity, at once faced the new king with the serious problem of the acquisition of political power by the people, and continued to remind him of it. He put himself at the head of the party of progress (parti du mouvement) as opposed to the (parti de la cour) court party, and of the resistance, which considered that it was now necessary to check the revolution in order to make it fruitful, and in order to save it. But none of these parties were homogeneous; in the chamber they split up into a republican or radical Extreme Left, led by Gamier-Pages and ~ Arago; a dynastic Left, led by the honorable and sincere Odilon Barrot; a constitutional Right Centre and Left Centre, differing in certain slight respects, and presided over respectively by Thiers, a wonderful political orator, and Guizot, whose ideas were those of a strict doctrinaire; not to mention a small party which clung to the old legitimist creed, and was dominated by the famous avocat Berryer, whose eloquence was the chief ornament of the cause of Charles X.s grandson, the comte de Chambord. The result was a ministerial majority which was always uncertain; and the only occasion on which Guizot succeeded in consolidating it during seven years resulted in the overthrow of the monarchy.

Louis Philippe first summoned to power the leaders of the party of movement, Dupont de lEure, and afterwards Lafitte, in order to keep control of the progressive forces for his own ends. They wished to introduce democratic reforms and to uphold throughout Europe th,e revolution, which had spread from France into Belgium, Germany, Italy and Poland, while Paris was still in a state of unrest. But Louis Philippe took fright at the attack on the Chamber of Peers after the trial of the ministers of Charles X., at the sack of the church of Saint Germain lAuxerrois and the archbishops palace (February, 1831), and at the terrible strike of the silk weavers at Lyons. Casimir Prier, who was both a Liberal and a believer in a strong government, was then charged with the task of heading the resistance to advanced ideas, and applying the principle of non-intervention in foreign affairs (March 13, 1831). After his death by cholera in May 1832, the agitation which he had succeeded by his energy in checking at Lyons, at Grenoble and in the Vende, where it had been stirred up by the romantic duchess of Berry, began to gain ground. The struggle against the republicans was still longer; for having lost all their chance of attaining power by means of the Chamber, they proceeded to reorganize themselves into armed secret societies. The press, which was gaining that influence over public opinion which had been lost by the parliamentary debates, openly attacked the government and the king, especially by means of caricature. Between 1832 and 1836 the Soult ministry, of which Guizot, Thiers and the duc de Broglie were members, J~,z had to combat the terrible insurrections in Lyons that and Paris (1834). The measures of repression were threefold: military repression, carried out by the National Guard and the regulars, both under the command of Bugeaud; judicial repression, effected by the great trial of April I835;

and legislative repression, consisting in the laws of September, which, when to mere ridicule had succeeded acts of violence, such as that of Fieschi (July 28th, 1835), aimed at facilitating the condemnation of political offenders and at intimidating the press. The party of movement was vanquished.

But the July Government, born as it was of a popular movement, had to make concessions to popular demands. Casimir Prier had carried a law dealing with municipal bourgeois organization, which made the municipal councils policy, elective, as they had been before the year VIII.; and in 1833 Guizot had completed it by making the conseils gnraux also elective. In the same year the law dealing with primary instruction had also shown the mark of new ideas. But now that the bourgeoisie was raised to power it did not prove itself any more liberal than the aristocracy of birth and fortune in dealing with educational, fiscal and industrial questions In spite of the increase of riches, the bourgeois rgime maintained a fiscal and social legislation which, while it assured to the middle class certainty and permanence of benefits, left the laboring masses poor, ignorant, and in a state of incessant agitation.

The Orleanists, who had been unanimous in supporting the king, disagreed, after their victory, as to what powers he was T to be given. The Left Centre, led by Thiers, held socialist that he should reign but not govern; the Right party. Centre, led by Guizot, would admit him to an active part in the government; and the third party (tiersparti) wavered between these two. And so between 1836 and 1840, as the struggle against the kings claim to govern passed from the sphere of outside discussion into parliament, we see the rise of a bourgeois socialist party, side by side with the now dwindling republican party. It no longer confined its demands to universal suffrage, on the principle of the legitimate representation of all interests, or in the name of justice. Led by Saint-Simon, Fourier, P. Leroux and Lamennais, it aimed at realizing a better social organization for and by means of the state. But the question was by what means this was to be accomplished. The secret societies, under the influence of Blanqui and Barbs, two revolutionaries who had revived the traditions of Babeuf, were not willing to wait for the complete education of the masses, necessarily a long process. On the 12th of May 1839 the Socit des Saisons made an attempt to overthrow the bourgeoisie by force, but was defeated. Democrats like Louis Blanc, Ledru-Rollin and Lamennais continued to repeat in support of the wisdom of universal suffrage the old profession of faith: vox populi, vox Dei. And finally this republican doctrine, already confused, was still further complicated by a kind of mysticism which aimed at reconciling the most extreme differences of belief, the Catholicism of Buchez, the Bonapartism of Cormenin, and the humanitarianism of the cosmopolitans. It was in vain that Auguste Comte, Michelet and Quinet denounced this vague humanitarian mysticism and the pseudoliberalism of the Church. The movement had now begun.

At first these moderate republicans, radical or communist, formed only imperceptible groups. Among the peasant classes, The and even in the industrial centres, warlike passions Bona- were still rife. Louis Philippe tried to find an outlet for them in the Algerian war, and later by the revival of the Napoleonic legend, which was held to be no longer dangerous, since the death of the duke of Reichstadt in 1832. It was imprudently recalled by Thiers History of the Consulate and Empire, by artists and poets, in spite of the prophecies of Lamartine, and by the solemn translation of Napoleon I.s ashes in 1840 to the Invalides at Paris.

All theories require to be based on practice, especially those which involve force. Now Louis Philippe, though as active as his predecessors had been slothful, was the least warlike ~ of men. His only wish was to govern personally, as opposition George III. and George IV. of England had done, to the especially in foreign affairs, while at home was being Z~er. waged the great duel between Thiers and Guizot, with Mole as intermediary. Thiers, head of the cabinet of the 22nd of February 1836, an astute man but not pliant enough to please the king, fell after a few months, in consequence of his attempt to stop the Carlist civil war in Spain, and to support the constitutional government of Queen Isabella. Louis Philippe hoped that, by calling upon Mole to form a ministry, he would be better able to make his personal authority felt. From 1837 to 1839 Mole aroused opposition on all hands; this was emphasized by the refusal of the Chambers to vote one of those endowments which the king was continually asking them to grant for his children, by two dissolutions of the Chambers, and finally by the Strasburg affair and the stormy trial of Louis Napoleon, son of the former king of Holland (1836-1837). At the elections of 1839 Mole was defeated by Thiers, Guizot and Barrot, who had combined to oppose the tyranny of the Chteau, and after a long ministerial crisis was replaced by Thiers (March 1, 1840). But the latter was too much in favor of war to please the king, who was strongly disposed towards peace and an alliance with Great Britain, and consequently fell at the time of the Egyptian question, when, in answer to the treaty of London concluded behind his back by Nicholas I. and Palmerston on the j5th of July 1840, he fortified Paris and proclaimed his intention to give armed support to Mehemet Ali, the ally of France (see MEHEMET ALl). But the violence of popular Chauvinism and the renewed attempt of Louis Napoleon at Boulogne proved to the holders of the doctrine of peace at any price that in the longrun their policy tends to turn a peaceful attitude into a warlike one, and to strengthen the absolutist idea.

In spite of all, from 1840 to 1848 Louis Philippe still further extended his activity in foreign affairs, thus bringing himself into still greater prominence, though he was already ~

frequently held responsible for failures in foreign ~fgt, politics and unpopular measures in home affairs. The catchword of Guizot, who was now his minister, was: Peace and no reforms. With the exception of the law of 1842 concerning the railways, not a single measure of importance was proposed by the ministry. France lived under a rgime of general corruption: parliamentary corruption, due to the illegal conduct of the deputies, consisting of slavish or venal officials; electoral corruption, effected by the purchase of the 200,000 electors constituting the pays legal, who were bribed by the advantages of power; and moral corruption, due to the reign of the plutocracy, the bourgeoisie, a hard-working, educated and honorable class, it is true, but insolent, like all newly enriched parvenus in the presence of other aristocracies, and with unyielding selfishness maintaining an attitude of suspicion towards the people, whose aspirations they did not share and with whom they did not feel themselves to have anything in common. This led to a slackening in political life, a sort of exhaustion of iilterest throughout the country, an excessive devotion to material prosperity. Under a superficial appearance of calm a tempest was brewing, of which the industrial writings of Balzac, Eugene Sue, Lamartine, H. Heine, Vigny, Montalembert and Tocqueville were the premonitions. But it was in vain that they denounced this supremacy of the bourgeoisie, relying on its two main supports, the suffrage based on a property qualification and the National Guard, for its rallying-cry was the Enrichissez-vous of Guizot, and its excessive materialism gained a sinister distinction from scandals connected with the ministers Teste and Cubires, and such mysterious crimes as that of Choiseul~PrasIin,i In vain also did they point out that mere riches are not so much a protection to the ministry who are in power as a temptation to the majority excluded from power by this barrier of wealth.

i Charles Laure Hugues Thobald, duc de Choiseul-Praslin (1805 I847), was deputy in 1839, created a peer of France in 1840. He had married a daughter of General Sebastiani, with whom he lived on good terms till 1840, when he entered into open relations with his childrens governess. The duchess threatened a separation; and the duke consented to send his mistress out of the house, but did not cease to correspond with and visit her. On the 18th of August 1847 the duchess was found stabbed to death, with more than thirty wounds, in her room. The duke was arrested on the 20th and imprisoned in the Luxembourg, where he died of poison, self-administered on the 24th. It was, however, popularly believed that the government had smuggled him out of the country and that he was living under a feigned name in England.

It was in vain that beneath the inflated haute bourgeoisie which speculated in railways and solidly supported the Church, behind the shopkeeper clique who still remained Voltairian, who enviously applauded the pamphlets of Cormenin on the luxury of the court, and who were bitterly satirized by the pencil of Daumier and Gavarni, did the thinkers give voice to the mutterings of an immense industrial proletariat, which were re-echoing throughout the whole of western Europe.

In face of this tragic contrast Guizot remained unmoved, blinded by the superficial brilliance of apparent success and prosperity. He adorned by flights of eloquence his auizoes invariable theme: no new laws, no reforms, no foreign ~ complications, the policy of material interests. He preserved his yielding attitude towards Great Britain in the affair of the right of search in 1841, and in the affair of the missionary Pritchard at Tahiti (1843-1845). And when the marriage of the duc de Montpensier with a Spanish infanta in 1846 had broken this entente cordiale to which he clung, it was only to yield in turn to Metternich, when he took possession of Cracow, the last remnant of Poland, to protect the Sonderbund in Switzerland, to discourage the Liberal ardour of Pius IX., and to hand over the education of France to the Ultramontane clergy. Still further strengthened by the elections of 1846, he refused the demands of the Opposition formed by a coalition of the Left Centre and the Radical party for parliamentary and electoral reform, which would have excluded the officials from the Chambers, reduced the electoral qualification to xoo francs, and added to the number of the electors the capacaires whose competence was guaranteed by their education. For Guizot the whole country was represented by the pays legal, consisting of the king, the ministers, the deputies and the electors. When the Opposition appealedtothe country, campaign he flung down a disdainful challenge to what les ~anq~~ets. brouillons et les badauds appellent le peuple. The challenge was taken up by all the parties of the Opposition in the campaign of the banquets got up somewhat artificially in 1847 in favor of the extension of the franchise. The monarchy had arrived at such a state of weakness and corruption that a determined minority was sufficient to overthrow it. The prohibition of a last banquet in Paris precipitated the catastrophe. The monarchy which for fifteen years had overcome its adversaries collapsed on the 24th of February 1848 to the astonishment of all.

The industrial population of the faubourgs on its way towards the centre of the town was welcomed by the National Guard, The Re- among cries of Vive la rforme. Barricades were voiution raised after the unfortunate incident of the firing on of Feb. 24, the crowd in the Boulevard des Capucines. On the 1848.23rd Guizots cabinet resigned, abandoned by the petite bourgeoisie, on whose support they thought they could depend. The heads of the Left Centre and the dynastic Left, Mole and Thiers, declined the offered leadership. Odilon Barrot accepted it, and Bugeaud, commander-in-chief of the first military division, who had begun to attack the barricades, was recalled. But it was too late. In face of the insurrection which had now taken possession of the whole capital, Louis Philippe decided to abdicate in favor of his grandson, the comte de Paris. But it was too late also to be content with the regency of the duchess of Orleans. It was now the turn of the Republic, and it was proclaimed by Lamartine in the name of the provisional government elected by the Chamber under the pressure of the mob.

This provisional government with Dupont de lEure as its president, consisted of Lamartine for foreign affairs, Crmieux The Pie- for justice, Ledru-Rollin for the interior, Carnot for visional public instruction, Gondchaux for finance, Arago for Govern the navy, and Bedeau for war. Gamier-Pages was ment. mayor of Paris. But, as in 1830, the republican- socialist party had set up a rival government at the Hotel de Ville, including L. Blanc, A. Marrast, Flocon, and the workman Albert, which bid fair to involve discord and civil war. But this time the Palais Bourbon was not victorious over the HOtel de Vile. It had to consent to a fusion of the two bodies, in which, however, the predominating elements were the moderate republicans. It was doubtful what would eventually be the policy of the new government. One party, seeing that in spite of the changes in the last sixty years of all political institutions, the position of the people had not been improved, demanded a reform of society itself, the abolition of the privileged position of property, the only obstacle to equality, and as an emblem hoisted the red flag. The other party wished to maintain society on the basis of its ancient institutions, and rallied round the tricolour.

The first collision took place as to the form which the revolution of 1848 was to take. Were they to remain faithful to their original principles, as Lamartine wished, and accept Universal the decision of the country as supreme, or were they, suffrage.

as the revolutionaries under Ledru-Rollin claimed, to declare the republic of Paris superior to the universal suffrage of an insufficiently educated people? On the 5th of March the government, under the pressure of the Parisian clubs, decided in favor of an immediate reference to the people, and direct universal suffrage, and adjourned it till the 26th of April. In this fateful and unexpected decision, which instead of adding to the electorate the educated classes, refused by Guizot, admitted to it the unqualified masses, originated the Constituent Assembly of the 4th of May 1848. The provisional government having resigned, the republican and anti-socialist majority on the 9th of May entrusted the supreme power to an executive The commission consisting of five members: Arago, Executive Marie, Gamier-Pages, Lamartine and Ledru-Rollin. Conimis. But the spell was already broken. This revolution sion.

which had been peacefully effected with the most generous aspirations, in the hope of abolishing poverty by organizing industry on other bases than those of competition and capitalism, and which had at once aroused the fraternal sympathy of the nations, was doomed to be abortive.

The result of the general election, the return of a constituent assembly predominantly moderate if not monarchical, dashed the hopes of those who had looked for the establishment, by a peaceful revolution, of their ideal socialist state; but they were not prepared to yield without a struggle, and in Paris itself they commanded a formidable force. In spite of the preponderance of the tricolour party in the provisional government, so long as the voice of France had not spoken, the socialists, supported by the Parisian proletariat, had exercised an influence on policy out of all proportion to their relative numbers or personal weight. By the decree of the 24th of February the provisional government had solemnly accepted the principle of the right to work, and decided to establish national workshops for the unemployed; at the same time a sort of industrial parliament was established at the Luxembourg, under the presidency of Louis Blanc, with the object of preparing a scheme for the organization of labor; and, lastly, by the decree of the 8th of March the property qualification for enrolment in the National Guard had been abolished and the workmen were supplied with arms. Tne socialists thus formed, in some sort, a state within the state, witii a government, an organization and an armed force.

In the circumstances a conflict was inevitable; and on the I5th of May an armed mob, headed by Raspail, Blanqui and Barbs, and assisted by the proletariat Guard, attempted to overwhelm the Assembly. They were defeated by the bourgeois battalions of the National Guard; but the situation none the less remained highly critical. The national workshops were producing the results that might have been foreseen. It was impossible to provide remunerative work even for the genuine unemployed, and of the thousands who applied the greater number were employed in perfectly useless digging and refilling; soon even this expedient failed, and those for whom work could not be invented were given a half wage of 1 franc a day. Even this pitiful dole, with no obligation to work, proved attractive, and all over France workmen threw up their jobs and streamed to Paris, where they swelled the ranks of the army under the red flag. It was soon clear that the continuance of this experiment would mean financial ruin; it had been proved by the meute of the 15th of May that it constituted a perpetual menace to the state; and the government decided to end it. The method chosen was scarcely a happy one. On the 21st of June M. de Falloux decided in the name of the parliamentary commission on labor that the workmen should be discharged within three days and such as were able-bodied should be forced to enlist.

A furious insurrection at once broke out. Throughout The June D2-s. the whole of the 24th, 25th and 26th of June, the eastern industrial quarter of Paris, led by Pujol, carried on a furious struggle against the western quarter, led by Cavaignac, who had been appointed dictator. Vanquished and decimated, first by fighting and afterwards by deportation, the socialist party was crushed. But they dragged down the Republic in their ruin. This had already become unpopular with the peasants, exasperated by the newland tax of 45 centimes imposed in order to fill the empty treasury, and with the bourgeois, in terror of the power of the revolutionary clubs and hard hit by the stagnation of business. By the massacres of the June Days the working classes were also alienated from it; and abiding fear of the Reds did the rest. France, wrote the duke of Wellington at this time, needs a Napoleon! I cannot yet see him. .. Where is he? 1

France indeed needed, or thought she needed, a Napoleon; and the demand was soon to be supplied. The granting of universal suffrage to a society with Imperialist ~ sympathies, and unfitted to reconcile the principles of 1848. of order with the consequences of liberty, was indeed - bound, now that the political balance in France was so radically changed, to prove a formidable instrument of reaction; and this was proved by the election of the president of the Republic. On the 4th of November 1848 was promulgated the new constitution, obviously the work of inexperienced hands, proclaiming a democratic republic, direct universal suffrage and the separation of powers; there was to be a single permanent assembly of 750 members elected for a term of three years by the scrutin de liste, which was to vote on the laws prepared by a council of state elected by the Assembly for six years; the executive power was delegated to a president elected for four years by direct universal suffrage, i.e. on a broader basis than that of the chamber, and not eligible for re-election; he was to choose his ministers, who, like him, would be responsible. Finally, all revision was made impossible since it involved obtaining three times in succession a majority of three-quarters of the deputies in a special assembly. It was in vain that M. Grvy, in the name of those who perceived the obvious and inevitable risk of creating, under the name of a president, a monarch and more than a king, proposed that the head of the state should be no more than a removable president of the ministerial council. Lamartine, thinking that he was sure to be the choice of the electors under universal suffrage, won over the support of the Chamber, which did not even take the precaution of rendering ineligible the members of families which had reigned over France. It made the presidency an office dependent upon popular acclamation.

The election was keenly contested; the socialists adopted as their candidate Ledru-Rollin, the republicans Cavaignac; 1. and the recently reorganized Imperialist party Prince Na,o:Ieon. Bonaparte. Louis Napoleon, unknown in 1835, and forgotten or despised since 1840, had in the last eight years advanced sufficiently in the public estimation to be elected to the Constituent Assembly in 1848 by five departments. He owed this rapid increase of popularity partly to blunders of the government of July, which had unwisely aroused the memory of the country, filled as it was with recollections of the Empire, and partly to Louis Napoleons campaign carried on from his prison at Ham by means of pamphlets of socialistic tendencies. Moreover, the monarchists, led by Thiers and the committee of the Rue de Poitiers, were no longer content even with the safe dictatorship of the upright Cavaignac, and joined forces with the Bonapartists. On the 10th of December the peasants gave over 5,000,000 votes to a name: Napoleon, which stood for order at all costs, against 1,400,000 for Cavaignac.

IT. T. de Martens, Recuell des traites, &c., xii. 248.

For three~years there went on an indecisive struggle between the heterogeneous Assembly and the prince who was silently awaiting his opportunity. He chose as his ministers men but little inclined towards republicanism, for preference Orleanists, the chief of whom was Odilon Barrot. In order to strengthen his position, he endeavoured to conciliate the reactionary parties, without committing himself to any of them. The chief instance of this was the expedition to Rome, voted by the Catholics with the object of restoring the papacy, which had been driven out by Garibaldi and Mazzini. The prince-president was also in favor of it, as beginning the work of European renovation and reconstruction which he already looked upon as his mission. General Oudinots entry into Rome provoked in Paris a foolish insurrection in favor of the Roman republic, that of the Chteau dEau, which wascrushed on the 13th of June 1849. On the other hand, when Pius IX., though only just restored, began to yield to the general movement of reaction, the president demanded that he should set up a Liberal gojzernment. The popes dilatory reply having been accepted by his ministry, the president replaced it on the 1st of November by the Fould-.Rouher cabinet.

This looked like a declaration of war against the Catholic and monarchist majority in the Legislative Assembly which had been elected on the 28th of May in a moment of panic. But the prince-president again pretended to be The Legisplaying the game of the Orleanists, as he had done .~ffsmb1y. in the case of the Constituent-Assembly. The complementary elections of March and April 1850 having resulted in an unexpected victory for the ttdvanced republicans, which struck terror into the reactionary leaders, Thiers, Berryer and Montalembert, the president gave his countenance to a clerical campaign against the republicans at home. The Church, which had failed in its attempts to gain control of the university under Louis XVIII. and Charles X,, aimed at setting up a rival establishment of its own. The Loi Falloux of the 1~th of March 1850, under the pretext of establishing the liberty F~~1ux. of instruction promised by the charter, again placed the teaching of the university under the direction of the Catholic Church, as a measure of social safety, and, by the facilities which it granted to the Church for propagating teaching in harmony with its own dogmas, succeeded in obstructing for half a century the work of intellectual enfranchisement effected by the men of the 18th century and of the Revolution, The electoral law of the 31st of May was another class law directed against subversive ideas. It required as a proof of Electors) three years domicile the entries in the record of direct taxes, thus cutting down universal suffrage by taking away the vote from the industrial population, which was not as a rule stationary. The law of the 16th of July aggravated the severity of the press restrictions by re-establishing the caution money (cautionnement) deposited by proprietors and editors of papers with the government as a guarantee of good behaviour. Finally, a skilful interpretatien of the law on clubs and political societies suppressed about this time all the Republican societies. It was now their turn to be crushed like the socialists.

But the president had only joined in Montalemberts cry of l)own with the Republicans! in the hope of effecting a revision of the constitution without having recourse to a coup detat. His concessions only increased the boldness of the monarchists; while they had only the Presiaccepted Louis Napoleon as president in opposition dent and to the Republic and as a step in the direction of the ~~eWbJi monarchy. A conffict was now inevitable between his personal policy and the majority of the Chamber, who were1 moreover, divided into legitimists and Orleanists, in spite of the death of Louis Philippe in August I85. Louis Napoleon skilfully exploited their projects for a restoration of the monarchy, which he knew to be unpopular in the country, and which gave him the opportunity of, furthering his own personal ambitions. From the 8th of August to the 12th of November 1850 he went about France stating the case for a revisiOn of the constitution in speeches which he varied according to each place; he held reviews, at which cries of Vive Napoleo-n showed that the army was with him; he superseded General Changarnier, on whose arms the parliament relied for the projected monarchical coup detat; he replaced his Orleanist ministry by obscure men devoted to his own cause, such as Morny, Fleury and Persigny, and gathered round him officers of the African army, broken men like General Saint-Arnaud; in fact he practically declared open war.

His reply to the votes of censure passed by the Assembly, and their refusal to increase his civil list, -was to hint at a vast communistic plot in order to scare the bourgeoisie, and to denounce Coup the electoral law of the 31st of May in order to gain. the dEtat of support of the mass of the people. The Assembly reDec. 2, taliated by throwing out the proposal for a partial ~ reform of that article of the constitution which prohibited the re-election of the president and the re-establishment of universal suffrage (July). All hope of a peaceful issue was at an end. When the questors called upon the Chamber to have posted up in all barracks the decree of the 6th of May 1848 concerning the right of the Assembly to demand the support of the troops if attacked, the Mountain, dreading a restoration of the monarchy, voted with the Bonapartists against the measure, thus disarming the legislative power. Louis Napoleon saw his opportunity. On the night between. the 1st and 2nd of December 1851, the anniversary of Austerlitz, he dissolved the Chamber, re-established universal suffrage, had all the party leaders arrested, and summoned a new assembly to prolong his term of office for ten years. The deputies who had met under Berryer at the Maine of the tenth arrondissement to defend the constitution and proclaim the deposition of Louis Napoleon were scattered by the troops at Mazas and Mont Valrian. The resistance organized by the republicans within Paris under Victor Hugo was soon subdued by the intoxicated soldiers. The more serious resistance in the departments was crushed by declaring a state of siege and by the mixed commissions. The plebiscite of the 20th of December ratified by a huge majority the coup d tat in favor of the prince-president, who alone reaped the benefit of the excesses of the Republican.s and the reactionary passions of the monarchists.

The second attempt to revive the principle of 1789 only served as a preface to the restoration of the Empire. The new anti- parliamentary constitution of the I4th of January Second 1852 was to a large extent merely a repetition of that Empire. of the year VIII. All executive power was entrusted to the head of the state, who was solely responsible to the people, now powerless to exercise any of their rights. He was to nominate the members of the council of state, whose duty it was to prepare the laws, and of the senate, a body permanently established as a constituent part of the empire. One innovation was made, namely, that the Legislative Body was elected by universal suffrage, but it had no right of initiative, all laws being proposed by the executive power. This new and violent political change was rapidly followed by the same consequence as had attended that of Brumaire. On the 2nd of December 1852, France, still under the effect of the Napoleonic virus, and the fear of anarchy, conferred almost unanimously by a plebiscite the supreme power, with the title of emperor, upon Napoleon III.

But though the machinery, of government was almost the same under the Second Empire as it had been under the First, the principles upon which its founder based it were different. The function of the Empire, as he loved to repeat, was to guide the people internally towards justice and externally towards perpetual peace. Holding his power by universal suffrage, and having frequently, from his prison or in exile, reproached former oligarchical governments with neglecting social ,~uestions, he set out to solve them by organizing a system of government based on the principles of the Napoleonic Idea, i.e. of the emperor, the elect of the people as the representative of the democracy, and as such supreme; and of himself, the representative of the great Napoleon, who had sprung armed from the Revolution like Minerva from the head of Jove, as the guardian of the social gains of the revolutionary epoch. But he sood proved that social justice did not mean liberty; for he acted in such a way that those of the principles of 1848 which he had preserved became a mere sham. He proceeded to paralyze all those active national forces which tend to create the public spirit of a people, such as parliament, universal suffrage, the press, education and associations. The Legislative Body was not allowed either to elect its own president or to regulate its own procedure, or to propose a law or an amendment, or to vote on the budget in detail, or to make its deliberations public. It was a dumb parliament. Similarly, universal suffrage was supervised and controlled by means of official candidature, by forbidding free speech and action in electoral matters to the Opposition, and by a skilful adjustment of the electoral distticts in such a way as to overwhelm the Liberal vote in the mass of the rural population. The press was subjected to a system of cautionnements, i.e. caution money, deposited as a guarantee of good behaviour, and avertissemenis, i.e. requests by the authorities to cease publication of certain articles, under pain of suspension or suppression; while books were subject to a censorship. France was like a sickroom, where nobody might speak aloud. In order: to counteract the opposition of individuals, a surveillance of suspects was instituted. Orsinis attack on the emperor in 1858, though purely Italian in its motive, served as a pretext for increasing the severity of this rgime by the law of general security (s-4ret generale) which authorized the internment, exile or deportation of any suspect without trial. In the same way public instruction was strictly supervised, the teaching of philosophy was suppressed in the Lyces, and the disciplinary powers of the administration were increased. In fact for seven years France had no political life. The Empire was carried on by a series of plebiscites. Up to 1857 the Opposition did not exist; from then till 1860 it was reduced to five members: Darimon, Emile Ollivier, Hnon, J. Favre and E. Picard. The royalists waited inactive after the new and unsuccessful attempt made at Frohsdorf in 1853, by a combination of the legitimists and Orleanists, to re-create a living monarchy out of the ruin of two royal families. Thus the events of that ominous night in December were closing the future to the new generations as well as to those who had grown up during forty years of liberty.

But it was not enough to abolish liberty by conjuring up the spectre of demagogy. It had to be forgotten, the great silence had to be covered by the noise of festivities and material Material enjoyment, the imagination of the French people had prosperity to be distracted from public affairs by the taste for a conwork, the love of gain, the passion for good living. dition of The success of the imperial despotism, as of any other, des,ootism. was bound up with that material prosperity which would make all interests dread the thought of revolution. Napoleon III., therefore, looked for support to the clergy, the great -financiers, industrial magnates and landed proprietors. He revived on his own account the Let us grow rich of 1840. Under the influence of the Saint-Simonians and men of business great credit establishments were instituted and vast public works entered upon: the Credit foncier de France, the Credit mobilier, the conversion of the railways into six great companies between 1852 and 1857. The rage for speculation was increased by the inflow of Californian and Australian gold, and consumption was facilitated by a general fall in prices between 1856 and 1860, due to an economic revolution which was soon to overthrow the tariff wall, as it had done already in England. Thus French activity flourished exceedingly between 1852 and 1857, and was merely temporarily checked by the crisis of 1857. The universal Exhibition of i85~ was its culminating point. Art felt the effects of this increase of comfort and luxury. The great enthusiasms of the romantic period were over; philosophy became sceptical and literature merely amusing. The festivities of the court at Compigne set the fashion for the bourgeoisie, satisfied with this energetic government which kept such good guard over their bank balances.

If the Empire was strong, the emperor was weak. At once headstrong and a dreamer, he was full of rash plans, but irresolute in carrying them out. An absolute despot, he remained what his life had made him, a conspirator through the very mysticism of his mental habit, and a revolutionary by reason of his demagogic imperialism and his democratic chauvinism. In his ~apoIboo opinion the artificial work of the congress of Vienna, ~ involving the downfall of his own family and of France, ought to be destroyed, and Europe organized as a collection of great industrial states, united by communit3~ of interests and bound together by commercial treaties, and expressing this unity by periodical congresses presided over by himself, and by universal exhibitions. In this way he would reconciles the revolutionary principle of the supremacy of the people with historical tradition, a thing which neither the Restoration nor the July monarchy nor the Republic of 1848 had been able to achieve. Universal suffrage, the organization of Rumanian, Italian and German nationality, and commercial liberty; this was to be the work of the Revolution. But the creation of great states side by side with France brought with it the necessity for looking for territorial compensation elsewhere, and consequently for violating the principle of nationality and abjuring his system of economic peace. Napoleon III.s foreign policy was as contradictory as his policy in home affairs, LEmpire, cest la paix, was his cry; and he proceeded to make war.

So long as his power was not yet established, Napoleon III. made especial efforts to reassure European opinion, which had been made uneasy by his previous protestations cCmean against the treaties of 1815. The Crimean War, in war. which, supported by England and the king of Sardinia, he upheld against Russia the policy of the integrity of the Turkish empire, a policy traditional in France since Francis I., won him the adherence both of the old parties and and the Liberals. And this war was the prototype of all the rest. It was entered upon with no clearly defined military purpose, and continued in a hesitating way. This was the cause, after the victory of the allies at the Alma (September 14, 1854), of the long and costly siege of Sevastopol (September 8, 1855). Napoleon III., whose joy was at its height owing to the signature of a peace which excluded Russia from the Black Sea, and to the birth of the prince imperial, which ensured the continuation of his dynasty, thought that the time had arrived to make a beginning in applying his system. Count Walewski, his minister for foreign affairs, gave a sudden and unexpected extension of scope to the deliberations of the congress which met at Paris in 1856 by inviting the plenipotentiaries to consider the questions of Greece, Rome, Naples, &c. This motion contained the principle of all the upheavals which were to effect such changes in Europe between 1859 and 1871. It was Cavour and Piedmont who immediately benefited by it, for thanks to Napoleon III. they were able to lay the Italian question before an assembly of diplomatic Europe.

It was not Orsinis attack on the i4th of January 1858 which brought this question before Napoleon. It had never ceased to Th ~ occupy him since he had taken part in the patriotic in ietaLi~ conspiracies in Italy in his youth. The triumph of his armies in the East now gave him the power necessary to accomplish this mission upon which he had set his heart. The suppression of public opinion made it impossible for him -to be enlightened as to the conflict between the interests of the country and his own generous visions. The sympathy of all Europe was with Italy, torn for centuries past between so many masters; under Alexander II. Russia, won over since the interview of Stuttgart by the emperors generosity rather than conquered by armed force, offered no opposition to this act of justice; while England applauded it from the first. The emperor, divided between the empress Eugnie, who as a Spaniard and a devout Catholic was hostile to anything which might threaten the papacy, and Prince Napoleon, who as brother-in-law of Victor Emmanuel favored the cause of Piedmont, hoped to conciliate both sides by setting up an Italian federation, intending to reserve the presidency of it to Pope Pius IX., as a mark of respect to the moral authority of the Church. Moreover, the very difficulty of the undertaking appealed to the emperor, elated by his recent success in the Crimea. At the secret meeting between Napoleon and Count Cavour (July 20, 1858) the eventual armed intervention of France, demanded by Orsini before he mounted the scaffold, was definitely promised.

The ill-advised Austrian ultimatum demanding the immediate cessation of Piedmonts preparations for war precipitated the Italian expedition. On the 3rd of May 1859 Napoleon declared his intention of making Italy free from the Alps to the Adriatic. As he had done four years ago, france. he plunged into the war with no settled scheme and without preparation; he held out great hopes, but without reckoning what efforts would be necessary to realize them. Two months later, in spite of the victories of Montebello, Magenta and Solferino, he suddenly broke off, and signed the patched-up peace of Villafranca with Francis Joseph (July 9). Austria ceded Lombardy to Napoleon III., who in turn ceded it to Victor Emmanuel; Modena and Tuscany were restored to their respective dukes, the Romagna to the pope, now president of an Italian federation. The mountain had brought forth a mouse.

The reasons for this breakdown on the part of the emperor in the midst of his apparent triumph were many. Neither Magenta nor Solferino had been decisive battles.

Further, his idea of a federation was menaced by the revolutionary movement which seemed likely to drive pa~~-,bkm. out all the princes of central Italy, and to involve him in an unwelcome dispute with the French clerical party. Moreover, he had forgotten to reckon with the Germanic Confederation, which was bound to come to the assistance of Austria. The mobilization of Prussia on the Rhine, combined with military difficulties and the risk of a defeat in Venetian territory, rather damped his enthusiasm, and decided him to put an end to the war. The armistice fell upon the Italians as a bolt from the blue, convincing them that they had been betrayed; on all sides despair drove them to sacrifice their jealously guarded independence to national unity. On the one hand the Catholics were agitating throughout all Europe to obtain the independence of the papal territory; and the French republicans were protesting, on the other hand, against the abandonment of those revolutionary traditions, the revival of which they had hailed so enthusiastically. The emperor, unprepared for the turn which events had taken, attempted to disentangle this confusion by suggesting a fresh congress of the Powers, which should reconcile dynastic interests with those of the people. After a while he gave up the attempt and resigned himself to the position, his actions having had more wide-reaching results than he had wished. The treaty of ZUrich proclaimed the fallacious principle of nonintervention (November 10, 1859); and then, by the treaty of Turin of the 24th of May i86o, Napoleon threw over his illtimed confederation. He conciliated the mistrust of Great Britain by replacing Walewski, who was hostile to his policy, by Thouvenel, an anti-clerical and a supporter of the English alliance, and he counterbalanced the increase of the new Italian kingdom by the acquisition of Nice and Savoy. Napoleon, like all French governments, only succeeded in finding a provisional solution for the Italian problem.

But this solution would only hold good so long as the emperor was in a powerful position. Now this Italian war, in which he had given his support to revolution beyond the Alps, and, Catholk though unintentionally, compromised the temporal and propower of the popes, had given great offence to the t~ca anisE Catholics, to whose support the establishment of the ~fDOSI

Empire was largely due. A keen Catholic opposition sprang up, voiced in L. Veuillots paper the Univers, and was not silenced even by the Syrian expedition (1860) in favor of the Catholic Maronites, who were being persecuted by the Druses. On the other hand, the commercial treaty with Great Britain which was signed in January i86o, and which ratified the freetrade policy of Richard Cobden and Michael Chevalier, had brought upon French industry the sudden shock of foreign competition. Thus both Catholics and protectionists made the discovery that absolutism may be an excellent thing when it serves their ambitions or interests, but a bad thing when it is exercised at their expense. But Napoleon, in order to restore the prestige of the Empire before the newly-awakened hostility of public opinion, tried to gain from the Left the support which he had lost from the Right. After the return from Italy the general amnesty of the 16th of August 1859 had marked the evolution of the absolutist empire towards the liberal, and later parliamentary empire, which was to last for ten years.

Napoleon began by removing the gag which was keeping the country in silence. On the 24th of November 1860,- by a coup detat matured during his solitary meditations, ~erai like a conspirator in his love of hiding his mysterious Empire. thoughts even from his ministers, he granted to the Chambers the right to vote an address annually in answer to the speech from the throne, and to the press the right of reporting parliamentary debates. He counted on the latter concession to hold in check the growing Catholic opposition, which was becoming more and more alarmed by the policy of laissezfaire practised by the emperor in Italy. But the government majority already showed some signs of independence. The right o~ voting on the budget by sections, granted by the emperor in 1861, was a new weapon given to his adversaries. Everything conspired in their favor: the anxiety of those candid friends who were calling attention to the defective budget; the commercial crisis, aggravated by the American Civil War; and above all, the restless spirit of the emperor, who had annoyed his opponents in 1860 by insisting on an alliance with Great Britain in order forcibly to open the Chinese ports for trade, iii 1863 by his ill-fated attempt to put down a republic and set up a Latin empire in Mexico in favor of the archdukeMaximilian of Austria, and from 1861 to 1863 by embarking on colonizing experiments in Cochin China and Annam.

The same inconsistencies occurred in the emperors European. politics. The support which he had given to the Italian cause The had aroused the eager hopes of other nations. The policy of proclamation of the kingdom of Italy on the 18th of national- February 1861 after the rapid annexation of Tuscany ism. and the kingdom of Naples had proved the danger of half-measures. But when a concession, however narrow, had been made to the liberty of one nation, it could hardly be refused to the no less legitimate aspirations of the rest. In 1863 these new rights again clamoured loudly for recognition, in Poland, in Schleswig and Holstein, in Italy, now indeed united, but with neither frontiers nor capital, and in the Danubian principalities. In order to extricate himself from the Polish impasse, the emperor again had recourse to his expedient always fruitless because always inopportuneof a congress. He was again unsuccessful: England refused even to admit the principle of a congress, while Austria, Prussia and Russia gave their adhesion only on conditions which rendered it futile, i.e. they reserved the vital questions of Venetia and Poland.

Thus Napole~ had yet again to disappoint the hopes of Italy, let Poland be crushed, and Germany triumph over Denmark in the Schleswig-Holstein question. These inconsistencies resulted in a combination of the opposition parties, Catholic, Liberal and Republican, in the Union librale. The elections of May-June 5863 gained the Opposition forty seats and a leader, Thiers, who at once urgently gave voice to its demand for the necessary liberties.

It would have been difficult for the emperor to mistake the importance of this manifestation of French opinion, and in view The of his international failures, impossible to repress it.

regime of The sacrifice of Persigny, minister of the interior, con ces- who was responsible for the elections, the substitution slons. for the ministers without portfolio ofasort of presidency of the council filled by Rouher, the Vice-Emperor, and the nomination of V. Duruy, an anti-clerical, as minister of public instruction, in reply to those attacks of the Church which were to culminate in the Syllabus of 1864, all indicated a distinct rapprochement between the emperor and the Left. But though the opposition represented by Thicrs was rather constitutional than dynastic, there was another and irreconcilable opposition, that of the amnestied or voluntarily exiled republicans, of whom Victor Hugo was the eloquent mouthpiece. Thus those who had formerly constituted the governing classes were again showing signs of their ambition to govern. There appeared to be some risk that this movement among the bourgeoisie might spread to the people. As Antaeus recruited his strength by touching the earth Napoleon believed that he would consolidate his menaced power by again turning to the laboring masses, by whom that power had been established.

This industrial policy he embarked upon as much from motives of interest as from sympathy, out of opposition to the bourgeoisie, which was ambitious of governing or desirous of his Jndest,j~j overthrow. His course was all the easier, since he had policy only to exploit the prejudices of the working classes, of the They had never forgotten the loi Cliapelle of 1791, which Empire. by forbidding all combinations among the workmen had placed them at the mercy of their employers, nor had they forgotten how the limited suffrage had conferred upon capital a political monopoly which had put it out of reachof the law, nor how each time they had left their position of rigid isolation in order to save the Charter or universal suffrage, the triumphant bourgeoisie had repaid them at thc last with neglect. The silence of public opinion under the Empire and the prosperous state of business had completed the separation of the labor party from the political parties. The visit of an elected and paid labor delegation. to the Universal Exhibition of 1862 in London gave the emperor an opportunity for re-establishing relations with that party, and these relations were to his mind all the more, profitable, sin.ce the labor party, by refusing to associate their social and industrial claims with the political ambitions of the bourgeoisie, maintained a neutral attitude between the parties, and could, if n.ecessary, divide them, while by its keen criticism of society it aroused the conservative instincts of the bourgeoisie and consequently checked their enthusiasm for liberty. A law of the 23rd of May 1863 gave the workmen the right, as in England, to save money by creating co-operative societies. Another law, of the 25th of May 1864, gave them the right to enforce better conditions of labor by organizing strikes. Still further, the emperor permitted the workmen to imitate their employers by establishing unions for the permanent protection of their interests. And finally, when the ouvriers, with the characteristic French tendency to insist on. the universal application of a theory, wished to substitute for the narrow utilitarianism of the English tradeunions the ideas common to the wage-earning classes of the whole world, he put no obstacles in the way of their leader M. Tolains plan for founding an International Association of Workers (SociM Internalionale des Travailleurs). At the same time he encouraged the provision made by employers for thrift and relief and for improving the condition of the workingclasses.

Thus assured of support, the emperor, through the mouth piece of M. Rouher, who was a supporter of the absolutist rgime. was able to refuse all fresh claims on the part of the Sadowa Liberals. He was aided by the cessation of the in- (1866).

dustrial crisis as the American civil war came to an end, by the apparent closing of the Roman question by the convention of the 15th of September, which guaranteed to the papal states the protection of Italy, and finally by the treaty of the 3ot h of October 1864, which temporarily put an end to the crisis of the Schlcswig-Holstein question. But after 1865 the momentary agreement which had united Austria and Prussia for the purpose of administering the conquered duchies gave place to a silent antipathy which foreboded a rupture. Yet, though the AustroPrussian War of 1866 was not unexpected, its rapid termination and fateful outcome came as a severe and sudden shock to France. Napoleon had hoped to gain fresh prestige for his throne and new influence for France by an intervention at the proper moment between combatants equally matched and mutually exhausted. His calculations were upset and his hopes dashed by the battle of Sadowa (Koniggratz) on the 4th of July. The treaty of Prague put an cud to the secular rivalry of Habsburg and Hohenzollcrn for the hegemony of Germany, which had been Frances opportunity; and Prussia could afford to humour the just claims of Napoleon by establishing between her North German Confederation and the South German states the illusory frontier of the Main. The belated efforts of the French emperor to obtain compensatjon on the left bank of the Rhine, at the expense of the Sout1~ German states, made matters worse. France realized with an angry surprise that on her eastern frontier had arisen a military power by which her influence, if not her existence, was threatened; that in the name of the principle of nationality unwilling populations had been brought under the sway of a dynasty by tradition militant and aggressive, by tradition the enemy of France; that this new and threatening power had destroyed French influence in Italy, which owed the acquisition of Ventia to a Prussian alliance and to Prussian arms; and that all this had been due to Napoleon, outwitted and outmancnuvred at every turn, since his first interview with Bismarck at Biarritz in October 1865.

All confidence in the excellence of imperial rgime vanished at once. Thiers and Jules Favre as representatives of the Further Opposition denounced in the Legislative Body the ~ blunders of 1866. Emile Ollivier split up the official sions of majority by the amendment of the 45, and gave it to Napoleon be understood that a reconciliation with the Empire would be impossible until the emperor would grant entire liberty. The recall of the French troops from Rome, in accordance with the convention of 1864, also led to further attacks by the Ultramontane party, who were alarmed for the Struggle papacy. Napoleon III. felt the necessity fot developing between the great act of 1860 by the decree of the I9th of Oflhler January 1867. In spite of Rouher, by a secret agreeand~ ment with Ollivier the right of interpellation was ROU ~ restored to the Chambers. Reforms in press supervision and the right of holding meetings were promised., It was in vain that M. Rouher tried to meet the Liberal opposition by organizing a party for the defence of the Empire, the Union dynastique. But the rapid succession of international reverses prevented him from effecting anything.

The year 1867 was particularly disastrous for the Empire. In Mexico the greatest idea of the reign ended in a humiliating withdrawal before the ultimatum of the United States, ,T8h6e7year while Italy, relying on her new alliance with Prussia and already forgetful of her promises, was mobilizing the revolutionary forces to complete her unity by conquering Rome. The chassepots of Mentana were needed to check the Garibaldians. And when the imperial diplomacy made a belated attempt to obtain from the victorious Bismarck those territorial compensations on the Rhine, in Belgium and in Luxemburg, which it ought to have been possible to exact from him earlier at Biarritz, - Benedetti added to the mistake of asking at the wrong time the humiliation of obtaining nothing (see LUXEMnURG). Napoleon did not dare to take courage and confess his weakness. And finally was seen the strange contrast of France, though reduced to such a state of real weakness, courting the mockery of Europe by a display of the external magnificence which concealed her decline. In the Paris transformed by Baron Haussmann and now become almost exclusively a city of pleasure and frivolity, the openin.g of the Universal Exhibition was marked by Berezowskis attack on the tsar Alexander II., and its success was clouded by the tragic fate of the unhappy emperor Maximilian of Mexico. Well might Thiers exclaim, There are no blunders left for us to make.

But the emperor managed to commit still more, of which the consequences both for his dynasty and for France icere irrepara~nle. Old, infirm and embittered, continually keeping Peace or his ministers in suspense by the uncertainty and secrecy of his plans, surrounded by a people now bent almost entirely on pleasure, and urged on by a growing opposition, there now remained but two courses open to Napoleon III.:

either to arrange a peace which should last, or to prepare for a decisive war. He allowed himself to drift in the direction of war, but without bringing thin,gs to a necessary state of preparation. It was in vain that Count Beust revived on bdhalf of the Austrian government the project abandoned by Napoleon since 1866 of a settlement on the basis of the status quo with reciprocal disarmament. Napoleon refused, on hearing from Colonel Stoffel, his military attach at Berlin, that Prussia would not agree to disarmament. But he was more anxious than he was willing to show. A reconstitution of the military organization seemed to him to be necessary. This Marshal Niel was unable to obtain either from the Bonapartist Opposition, who feared the electors, in whom the old patriotism had given place to the commercial or cosmopolitan spirit, or from the Republican opposition, who were unwilling to strengthen the despotism. Both of them were blinded by party interest to the danger from outside.,

The emperors good fortune had departed; he was abandoned by men and disappointed by events. He had vainly hoped that, though by the laws of May-June 1868, granting the Action freedom of the press and authorizing meetings, he had of the conceded the right ofspeech, he would retain the right of ~voIu action; but he had played into the hands of his enemies. tionarles. Victor Hugos Chdtiments, the insults of Rocheforts Lanterne, the subscription for the monument to Baudin, the deputy killed at the barricades in 1851, followed by Gatnbettas terrible speech against the Empire on the occasion of the trial of Delescluze, soon showed that the republican party was irreconcilable, and bent on the Republic. On the other hand, the Ultramontane party were becoming more and more discontented, while the industries formerly protected were equally dissatisfied with the free-trade reform. Worse still,, the working classes had abandoned their political neutrality, which had brought them nothing but unpopularity, and gone over to the enemy. Despising Proudhons impassioned attack~ on the slavery of communism, they had gradually been won over by the collectivist theories of Karl Marx or the revolutionary theories of Bakounine, as set forth at the congresses of the International. At these Labor congresses, the fame of which was ohly increased by the fact that they were forbidden, it had been affirmed that the social emancipation of the worker was inseparable from his political emancipation. Henceforth the union between the internarionalists and the republican bourgeois Was an accomplished fact. The Empire, taken by surprise, sought to curb both the middle classes and the laboring classes, and forced them both into revolutionary actions. On every side took place strikes, forming as it were a review of the effective forces of the Revolution.

The elections of May 1869, made during these disturbances, inflicted upon the Empire a serious moral- defeat. In spite of the revival by the government of the cry of the red The terror, Ollivier, the advocate of conciliation, was perilsrejected by Paris, while 40 irreconcilables and 116 mentary members of the Third Party were elected. Concessions Empire. had to be made to these, so by the senatus-consulte of the 8th of September 1869 a parliamentary monarchy was substituted for personal government. On the 2nd of January 1870 Ollivier was placed at the head of the first homogen~us, united and responsible ministry. But the republican party, unlike the country, which hailed this reconciliation of liberty and order, refused to be content with the liberties they had won; they refused all compromise, declaring themselves more than ever decided upon the overthrow of the Empire. The murder of the journalist Victor Noir by Pierre Bonaparte, a member of the imperial family, gave the revolutionaries their long desired opportunity (January 10). But the meute ended in a failure,, and the emperor was able to answer the personal threats against him by the overwhelming victory of the plebiscite of the 8th of May 1870.

But this success, which should have consolidated the Empire, determined its downfall. It was thought that a diplomatic success should complete it, and make the~ country The forget liberty for glory. It was in vain that after the Fran~oparliamentary revolution of the 2nd of January that German prudent statesman Comte Daru revived, through war.

Lord Clarendon, Count Beusts plan of disarmament after Sadowa. He met with a refusal from Prussia and from the imperial entourage. The Empress Eugnie was credited with the remark, If there is no war, my son will never be emperor. The desired pretext was offered on the 3rd of July 1870 by the The candidature of a Hohenzollern prince for the throne itolien- of Spain. To the French people it seemed that Prussia, zoilern barely mistress of Germany, was reviving against France the traditional policy of the Rabsburgs, France, having rejected for dynastic reasons the candidature of a Frenchman, the duc de Montpensier, saw herself threatened with a German prince. Never had the emperor, now both physically and morally ill, greater need of the counsels of a clear-headed statesman and the support of an enlightened public opinion if he was to defeat the statecraft of Bismarck. But be could find neither.

Olliviers Liberal ministry, wishing to show itself as jealous for national interests as any absolutist ministry, bent upon The doing something great, and swept away by the force declare- of that opinion which it had itself set free, at once Uon of accepted the war as inevitable, and prepared for it war, with a light heart, In face of the decided declaration of the duc de Gramont, the minister for foreign affairs, before the Legislative Body of the 6th of July, Europe, in alarm, supported the efforts of French diplomacy and obtained the withdrawal of the Hohenzollern candidature. This did not suit the views either of the war party in Paris or of Bismarck, who wanted the other side to declare war. The ill-advised action of Gramont in demanding from King William one of those promises for the future which are humiliating but never binding, gave Bismarck his opportunity, and the kings refusal was transformed by him into an insult by the editing of the Ems telegram. The chamber, in spite of the desperate efforts of Thiers and Gambetta, now voted by 246 votes to 10 in favor of the war.

France found herself isolated, as much through the duplicity of Napoleon as through that of Bismarck. The disclosure to the diets of Munich and Stuttgart of the written text of lsojaWd. the claims laid by Napoleon on the territories of Hesse and Bavaria had since the 22nd of August 1866 estranged southern Germany from France, and disposed the southern states to sign the military convention with Prussia. Owing to a similar series of blunders, the rest of Europe had become hostile. Russia, which it had been Bismarcks study both during and after the Polish insurrection of 1863 to draw closer to Prussia, learnt with annoyance, by the same indiscretion, how Napoleon was keeping his promises made at Stuttgart. The hope of gaining a revenge in the East for her defeat of 1856 while France was in difficulties made her decide on a benevolent neutrality. The disclosure of Benedettis designs of 1867 on Belgium and Luxemburg equally ensured an unfriendly neutrality on the part of Great Britain. The emperor counted at least on the alliance of Austria and Italy, for which he had been negotiating since the Salzburg interview (August 1867). But Austria, having suffered at his hands in 1859 and 1866, was not ready and asked for a delay before joining in the war; while the hesitating friendships of Italy could only be won by the evacuation of Rome. The chassepots of Mentana, Rouhers Never, and the hostility of the Catholic empress to any secret article which should open to Italy the gates of the capital, deprived France of her last friend.

Marshal Leboeufs armies were no more effective than Gramonts alliances. The incapacity of the higher officers of the French army, the lack of preparation for war at F flUb headquarters, the selfishness and shirking of responsi~ipim. e bility on the part of the field officers, the absence of any fixed plan when failure to mobilize had destroyed all chance of the strong offensive which had been counted on, and the folly of depending on chance, as the emperor had so often .1 In the 14th volume of his LEm p-ire liberal (1909) M. Emile Ollivier gives a detailed and illuminating account of the events that led up to the war. He indignantly denies that he ever said that he contemplated it with a light heart, and says that he disapproved of Gramonts demand for guarantees, to which he was not privy. His object is to prove that France was entrapped by Bismarck into a position in which she was bound in honor to declare war. (En.)

done successfully, instead of scientific warfare, were all plainly to be seen as early as the insignificant engagement of Saarbruckeri. Thus the French army proceeded by diastrous stages from Weissenburg, Forbach, Froeschweiler, Borny, .Gravelotte, Noisseyule and Saint-Privat to the siege of Meta arid the slaughter at Illy. By the capitulation of Sedan the Empire lost its only support, the army, and fell. Paris was left unprotected and emptied of troops, with only a woman at the Tuileries, a terrified Assembly at the Palais-Bourbon, a ministry, that of Palikao, without authority, and leaders.of the Opposition who fled as the catastrophe approached. (P. W.)

THE Tirnw REPUBLIC 1870-1909

The Third Republic may be said to date from the revolution of the 4th of September 1870, when the republican deputies of Paris at the hotel de ville constituted a provisional Govern. government under the presidency of. General Trochu, mont oi military gevernor of the capital. The Empire had National fallen, and the emperor was a prisoner in Germany. ~ As, however, since the great Revolution regimes in France have been~ only passing expedients,, not inextricably associated with the destinie~ of the people, but bound to disappear when accounted responsible for national disaster, the surrender of Louis Napoleons sword to William of Prussia did not disarm the country. Hostilities were therefore continued. The provisional government had to assume the part of a Committee of National Defence, and while insurrection was threatening in Paris, it had, in the face, of the invading Germans, to send a delegation to Tours to maintain the relations of France with the outside world. Paris was invested, and for five months endured siege, bombardment and famine. Before the end of October the capitulation of Metz, by the treason of Marshal Bazaine, deprived France of the last relic of its regular army. With indomitable courage the garrison of Paris made useless sorties, while an army of irregular troops~ vainly essayed to resist the invader, who had reached the valley of the Loire. The acting Government of National Defence, thus driven from Tours, took refuge at Bordeaux, where it awaited the capitulation of Paris, which took place on the 29th of January 1871. The same day the preliminaries of peace were signed at Versailles, which, confirmed by the treaty of Frankfort of the 10th of May, transferred from France to Germany the whole of Alsace, excepting Belfort, and a large portion of Lorraine, including Metz, with a money indemnity of two hundred millions sterlirlg.

On the j3th of February 1871 the National Assembly, elected after the capitulation of Paris, met at Bordeaux and assumed the powers hitherto exercised by the Government of FoundaNational Defence. Since the meeting of the states- tion of the general in 1789 no representative body in France had Third ever contained so many men of distinction. Elected ~ to conclude a peace, the great majority of its members were monarchists, Gambetta, the rising hope of the republicans, having discredited his party in the eyes of the weary population by his,efforts to carry on the war. The Assembly might thus have there and then restored the monarchy had not the monarchists been divided among themselves as royalist supporters of the comte de Chambord, grandson of Charles X., and as Orleanists favoring the claims of the comte de Paris,, grandson of Louis Philippe. The majority being unable to unite on the essential point of the choice of a sovereign, decided to allow the Republic, declared on the morrow of Sedan, to liquidate the disastrous situation. Consequently, on the 17th of February the National Assembly elected Thiers as Chief of the Executive Power of the French Republic, the abolition of the Empire being formally voted a fortnight later. The old minister of Louis Philippe, who had led the opposition to the Empire, and had been the chief opponent of the war, was further marked out for the position conferred on him by his election to the Assembly in twenty-six departments in recognition of his tour through Europe after the first defeats, undertaken in the patriotic hope of obtaining the intervention of the Powers on behalf of France. Thiers composed a ministry, and announced that the first duty of the government~

before examining constitutional questions, would be to reorganize the forces of the nation in order to provide for the enormous war indemnity which had to be paid to Germany before the territory could be liberated from the presence of the invader. The tacit acceptance of this arrangement by aLl parties was known as the pacte de Bordeaux. Apart from the pressure of patriotic considerations, it pleased the republican minority to have the government of France officially proclaimed a Republic, while the monarchists thought that pending their choice of a monarch it might popularize their cause not to have it associated with the imposition of the burden of war taxation. From this fortuitous and informal transaction, accepted by a monarchical Assembly, sprang the Third Republic, the most durable rgime established in France since the ancient monarchy disappeared in 1792.

The Germans marched down the Champs Elyses on the 1st of March 1871, and occupied Paris for forty-eight hours.

I, The National Assembly then decided to remove its nmune. sittings to Versailles; but two days before its arrival at the palace, where the king of Prussia had just been proclaimed German emperor, an insurrection broke out in Paris. The revolutionary element, which had been foremost in proclaiming the Republic on the 4th of September, had shown signs of disaffection during the siege. On the conclusion of the peace the triumphal entry of the German troops, the threatened disbanding of the national guard by an Assembly known to be anti-republican, and the resumption of orderly civic existence after the agitated life of a suffering population isolated by siege, had excited the nerves of the Parisians, always prone to revolution. The Commune was proclaimed on the t8th of March, and Paris was declared to be a free town, which recognized no government but that chosen by the people within its walls, the communard theory being that the state should consist of a federation of self-governing communes subject to no central power. Administrative autonomy was not, however, the real aim of the insurgent leaders. The name of the Commune had always been a rallying sign for violent revolutionaries ever since the Terrorists had found their last support in the municipality of Paris in 1794. In 187, among the communard chiefs were revolutionaries of every sect, who, disagreeing on governmental and economic principles, were united in their vague but perpetual hostility to the existing order of things. The regular troops of the garrison of Paris followed the National Assembly to Versailles, where they were joined by the soldiers of the armies of Sedan and Metz, liberated from captivity in Germany. With this force the government of the Republic commenced the second siege of Paris, in order to capture the city from the Commune, which had established the parody of a government there, having taken possession of the administrative departments and set a minister at the head of each office. The second siege lasted six weeks under the eyes of the victorious Germans encamped on the heights overlooking the capital. The presence of the enemy, far from restraining the humiliating spectacle of Frenchmen waging war on Frenchmen in the hour of national disaster, seemed to encourage the fury of the combatants. The communards, who had begun their reign by the murder of two generals, concluded it, when the Versailles troops were taking the city, with the massacre of a number of eminent citizens, including the archbishop of Paris, and with the destructiofi by fire of many of the finest historical buildings, including the palace of the Tuileries and the hotel de ville. History has rarely known a more unpatriotic crime than that of the insurrection of the Commune; but the punishment inflicted on the insurgents by the Versailles troops was so ruthless that it seemed tobe a countermanifestation of French hatred-for Frenchmen in civil disturbance rather than a judicial penalty applied to a heinous offence. The number of Parisians killed by French soldiers in the last week of May 1871 was probably 20,000, though the partisans of the Commune declared that 36,000 men and women were shot in the streets or after summary court-martial.

It is from this point that the history of the Third Republic commences. In spite of the doubly tragic ending of the war the vitality of the country seemed unimpaired. With ease and without murmur it supported the new burden of taxation called for by the war indemnity and by the reorganization ~epub of the shattered forces of France. Thiers was thus henna aa~ aided in his task of liberating the territory from the Monarch. presence of the enemy. His proposal at Bordeaux to after make the essai loyal of the Republic, as the form of e war. government which caused the least division among Frenchmen, was discouraged by the excesses of the Commune which associated republicanism with revolutionary disorder. Nevertheless, the monarchists of the National Assembly received a note of warning that the country might dispense with their services unless they displayed governmental capacity, when in July 1871 the .re~ publican minority was largely increased at the bye-elections. The next month, within a year of Sedan, a provisional constitution was voted, the title of president of the French Republic being then conferred on Thiers. The monarchists consented to this against their will; but they bad their own way when they conferred constituent powers on the Assembly in opposition tO the republicans, who argued that it was a usurpation of the sovereignty of the people for a body elected for another purpose to assume the power of giving a constitution to the land without a special mandate from the nation. The debate gave Gambetta his first opportunity of appearing as a serious politician. The fou furieux of Tours,, whom Thiers had denounced for his efforts to prolong the hopeless war, was about to become the chief support of the aged Orleanist statesman whose supreme achievement was to be the foundation of the Republic.

It was in 1872 that Thiers practically ranged himself with Gambetta and the republicans. The divisions in the monarchical party made an immediate restoration impossible. This situation induced some of the moderate deputies, ~ and whose tendencies were Orleanist, to support the oam~gt~. organization of a Republic which now no longer found its chief support in the revolutionary section of the nation, and it suited the ideas of Thiers, whose personal ambition was not less than his undoubted patriotism. Having become unexpectedly chief of the state at seventy-four he had no wish to descend again. to the position of a minister of the Orleans dynasty which he had held at thirty-five. So, while the royalists refused to admit the claims of the comte de Paris, the old minister of Louis Philippe did his best to undermine the popularity of the Orleans tradition, which had been great among the Liberals under the Second Empire. He moved the Assembly to restore to the Orleans princes the value of their property confiscated under Louis Napoleon. This he did in the well-founded belief that the family would discredit itself in the eyes of the nation by accepting two millions sterling of public money at a moment when the country was burdened with the war indemnity. The incident was characteristic of his wary policy, as in the face of the anti-republican majority in the Assembly he could not openly break with the Right; and when it was suggested that he was too favorable to the maintenance of the Republic he offered his resignation, the refusal of which he took as indicating the indispensable nature of his services. Meanwhile Gambetta, by his popular eloquence, had won for himself in the autumn a triumphal progress, in the course of which he declared at Grenoble that political power had passed into the hands of une couche soci ale nouvelle, and he appealed to the new social strata to put an end to the comedy of a Republic without republicans. When the Assembly resumed its sittings, order having been restored in the land disturbed by war and revolution, the financial system being reconstituted and the reorganization of the army planned, Thiers read to the house a presidential message which marked such a distinct movement towards the Left that Garnbetta led the applause. The Republic exists, said the president, it is the lawful government of the country, and to devise anything else is to devise the most terrible of revolutions.

The year 1873 was full of events fateful for the historyof France. It opened with the death of Napoleon III. at Chislehurst; but the disasters amid which the Second Empire had ended were too recent for the youthful promise of his heir to be regarded as having any connection with the future fortunes of France, except by the small group of Bonapartists. Thiers remained the centre of interest. Much as the monarchists disliked him, they at first shrank from upsetting him before they were ready with a scheme of monarchical restoI~tion, and while Gambettas authority was growing in the land. But when the Left Centre took alarm at the return of radical deputies at numerous by-elections the reactionaries utilized the divisions in the republican party, and for the only time in the history of the Third Republic they gave proof of parliamentary adroitness. The date for the evacuation of France by the German troops had been advanced, largely owing to Tbiers successful efforts to raise the war indemnity. The monarchical majority, therefore, thought the moment had Rcs~gna- arrived when his services might safely be dispensed ~ with, and the campaign against him was ably con ducted by a coalition of Legitimists, Orleanists and Bonapartists. The attack on Thiers was led by the duc, de Broglie, the son of another minister of Louis Philippe and grandson of Madame de Stal. Operations began with the removal from the chair of the Assembly of Jules Grvy, a moderate republican, who was chosen president at Bordeaux, and the substitution of Buffet, an old minister of the Second Republic who had rallied to the Empire. A debate on the political tendency of the government brought Thiers himself to the tribune to defend his policy. He maintained that a conservative Republic was the only rgime possible, seeing that the monarchists in the Assembly could not make a choice between their three pretenders to the throne. A resolution, however, was carried which provoked the old statesman into tendering his resignation. This time it was not declined, and the majority with unseemly Marshal haste elected as president of the Republic Marshal MacMahon MacMahon, duc de Magenta, an honest soldier of president royalist sympathies, who had won renown and a ducal 0 ~ title on the battlefields of the Second Empire. In the PU eyes of Europe the curt dismissal of the aged liberator of the territory was an act of ingratitude. Its justification would have been the success of the majority in forming a stable monarchical government; but the sole result of the 24th of May 1873 was to provide a definite date to mark the opening of the era of anti-republican incompetency in France which has lasted for more than a generation, and has been perhaps the most effective guardian of the Third Republic.

The political incompetency of the reactionaries was fated never to be corrected by the intelligence of its princes or of its chiefs, and the year which saw Thiers dismissed to make way for a restoration saw also that restoration indefinitely postponed by the fatal action of the legitimist pretender. The comte de Paris went to Frohsdorf to abandon to the comte de Chambord his claims to the crown as the heir of the July Monarchy, and to accept the position of dauphin, thus implying that his grandfather Louis Philippe was a usurper. With the Government of Moral Order in command the restoration of the monarchy seemed imminent, when the royalists had their hopes dashed by the announcement that Henri V. would accept the throne only on the condition that the nation adopted as the standard of France the white flagat the very sight of which Marshal MacMahon said the rifles in the army would go off by themselves. The comte de Chambords refusal to accept the tricolour was probably only the pretext of a childless man who The had no wish to disturb his secluded life for the ultimate comic do Chambord. benefit of the Orleans family which had usurped his crown, had sent him as a child into exile, and outraged his mother the duchesse de Berry. Whatever his motive, his decision could have no other effect than that of establishing the Republic, as he was likely to live for years, during which the cointe de Paris claims had to remain suspended. It was not possible to leave the land for ever under the government improvised at Bordeaux when the Germans were masters of France; so the majority in the Assembly decided to organize another provisional government on more regular lines, which might possibly last till the comte de Chambord had taken the white flag to the grave, leaving the way to the throne clear for the comte de Paris. On the I gth of November 1873 a Bill was passed which instituted the Septennate, whereby the executive power was confided to Marshal MacMahon for seven The years. It also provided for the nomination of acornmission of the National Assembly to take in hand the enactment of a constitutional law. Before this an important constitutional innovation had been adopted. Tinder Thiers there were no changes of ministry. The president of the Republic was perpetual prime minister, constantly dismissing individual holders of portfolios, but never changing at one moment the whole council of ministers. Marshal MacMahon, the day after his appointment, nominated a cabinet with a vice-president of the council as premier, and thus inaugurated the system of ministerial instability which has been the most conspicuous feature of the government of the Third Republic. Under the Septennate the ministers, monarchist or moderate republican, were socially and perhaps intellectually of a higher class than those who governed France during the last twenty years of the 19th century. But the duration of the cabinets was just as brief, thus dispIayin~g the fact, already similarly demonstrated under the Restoration and the July Monarchy, that in France parliamentary government is an importation not suited to the national temperament.

The duc de Broglie was the prime minister in MacMahons first two cabinets which carried on the government of the country up to the first anniversary of Thiers resignation. The duc de Broglies defeat by a coalition of Legitimists and Bonapartists with the Republicans displayed the mutual attitude of parties. The Royalists, chagrined that the fusion of the two branches of the Bourbons had not brought the comte de Chambord to the throne, vented their rage on the Orleanists, who had the chief share in the government without being able to utilize it for their dynasty. The Bonapartists, now that the memory of the war was receding, were winning elections in the provinces, and were further encouraged by the youthful promise of the Prince Imperial. The republicans had so improved their position that the duc dAudiffret-Pasquier, great-nephew of the chancellor Pasquier, tried to form a coalition ministry with M. Waddington, afterwards ambassador of the Republic in London, and other members of the Left Centre. Out of this uncertain state of affairs was evolved the constitution which has lasted the longest of all those that France has tried since the abolition of the old monarchy in 1792. Its birth was due to chance. Not being able to restore a monarchy, the National Assembly was unwilling definitively to establish a republic, and as no limit was set by the law on the duration of its powers, it might have continued the provisional state of things had it not been for the Bonapartists. That party displayed so much activity in agitating for a plebiscite, that when the rural voters at by-elections began to rally tc the Napoleonic idea, alarm seized the constitutionalists of the Right Centre who had never been persuaded by Thiers exhortations to accept the Republic. Consequently in January 1875 the Assembly, having voted the general principle that the legislative power should be exercised by a Senate and a Chamber of Deputies, without any mention of the Constltu i/on voted, executive regime, accepted by a majority of one a 1875.

momentous resolution proposed by M. Wallon, a member of the Right Centre. It provided that the president of the Republic should be elected by the absolute majority of the Senate and the Chamber united as a National Assembly, that he should be elected for seven years, and be eligible for re-election. Thus by one vote the Republic was formally established, the Father of the Constitution. being M. Wallon, who began his political experiences in the Legislative Assembly of 1849, and survived to take an active part in the Senate until the twentieth century.

The Republic being thus established, General de Cissey, who had become prime minister, made way for M. Buffet, but retained his portfolio of war in the new coalition cabinet, which contained some distinguished members of the two central groups, including M. Leon Say. A fortnight previously, at the end of February 1875, were passed ,two statutes defining the legislative and executive powers in the Republic, and organizing the Senate. ProviRions These joined to a third enactment, voted in July, form of the Con- the body of laws known as the Constitution of 1875,.

which though twice revised, lasted without essential o alte~atiqn. to the twentieth century. The legislative power was conferred 011 a Senate and a Chamber of Deputies, which m~ght unite in congress to revise the constitution, if they both agreed that revision was necessary, and. which were bound so to meet for the electi0n of the president of the Republic when a vacancy occurred. It was enacted that the president so ejected should, retain office for. seven years, and be eligible for re-election at the end of his term. He was also held to be irresponsible, except in the case of high treason. The other principal prerogatives bestowed on the presidential office by the con.stitution of 1875 were the right of initiating laws concurrently with the members of the two chambers; the promulgation of the laws; the right of dissolving the Chamber of Deputies before its legal term on the advice of the Senate, and that of adjourning the sittings of both houses for a. month; the right of pa,rdon; the disposal of the armed forces of the country; the reception of diplomatic envoys, and, under certain limitations, the power to ratify treaties. The constitution relieved the president of the responsibility of private patronage, by providing that every act of his should be countersigned by a minister. The constitutional law provided that the Senate should consist of 300 members, ~5 being nominated for life by the National Assembly, and the remaining 225 elected for nine years by the departn~ient5 and the colonies. Vacancies among the life members, after the dissolution of the National Assembly, were filled by the Senate until 1884, whenthe nominative system was abolished, though the survivors of it were not disturbed. The law of 1875 enacted that the elected senators, who were distributed among the departments on a rough basis of population1 should be elected for nine years, a third of them retiring triennially. It was provided that the senatorial electors in each department should be the deputies, the members of the conseil gnral and of the conseils darrondissement,. and delegates nominated by the municipal councils of each commune. As the municipal delegates composed the majority in each electoral college, Gambetta called the Senate the Grand Council of the Communes; but in practice the senators elected have always been the nominees of the local deputies and of the departmental councillors (conseillers generaux).

The Constitutional Law further provided that the deputies should be elected to the Chamber for four years by direct mansci.utin hood suffrage, which had been enjoyed in France ever darron- since 1848. The laws relating to registration, which is dissenient of admirable simplicity in France, were left practically a~nf,1,:rutin the same as under the Second Empire. From 1875 to C 1885 the elections were held on the basis of scrutin darrondissement, each department being divided into singlemember districts. In 1885 scrutin de liste was tried, the department being the electoral unit, and each elector having as many votes as there were seats ascribed to the department without the power to cumulatelike the voting in the city of London when it returned four members. In 1889 scrutin darrondisse~nent was resumed. The payment of members continued as under the Second Empire, the salary now being fixed at 9000 francs a year in both houses, or about a pound sterling a day. The Senate and the Chamber were endowed with almost identical powers. The only important advantage given to the popular house in the paper constitution was its initiative in matters of finance, but the right of rejecting or of modifying the financial proposals of the Chamber was successfully upheld by the Senate. In reality the Chamber of Deputies has overshadowed the upper house. The cOnstitution did not prescribe that ministers should be selected from either house of parliament, but in practice the deputies have been in cabinets in the proportion of five to one In excess of the senators. Similarly the very numerous ministerial crises which have taken place under the Third Republic have with the rarest exceptions been caused by votes in the lower chamber. Among minor differences between the two houses ordained by the constitution was the legal minimuzn age of their members1 that ~f.senators being forty and of deputies twenty.~five. It was enacted, moreover, that the Senate1 by presidential decree, could, be constituted into a high court for the trial of certain offences against the security of the state.

The constitution thus produced,, th9 fourteenth since the Revolution of 1789, was the issue of a monarchical Assembly forced by circumstances to establish, a republic. It was therefore distinguished from others which preceded ~ it in that it contained no declaration of principle, and parties no doctrinal theory. The comparative.excellence of undc the the work must be reco~nized, seeing that it has lasted.

But it owed its duration, as it owed its origin and its character, to the weakness of purpose and to the dissensions of the monarchical parties~ The first legal act under the -new constitution was the selection. by the expiring National Assembly of seventy-five nominated se,iat~rs, and here the reactionaries gave a crowning example of that folly which has ever marked their conduct each, time they have had the chance of scoring an advantage against the Republic. The principle of nomination had been carried in the National Assembly by the Right and opposed by the Republicans. But the quarrels of the Legitimists with the duc de Brogue and his party were so bitter that the formtr made a present of the nominated element in the Senate to the Republicans in order to spite the Orleanists; so out of seventy-five senatots itominated by the monarchical Assembly, fifty-seven Republicans were chosen. Without this suicidal act the Republicans would have been in a woeful minority in the Senate when. parliament met in 1876 after the first elections under the new system of parliamentary government.. The slight advantage which, in Spite of their self-destruction,, the reactionaries maintained in the upper house was outbalancd by the republican success at the elections to the Chamt~r. In a house of over 500 members only about 150 monarchical deputies were returned, of whom half were Bonapartists. The first cabinet under the new constitution was formed by Dufaure, an old minister of Louis Philippe like Thiers, and like him born in the 18th century.. .The premier now took the title of president of the council, the chief of the state no longer presiding at the meetings of ministers, though he continued to be present at their deliberations. Although the republican victories at the elections were greatly due to the influence of Gambetta,none of his partisans was included in the ministry, which was composed of members of the two central groups. At the end of 1876 Dufaure retired, but nearlyall his ministers retained their portfolios under the presidency of Jules Simon, a pupil of Victor Cousin, who tlrst entered political life in the Constituent Assembly of 1848, and was later a leading member of the opposition in the last seven years of the Second Empire.

The premiership of Jules Simon came to an end with. the abortive coup detat of 1877, commonly called from its date, the Seize Mai. After the election of Marshal MacMahon .

to the presidency, the clerical party, irritated at the ~ I8~.? failure to restore the comte de Chambord, commenced a campaign in favor of the iestitution.of the temporal power to the Pope. It provoked the Italian government to make comi~rnn cause with Germany, as Prince Bismarck was likewise attacked by the French clericals for his ecclesiastical policy. At Jagt Jules Simon, who was a liberal most friendly to Catholicist~i, had to accept a resolution of the Chamber, inviting the ministry to adopt the same disciplinary policy towards the Church which had been followed by the Second Empire and the Monarchy ~OI July. It was on this occasion that Gambetta used his famous expression, Le clricalisme, voill lennemi. Some days later a letter appeared in the Journal officiel, dated 16th May 1871, signed by President MacMahon, informing Jules Simon that he had no longer his confidence, as it was clear that he had lost that influence over the Chamber which a president of the Council ought to exercise. The dismissal of the prime minister and the presidential acts which followed did not infringe the letter of the new constitution; yet the proceeding was regarded as a coup d~ia~ in favor of the clerical reactionaries. The due si~

BrogUe formed an anti-republican ministry, ana Marshal Ma Mahon, in virtue of the presidential prerogative conferred by ti law of 1875, adjourned parliament for a month. When ti Chamber reassembled the republican majority of 363 denounc the coalition of parties hostile to the Republic. The presiden again using his constitutional prerogative, obtained the autho ization of the Senate to dissolve the Chamber. Meanwhile ti Brogli ministry had put in practice the policy, favored by r parties in France, of replacing the functionaries hostile to with its own partisans. But in spite of the administratii electoral machinery being thus in the hands of the reactionarie a republican majority was sent back to the Chamber, the sudch death of Thiers on the eve of his expected return to power, at the demonstration at his funeral, which was described as silent insurrection, aiding the rout of the monarchists. Ti duc de Brogue resigned, and Marshal MacMahon sent for Gener de Rochebouet, who formed a cabinet of unknown reactionarie but it lasted only a few days, as the Chamber refused to vo supply. Dufaure was then called back to office, and his modera republican ministry lasted for the remainder of the MacMahc presidency.

Thus ended the episode of the Seize Mai, condemned by ti whole of Europe from its inception. Its chief effects were I prove again to the country the incompetency of the monarchist and by associating in the public mind the Church with th ill-conceived venture, to provoke reprisals from the anti-clerica when they came into power. After the storm, the year I8~ was one of political repose. The first international exhibitic held at Paris after the war displayed to Europe how the seen of Franc&s recuperative power lay in the industry and artist instinct of the nation. Marshal MacMahon presided wit I879~ dignity over the f&tes held in honor of the exhibitioi Ju,e and had he pleased he might have tranquilly fulfihle Grvy the term of his Septennate. But in January 18i pres~dent he made a difference of opinion on a military questic Republic. an excusefor resignation, and Jules Grvy, the presider of the Chamber, was elected to succeed him by tI

National Assembly, which thus met for the first time under t1 Constitutional Law of 1875.

Henceforth the executive as well as the legislative pow was in the hands of the republicans. The new president wi a leader of the bar, who had first become known in the Constituer Assembly of 1848 as the advocate of the principle that a republ~ would do better without a president. M. Waddington was h:

first prime minister, and Gambetta was elected president of tli Chamber. The latter, encouraged by his rivals in the idea tha the time was not ripe for him openly to direct the affairs of th country, thus put himself, in spite of his occult dictatorship, i a position of official self-effacement from which he did not emerg until the jealousies of his own party-colleagues had undermine the prestige he had gained as chief founder of the Republii The most active among them was Jules Ferry, minister ,~,,, Education, who having been a republican deputy ft - Ferry. Paris at the end of the Empire, was one of the membet of the provisional government proclaimed on 4t September 1870. Borrowing Gambettas cry that clericalist was the enemy, he commenced the work of reprisal for the Self Mai. His educational projects of 1879 were thus anti-clerici in tendency, the most famous being article 7 of his educatio bill, which prohibited members of any unauthorized religiou orders exercising the profession of teaching in any school i France, the disability being applied to all ecclesiastical coIr munities, excepting four or five which had been privileged b, special legislation. This enactment, aimed chiefly at the Jesuit~ was advocated with a sectarian bitterness which will be associate with the name of Jules Ferry long after his more stateslnanlik qualities are forgotten. The law was rejected by the Senat Jules Simon being the eloquent champion of the clericals, whos intrigues had ousted him from office. The unauthorized ordef were then dissolved by decree; but though the forcible expulsio of aged priests and nuns gave rise to painful scenes, it canne be said that popular feeling was excited in their favor, s grievously had the Church blundered in identifying itself wit Le the conspiracy of the Seize Mai.

e Meanwhile the death of the Prince Imperial in Zululand ha d shattered the hopes of the Bonapartists, and M. de~ Freycine t, a former functionary of the Empire, had become prime ministc r. at the end of 1879. He had retained Jules Ferry at the ministr Le of Education, but unwilling to adopt all his anti-clerical polic)

11 he resigned the premiership in September 188o. The constitutio it of the first Ferry cabinet secured the further exclusion from offic e of Gambetta, to which,however, he preferred his occult dictatoi 1, ship. In August he had, as prestdent of the Chamber, accofr n panied M. Grevy on an official visit to Cherbourg, and the a ccli d mations called forth allover France by his speech, which wi a a hopeful defiance to Germany, encouraged the wily chh e of the state to aid the republican conspiracy against the her ii of the Republic. In 1881 the only political question befoi s, the country was the destiny of Gambetta. His influence in th .e Chamber was such that in spite of the opposition of the prim ,e minister he carried his electoral scheme of scrutin de liste, descenc n ing from the presidential chair to defend it. Its rejection b the Senate caused no conflict between the houses. The chec e was inflicted not on the Chamber, but on Gambetta, who counte o on his popularity to carry the lists of his candidates in a 1, the republican departments in France as a quasi-plebiscitar s demonstration in his favor. ,,His rivals dared not openl s quarrel with him. There was the semblance of a reconciLiatio 8 between him and Ferry, ~mn.d his name was~ the rallying-cry c n the Republic at the general election, which was conducted 0:

t the old system of scrutin~ ~~orron~fssement~

c The triumph for the Republic was great, the combined forc h of reactionary members returned being less than one-fifth of th t, new Chamber. M. Grvy could no longer abstain from d asking Gambetta to form a ministry, but he had 9 bided his time till jealousy of the occult power minister o of the president of the Chamber had undermined his t position in parliament. Consequently, when on the 14th 6

e November 1881 Gambetta announced the composition of hi e cabinet, ironically called the grand ministre, which was ti consolidate the Republic and to be the apotheosis of its chief r a great feeling of disillusion fell on the country, for his colleague s were untried politicians. The best known was Paul Bert, a mar t of science, who as the reporter in the Chamber of the Ferr c Education Bill had distinguished himself as an aggressive free s thinker, and he inappropriately was named minister of publi e worship. All the conspicuous republicans who had held offic t refused to serve under Gambetta. His cabinet was condemne e in advance. His enemies having succeeded in ruining its com i position, declared that the construction of a one-man mathin e was ominous of dictatorship, and the grand ministre lived fo I only ten weeks.

. Gambetta was succeeded in January 1882 by M. de Freycinet f who having first taken office in the Dufaure cabinet of 1877, am r having continued to hold office at intervals until 1899,

s was the most successful specimen of a ministrable ~ as recurrent portfolio-holders have been called under i the Third Republic. His second ministry lasted only six months r The failure of Gambetta, though pleasing to his rivals, discouragec 1 the republican party and disorganized its majority in the Chamber 1 M. Duclerc, an old minister of the Second Republic, then becami s president of the council, and before his short term of office wa~

i run Gambetta died on the last day of 1882, without having hac - the opportunity of displaying his capacity as a minister or ar r administrator. He was only forty-four at his death, and his fam rests on the unfulfilled promise of a brief career. The men wh 1 had driven him out of public life and had shortened his existenc were the most ostentatious of the mourners at the great pageani with which he was buried, and to have been of his party was ir 1 future the popular trade-mark of his republican enemies. Gambettas death was followed by a period of anarchy, durinf i which Prince Napoleon, the son of Jerome, king of Westphaiia, placarded the walls of Paris with a manifesto. The Chamber thereupon voted the exile of the members of the families which had reigned in France. The Senate rejected the measure, and a conflict arose between the two houses. M. Duclerc resigned the premiership in January 1883 to his minister of the ~ Interior, M. Fallires, a Gascon. lawyer, who became president of the Senate in 1899 and president of the Republic in 1906. He held office for three weeks, when Jules Ferry became president of the council for the second time. Several of the closest of Gambettas friends accepted office under the old enemy of their chief, and the new combination adopted the epithet opportunist, which had been invented by Gambetta in 1875 to justify the expediency of his alliance with Thiers. The Opportunists thenceforth formed an important group standing between the Left Centre, which was now excluded from office, and the Radicals. It claimed the tradition of Gambetta, but the guiding principle manifested by its members was that of securing the spoils of place. To this end it often allied itself with the Radicals,, and the Ferry cabinet practised this policy in 1883 when it removed the Orleans princes from the active list in the army as the illogical result of the demonstration of a Bonaparte. How needless was this proceeding was shown a few months lateE when the comte de Chambord died, as his death, which finally fused the Royalists with the Orleanists, caused no commOtion in France.

The year 1884 was unprecedented seeing that it passed without a change of ministry. Jules Ferry displayed real adminiRevision strative ability, and as an era of steady government of the Con- seemed to be commencin.g, the opportunity was taken at it ution, to revise the Constitution. The two Chambers there:884. fore met in congress, and enacted that the republican form of government could never be the subject of revision, and that all members of families which had reigned in France were ineligible for the presidency of the Republica repetition of the adventure of Louis Bonaparte in the middle of the century being thus made impossible. It also decided that the clauses of the law of 1875 relating to the organization of the Senate should no longer have a constitutional character. This permitted the reform of the Upper House by ordinary parliamentary procedure. So an organic law was passed to abolish the system of nominating senators, and to increase the number of municipal delegates in the electoral colleges in proportion to the population of the communes. The French natiOn, for the first time since k had enjoyed political life, had revised a constitution by pacific means without a revolution. Gambetta being out of the way, his favorite electoral system of scrutin1de lisle had no longer any terror for his rivals, so it was voted by the Chamber early in 1885. Before the Senate had passed it into law the Ferry ministry had fallen at the end of March, after holding office for twenty-five months, a term rarely exceeded in the annals of the Third Republic. This long tenure of power had excited the dissatisfaction of jealous politicians, and the news of a slight disaster to the French troops in Tongking called forth all the pent-up rancour which Jules Ferry had inspired in various groups. By the exaggerated news of defeat Paris was excited Tongking to the brink of a revolution. The npproaches of the Chamber were invaded by an angry mob, and Jules Ferry was the object of public hate more bitter than any man had called forth in France since Napoleon III. on the days after Sedan. Within the Chamber he was attacked in all quarters. The Radicals took the lead, supported by the Monarchists, who remembered the anti-clerical rigour of the Ferry laws, by the Left Centre, not sorry for the tribulation. of the group which had supplanted it, and by place-hunting republicans of all shades. The attack was led by a politician who disdained office. M. Georges Clmenceau, who had originally cOme to Paris from the Vende as a doctor, had as a radical leader in the Chamber used his remarkable talent as an overthrower of ministries, and nearly every one of the eight ministerial crises which had already occurred during the presidency of Grvy had been hastened by his mordant eloquence.

The next prime minister was M. Brisson, a radical lawyer and journalist, who in April 1885 formed a cabinet of concentration that is to say, it was recruited from various groups with the idea of concentrating all republican forces in opposition to the reactionaries. MM. de Freycinet and Carnot, afterwards president of the Republic, represented the moderate element in this ministry, which superintended the general elections under scrulin de lisle. That system was recommended by its advocates as a remedy for the rapid decadence in the composition of the Chamber. Manhood suffrage, which had returned to the National Assembly a distinguished body of men to conclude peace with Germany, had chosen a very different type of representative to sit in the Chamber created by the constitution of 1875. At each succeeding election the standard of deputies returned grew lower, till Gambetta described them contemptuously as sous-v~terinaires, indicating that they were chiefly chosen from the petty professional class, which represented neither the real democracy nor the material interests of the country. His view was that the election of members by departmental lists would ensure the candidature of the best men in each region, who under the system of single-member districts were apt to be neglected in favor of local politicians representing narrow interests. When his death had removed the fear of his using scrulin de lisle as a plebiscitary organization, parliament sanctioned its trial. The result was not what its promoters anticipated. The composition El ~t of the Chamber was indeed transformed,, but only by 01e,81s the substitution of reactionary deputies for republicans.

Of the votes polled, 45% were given to the Monarchists, and if they had obtained one-half of the abstentions the Republic would have come to an end, At the same time the character of the republican deputies returned was not improved; so the sole effect of scrutin de lisle was to show that the electorate, weary of republican dissensions, was ready to make a trial of monarchical government,if only the reactionary party proved that it contained statesmen capable of leading the nation. So menacing was the situation that the republicans thought it wise not further to expose their divisions in the presidential election which was due to take place at the end of the year. Consequently, on the 28th of December 1885, M. Grvy, in spite of his growing unpopularity, was elected president of the Republic for a second term of seven years.

The Brisson cabinet at once resigned, and on the ~th of January 1886 ~ts most important member, M. de Freycinet, formed his third ministry, which had momentous influence on the General history of the Repubhc. The new minister of war ~uian~r.

was General Boulanger,a smart soldier of no remarkable military record; but being the nominee of M. Clmenceau, he began his official career by taking radical measures against command~ ing officers of reactionary tendencies. He thus aided the government in its campaign against the families which had reigned in France, whose situation had been improved by the result of the elections. The fetes given by the comte de Paris to celebrate his daughters marriage with the heir-apparent of Portugal moved the republican majority in the Chambers to expel from France the heads of the houses of Orleans and of Bonaparte, with their eldest sons. The names of all the princes on the army list were erased from it, the decree being executed with unseemly ostentation by General Boulanger, who had owed early promotion to the protection of the duc dAumale, and on that prince protesting he was exiled too. Meanwhile General Boulanger took advantage of Grvys unpopularity to make himself a popular hero, and at the review, held yearly on the i4th of July, the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, his acclamation by the Parisian mob showed that he was taking an unexpected place in the imagination of the people. He continued to work with the Radicals, so when they turned out M. de Freycinet in December 1886, one of their group, M. Goblet, a lawyer from Amiens, formed a ministry, and retained Boulanger as minister of war. M. Clmenceau, however, withdrew his support from the general, who was nevertheless loudly patronized by the violent radical press. His bold attitude towards Germany in connection with the arrest on the German frontier of a French official named Schnaebele so roused the enthusiasm of the public, that M.Goblet was not sorry to resign in May 1887 in order to get rid of his ton popular colleague.

To form the twelfth of his ministries, Grvy called upon M. Rouvier, an Opportunist from Marseilles, who had first held office in Gambettas short-lived cabinet. General Boulan.ger The ~V~Json was sent to command a corps darme at ClermontFerrand; but the popular press and the people clamou red for the hero who was said to have terrorized Prince Bismarck, and they encouraged him to play the part of a plebiscitary candidate. There were grave reasons for public discontent. Parliament in 1887 was more than usually sterile in legislation, and in the autumn session. it had to attend to a scandal which had long been rumoured. The son-in-law of Grvy, Daniel Wilson, a prominent deputy who had been an under secretary of state, was accused of trafficking the decoration of the Legion of Honor, and of using the Elysee, the presidents official residence, where he lived, as an agency for his corrupt practices. The evidence against him was so clear that his colleagues in the Chamber put the government into a minority in order to precipitate a presidential crisis, and on Grvy refusing to accept this hint, a long array of politicians, representing all the republican groups, declined his invitation to aid him in forming a new ministry, all being bent on forcing his resignation. Had General Boulanger been a man of resolute courage he might at this crisis have made a coup detai, for his popularity in the street and in the army increased as the Republic sank deeper into scandal and anarchy. At last, when Paris was on the brink of revolution, Grvy was prevailed on to,resign. The candidates for his succession to the presidency were two ex-prime ministers, MM. Ferry and de Freycinet, and Floquet, a barrister, who had been conspicuous in the National Assembly for his sympathy with the Commune. The Monarchists had no candidate ready, and resolved to vote for Ferry, because they believed that if he were elected his unpopularity with the democracy would cause an insurrection in Paris and the downfall of the Republic. MM. de Freycinet and Floquet each looked for the support of the Radicals, and each had made a secret compact, in the event of his election, to restore General Boulanger to the war office. But M. Clmenceau, fearing the election of Jules Ferry, advised his followers to vote for an outsider, and after some manceuvring the congress elected bya large majority Sadi Carnot.

The new president, though the nominee of chance, was an excellent choice. The grandson of Lazare Carnot, the organizer Af Carnot of victory of the Convention, he was also a man of pr~esJent unsullied probity. The tradition of his family name, of the only less glorious than that of Bonaparte in the annals Repubik, of the Revolution, was welcome to France, almost ready to throw herself into the arms of a soldier of fortune, while his blameless repute reconciled some of those whose opposition to the Republic had been quickened by the mean vices of Grvy. But the name and character of Carnot would have been powerless to check the Boulangist movement without the incompetency of its leader, who was getting the democracy at his back without knowing how to utilize it. The new presidents first prime minister was M. Tirard, a senator who had held office in six of Grevys ministries, and he formed a cabinet of politicians as colorless as himself. The early months of 1888 were occupied with the trial of Wilson, who was sentenced to two years imprisonment for fraud, and with the conflicts of the government with General Boulanger, who was deprived of his command for coming to Paris without leave. Wilson appealed against his sentence, and General Boulanger was elected deputy for the department of the Aisne by an enormous majority. It so happened that the day after his election a presidential decree was signed on the advice of the minister of war removing General Boulanger from the army, and the court of appeal quashed Wilsons conviction. Public feeling was profoundly moved by the coincidence of the release of the relative of the ex-president by the judges of the Republic on the same day that its ministers expelled from the army the popular hero of universal suffrage.

As General Boulanger had been invented by the Radicals it was thought that a Radical cabinet might be a remedy to cope with him, so M. Floquet became president of the council in April f 888, M. de Freycinet taking the portfolio of war, which he retained through many ministries. M. Floquets chief achievement was a duel with General Boulanger, B, gi in which, though an elderly civilian, he wounded him. an Nothing, however, checked the popularity of the military politician, and though he was a failure as a speaker in the Chamber, several departments returned him as their deputy by great majorities. The Bonapartists had joined him, and while in his manifestos he described himself as the defender of the Republic, the massof the Monarchists, with the consent of the comte deParis, entered the Boulangist camp, to the dismay both of old-fashioned Royalists and of many Orleanists, who resented his recent treatment of the duc dAumale. The centenary of the taking of the Bastille was to be celebrated in Paris by an international exhibition, and it appeared likely that it would be inaugurated by General Boulanger, so irresistible seemed his popularity. In January 1889 he was elected member for the metropolitan department of the Seine with a quarter of a million votes, and by a majority of eighty thousand over the candidate of the government. Had he marched on the Elysee the night of his election, nothing could have saved the parliamentary Republic; but again he let his chance go by. The government in alarm proposed the restoration of scrutin darrondissement as the electoral system for scrutin de liste. The change was rapidly enacted by the two Chambers, and was a significant commentary on the respective advantages of the two systems. M. Tirard was again called to form a ministry, and he selected as minister of the interior M. Constans, originally a professor at Toulouse, who had already proved himself a skilful manipulator of elections v.. hen he held the same office in r881. He was therefore given the supervision of the machinery of centralization with which it was supposed that General Boulanger would have to be fought at the general election. That incomplete hero, howBoulangers ever, saved all further trouble by flying the country flight.

when he heard that his arrest was imminent. The government, in order to prevent any plebiscitary manifestation in his favor, passed a law forbidding a candidate to present himself for a parliamentary election in more than one constituency; it also arraigned the general on the charge of treason before the Senate sitting as a high court, and he was sentenced in his absence to perpetual imprisonment. Such measures were needless. The flight of General Boulanger was the death of Boulangism. He alone had saved the Republic which had done nothing to save itself. Its government had, on the contrary, displayed throughout the crisis an anarchic feebleness and incoherency which would have speeded its end had the leader of the plebiscitary movement possessed sagacity or even common courage.

The elections of 1889 showed how completely the reactionaries had compromised their cause in the Boulangist failure. Instead of 45% of the votes polled as in 1885, they obtained only 25%, and the comte de Paris, the pretender of constitutional monarchy, was irretrievably prejudiced by his alliance with the military adventurer who had outraged the princes of his house. A period of calm succeeded the storm of Boulangism, and for the first time under the Third Republic parliament set to work to produce legislation useful for the state, without rousing party passion, as in its other period of activity when the Ferry education laws were passed. Before the elections of 1889 the reform of the army was undertaken, the general term of active compulsory service was made three years, while certain classes hitherto dispensed from serving, including ecclesiastical seminarists and lay professors, had henceforth to undergo a years military trLining the new parliament turned its attention to social and labor questons, as the only clouds on the political horizon were the serious ~,trikes in the manufacturing districts, which displayed the growing political organization of the socialist party. Otherwise nothing disturbed the calm of the country. The young duc dOrlans vainly tried to ruffle it by breaking his exile in order to claim his citizens right to perform his military service. The cabinet was rearranged in March r89o, M. de Freycinet becoming prime minister for the fourth time, and retaining the portfolio of. war. All seemed to point to the consolidation of the Republic, and even the Church made signals of reconciliation. Cardinal Lavigerie, a~ patriotic missionary and statesman, entertained the officers of the fleet at Algiers, and proposed the toast of the. Republic to the tune of the Marseillaise played by his pres blancs. The royalist Catholics protested, but it was soon intimated that the archbishop of Algiers demonstration was approved at Rome. The year 1891 was one of the few in the annals of the Republic which passed without a change of ministry, but the agitations of 1892 were to counterbalance the repose of the two preceding years.

The first crisis arose out of the peacemaking policy of the Pope. Following up his intimation to the archbishop of Algiers.,

Leo XIII. published in February 1892 an encyclical, The t,aal bidding French Catholics accept the Republic as the ~CJ9~C Ca, firmly established form of government. The papal injunction produced, a new political group called the Raffles, the majority of its members being Monarchists who rallied to the Republic in obedience to the Vatican. The most conspicuous among them was Comte Albert de Mun, an eloquent exponent in the Chamber of legitimism and Christian socialism. The extreme Left mistrusted the adhesion of the new converts to the Republic, and ecclesiastical questions were the constant subjects of acrimonious debates in parliament. In the course of one of them M. de Freycinet found himself in a minority. lie ceased to be prime minister, being succeeded by M. Loubet, a lawyer from Montlimar, who had previously held office for three months in the first Tirard cabinet; but M. de Freycinet continued to hold his portfolio of war. The confusion of the republican groupskept pace with the disarray of the reactionaries, and outside parliament the frequency of anarchist outrages did not increase public confidence. .The only figure in. the Republic which grew in prestige was that of M. Carnot, who in his frequent presidential tours dignified his office, though his modesty made him unduly efface his own personality.

When the autumn session of 1892 began all other questions were overwhelmed by the bursting of the Panama scandal.

The company. ass6ciated for the piercing of the Isthmus The of, Panama, undertaken by M., de Lesseps, the maker ~ of the Suez Canal, had become insolvent some years - before. Fifty millions sterling subscribed by the thrift of France had disappeared, but the rumours involving political personages in the disaster were so confidently asserted to be reactionary libels, that a minister of the Republic, afterwards sent to penal servitude for corruption, obtained damages for the publication of one of them. It was known that M. de Lesseps was to be tried for misappropriating the money subscribed; but considering the vast sums lost by the public, little interest was taken in the matter till it was suddenly stirred by the dramatic suicide of a well-known Jewish financier closely connected with republican politicians, driven to death, it was said, by menaces of blackmail. Then succeeded a period of terror in political circles. Every one who had a grudge against an enemy found vent for it in the press, and the people of Paris lived in an atmosphere of delation. Unhappily it was true that ministers and members of parliament had been subsidized by the Panama company. Floquet, the president of the Chamber, avowed that when prime minister he had laid hands on 12,000 of the companys funds for party purposes, and his justification of the act threw a light on the code of public morality of the parliamentary Republic. Other politicians were more seriously implicated on the charge of having accepted subsidies for their private purposes, and emotion reached its height when the cabinet ordered the prosecution of two of its members for corrupt traffic of their offices. These two ministers were afterwards, discharged, and they seem to have been accused with recklessness; but their prosecution by their own colleagues proved that the statesmen of the Republic believed that their high political circles were sapped with corruption. Finally, only twelve senators and deputies were committed for trial, and the only one convicted was a minister of M. de Freycinets third cabinet, who pleaded guilty to receiving large bribes from the Panama company. The public regarded the convicted politician as a scapegoat, believing that there were numerous delinquents in parliament, more guilty than he, who had not even been prosecuted. This feeling was aggravated by the sentence passed, but afterwards remitt~d,bx~ the aged M. de Lesseps, who had. involved French people in misfortune only because he too sanguinely desired to repeat the triumph he had achieved for France by his great work in Egypt~

Within the nation the moral result of the Panama affair was a general feeling that politics had become under the Republic a profession unworthy of honest citizens. The sentiment evoked by the scandal was one of sceptical lassitude rather than of indignation. The reactionaries had crowned their record of political Incompetence. At a crisis which gave legitimate opportunity to a respectable and patriotic Opposition they showed that the country had nothing to expect from them but incoherent and exaggerated invective. If the scandal had come to light in the time of General Boulanger the parliamentary Republic would not have survived it. As it was, the sordid story did little more than produce several changes. of ministry. M. Loube,~ resigned the premiership in December, 1892 to M, Ribot, a former functionary of the Empire, whose ministry livedfor three stormy weeks. On the first.day of 1893 M. Ribot formed his.seconrl cabinet, which survived till, the end of March, when he was succeeded by his minister of education, M. Charles Dupuy, an exprofessor who had never held off ce I ill~four months previously, M. Dupuy, having taken the portfolio of the interior, supervised the general election of 1893, which took place amid the profound indifference of the population, except in certain localities. where personal antagonisms excited violence. An intelligent Opposition would have roused the country at the polls against the rgime compromised by the Panama affair. Nothing of the sort occprred~ and the electorate preferred.the doubtful probity of their republican representatives to the certain. incompetence of the reactionaries. The adversaries of the Republic polled onlyI6% of the votes recorded, and the chief feature of the election was the increased return of socialist and radical-socialist deputies. When parliament met it turned out the Dupuy ministry, apd M. Casimir-Prier quitted. the presidency of the Chamber to take his place. The new prime minister was the bearer of an eminent name, being the grandson of the statesman of r831, and the great-grandson of the owner of Vizilie, where the estates of Dauphin met in 1788, as a prelude to the assembling of the states-general the next year. His acceptance of office rousd additional interest because he was a minister possessed of independent wealth, and therefore a rare example of a French politician free from the imputation of making a living out of politics. Neither his repute nor his qualities gave long life to his ministry, which fell in four months, and M. Dupuy was. sent for again to form a cabinet in May 1894.

Before the second Dupuy ministry had been in office a mQnth President Carnot died by the knife of an anarchist at Lyons. He was perhaps the most estimable politician of the ASS8SSIIIThird Republic. Although the standard of political tiot, oi life was not elevated under his presidency, he at all president events set a good personal example, and to have filled ~ unscathed the most conspicuous position in the land during a period unprecedented for the scurrility of libels on public men was a testimony to his blameless character. As the term of his septennate was near, parliament was not unprepared for a presi~ dential election, and M. Casimir-Prier, who had been spoken of as his possible successor, was elected by the Congress Casimi,. which met at: Versailles on the 27th of June 1894, three Perier days after Carnots assassination. The election of ~14en4 one who bore respectably a name not less distinguished in history than that of Carnot seemed to ensure that the Republic would reach the end of the century under the headship of a president of exceptional prestige. But instead of remaining chief of the state forseven years, in less thansevenmonths M..CasimirPrier astonished France and Europe by his resignation. Scurrilously defamed by the socialist press, the new president found that the Republicans in the Chamber were not disposed to defend him in his high office; so, oq the i5th of January 1895. he seized the occasion of the retirement of the Dupuy ministry to address a message to the two houses intimating his resignation of the presidency, which, he said, was endowed with too many responsibilities and not sufficient powers.

This time the Chambers were unprepared for a presidential vacancy, and to fill it in forty-eight hours was necessarily a matter of haphazard. The choice of the congress fell Faurc on Felix Faure, a merchant of Havre, who, though presi4ent,. minister of marine in the retiring cabinet, was one of 1895. the least-known politicians who had held office. The selection was a good one, and introduced to the presidency a type of politician unfortunately rare under the Third Republic a successful man of business. Felix Faure had a fine presence and polished manners, and having risen from a humble origin he displayed in. his person the fact that civilization descends to a lower social level in France than elsewhere. Although he was in a sense a man of the people the Radicals and Socialists in the Chambers had voted against him. Their candidate, like almost all democratic eaders in France, had never worked with his handsM. Brisson, the son of an attorney at Bourges, a member of the Parisian bar, ay~d perpetual candidate for the presidency. Nevertheless the1 Left tried to take possession of President Faure. His first ministry, composed of moderate republicans a~d presided over by M. Ribot, lasted until the autumn session of 1895, when it was turned out and, a radical cabinet was formed by M. Leon Bourgeois, an ex-functionary, who when a prefect had been suspected of reactionary tendencies.

The Bourgeois cabinet of 1895 was remarkable as the first ministry formed since 1877 which did not contain a single member of the outgoing cabinet. It was said to be exclusively radical in its composition, and thus to indicate that the days of republican concentration were over, and that the Republic, being firmly established, an era of party government on the English model had arrived. The new ministry, however, on analysis did not differ in character from any of its predecessors. Seven of its members were old office-holders of the ordinary ministrable type. The most conspicuous was M. Cavaignac, the son of the general who had opposed Louis Bonaparte in 1848, and the grandson of J. B. Cavaignac, the regicide member of the Convention. Like Carnot and Casimir-Prier, he was, therefore, one of those rare politicians of the Republic who possessed some hereditary tradition. An ambitious man, he was now classed as a Radical on the strength of his advocacy of the income-tax, the principle of which has never been popular in France, as being adverse to the secretive habits of thrift cultivated by the people, which are a great source of the national wealth. The radicalism of the rest of the ministry was not more alarming in character, and its tenure of office was without legislative result. Its fall, however, occasioned the only constitutionally interesting ministerial crisis of the twenty-four which had taken place since Grvys election to the presidency, sixteen years before. The Senate, disliking the fisca policy of the government, refused to vote supply in spite of the support which the Chamber gave to the ministry. The collision between the two houses did not produce the revolutionary rising which the Radicals predicted, and the Senate actually forced the Bourgeois cabinet to resign amid profound popular indifferenee.

The new prime minister was M. Mline, who began his long pcslitical career as a member of the Commune in 1871, but was so little compromised in the insurrection that Jules Simon gave him an under-secretaryship in his ministry of 1876. After that he was once a cabinet minister, and was for a year president of the Chamber. He was chiefly known as a protectionist; but it was as leader of the Progressists, as the Opportunists now called themselves, that he, formed his cabinet in April 1896, which was announced as a moderate ministry opposed to the policy of the Radicals. It is true that it made no attempt to tax incomes, but otherwise its achievements did not differ from those of other ministries, radical or concentration, except in its long survival. It lasted for over two years, and lived as long as the second Ferry cabinet. Its existence was prolonged by certain incidents of the Franco-Russian alliance. The visit of the Tsar to Paris in October 1896, being the first official visit paid by a European sovereign to the Republic, helped the government over the critical period at which ministries usually succumbed; and it was further strengthened in parliament by the invitation to the president of the Republic to return ~ the imperial visit at St Petersburg in 1897. The Chamber came to its normal term that autumn; but a law had been passed fixing May as the month for general elections, and the ministry was allowed to retain office till the dissolution at Easter 1898.

The long duration of the Mline government was said to be a further sign of the arrival of an era of party government with its essential accompaniment, ministerial stability. But in the country there was no corresponding sign that the electorate was being organized into two parties of Progressists and Radicals; while in the Chamber it was ominously observed that persistent opposition to the moderate ministry came from nominal supporters of its views, who were dismayed at one small band of fellow-politicians monopolizing office for two years. The last election of the century was therefore fought on a confused issue, the most tangible results being the further reduction of the Monarchists, who secured only 12% of the total poll, and the, advance of the Socialists, who obtained nearly 20% of the votes recorded. The Radicals returned were less numerous than the Moderates, but with the aid of the Socialists they nearly balanced them. A new group entitled Nationalist made its appearance, supported by a miscellaneous electorate representing the malcontent element in the nation of all political shades from mon~ archist to revolutionary socialist. The Chamber, so composed, was as incoherent as either of its predecessors. It refused to reelect the radical leader M. Brisson as its president, and then refused its confidence to the moderate leader M. Mline. M. Brisson, the rejected of the Chamber, was sent for to form a ministry, on the 28th of June 1898, which survived till the adjourn. ment, only to be turned out when the autumn session began. M. Charles Dupuy thus became prime minister forthe third time with a cabinet of the old concentration pattern, and for the third time in less than five years under his premiership the Presidency of the Republic became vacant. Felix Faure had increased in pomposity rather than in popularity. His contact with European sovereigns seems to have made him over-conscious of ~

his superior rank, and he cultivated habits which death of austere republicans make believe to be the mono- lre~ideat poly of frivolous courts. The regular domesticity Faure.

of middle-class life may not be disturbed with impunity when age is advancing, and Felix Faure died with tragic unexpectedness on the 16th of February 1899. The joys of his high office were so dear to him that nothing but death would have induced him to lay it down before the termof his septennate. There was therefore no candidate in waiting for the vacancy; and as Paris was in an agitated mood the majority in the Congress elected M. Loubet president of the Republic, because he happened to hold the second place of dignity in the state, the presidency M L

of the Senate, and was, moreover, a politician who had p,$jdO~~t the confidence of the republican groups as an adversary of plebiscitary pretensions. His only competitor was M. Mline, whose ambitions were not realized, in spite of the alliance of his Progressist supporters with the Monarchists and Nationalists. The Dupuy ministry lasted till June 1899, when a new cabinet was formed by M. Waldeck-Rousseau5 who, having held office under Gambetta and Jules Ferry, had relinquished politics for the bar, of which he had become a distinguished leader. ThouSh a moderate republican, he was the first prime minister to give portfolios to socialist politicians. This was the distinguishing feature of the last cabinet of the centurythe thirty-seventh which had taken office in the twenty-six years which had elapsed since the resignation of Thiers in 1873.

It is now necessary to go back a few years in order to refer to a matter which, though not political in its origin, in its development filled the whole political atmosphere of France in the closing period of the I 9th century. Soon after the failure of the Boulangist movement a journal was founded at Paris called the Libre Parole. Its editor, M. Drurnont, was known as the author of La France juive, a violent anti-Semitic work, writ ten to denounce the influence exercised by Jewish financiers in Anti. the politics of the Third Republic. It may be said to m.ement. have started the anti-Semitic movement in Frftnce, where hostility to the Jews had not the pretext existing in those lands which contain a large Jewish population exercising local rivalry with the natives of the soil, or spoiling them with usury. That state of things existed in Algeria, where the indigenous Jews were made French citizens during the Franco-Prussian War to secure their support against the Arabs in rebellion. But political anti-Semitism was introduced into Algeria only as an offshoot of the movement in continental France, where the great majority of the Jewish community were of the same social class as the politicians of the Republic. Primarily directed against the Jewish financiers, the movement was originally looked upon as a branch of the anti-capitalist propaganda of the Socialists. Thus the Libre Parole joined with the revolutionary press in attacking the repressive legislation provoked by the dynamite outrages of the anarchists, clerical reactionaries who supported it being as scurrilously abused by the anti-Semitic organ as its republican authors. The Panama affair, in the exposure of which the Libre Parole took a prominent part soon after its foundation, was also a bond between antiSemites and Socialists, to whom, however, the Monarchists, always incapable of acting alone, united their forces. The implication of certain Jewish financiers with republican politicians in the Panama scandal aided the anti-Semites in their special propaganda, of which a main thesis was that the government of the Third Republic had been organized by its venal politicians for the benefit of Jewish immigrants from Germany, who had thus enriched themselves at the expense of the laborious and unsuspecting French population. The Libre Parole, which had become a popular organ with reactionaries and with malcontents of all classes, enlisted the support of the Catholics by attributing the anti-religious policy of the Republic to the influence of the Jews, skilfully reviving bitter memories of the enaction of the Ferry decrees, when sometimes the laicization of schools or the expulsion of monks and nuns had been carried out by a Jewish functionary. Thus religious sentiment and race prejudice were introduced into a movement which was at first directed against capital; and the campaign was conducted with the weapons of scurrility and defamation which had made an unlicensed press under the Third Republic a demoralizing national evil.

An adroit feature of the anti-Semitic campaign was an appeal to national patriotism to rid the army of Jewish influence. The Con dem- Jews, it was said, not content with directing the nation of financial, and thereby the general policy of the Re- Captain public, had designs on the French army, in which they Dreyfus. wished to act as secret agents of their German kindred. In October i 894 the Libre Parole announced that a Jewish officer of artillery attached to the general staff, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, had been arrested on the charge of supplying a government of the Triple Alliance with French military secrets. Tried by court-martial, he was sentenced to military degradation and to detention for life in a fortress. He was publicly degraded at Paris in January 1895, a few days before Casimir-Prier resigned the presidency of the Republic, and was transported to the lIe du Diable on the coast of French Guiana. His conviction, onthe charge of having betrayed to a foreign power documents relating to the national defence, was based on the alleged identity of his handwriting with that of an intercepted covering-letter, which contained a list of the papers treasonably communicated. The possibility of his innocence was not raised outside the circle of his friends; the Socialists, who subsequently defended him, even complained that common soldiers were shot for offences less than that for which this richly connected officer had been only transported. The secrecy of his trial did not shock public sentiment in France, where at that time all civilians charged with crime were interrogated by a judge in private, and where all accused persons are presumed guilty until proved innocent. In a land subject to invasion there was less dispOsition to criticize the decision of a military tribunal acting in the defence of the nation even than there would have been in the case of a doubtful judgment passed in a civil court. The country was practically unanimous that Captain Dreyfus had got his deserts. A few, indeed, suggested that had he not been a Jew he would never have been accused; but the greater number replied that an ordinary French traitor of Gentile birth would have been forgotten from the moment of his condemnation. The pertinacity with which some of his co-religionists set te work to show that he had been irregularly condemned seemed to justify the latter proposition. But it was not a Jew who brought about the revival of the affair. Colonel Picquart, an officer of great promise, became head of, the intelligence department at the war office, and in 1896 informed the minister of his suspicion that the letter on which Dreyfus had been condemned was written by a certain Major Esterhazy. The military authorities, not wishing to have the case reopened, sent Colonel Picquart on foreign service, and put in his place Colonel Henry. The allseeing press published various versions of the incident, and the anti-Semitic journals denounced them as proofs of a Jewish conspiracy against the French army.

At the end of 1897 M. Scheurer-Kestner, an Alsatian devoted to France and a republican senator, tried to persuade his political friends to reopen the case; but M. Mline, the prime Dftyfus. minister, declared in the name of the Replfblic that the ards and Dreyfus affair no longer existed. The fact that the anti-Drey. senator who championed Dreyfus was a Protestant ~

encouraged the clerical press in its already marked tendency to utilize anti-Sensitism as a weapon of ecclesiastical warfare. But the religious side-issues of the question would have had little importance had not the army been involved in the controversy, which had become so keen that all the population, outside that large section of it indifferent to all public questions, was divided into Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards. The strong position of the latter was due to their assuming the position of defenders of the army, which, at an epoch when neither the legislature nor the government inspired respect, and the Church was the object of polemic, was the only institution in France tO unite the nation by appealing to its martial and patriotic instincts. That is the explanation of the enthusiasm of the public for generals and other officers by whom the trial of Dreyfus and subsequent proceedings had been conducted in a manner repugnant to those who do not favor the arbitrary ways of military dictatorship, which, however, are not unpopular in France. The acquittal of Major Esterhazy by a court-martial, t~ie conviction of Zola by a civil tribunal for a violent criticism of the military authorities, and the imprisonment without trial of Colonel Picquart for his efforts to exonerate Dreyfus, were practically approved by the nation. This was shown by the result of the general elections in May 1898. The clerical reactionaries were almost swept out of the Chamber, but the overwhelming republican majority was practically united in its hostility to the defenders of Dreyfus, whose only outspoken representatives were found in the socialist groups. The moderate Mline ministry was succeeded in June 1898 by the radical Brisson ministry. But while the new prime minister was said tob~ personally disposed to revise the sentence on Dreyfus, his civilian minister of war, M. Cavaignac, was as hostile to revision as any of his military predecessorsGeneral Mercier, under whom the trial took place, General Zurlinden, and General Billot, a republican soldier devoted to the parliamentary rgime.

The radical minister of war in July 1898 laid before the Chamber certain new proofs of the guilt of Dreyfus, in a speech so convincing that the house ordered it to be placarded Pelitte~ in all the communes of France. The next month resuits of Colonel Henry, the chief of the intelligence department, 0 eyfus confessed to having forged those new proofs, and then a~itatioiz. committed suicide. M. Cavaignac thereupon resigned office, but declared that the crime of Henry did not prove the innocence of Dreyfus. Many, however, who had hitherto accepted the judgment of 1894, reflected that the offence of a guilty man did not need new crime for its proof. It was further remarked that the forgery had been committed by the intimate colleague of the officers of the general staff, who had zealously protected Esterhazy, the suspected author of the document on which Dreyfus had been convicted. An uneasy misgiving became widespread; but partisan spirit was too excited for it to cause a general revulsion of feeling. Some journalists and politicians of the extreme Left had adopted the defence of Dreyfus as an anti-clerical movement in response to the intemperate partisanship of the Catholic press on the other side. Other members of the socialist groups, not content with criticizing the conduct of the military authorities in the Dreyfus affair, opened a general attack on the French army,an unpopular policy which allowed the anti-Dreyfusards to utilize the old revolutionary device of making the word patriotism a party cry. The defamation and rancour with which the press on both sides flooded the land obscured the point at issue. However, the Brisson ministry just before its fall remitted the Dreyfus judgment to the criminal division of the cour de cassationthe supreme court of revision in France. M. Dupuy formed a new cabinet in November 1898, and made M. de Freycinet minister of war, but that adroit office-holder, though a civilian and a Protestant, did not favor the anti-military and anti-clerical defenders of Dreyfus. The refusal of the Senate, the stronghold of the Republic, to re-elect M. Scheurer-Kestner as its vice-president, showed that the opportunist minister of war understood the feeling of parliament, which was soon displayed by an extraordinary proceedtng. The divisional judges, to whom the case was remitted, showed signs that their decision would be in favor of a new trial of Dreyfus. The republican legislature, therefore, disregarding the principle of the separation of the powers, which is the basis of constitutional government, took the arbitrary step of interfering with the judicial authority. It actually passed a law withdrawing the partly-heard cause from the criminal chamber of the cour de cassation, and transferring it to the full court of three divisions, in the hope that a majority of judges would thus be found to decide against the revision of the sentence on Dreyfus.

This flagrant confusion of the legislative with the judicial power displayed once more the incompetence of the French rightly to use parliamentary institutions; but it left the nation indifferent. It was during the passage of the bill that the president of the Republic suddenly died. Felix Faure was said to be hostile to the defenders of Dreyfus and disposed to utili7e the popular enthusiasm for the army as a means of making tile presidential office independent of parliament. The Chambers, therefore, in spite of their anti-Dreyfusard bias, were determined not to relinquish any of their constitutional prerogative. The military and plebiscitary parties were now fomenting the public discontent by noisy demonstrations. The president of the Senate, M. Loubet, as has been mentioned, was known to have no sympathy with this agitation, so he was elected president of the Republic by a large majority at the congress held at Versailles on 18th February 1899. The new president, who was unknown to the public, though he had once been prime minister for nine months, was respected in political circles; but his elevation to the first office of the State made him the object of that defamation which had become the chief characteristic of the partisan press under the Third Republic. He was recklessly accused of having been an accomplice of the Panama frauds, by screening certain guilty politicians when he was prime minister in 892, and because he was not opposed to the revision of the Dreyfus sentence he was wantonly charged with being bought with Jewish money. Meanwhile the united divisions of the cour de cassation were, in spite of the intimidation of the legislature, reviewing the case with an independence worthy of praise in an ill-paid magistracy which owed its promotion to political influence. Instead of justifying the suggestive interference of parliament it revised the judgment of the court-martial, and ordered Dreyfus to be re-tried by a military tribunal at Rennes. The Dupuy ministry, which had wished to prevent this decision, resigned, and M. Waldeck-Rousseau formed a heterogeneous cabinet in which Socialists, who for the first time took office, had for their colleague as minister of war General de Galliffet, whose chief political fame had been won as the executioner of the Commuisards after the insurrection of 87 I. Dreyfus was brought back from the Devils Island, and in August 1899 was put upon his trial a second time. His old accusers, led by General Mercier, the minister of war of 1894, Dftyfus. redoubled their efforts to prove his guilt, and were permitted by the officers composing the court a wide license according to English ideas of criminal jurisprudence. The published evidence did not, however, seem to connect Dreyfus with the charges brought against him. Nevertheless the court, by a majority of five to two, found him guilty, and with illogical inconsequence added that there were in his treason extenuating circumstances. He was sentenced to ten years detention, and while it was being discussed whether the term he had already served would count as part of his penalty, the ministry completed the inconsequency of the situation by advising the president of the Republic to pardon the prisoner. The result of the second trial satisfied neither the partisans of the accused, who desired his rehabilitation, some of them reproaching him for accepting a pardon, nor his adversaries, whose vindictiveness was unsated by the penalty he had already suffered. But the great mass of the French people, who are always ready to treat a public question with indifference, were glad to be rid of a controversy which had for years infected the national life.

The Dreyfus affair was severely judged by foreign critics as a miscarriage of justice resulting from race-prejudice. If that simple appreciation rightly describes its origin, it Real became in its development one of those scandals character symptomatic of the unhealthy political condition of of the France, which on a smaller scale had often recurred Dre.s-fus under the Third Republic, and which were made the ag Ofl~ pretext by the malcontents of all parties for gratifying their animosities. That in its later stages it was not a question of race-persecution was seen in the curious phenomenon of journals owned or edited by Jews leading the outcry against the Jewish officer and his defenders. That it was not a mere episode of the rivalry between Republicans and iVionarchists, or between the advocates of parliamentarism and of military autocracy, was evident from the fact that the most formidable opponents of Dreyfus, without whose hostility that of the clericals and reactionaries would have been ineffective, were republican politicians. That it was not a phase of the anti-capitalist movement was shown by the zealous adherence of the socialist leaders and journalists to the cause of Dreyfus; indeed, one remarkable result of the affair was its diversion of the socialist party and press for several years from their normal campaign against property. The Dreyfus affair was utilized by the reactionaries against the Republic, by the clericals against the nonCatholics, by the anti-clericals against the Church, by the military party against the parliamentarians, and by the revolutionary socialists against the army. It was also conspicuously utilized by rival republican politicians against one another, and the chaos of political groups was further confused by it.

Ai~ epilogue to the Dreyfus affair was the trial for treason before the Senate, at the end of 1899, of a number of persons, mostly obscure followers either of M. Droulde the poet, who advocated a plebiscitary republic, or of the due 1S~ate dOrlans, thepretenderof the constitutional monarchy. ,s~. On the day of President Faures funeral M. Droulde had vainly tried to entice General Roget, a zealous adversary of Dreyfus, who was on duty with his troops, to march on the Elysee in order to evict the newly-elected president of the Republic. Other demonstrations against M. Loubet ensued, the most offensive being a concerted assault upon him on the racecourse at Auteuil in June 1899. The subsequent resistance to the police of a band of anti Semites threatened with arrest, who barricaded themselves in a house in the rue Chabrol, in the centre of Paris, and, with the marked approval of the populace, sustained a siege for several weeks. indicated that the capital was in a condition not far removed from anarchy. M. DCroulde, indicted at the assizes of the Seine for his misdemeanour on the clay of President Faures funeral, had been triumphantly acquitted. It was evident that no jury would convict citizens prosecuted for political offences and the~ government therefore decided to make use of the article of the Law of 1875, which allowed the Senate to be constituted a high court for the trial of offences endangering the state. A respectable minority of the Senate, including M. Wallon, the venerable Father of the Constitution of 5875, vainly protested that the framers of the law intended to invest the upper legislative chamber with judicial power only for the trial of grave crimes of high treason, and not of petty political disorders which a well-organized government ought to be able to repress with the ordinary machinery of police and justice. The outvoted protest was justified by theproceedings before the High Court, which, undignified and disorderly, displayed both the fatuity of the socalled conspirators and the feebleness of the government which had to cope with them. The trial proved that the plebiscitary faction was destitute of its essential factor, a chief to put forward for the headship of the state, and that it was resolved, if it overturned the parliamentary system, not to accept under any conditions the duc :dOrlans, the only pretender before the public. It was shown that royalists and plebiscitary republicans alike had utilized, as an organization of disorder the anti-Semitic propaganda which had~ won favor among the masses as a nationalist movement to protect the French from foreigncompetition. The evidence adduced before the high court revealed, moreover, the curious fact that certain Jewish rOyalists had given to the duc dOrlans large sums of money to found anti-Semitic journals as the surest means of popularizing his cause.

The last year of the 19th century, though uneventful for France, was one of political unrest. This, however, did not take the form of ministerial crises, as, for the fourth time ~~at since responsible cabinets were introduced in 1873, the dose a whole year, from the 1st of January to the 31st of of the December, elapsed without a change of ministry.

The prime minister, M. Waldeck-Rousseau, though his domestic policy exasperated a large section of the political world, including one half of the Progressive group which he had helped to found, displayed qualities of statesmanship always respected in France, but rarely exhibited under the Third Republic. He had proved himself to be what the French call un homme de gouvernementthat is to say, an authoritative administrator of unimpassioned temperament capable of governing with the arbitrary machinery of Napoleonic centralization. His alliance with the extreme Left and the admission into his cabinet of socialist deputies, showed that he understood which wing of the Chamber itwas best to conciliate in order to keep the government in his hands for an abnormal term. The advent to office of Socialists disquieted the respectable and prosperous commercial classes, which in France take little part in politics, though they had small sympathy with the nationalists, who were the most violent opponents of the Waldeck-Rousseau ministry. The alarm caused by the handing ov~t of important departments of the state to socialist politicians arose upon a danger which is not always understood beyond the btrders of France. Socialism in France is a movement appealing to the revolutionary instincts of the French democracy, advocated in vague terms by the members of rival groups or sects. Thus the increasing number of socialist deputies in parliament had produced no legislative results, and their presence in the cabinet was not feared on that account. The fear which their officeholding inspired was due to the immense administrative patronage which the centralized system confides to each member of the government., French ministers are wont to bestow the places at their disposal on their political friends, so the prospect of administrative posts being filled all over the land by revolutionaries caused some uneasiness. Otherwise the presence of Socialists on the ministerial bench seemed to have no other effect than that of partially muzzling the socialist groups in the Chamber. - The opposition to the government was heterogeneous. It included the few Monarchists left in the Chamber, the Nationalists, who resembled the Boulangists of twelve years before, and who had added anti-Semitism to the articles of the revisionist creed, and a number of republicans, chiefly of the old Opportunist group, which had renewed itself under the name of Progressist at the time when M. Waldeck-Rousseau was its most important member in the Senate.

The ablest leaders of this Opposition were all malcontent Republicans; and this fact seemed to show that if ever any form of monarchy were restored in France, political office would probably remain in the hands of men who were former ministers of the Third Republic. Thus the most conspicuous opponents of the cabinet were three ex-prime ministers, MM. Mline, Charles Dupuy and Ribot. Less distinguished republican ministrables had their normal appetite for office whetted in 1900 by the international exhibition. at Paris. It brought the ministers of the day into unusual prominence, and endowed theth with large subsidies voted by parliament for -official entertainments. The exhibitiOn was planned on too ambitious a scale to be a financial success. It also called forth the just regrets of those who deplored the tendency of Parisians under the Third Republic to turn their once brilliant city into an international casino. Its most satisfactory feature was the proof it displayed of the industrial inventiveness and the artistic instinct of the French. The political importance of the exhibition lay in the fact that it determined the majority in the Chamber not to permit the foreigners attracted by it to the capital to witness a ministerial crisis. Few strangers of distinction, however, came to it, and not one sovereign of the great powers visited Paris; but the ministry remained in office, and M. Waldeck-Rousseau had uninterrupted opportunity of showing his governmental ability. The only change in his cabinet took place when General de Galliffet resigned the portfolio of war to General Andr. The army, as represented by its officers, had shown symptoms of hostility to the ministry in consequence of the pardon of -Dryfus. The new minister of war repressed such demonstra~tions with proceedings of the same arbitrary character as those which had called forth criticism in England when used in the Dreyfus affair. In both cases the high-handed policy was regarded either with approval or with indifference by the great majority of the French nation, which ever since the Revolution has shown. that its instincts are in favor of authoritative government. The emphatic support given by the radical groups to the autocratic policy of M. Waldeck-Rousseau and his ministers was not surprising to those who have studied the history of the French democracy. It has always had a taste for despotism since it first became a political power in the days of the Jacobins, to whose early protection General Bonaparte owed his career. On the other hand liberalism has always been repugnant to the masses, and the only period in which the Liberals governed the country was under the rgime of limited suffrageduring the Restoration and the Monarchy of July.

The most important event in France during the last year of the century, not from its political result, but from the lessons it taught, was perhaps the Paris municipal election. The quadrennial renewal of all the municipal councils of France took place in May 1900. The municipality of the capital had been for many years in the hands of the extreme Radicals and the revolutionary Socialists. The Parisian electors now sent to the Hotel de Ville a council in which the majority were Nationalists, in general sympathy with the anti-Semitic and plebiscitary movements. The nationalist councillors did not, however, form one solid party, but were divided into five or six groups, representing every shade of political discontent, from monarchism to revisionist-socialism. While the electorate of Paris thus pronounced for the revision of the Constitution, the provincial elections, as far as they had a political bearing, were favorable to the ministry and to the Republic. M. Waldeck-Rousseau accepted the challenge of, the capital, and dealt with its representatives with the arbitrary weapons of centralization which the Republic had inherited from the Napoleonic settlement of the Revolution. Municipal autonomy is unknown in France, and the town council of Paris has to submit to special restrictions on its liberty of action. The prefect of the Seine is always present at its meetings as agent of the government and the minister of the interior can veto any of its resolutions. The Socialists, when their party ruled the municipality, clamoured in parliament for the removal of this administrative control. But now sad the being in a minority they supported the government prov!n~s. in its anti-autonomic rigours. The majority of the municipal council authorized its president to invite to a banquet, in h~nour of the international exhibition, the provincial mayors and a number of foreign municipal magnates, including the lord mayor of London. The ministers were not invited, and the prefect of the Seine thereupon informed the president of the municipality that he had no right, without consulting the agent of the government, to offer a banquet to the provincial mayors; and they, with the deference which French officials instinctively show to the central authority, almost all refused the invitation to the Hotel de Ville. The municipal banquet was therefore abandoned, but the government gave one in the Tuileries gardens, at which no fewerthan 22,000mayors paid their respects to the chief of the state. These events showed that, as in the Terror, as at the coup detat of 1851, and as in the insurrection of the Commune, the French provipces were never disposed to follow the political lead of the capital, whether the opinions prevailing there were Jacobi. or reactionary. These incidents displayed the tendency of the French democracy, in Paris and in the country alike, to submit to and even to encourage the arbitrary working of administrative centralization. The elected mayors of the provincial communes, urban and rural, quitted themselves like well-drilled functionaries of the state, respectful of their hierarchical superiors, just as in the days when they were the nominees of the government; while the population of Paris, in spite of its perennial proneness to reviution, accepted the rebuff inflicted on. its chosen representatives without any hostile demonstration. The municipal elections in Paris afforded fresh proof of the unchanging political ineptitude of the reactionaries. The dissatisfaction of the great capital with the government of the Republic might, in spite of the reluctance of the provinces to follow the lead of Paris, have had, grave results if skilfully organized. But the anti-republican groups, instead of putting forward men of high ability or reputation to take possession of the HOtel de Ville, chose their candidates among the same inferior cl~s~of professional politicians as the Radicals and the Socialists whom they replaced on the municipal council.

The beginning of a century of the common era is a purely artificial division of time. Yet it has often marked a turningpoint in the history of nations. This was notably tile case in France in 1800. The violent and anarchical opening phases of the Revolution of 1789 came to an end with of the the 18th century; and the dawn of the i9th was 0th ~ coincident with the administrative reconstruction of France by Napoleon, on lines which endured with little modification till the end of that century, surviving seven revolutions of the executive power. The opening years of the 20th century saw no similar changes in the government of the country. The Third Republic, which was about to attain an age double that reached by any other rgime since the Revolution, continued to live on the basis of the Constitution enacted in 1875, before it was five years old. Yet it seems not unlikely that historians of the future may take the date 1900 as a landmark between two distinct periods in the evolution of the French nation.

With the close of the r9th century the Dreyfus affair came practically to an end. Whatever the political and moral causes Results of the agitation which attended it, its practical result of the was to strengthen the Radical and Socialist parties in Droylus the Republic, and to reducetounprecedentedimpotence - the forces of reaction. This was due more to the maladroitness of the Reactionaries than to the virtues or the prescience of the extreme Left, as the imprisonment of the Jewish captain, which agitated and divided the nation, could not have been inflicted without the ardent approval of Republicans of all shades of opinion. But when the majority at last realized that a mistake had been committed, the Reactionaries, in great measure through their own unwise policy, got the chief credit for it. Consequently, as the clericals formed the militant section of the anti-Republican parties, and as the Radical-Socialists were at that time keener in their hostility to the Church thanin their zeal for social or economic reform, the issue of the Dreyf us affair brought about an anti-clerical movement, which, though initiated and organized by a small minority1 met with nothing to resist it in the country, the reactionary forces being effete and the vast majority of the population indifferent. The main and absorbing feature therefore of political life in France in the first years of the 20th century was a campaign against the Roman Catholic Church, unparalleled in energy since the Revolution. Its most:striking result was the rupture of the Concordat between France and the Vatican. This act was additionally important as being the first considerable breach made in the administrative structure reared by Napoleon, which had hitherto survived all the vicissitudes of the zgth century. Concurrently with this the influence of the Socialist party in French policy largely increased. A primary principle professed by the Socialists throughout Europe is pacificism, and its dissemination in France acted in two very different ways. It encouraged in the French people a growth of anti-military spirit, which showed some sign of infecting the national army, and it impelled the government of the Republic to be zealous in cultivating friendly relations with other powers. The result of the latter phase of pacificism was that France, under the Radical-Socialist administrations of the early years of the~ 20th century, enjoyed a measure of international prestige of that superficial kind which is expressed by the state visits of crowned heads to the chief of the executive power; greater than at any period %ince the Seeon.d Empire.

The voting of the law which separated the Church from the state will probably mark a capital date in French history; so, as the ecclesiastical policy of successive ministries, filled almost entirely the interior chronicles of France for the first five years of the new century, it will be convenient to set forth in order the events which during that period lell up to the passing of the Separation Act.

The French legislature during the first sessiOn of the coth century was chiefly occupied with the passing of the Associations Law. That measure, though it entirely changed the, legal position of all associations in France, was primarily directed against the religious associations of the Roman Catholic Church. Their influence in the land, according to the anti-clericals, had been proved by the Dreyfus affair, to be excessive. The Jesuits were alleged, on their own showing, to exercise considerable power over the officers of the army, and in. this way to have been largely responsible for the blunders of the Dreyfus case. Another less celebrated order, which took an active part against Dreyfus, the Assumptionists, had achieved notoriety by its journalistic enterprise, its cheap newspapers of wide circulation being remarkable for the violence of their attacks on the institutions and men of the Republic. The mutual antagonism between the French, government and religious congregations is a tradition. which dates from the ancient monarchy and was continued by Napoleon I. long before the Third Republic adopted it in the legislation associated with the names of Jules Ferry and Paul Bert. The prime minister, under whose administration the 20th century succeeded the I9th, was M. Waldeck-Rousseau, who had been the colleague of Paul Bert in Gambettas grand ministre, and in 1883 had served under Jules Ferry in his second ministry. He had retired from political life, though he remained a member of the Senate, and was making a large fortune at the bar, when in June 1899, at pecuniary sacrifice, he consented to form a ministry for the purpose of liquidating the Dreyfus affair. In 1900, the year after the second condemnation of Dreyfus and his immediate pardon by the government, M. Waldeck-Rotisseau in a speech at Toulouse announced that legislation was about to be undertaken on the subject of associations.

At that period the hostility of the Revolution to the principle of associations of all kinds, civil as well as religious, was still enforced by the law. With the exception of certain commercial societies subject to special legislation, no association composed of more than twenty persons could be formed without governmental authorization which was always revocable, the restriction applying equally to political and social clubs and to religious communities. The law was the same for all, but was differently applied. Authorization was rarely refused to political or social societies, though any club was liable to have its authorization withdrawn arid to be shut up or dissolved. But to religious orders new authorization was practically never granted. Only four of them, the orders of Saint Lazare, of the Saint Esprit, of the Missions Etrangres and of Saint Sulpice, were authorized under the Third Republictheir authorization dating from the First Empire and the Restoration. The Frres de la Doctrine Chrtienne were also recognized, not, however, as a religious congregation under the jurisdiction of the minister of public worship, but as a teaching body under that of the minister of education. All the great historical orders, preaching, teaching or comtempiative, were unauthorized; they led a precarious life on sufferance, having as corporations no civil existence, andbeing subject to dissolution at a moments notice by the administrative authority. In spite of this disability and of the decrees of 1880 directed against unauthorized monastic orders they had so increased under the anti-clerical Republic, that the religious of both sexes were more numerous in France at the beginning of the 20th century than at the end of the ancient monarchy. Moreover, in the twenty years during which unauthorized Orders had been supposed to be suppressed under the Ferry Decrees, their numbers had become six times more numerous than before, while it was the authorized Congregations which had diminished. The bare catalogue of the religious houses in the land, with the value of their properties (estimated by M. Waldeck-Rousseau at a milliard~4o,ooo,ooo) filled two White Books of two thousand pages, presented to parliamerit on the 4th of December 1900. The hostility to the Congregations was not confined to the anti-clericals. The secular clergy were suffering materially from the enterprising competition of their old rivals the regulars. Had the legislation for defining the legal situation of the religious orders been undertaken with the sole intention of limiting their excessive growth, such a measure would have been welcome to the parochial clergy. But they saw that the attack upon the congregations was only preliminary to a general attack upon the Church, in spite of the sincere assurances of the prime minister, a statesman of conservative temperament, that no harm would accrue to the secular clergy from the passing of the Associations Law.

In January 1901, on the eve of the first debate in the Chamber of Deputies on the Associations bill, a discussion took place which showed that the rupture of the Concordat might be nearing the range of practical politics, though parliament was as yet unwilling to take it into considertion. The archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Richard, had published a letter addressed to him by Leo XIII. deploring the projected legislation as being a breach of the Concordat under which the free exlrcise of the Catholic religion in France was assured. The Socialists argued that this letter was an intolerable intervention on the part of the Vatican in the domestic politics of the Republic, and proposed that parliament should after voting the Associations Law proceed to separate Church and State. M. Waldeck-Rousseau, the prime minister, calm and moderate, declined to take this view of the popes letter, and the resolution was defeated by a majority of more than two to one. But another motion, proposed by a Nationalist, that the Chamber should declare its resolve to maintain the Concordat, was rejected by a small majority. The discussion of the Associations bill was then commenced by the Chamber and went on until the Easter recess. Its main features when finally voted were that the right to associate for purposes not illicit should be henceforth free of all restrictions, though juridical capacity, would be accorded only to such associations as were formally notified to the administrative authority. The law did not, however, accord liberty of association to religious Congregations, none of which could be formed without a special statute, and any constituted without such authorization would be deemed illicit. The policy of the measure, as applying to religious orders, was attacked by the extreme Right and the extreme Left from their several standpoints. The clericals proposed that under the new law all associations, religious as well as civil, should be free. The Socialists proposedthat all religious communities, authorized or unauthorized, should be suppressed. The prime minister took a middle course. But he went farther than the moderate Republicans, with whom he was generally classed. While he protected the authorized religious orders against the attacks of the extreme anti~clericals, he accepted from the latter a new clause which disqualified any mejnber of an unauthorized order from teaching in any school. This was a blow at the principle of liberty of instruction, which had always been supported by Liberals of the old school, who ,had no sympathy with the pretensions of clericalism. Consequently this provision, though voted by a large majority, was opposed by the Liberals ~of the Republican party, notably by M. Ribot, who had been twice prime minister, and M. Aynard, almost the sole eurvivor of the Left Centre. It was remarked that in these, as in all subsequent debates on ecclesiastical questions, the ablest defenders of the Church were not found among the clericals, but among the Liberals, whose primary doctrine was that of tolerance, which they believed ought to be applied to the exercise of the religion nominally professed by a large majority of the nation. Few of the ardent professors of that religion gave effective aid to the Church during that period of crisis. M. de Mun still used his eloquence in its defence, but the brilliant Catholic orator had entered his sixtieth year with health impaired, and among the young reactionary~members there was not one who displayed any talent. At the other end of the Chamber M. Viviani, a Socialist member for Paris, made an eloquent speech. As was anticipated the bill received no serious opposition in the Senate. Though not in sympathy with the attacks of the Socialists in the Chamber on property, the Upper House had as a whole no objection to their attacks on the Church, and had become a more persistently anti-clerical body than the Chamber of Deputies. The bill was therefore passed without any serious amendments, even those which were moved for the purpose of affirming the principle of liberty of education being supported by very few Republican senators. In the debates some of the utterances of the prime minister were important. On the proposal of M. Rambaud, a professor who was minister of education in the Mline cabinet of 1896, that religious associations should be authorized by decree and not bylaw, M. WaldeckRousseau said that inasmuch as vows of poverty and celibacy were illegal, nothing but a law would suffice to give legality to any association in which such vows were imposed on the members. It was thus laid down by the responsible author of the law that the third clause, providing that any association founded for an illicit cause was null, applied to religious communities. On the other hand the prime minister in another speech repudiated the suggestion that the proposed law was aimed against any form of religion. He argued that the religious orders, far from being essential to the existence of the Church, were a hindrance to the work of the parochial clergy, and that inasmuch as the religious orders were organizations independent of the State they were by their nature and influence a danger to the State. Consequently their regulation had become necessary in the interests both of Church and State. The general suppression of religious congregations, the prime minister said, was not contemplated; the case of each one would be decided on its merits, and he had no doubt that parliament would favorably consider the authorization of those whose aim was to alleviate misery at home or to extend French influence abroad. The tenor of M. Waldeck-Rousseaus speech was eminently Concordatory. One of his chief arguments against the religious Orders was that they were not mentioned in the Concordat, and that their unregulated existence prejudiced the interests of the Concordatory clergy. The speech was therefore an official declaration in favor of the maintenance of the relations between Church and State. That being so, it is important to notice that by a majority of nearly two to one the Senate voted the placarding of the prime ministers speech in all the communes of France, and that the mover of the resolution was M. Combes, senator of the Charente-Infrieure, a politician of advanced views who up to that date had held office onlyonce, when he was minister of education and public worship for about six months, in the Bourgeois administration in 1895-1896. -

The Law relating to the contract of Association was promulgated on the 2nd of July 1901, and its enactment was the Socialism, only political event of high importance that year.

The Socialists, except in their anti-clerical capacity, were more active outside parliament than within. Early in the year some formidable strikes took place. At Montceau-les-Mines in Burgundy, where labor demonstrations had often been violent, a new feature of a strike was the formation of a tradeunion by the non-strikers, who called their organization the yellow trade-union (le syndicat jaune) in opposition to the red trade-union of the strikers, who adopted the revolutionary flag and were supported by the Socialist press. At the same time the dock-laborers at Marseilles went out on strike, by the orders of an international trade-union in that port, as a protest against the dismissal of a certain number of foreigners. The number of strikes in France had increased considerably under the Waldeck-Rousseau government. Its opponents attributed this to the presence in the cabinet of M. Millerand, who had been ranked as a Socialist. On the other hand, the revolutionary Socialists excommunicated the minister of commerce for having joined a bourgeois government and retired from the general congress of the Socialist party at Lyons, where MM. Briand and Viviani, themselves future ministers, persuaded the majority not to go so far. The federal committee of miners projected a general strike in all the French coal-fields, and to that end organized a referendum. But of 125,000 miners inscribed on their lists nearly 70,000 abstained from voting, and although the general strike was voted in October by a majority of 34,000, it was not put into effect. Another movement favored by the Socialists was that of anti-militarism. M. Herv, a professor at the lyce of Sens, had written, in a local journal, the Pioupiou de 1 Yoene, on the occasion of the departure of the conscripts for their regiments, some articles outraging the French flag. He was prosecuted and acquitted at the assizes at Auxerre in November, a number of his colleagues in the teaching profession coming forward to testify that they shared his views. The local educational authority, the academic council of Dijon, however, dismissed M. Herv from his official functions, and its sentence was confirmed by the superior council of public education to which he had appealed. Thereupon the Socialists in the Chamber, under the lead of M. Viviani, violently attacked the Government shortly before the prorogation at the end of the year. M. Leygues, the minister of education, defended the policy of his department with equal vigour, declaring that if a professor in the university claimed the right of publishing unpatriotic and anti-military opinions he could exercise it only on the condition of giving up his employment under governmenta thesis which was supported by the entire Chamber with the exception of the Socialists. This manifestation of anti-military spirit, though not widespread, was the more striking as it followed close upon a second visit of the emperor and empress of Russia to France, which took place in September 1901 and was of a military rather than of a popular character. The Russian sovereigns did not come to Paris. After a naval display at Dunkirk, where they landed, they were the guests of President Loubet at Compigne, and concluded their visit by attending a review near Reims of the troops which had taken part in the Eastern man~uvres. Compared with the welcome given by the French population to the emperor and empress in 1896 their reception on this occasion was not enthusiastic. By not visiting Paris they seemed to wish to avoid contact with the people, who were persuaded by a section of the press that the motive of the imperial journey to France was financial. The Socialists openly repudiated the Russian alliance, and one of them, the mayor of Lille, who refused to decorate his municipal buildings when the sovereigns visited the department of the Nord, was neither revoked nor suspended, although he publicly based his refusal on grounds insulting to the tsar.

It may be mentioned that the census returns of 1901 showed that the total increase of the population of France since the previous census in 1896 amounted only to 412,364, of which 289,662 was accounted for by the capital, while on the other hand the population of sixty out of eighty-seven departments had diminished.

As the quadrennial election of the Chamber of Deputies was due to take place in the spring of 1902, the first months of that year were chiefly occupied by politicians in preparing for it, though none of them gave any sign of being aware that~ the legislation to be effected by the new Chamber would be the most important which any parliament had undertaken under the constitution of 1875. At the end of the recess the prime minister in a speech at Saint Etienne, the capital of the Loire, of which department he was senator, passed in review the work of his ministry. With regard to the future, on the eve of the election which was to return the Chamber destined to disestablish the Church, he assured the secular clergy that they must not consider the legislation of the last session as menacing them: far from that, the- recent law, directed primarily against those monastic orders which were anti-Republican associations, owning political journals - and organizing electioneering funds (whose members he described as moines ligueurs et moines daffaires), would be a guarantee of the Republics protection of the parochial clergy. The presence of his colleague, M. Millerand, on this occasion showed that M. Waldeck-Rousseau did not intend to separate himself from the Radical-Socialist group which had supported his government; and the next day the Socialist minister of commerce, at Firminy, a mining centre in the same department, made a speech deprecating the pursuit of unpractical social ideals, which might have been a version of Gambettas famous discourse on opportunism edited by an economist of the school of Leon Say. The Waldeck-1~ousseau programme- for the elections seemed therefore to be an implied promise of a moderate opportunist policy which would strengthen and unite the Republic by conciliating all sections of its supporters. When parliament met, M. Delcass, minister for foreign affairs, on a proposal to suppress the Embassy to the Vatican, declated that even if the Concordat were ever revoked it would still be necessary for France to maintain diplomatic relations with the Holy See. On the otherhand, the ministry voted, against the moderate Republicans, for an abstract resolution, proposed by M. Brisson, in favor of the abrogation of the Loi Falloux of i85o, which law, by abolishing the monopoly of the university, had established the principle of liberty of education. Another abstract resolution, supported by the government, which subsequently become law, was voted in favor of the reduction of the terms of compulsory military service from three years to two.

The general elections tookplace on the 27th of April 1902, with the second ballots on the 11th of May, and were favorable to the ministry, 321 of its avowed supporters being Resignareturned and 268 members of the Opposition, including tion of 140 Progressist Republicans, many of whom were deputies whose opinions differed little from those of M. Waldeck-Rousseau. In Paris the government lost a few seats which were won by the Nationalist group of reactionaries. The chief surprise of the elections was the announcement made by M. Waldeck-Rousseau on the 20th of May, while the president of the Republic was in Russia on a visit to the tsar, of his intention to resign office. No one but the prime ministers intimates knew that his shattered health was the true cause of his resignation, which was attributed to the unwillingness of an essentially moderate man to be the leader of an advanced party and the instrument of an immoderate policy. His retirement from public life at this crisis was the most important event of its kind since the death of his old master Gambetta. He had learned opportunist statesmanship in the short-lived grand ministre and in the long-lived Ferry administration of r883

i88~, after which he had become an inactive politician in the Senate, while making a large fortune at the bar. In spite of having eschewed politics he had been ranked in the public mind with Gambetta and Jules Ferry as one of the small number of politicians of the Republic who had risen high above mediocrity, While he had none of the magnetic exuberance which furthered the popularity of Gambetta, his cold inexpansiveness had not made him unpopular as was his other chief, Jules Ferry. Indeed, his unemotional coldness was one of the elements of the power with which he dominated parliament; and being regarded by the nation as the strong man whom France is always looking for, he was the first prime minister of the Republic whose name was made a rallying cry at a general election. Yet the country gave him a majority only for it to be handed over to other politicians to use in a manner which he had not contemplated. On the 3rd of June 1902 he formally resigned office, his ministry having! lasted for three years, all but a few days, a longer duration than that of any other under the Third Republic.

M. Loubet called upon M. Leon Bourgeois, who had already been prime minister under M. Felix Faure, to form a ministry, but he had been nominated president of the new M. Comb,s Chamber. The president of the Republic then offered ~ the post to M. Brisson, who had been twice prime minister in 1885 and 1898, but he also refused. A third member of the Radical party was then sent for, M. Emile Combes, and he accepted. The senator of the Charente Infrieure, in his one short term of office in the Bourgeois ministry, had made no mark. But he had attained a minor prominence in the debates of the Senate by his ardent anti-clericalism. He had been educated as a seminarist and had taken minor orders, without proceeding to the priesthood, and had subsequently practised as a country doctor before entering parliament. M. Combes retained two of the most important members of the WaldeckRousseau cabinet, M. Delcass, who had been at the foreign office for four years, and General Andr, who had become war minister in igoo on the resignation of General de Galliffet. General Andr was an ardent Dreyfusard, strongly opposed to derical and reactionary influences in the army. Among the new ministers was M. Rouvier, a colleague of Gambetta in the grand ~zinis1re and prime minister in 1887, whose participation in the Panama affair had caused his retirement from official life. Being a moderate opportunist and reputed the ablest financier among French politicians, his return to the ministry of finance reassured those who feared the fiscal experiments of an administration supported by the Socialists. The nomination as minister of marine of M. Camille Pelletan (the son of Eugene Pelletan, a notable adversary of the Second Empire), who had been a Radical-Socialist deputy since 1881, though new to office, was less reassuring. M. Combes reserved for himself the departments of the interior and public worship, meaning that the centralized administration of France should be in his own hands while he was keeping watch over the Church. But in spite of the prime ministers extreme anti-clericalism there was no hint made in his ministerial declaration, on the zoth of June 1902, on taking office that there would be any question of the new Chamber dealing with the Concordat or with the relations of Church and state. M. Combes, however, warned the secular clergy not to make common cause with the religious orders, against which he soon began vigorous action. Before the end of June he directed the Prfets of the departments to bring political pressure to bear on all branches of the public service, and he obtained a presidential decree closing a hundred and twenty-five schools, which had been recently opened in buildings belonging to private individuals, on the ground that they were conducted by members of religious associations and that this brought the schools under the law of 1901. Such action seemed to be opposed to M. Waldeck-Rousseaus interpretation of the law; but the Chamber having supported M. Combes he ordered in July the closing of 2500 schools, conducted by members of religious orders, for which authorization had not been requested. This again seemed contrary to the assurances of M. Waldeck-Rousseau, and it called forth vain protests in the name of liberty from Radicals of the old school, such as M. Goblet, prime minister in 1886, and from Liberal Protestants, such as M. Gabriel Monod. The execution of the decrees closing the schools of the religious orders caused some violent agitation in the provinces during the parliamentary recess. ~But the majority of the departmental councils, at their meetings in August, passed resolutions in favor of the governmental policy, and a movement led by certain Nationalists, including M. Drumont, editor of the anti-semitic Libre Parole, and M. Francois Coppe, the Academician, to found a league having similar aims to those of the passive resisters in our country, was a complete failure. On the reassembling of parliament, both houses passed votes of confidence in the ministry and also an act supplementary to the Associations Law penalizing the opening of schools by members of religious orders.

In spite of the ardour of parliamentary discussions the French public was less moved in 1902 by the anti-clerical action of the government than by a vulgar case of swindling known as the Humbert affair. The wife of a former deputy ~ ~ for Seine.-et-Marne, who was the son of M.. Gustave Humbert, minister of justice in 1882, had for many years maintained a luxurious establishment, which included a political salon, on the strength of her assertion that she and her family had inherited several millions sterling from one Crawford, an Englishman. Her story being believed by certain bankers she had been enabled to borrow colossal sums on the legend, and had almost married her daughter as a great heiress to a Moderate Republican deputy who held a conspicuous position in the Chamber. The flight of the Humberts, the exposure of the fraud and their arrest in Spain excited the French nation more deeply than the relative qualities of M. Waldeck-Rousseau and M. Combes or the woes of the religious orders. A by-election to the Senate in the spring of 1902 merits notice as it brought back to parliament M. Clmenceau, who had lived in comparative retirement since 1893 when he lost his seat as deputy for Draguignan, owing to a series of unusually bitter attacks made against him by his political enemies. Hehad devoted his years of retirement to journalism, taking a leading part in the Dreyfus affair on the side of the accused. His ~election as senator for the Var, where he had formerly been deputy, was an event of importance unanticipated at the time. -

The year 1903 saw in progress a momentous development of the anti-derical movement in France, though little trace of this is found in the statute-book. The chief act of parliament of that year was one which interested the population much more than any law affecting the meovemeng~ Church. This was an act regulating the privileges of the bouilleurs de cru, the, peasant proprietors who, permitted to distil from their produce an annual quantity of alcohol supposed to be sufficient for their domestic needs, in practice fabricated and sold so large an amount as to prejudice gravely the inland revenue. As there were a million of these illicit distillers in the land they formed a powerful element in the electorate. The crowded and excited debates affecting their interests, in which Radicals and Royalists of the rural districts made common cause against ~Socialists and Clericals of the towns, were in striking contrast with the less animated discussions concerning the Church. The prime minister, an anti-clerical zealot, bitterly hostile to the Church of which he had been a minister, took advantage of the relative indifference of parliament and of the nation in matters ecclesiastical., The success of M. Combes in his campaign against the Church was an example of what energy and pertinacity can do. There was no great wave of popular feeling on the question, no mandate given to the deputies at the general election or asked for by them. Neither was M. Combes a popular leader or a man of genius. He was rather a trained politician, with a fixed idea, who knew how to utilize to his ends the ability and organization of the extreme anti-clerical element in the Chamber, and the weakness of the extreme derical party. The majority of the Chamber did not share the prime ministers animosity towards the Church, for which at the same time it had not the least enthusiasm, and under the concordatory lead of M. Waldeck-Rousseau it would have been content to curb clerical pretensions without having recourse to extreme measures of repression. It was, however, equally content to follow the less tolerant guidance of M. Combes. Thus, early in the session of 903 it approved of his circular forbidding the priests of Brittany to make use of the Breton language in their religious instruction under pain of losing their salaries. It likewise followed him on the 26th of January when he declined to accept, as being premature and unpractical, a Socialist resolution in favor of suppressing the budget of public worship, though the majority was indeed differently composed on those two occasions. In the Senate on the 29th of January M. WaldeckRousseau indicated what his policy would have been had he retained office, by severely criticizing his successors method of applying the Associations Law. Instead of asking parliament to judge on its merits each several demand for authorization made by a congregation, the government had divided the religious orders into two chief categories, teaching orders and preaching orders, and had recommended that all should be suppressed by a general refusal of atthorization. The Grande Chartreuse was put into a category by itself as a trading association and was dissolved; but Lourdes, which with its crowds of pilgrims enriched the Pyrenean region and the railway companies serving it, was spared for electioneering reasons. A dispute arose between the government and the Vatican on the nomination of bishops to vacant sees. The Vatican insisted on the words nobis nominavil in the papal bulls instituting the bishops nominated by the chief of the executive in France under the Concordat. M. Combes objected to the pronoun, and maintained that the complete nomination belonged to the French government, the Holy See having no choice in the matter, but only the power of canonical institution. This produced a deadlock, with the consequence that no more bishops were ever again appointed under the Concordat, which both before and after the Easter recess M. Combes now threatened to repudiate. These menaces derived an increased importance from the failing health of the pope. LeO XIII. had attained the great age of ninetythree, and on the choice of his successor grave issues depended. He died on the 20th of July 1903. The conclave indicated as his successor his secretary of state, Cardinal Rampolla, an able exponent of the late popes diplomatic methods and also a warm friend of France. It was said to be the latter quality which induced Austria to exercise its ancient power of veto on the choice of a conclave, and finally Cardinal Sarto, patriarch of Venice, a pious prelate inexperienced in diplomacy, was elected and took the title of Pius X. In September the inauguration of a statue of Renan at Trguier, his birthplace, was made the occasion of an anti-clerical demonstration in Catholic and reactionary Brittany, at which the prime minister made a militant speech in the name of the freethinkers of France, though Renan was a Voltairian aristocrat who disliked the aims and methods of modern RadicalSocialists. In the course of his speech M. Combes pointed out that the anti-clerical policy of the government had not caused the Republic to lose prestige in the eyes of the monarchies of Europe, which were then showing it unprecedented attentions. This assertion was true, and had reference to the visit of the king of England to the president of the Republic in May and the projected visit of the king of Italy. That of Edward VII., which was the first state visit of a British sovereign to France for nearly fifty years, was returned by President Loubet in July, and was welcomed by all parties, excepting some of the reactionaries. M. Millevoye, a Nationalist deputy for Paris, in the Pafrie counselled the Parisians to remember Fashoda, the Transvaal War, and the attitude of the English in the Dreyfus affair, and to greet the British monarch with cries of Vivent irs Boers. M. Droulde, the most interesting member of the Nationalist party, wrote from his exile at Saint-Sbastien protesting against the folly of this proceeding, which merits to be put on record as an example of the incorrigible ineptitude of the reactionaries in France. The incident served only to prove their complete lack of influence on popular feeling, while it damaged the cause of the Church at a most critical moment by showing that the only persons in France willing to insult a friendly monarch who was the guest of the nation, belonged to the clerical party. Of the royal visits that of the king of Italy was the more important in its immediate effects on the history of France, as will be seen in the narration of the events of 1904.

The session of 1904 began with the election of a new president of the Chamber, on the retirement of M. Bourgeois. The choice fell on M. Henri Brisson, an old Radical, but not a Socialist, who had held that post in 1881 and had subsequently ~lled It on ten occasions, the election to the office being annuaL The narrow majority he obtained over M. Paul Bertrand, a littleknown moderate Republican, by secret ballot, followed by the defeatof M. Jaurs, the Socialist leader, for one of the vicepresidential chairs, showed that one half of the Chamber was of moderate tendency. But, as events proved, the Moderates lacked energy and leadership, so the influence of the Radical prime minister prevailed. In a debate on. the 22nd of January on the expulsion of an Alsatian priest of French birth from a French frontier department by the French police, M. Ribot, who set an example of activity to younger men of the moderate groups, reproached M. Combes with reducing all questions in which the French nation was interested to the single one of anticlericalism, and the prime minister retorted that it was solely for that purpose that he took office. In pursuance of this policy a bill was introduced, and was passed by the Chamber before Easter, interdicting from teaching all members of religious orders, authorized or not authorized. Among other results this law, which the Senate passed in the summer, swept out of existence the schools of the Frres de la Doctrine Chrtienne (Christian Brothers) and closed in all 2400 schools before the end of the year.

This drastic act of anti-clerical policy, which was a total repudiation by parliament of the principle of liberty of education, shouki have warned the authorities of the Church of the relentless attitude of the government. The most superficial observation ought to have shown them that the indifference of the nation would permit the prime minister to go to any length, and common prudence should have prevented them from affording him any pretext for snore damaging measures. The President of the Republic accepted an invitation to return the visit of the king of Italy. When it was submitted to the Chamber on March 25th, 1904, a reactionary deputy moved the rejection of the vote for the expenses of the journey on the ground that the chief of the French ~executive ought not to visit the representative of the dynasty which had plundered the papacy. The amendment was rejected by a majority of 502 votes to 12, which showed that at a time of bitter controversy on ecclesiastical questions French opinion was unanimous in approving the visit of the president of the Republic to Rome as the guest of the king of Italy. Nothing could be more gratifying to the entire French nation, both on racial and on traditional grounds, than such a testimony of a complete revival of friendship with Italy~ of late years obscured by the Triple Alliance. Yet the Holy See saw fit to advance pretensions inevitably certain to serve the ends of the extreme anti-clericals, whose most intolerant acts at that moment, such as the removal of the crucifixes from the lawcoutts, were followed by new electoral successes. Thus the reactionary majority on the Paris municipal council was displaced by the Radical-Socialists on the 1st of May, the day that M. Loubet returned from his visit to Rome. On the 16th of May M. Jaurs Socialist organ, LHumani1,~, published the text of a protest, addressed by the pope to the powers having diplomatic relations with the Vatican, against the visit of the president of the Republic to the King of Italy. This document, dated the 28th of April, was offensive in tone both to France and to Italy. It intimated that while Catholic sovereigns refrained from visiting the person who, contrary to right, exercised civil sovereignty in Rome, that duty was even more imperious for the ruler of France by reason of the privileges enjoyed by that country from the Concordat; that the journey of M. Loubet to pay homage within the pontifical see to that person was an insult to the sovereign pontiff; and that only fOr reasons of special gravity was the nuncio permitted to remain in Paris. The publication of this document caused some joy among the extreme clericals, but this was nothing to the exultation of the extreme anti-clericals, who saw that the prudent diplomacy of Leo XIII., which had risen superior to many a provocation of the French government, was succeeded by a papal policy which woul~ facilitate their designs in a manner unhoped for. Moderate men were dismayed, seeing DipIoinadc that the Concordat was now in instant danger; but ~sis with the majority of the French nation remained entirely indifferent to its fate. Within a week France took the initiative by recalling the ambassador to the Vatican, M. Nisard, leaving a third-secretary in charge. In the debate in the Chamber upon the incident, the foreign minister, M. Delcass, said that the ambassador was recalled, not because the Vatican had protested against the visit of the president to the king of Italy, but because it had communicated this protest, in terms offensive to France, to foreign powers. The Chamber on the 2 7th of May approved the recall of the ambassador by the large majority of 420 to 90. By a much smaller majority it rejected a Socialist motion that the Nuncio should be given his passports. The action of the Holy See was not actually an infringement of the Concordat; so the government, satisfied with the effect produced on public opinion, which was now quite prepared for a rupture with the Vatican, was willing to wait for a new pretext, which was not long in coming. Two bi~shops, Mgr. Geay of Laval and Mgr. Le Nordez of Dijon, were on bad terms with the clerical reactionaries in their dioceses, The friends of the prelates, including some of their episcopal brethren, thought that their chief offence was their loyalty to the Republic, and it was an unfortunate coincidence that these bishops, subjected to proceedings which had been unknown under the long, pontificate of Leo XIII., should have been two who had incurred the animosity of anti-republicans. Their enemies accused Mgr. Geay of immorality and Mgr. Le Nordez of being in league with the freemasons. The bishop of Laval was summoned by the Holy Office, without any communication with the French government, to resign his see, and he submitted the citation forthwith to the minister of public worship. The French charg daffaires at the Vatican was instructed to protest against this grave infringement of an article of the Concordat, and, soon after, against another violation of the Concordat committed by the Nuncio, who had written to the bishop of Dijon ordering him to suspend his ordinations, the Nuncio being limited, like all other ambassadors, to communicating the instructions of his government through the intermediary of the minister for foreign affairs. The Vatican declined to give any satisfaction to the French government and summoned the two bishops to Rome under pain of suspension. So the French charg daffaires was directed to leave Rome, after having informed the Holy See that the government of the Republic considered that the mission of the apostolic Nuncio in Paris was terminated. Thus came to an end on the 30th of July 1904 the diplomatic relations which under the Concordat had subsisted between France and the Vatican for more than a hundred years. Twelve days later M~ Waldeck-Rousseau died, having lived just long enough to see this unanticipated result of his policy. It was said that his resolve to regulate the religious associations arose from his feeling that whatever injustice had been committed in the Dreyfus case had been aggravated by the action of certain unauthorized orders. However that may be, his own utterances showed that he believed that his policy was one of finality. But he had not reckoned that his legislation, which needed hands as calm and impartial as his own to apply it, would ,be used in a manner he had not contemplated by sectarian politicians who would be further aided by the self-destructive policy of the highest authorities of the Church. When parliament assembled for the autumn session a general feeling was expressed, by moderate politicians as well as by supporters of the Combes ministry, that disestablishment was inevitable. The prime minister said that he had been long in favor of it, though the previous year he had intimated to M. Nisard, ambassador to the Vatican, that he had not a majority in parliament to vote it. But the papacy and the clergy had since done everything to change that situation. The Chamber did not move in the matter beyond appointing a committee to consider the general question, to which M. Combes submitted in his own name a bill for the separation of the churches from the State.

During the last three months of 1904 public opinion was diverted to the cognate question of the existence of masonic delation in, the army. M. Guyot de Villeneuve, w~.

Nationalist deputy for Saint Denis, who had been ornce dismissed from the army by General de Ga)Jiffet in diffi. connection with the Dreyf us affair, brought before the cuities. Chamber a collection of documents which, it seemed, had been abstracted from the Grand Orient of France, the headquarters of French freemasonry, by an official of that order. These papers showed that an elaborate system of espionage and delation had been organized by the freemasons throughout France for the purpose of obtaining information as to the political opinions and religious practices of the officers of the army, and that this system was worked with the connivance of certain officials of the ministry, of war. Its aim appeared to be to ascertain if officers went to mass or sent their children to convent schools or in any way were in sympathy with the Roman Catholic religion, the names of officers so secretly denounced being placed on a black-list at the War Office, whereby they were disqualified for promotion. There was no doubt about the authenticity of the documents or of the facts which they revealed. Radical ex-niinisters joined with moderate Republicans and reactionaries in denouncing the system. Anti-clerical deputies declared that, it was no use to cleanse the war office of the influence of the Jesuits, which was alleged to have prevailed there, if it were to be replaced by another occult power, more demoralizing because more widespread. Only the Socialists and a few of the RadicalSocialists in the Chamber supported the action of the freemasons:

General Andr, minister of war, was so clearly implicated, with the evident approval of the prime minister, that a revulsion of feeling against the policy of the anti-clerical cabinet began to Operate in the Chamber. Had the opposition been wisely guided there can~ be little doubt that a moderate ministry would have beencalled to office and the history of the Church in France might have been changed. But the reactionaries, with their accustomed folly, played into the hands of their adversaries. The minister of war had made a speech which produced a bad impression. As he stepped down from the tribune he was struck in the face by a Nationalist deputy for Paris, a much younger man than he. The cowardly assault didnot save the minister, who was too deeplycompromised in the delationscandal. But it saved the anti-clerical party, by rallying a number of waverers who, until this exhibition of reactionary policy, were prepared to go over to the Moderates, from the bloc, as the ministerial majority was called. The Nationalist deputy was committed to the assizes on the technical charge of assaulting a functionary while performing his official duties. Towards the end of the year, on the eve of his trial, he met with a violent death, and the circumstances which led to it, when made public, showed that this champion of the Church was a man of low morality. General Andr had previously resigned and was succeeded as minister of war by M. Berteaux, a wealthy stock-broker and a Socialist.

The Combes cabinet could not survive the delation scandal, in spite of the resignation of the minister of war and the ineptitude of the opposition. On the 8th of January Fail 1905, two daysbefore parliament met, an election took of the place in Paris to fill the vacancy caused by the death Cowl,~s ministry.

of the Nationalist deputy who had assaulted General Andr. The circumstances of his death, at that time partially revealed, did not deter the electors from choosing by a large majority a representative of the same party, Admiral Bienaim, who the previous year had been removed for political reasons from the post of maritime prefect at Toulon, by M. Camille Pelletan, minister of marine. A more serious check to the Combes ministry was given by the refusal of the Chamber to re-elect as president M. Brisson, who was defeated by a majority of twenty- fIve by M. Doumer, ex-Governor-General of Indo-China, who, though he had entered politics as a Radical, was now supported by the anti-republican reactionaries as well as by the moderate Republicans. A violent debate arose on the question of expelling from the Legion of Honor certain members of that order, including a general officer, who had been involved in the delation scandal. M. Jaurs, the eloquent Socialist deputy for Albi, who played the part of Eminence grise to M. Combes in his anticlerical campaign, observed that the party which was now demanding the purification of the order had been in no hurry to expel from it Esterbazy long after his crimes had been proved in connection with the Dreyfus case. The debate was inconclusive, and the government on the 14th of January obtained a vote of confidence by a majority of six. But M. Combes, whose animosity towards the church was keener than his love of office, saw that his ministry would be constantly liable to be put in a minority, and that thus the consideration of separation might be postponed until after the general elections of 1906. ~So he announced his resignation in an unprecedented manifesto addressed to the president of the Republic on the 18th January.

M. Rouvier, minister of finance in the outgoing government, was called upon for the second time in his career to form a ministry.

A moderate opportunist himself, he intended to form a coalition cabinet in which all groups of Republicans, ministry, from the Centre to the extreme Left, would be represented. But he failed, and the ministry of the 24th of January 1905 contained no members of the Republican opposition which had combated M. Combes. The prime minister retained the portfolio of finance; M. Delcass remained at the foreign office, which he had directed since 1898, and M. Berteaux at the war office; M. Etienne, member for Oran, went to the ministry of the interior; another Algerian deputy, M. Thomson, succeeded M. Camille Pelletan at the ministry of marine, which department was said to have fallen into inefficiency; public worship was separated from the department of the interior and joined with that of education under M. Bienvenu-Martin, Radical-Socialist deputy for Auxerre, who was new to official life. Although M. Rouvier, as befitted a politician of the school of Waldeck~Rousseau, disliked the separation of the churches from the state, he accepted that policy as inevitable. After the action of the Vatican in 1904, which had produced the rupture of diplomatic relations with France, many moderates who had been persistent in their opposition to the Combes ministry, and even certain Nationalists, accepted the principle of separation, but urged that it should be effected on liberal terms. So on the 27th of -January, after the minister of education and public worship had announced that the government intended to introduce a separation bill, a vote of confidence was obtained by a majority of 373 to 99, half of the majority being opponents of the Combes ministry of various Republican and reactionary groups, while the minority was composed of 84 Radicals and Socialists and only 15 reactionaries.

On the 21st of March the debates on the separation of the churches from the state began. A commission had been appointed in 1904 to examine the subject. Its reporter was M.

The Aristide Briand, Socialist member for Saint Etienne.

ZV. According to French parliamentary procedure, the reporter of a commission, directed to draw up a great scheme of legislation, can make himself a more important person in conducting it through a house of legislature than the minister in charge of the bill. This is what M. Briand succeeded in doing. He prOduced with rapidity a report on the whole question, in which he traced with superficial haste the history of the Church in France from the baptism of Clovis, and upon this drafted a bill which was accepted by the government. He thus at one boun& came from obscurity into the front rank of politicians, and iii devising a revolutionary measure learned a lesson of moderate statesmanship. In conducting the debates he took the line of throwing the responsibility for the rupture of the Concordat on the pope. The leadership of the Opposition fell on M. Ribot, who had been twice prime minister of the Republic and was not a practising Catholic. He recognized that separation had become inevitable, but argued that it could be accomplished as a permanent act only in concert with the Holy See. The clerical party in the Chamber did little in defence of the Church. The abbs Lemire and Gayraud, the only ecciesiastics in parliament, spoke with moderation, and M. Groussau, a Catholic jurist, attacked the measure with less temperate zeal; but the best serious defence of the interests of the Church came from the Republican centre. Few amendments from the extreme Left were accepted by M. Briand, whose general tone was moderate and not illiberal. One feature of the debates was the reluctance of the prime minister to take part in them, even when financial clauses were discussed in which his own office was particularly concerned. The bill finally passed the Chamber on the 3rd of July by 341 votes against 233, the majority containing a certain number of conservative Republicans and Nationalists. At the end the Radical-Socialists manifested considerable discontent at the liberal tendencies of M. Briand, and declared that the measure as it left the Chamber could be considered only provisional. In the Senate it underwent no amendment whatever, not a single word being altered. The prime minister, M. Rouvicr, never once opened his lips during the lengthy debates, in the course of which M. Clmenceau, as a philosophical Radical who voted for the bill, criticized it as too concordatory, while M. Mline, as a moderate Republican, who voted against it, predicted that it would create such a state of things as would necessitate new negotiations with Rome a few years later. It was finally passed by a majority of 181 to 102, the complete number of senators being 300, and three days later, on the oth of December 1905, it was promulgated as law by the president of the Republic.

The main features of the act were as follows. The first clauses guaranteed liberty of conscience and the free practice of public worship, and declared that henceforth the Republic neither recognized nor remunerated any form of religion, except in the case of chaplains to public schools, hospitals and prisons. It provided that after inventories had been taken of the real and personal property in the hands of religious bodies, hitherto remunerated by the state, to ascertain whether such property belonged to the state, the department, or the commune, all such property should be transferred to associations of public worship (associations cult uejles) established in each commune in accordance with the rules of the religion which they represented, for the purpose of carrying on the practices of that religion. As the Vatican subsequently refused to permit Catholics to take part in these associations, the important clauses relating to their organization and powers became a dead letter, except in the case of the Protestant and Jewish associations, which affected only a minute proportion of the religious establishmentaunder the act. Nothing, therefore, need be said about them except that the chief discussions in the Chamber took place with regard to their constitution, which was so amended, contrary to the wishes of the extreme anti-clericals, that many moderate critics of the original bill thought that thereby the regular practice of the Catholic re ligion, under episcopal control, had been safeguarded. A system of pensions for ministers of religion hitherto paid by the state was provided, according to the age and the length of service of the ecclesiastics interested, while in small communes of under a thousand inhabitants the clergy were to receive in any case their full pay for eight years. The bishops palaces were to be left gratuitously at the disposal of the occupiers for two years, and the presbyteries and seminaries for five years. This provision too became a dead letter, owing to the orders given by the Holy See to the clergy. Other provisions enacted that the churches should not be used for political meetings, while the services held in them were protected by the law from the acts of disturbers. As the plenary operation of the law depended on the associations cultuelles, the subsequent failure to create those bodies makes it useless to give a complete exposition of a statute of which they were an essential feature.

The passing of the Separation Law was the chief act of the last year of the presidency of M. Loubet. One other important measure has to be noted, the law reducing compulsory military service to two years. The law of r88g had provided a general service of three years, with an extensive system of dispensations accorded to persons for domestic reasons, or because they belonged to certain categories of students, such citizens being let off with one years service with the colors or being entirely exempted. The new law exacted two years service from every Frenchman, no one being exempted save for physical incapacity. Under the act of 1905 even the cadets of the military college of Saint Cyr and of the Polytechnic had to serve in the ranks before entering those schools. Anti-military doctrines continued to be encouraged by the Socialist party, M. Herv, the professor who had been revoked in 1901 for his suggestion of a military strike in case of war and for other unpatriotic utterances, being elected a member of the administrative committee of the Unified Socialist party, of which M. Jaurs was one of the chiefs. At a congress of elementary schoolmasters at Lille in August, antimilitary resolutions were passed and a general adherence was given to the doctrines of M. Herv. At Longwy, in the Eastern coal-field, a strike took place in September, during which the military was called out to keep order and a workman was killed in a cavalry charge. The minister of war, M. Berteaux, visited the scene of the disturbance, and was reported to have saluted the red revolutionary flag which was borne by a procession of strikers singing the Internationale.

During the autumn session in November M. Berteaux suddenly resigned the portfolio of war during a sitting of the Chamber, and was succeeded by M. Etienne, minister of the interior7 a moderate politician who inspired greater confidence. Earlier in the year other industrial strikes of great gravity had taken place, notably at Limoges, among the potters, where several deaths took place in a conflict with the troops and a factory was burnt. Even more serious were the strikes in the government arsenals in November. At Cherbourg and Brest only a small proportion of the workmen went out, but at Lorient, Rochefort and especially at Toulon the strikes were on a much larger scale. In 1905 solemn warnings were given in the Chamber of the coming crisis in the wine-growing regions of the South. Radical-Socialists such as M. Doumergue, the deputy for Nlmes and a member of the Combes ministry, joined with monarchists such as M. Lasies, deputy of the Gers, in calling attention to the distress of the populations dependent on the vine. They argued that the wines of the South found no market, not because of the alleged over-production, but because of the competition of artificial wines; that formerly only twenty departments of France were classed in the atlas as wine-producing, but that thanks to the progress of chemistry seventy departments were now so described. The deputies of the north of France and of Paris, irrespective of party, opposed these arguments, and the government, while promising to punish fraud, did not seem to take very seriously the legitimate warnings of the representatives of the South.

The Republic continued to extend its friendly relations with foreign powers, and the end of M. Loubets term of office was signalized by a procession of royal visits to Paris, some of which the president returned. At the end of May the king of Spain came and narrowly escaped assassination from a bomb whkh was thrown at him by a Spaniard as he was returning with the president from the opera. In October M. Loubet returned this visit at ~Madrid and went on to Lisbon to see the king of Portugal, being received by the queen, who was the daughter of the comte de Paris and the sister of the duc dOrlans, both exiled by the Republic. In November the king of Portugal came to Paris, and the president of the Republic also received during the year less formal visits from the kings of England and of Greece.

One untoward international event affecting the French ministry occurred in June 1905. M. Delcassfi (see section on Exterior Policy), who had been foreign minister longer than any holder of that office under the Republic, Delcais resigned, and it was believed that he had been sacrificed by the prime minister to the exigencies of Germany, whith power was said to be disquieted at his having, in connection with the Morocco question, isolated Germany by promoting the friendly relations of France with England, Spain and Italy. Whether it be true or not that the French government was really in alarm at the possibility of a declaration of war by Germany, the impression given was unfavourable, nor was it removed when M. Rouvier himself took the portfolio of foreign affairs.

The year 1906 is remarkable in the history of the Third Republic in that it witnessed the renewal of all the public powers in the state. A new president of the Republic M. FaII~,res was elected on the 17th of January ten days after the p~ei,~ triennial election of one third of the senate, and the of the general election of the chamber of deputies followed Republic.

in Maythe ninth which had taken place under the constitutiofl of 1875. The senatorial elections of the ~th of January showed that the delegates of the people who chose the members ~of the upper house and represented the average opinion of the country approved of the anti-clerical legislation of parliament. ~The election of M. Fallires, president of the senate, to the presidency of the Republic was therefore anticipated, he being the candidate of the parliamentary majorities which had disestablished the churCh. At the congress of the two chambers held at Versailles on the 17th of January he received the absolute majority of 44~ votes out of 849 recorded. The candidate of the Opposition was M. Paul Doumer, whose anti-dericalism in the past was so extreme that when married he had dispensed with a religious ceremony and his children were unbaptized. So the curious spectacle was presented of the Moderate Opportunist M. Fallires being elected by Radicals and Socialists, while the Radical candidate was supported by Moderates and Reactionaries. For the second time a president of the senate, the second official personage in the Republic, was advanced to the chief magistracy, M. Loubet having been similarly promoted. As jn his case, M. Fallires owed his election to M. Clmencean. When M. Loubet was elected M. Cimenceau had not come to the end of his retirement from parliamentary life; but in political circles, with his powerful pen and otherwise, he was resuming his former influence as a king-maker. lie knew of the precariousness of Felix Faures health and of the indiscretions of the elderly president. So when the presidency suddenly became vacant in January 1899 he had already fixed his choice on M. Loubet, as a candidate whose unobtrusive name excited no jealousy among the republicans. At that moment, owing to the crisis caused by the Dreyfus affair, the Republic needed a safe man to protect it against the attacks of the plebiscitary party which had been latterly favored by President Faure~ M. Constans, it was said, had in 1899 desired the presidency of the senate, vacant by M. Loubets promotion, in preference to the post of ambassador at Constantinople. But M. Clmenceau, deeming that his name had been too much associated with polemics in the past, contrived the election of M. Fallires to th~ second place of dignity in the Republic, so as to have another safe candidate in readiness for the Elysee in case President Loubet suddenly disappeared. M. Loubet, however, completed his septennate, and to the end of it M. Fallires was regarded as his probable successor. As he fulfilled his high duties in the senate inoffensively without making enemies among his political friends, he escaped the fate which had awaited other presidentsdesignate of the Republic. Previously to presiding over the senate this Gascon advocate, who had represented his native Lot-et~ Garonne, in either chamber, since 1876, had once been prime minister for three weeks in 1883. He had also held office in six other ministries, so no politician in France had a larger experience in administration and in public affairs.

On New Years Day 1906, the absence of the Nuncio from the presidential reception of the diplomatic body marked conspicuously the rupture of the Concordat; for hitherto the representative of the Holy See had ranked as daye~r of the ambassadors to the Republic, whatever the relative seniority of his colleagues, and in the name of all the foreign powers had officially saluted the chief of the state. On the 20th of January the inventories of the churches were commenced, under the 3rd clause of the Separation Act, for the purpose of asstssing the value of the furniture and other objects which they contained. In Paris they occasioned some disturbance; but as the protesting rioters were led by persons whose hostility to the Republic was more notorious than their love for religion, the demonstrations ~crere regarded as political rather than religious. In certain rural districts, where the church had retained its influence and where its separation from the state was unpopular, the taking of the inventories was impeded by the inhabitants, and in some places, where the troops were called out to protect the civil authorities, further feeling was aroused by the refusal of officers to act. But, as a rule, this first manifest operation of the Separation Law was received with indifference by the population. One region where popular feeling was displayed in favor of the church was Flanders, where, in March, at Boeschepe on the ~ Belgian frontier, a man was killed during the taking m~isy. of an inventory. This accident caused the fall of the ministry. The moderate Republicans in the Chamber, who had helped to keep M. Rouvier in office, withheld their support in a debate arising out of the incident, and the government was defeated by thirty-three votes. M. Rouvier resigned, and the new president of the Republicsent forM. Sarrien, aRadical of the old school from Burgundy, who had been deputy for his native Sane-et-Loire from the foundation of the Chamber in 1876 and had previously held office in four cabinets. In M. Sarriens ministry of the 14th of March 1906 the president of the council was only a minor personage, its real conductor being M. Clmenceau, who accepted the portfolio of the interior. Upon him, therefore devolved the function of making the elections ~ ~ of 1906, as it is the minister at the Place Beauvau, n,enceau where all the wires of administrative government are minister centralized, who gives the orders to the prefectures at each general election. As in France ministers sit is or. and speak in both houses of parliament, M. Clmenceau, though a senator, now returned, after an absence of thirteen years, to the Chamber of Deputies, in which he had played a mighty part in the first seventeen years of its existence. His political experience was unique. From an early period after entering the Chamber in 1876 he had exercised there an influence not exceeded by any deputy. Yet it was not until 1906, thirty years after his first election to parliament, that he held office----though in 1888 he just missed the presidency of the Chamber, receiving the same number of votes as M. Mline, to whom the postwas allotted by right of seniority. He now returned to the tribune of the Palais Bourbon, on which he had been a most formidable orator. During his career as deputy his eloquence was chiefly destructive, and of the nineteen ministries which fell between the election of M. Grvy to the presidency of the Republic in 1879 and his own departure from parliamentary life in 1893 there were few of which the fall had not been expedited by his mordant criticism or denunciation. He now came back to the scene of his former achievements not to attack but to defend a ministry. Though his old occupation was gone, his re-entry excited the keenest interest, for at sixty-five he remained the biggest political figure in France. After M. Clmenceau the most interesting of the new ministers was M. Briand, who was not nine years old when M. Clmenceau had become conspicuous in political life as the mayor of Montmartre on the eve Of the Commune. M. Briand had entered the Chamber, as Socialist deputy for Saint Etienne, only in 1902. The mark he had made as reporter of the Separation Bill has been noted, and on that account he became minister of education and public worshipthe terms of the Separation Law necessitating the continuation of a department for ecclesiastical affairs. As he had been a militant Socialist of the unified group of which M. Jaurs was the chief, and also a member of the superior council of labor, his appointment indicated that the new ministry courted the support of the extreme Left. It, however, contained some moderate men, notably M. Poincar, who had the repute of making the largest income at the French bar after M. Waldeck-Rousseau gave up his practice, and who became for the second time minister of finance. The portfolios of the colonies and of public works were also given to old ministers of moderate tendencies, M. Georges Leygues and M. Barthou. A former prime minister, M. Leon Bourgeois, went to the foreign office, over which he had already presided, besides having represented France at the peace conference at the Hague; while MM. Etienne and Thomson retained their portfolios of war and marine. The cabinet contained so many men Of tried ability that it was called the ministry of all the talents. But the few who understood the origin of the name knew that it would be even more ephemeral than was the British ministry of 1806; for the fine show of names belonged to a transient combination which could not survive the approaching electi6rfs long enough to leave any mark in politics.

Before the elections took place grave labor troubles showed that social and economical questions were more likely to give anxiety to the government than any public movement resulting from the disestablishment of the church.

Almost the first ministerial act of M. Clmenceau was 1O8mSOC J to visit the coal basin of the Pas de Calais, where an accident causing great loss of life was followed by an uprising of the working population of the region, which spread into the adjacent department of the Nord and caused the minister of the Intericr to take unusual precautions to prevent violent demonstrations in Paris on Labor Day, the 1st of May. The activity of the Socialist leaders in encouraging anti-capitalist agitation did not seem to alarm the electorate. Nor did it show any sympathy with the appeal of the pope, who in his encyclical letter, Veheinenter nos, addressed to the French cardinals on the 11th of February, denounced the Separation Law. So the result of the elections of May 1906 was a decisive victory for the anticlericals and Socialists.

A brief analysis of the composition of the Chamber of Deputies is always impossible, the limits of the numerous groups being ill-defined. But in general ternis the majority supporting the radical policy of the bloc in the last parliament, which had usually mustered about 340 votes, now numbered more than 400, including 230 Radical-Socialists and Socialists. The gains of the extreme Left were chiefly at the expense of the moderate or progressist republicans, who, about 120 strong in the old Chamber, now came back little more than half that number. The antirepublican Right, comprising Royalists, Bonapartists and Nationalists, had maintained their former position and were about 130 all told. The general result of the polls of the 6th and 20th of May was thus an electoral vindication of the advanced policy adopted by the old Chamber and a repudiation of moderate Republicanism; while the stationary condition of the reactionary groups showed that the tribulations inflicted by the last parliamerit on the church had not provoked the electorate to increase its support of clerical politicians.

The Vatican, however, declined to recognize this unmistakable demonstration. The bishops, taking advantage of their release from the concordatory restrictions which lad withheld from them the faculty of meeting in assembly, had met at a preliminary conference to consider their plan of action under the Separation Law. They had adjourned for further instructions from the Holy See, which were published on the 10th of August 1go6, in a new encyclical Gravissimo qffi cii, wherein, to the consternation of many members of the episcopate, the pope interdicted the associations cultuelles, the bodies which, under the Separation Law, were to be established in each parish, to hold and to organize the church property and finances, and were essential to the working of the act. On the 4th of September the bishops met again and passed a resolution Of submission to the Holy See. In, spite of their loyalty they could not but deplore an injunction which inevitably would cause distress to the large majority of the clergy after the act came into operation on the 12th of December i~o6. They knew only too well how hopeless was the idea that the distress of the clergy would call .forth any revulsion of popular feeling in France. The excitement of the public that summer over a painful clerical scandal in the diocese of Chartres showed that the interest taken by the mass of the population in church matters was not of a kind which would aid the clergy in their difficult situation.

At the close of the parliamentary recess M. Sarrien resigned the premiership on the pretext of ill-health, and by a presidential decree of the 25th of October 1906 M. Clmenceau, The Cle. who had been called to fill the vacancy, took office.

~ MM. Bourgeois, Poincar, Etienne and Leygues retired with M. Sarrien. The new prime minister, placed at the foreign office M. Pichon, who had learned politics on the staff of the Justice, the organ of M. Clmenceau, by whose influence he had entered the diplomatic service in 1893, after eight years in the chamber of deputies. He had been minister at Pekin during the Boxer rebellion and resident at Tunis, and he was now radical senator for the Jura. M. Caillaux, a more adventurous financier than M. Rouvier or M. Poincar, who had been Waldeck-Rousseaus minister of finance, resumed that office. The most significant appointment was that of General Picquart to the war office. The new minister when a colonel had been willing to sacrifice his career, although he was an anti-Semite, to redressing the injustice which he believed had been inflicted on a Jewish officerwhose second condemnation, it may be noted, had been quashed earlier in 2906. M. Viviani became the first minister of labor (Travail et Prvoyance sociale). The creation of the office and the appointment of a socialist lawyer and journalist to fill it showed that M. Clmenceau recognized the increasing prominence of social and industrial questions and the growing power of the trade-unions.

The acts and policy of the Clmenceau ministry and the events which took place during the years that it held office are too near the present time to be appraised historically. It seemsnot unlikely that the first advent to power, after thirty-five years of strenuous political life, of one who must be ranked among the ablest of the twenty-seven prime ministers of the Third Republic will be seen to have been coincident with an important evolution in the history of the French nation. The separation of the Roman Catholic Church from the state, by the law of December 1905, had deprived the Socialists, the now most powerful party of the extreme Left, of the chief outlet for their activity, which hitherto had chiefly found its scope in anti-clericalism. Having no longer the church to attack they turned their attention to economical questions, the solution of which had always been their theoretical aim. At the same period the law relating to the contract of Association. of I9o1, by removing the restrictions (save in the case of religious communities) which previously had prevented French citizens from forming association without the authorization of the government, had formally abrogated the individualistic doctrine of the Revolution, which in all its phases was intolerant of associations. The law of June 1791 declared the destruction of all corporations of persons engaged in the same trade or profession to be a fundamental article of the French constitution, and it was only in the last six years of the Second Empire that some tolerance was granted to trade-unions, which was extended by the Third Republic only in 1884. In that year the prohibition of 1791 was repealed. Not quite 70 unions existed at the end of 1884. In 1890 they had increased to about 1000, in 1894 to 2000, and in 1901, when the law relating to the Contract of Association was passed, they numbered 3287 with 588,832 members. The law of 1901 did not specially affect them; but this general act, completely emancipating all associations formed for secular purposes, was a definitive break with the individualism of the Revolution. which had formed the basis of all legislation in France for nearly a century after the fall of the ancient monarchy. It was an encouragement and at the same time a symptom of the spread of anti-individualistic doctrine. This was seen in the accelerated increase of syndicated workmen during the years succeeding the passing of the Associations Law, who in 1909 were over a million strong. The power exercised by the trade-unions moved the functionaries of the government, a vast army under the centralized system of administration, numbering not less than 8oo,ooo persons, to demand equal freedom of association for the purpose of regulating their salaries paid by the state and their conditions of labor. This movement brought into new relief the long-recognized incompatibility of parliamentary government with administrative centralization as organized by Napoleon.

In another direction the increased activity in the rural districts of the Socialists, who hitherto had chiefly worked in the industrial centres, indicated that they looked for support from the peasant proprietors, whose ownership in the soil had hitherto opposed them to the practice of collectivist doctrine. In the summer of 1907 an economic crisis in the wine-growing districts of the South created a general discontent which spread to other rural regions. The Clmenceau ministry, while opposing the excesses of revolutionary socialism and while incurring the strenuous hostility of M. Jaurs, the Socialist leader, adopted a programme which was more socialistic than that of any previous government of the republic. Under its direction a bill for the imposition of a graduated income tax was passed by the lower house, involving a scheme -of direct taxation which would transform the interior fiscal system of France. But the income tax was still only a project of law when M. Clmenceau unexpectedly fell in July 1909, being succeeded as prime minister by his colleague M. Briand. His ministry had, however, passed one important measure which individualists regarded as an act of state-socialism. It took a long step towards the nationalization of railways by purchasing the important Western line and adding it to the relatively small system of state railways. Previously a more generally criticized act of the representatives of the people was not of a nature to augment the popularity of parliamentary institutions at a period of economic crisis, when senators and deputies increased their own annual salary, or indemnity as it is officially called, to I5,ooo francs. (J. E. C. B.)

ExTE1U0R POLICY 1870-1909

The Franco-German War marks a turning-point in the history of the exterior policy of France as distinct as does the fall of the ancient monarchy or the end of the Napoleonic epoch.

The new With the disappearance of the Second Empire, by epoh~ its own fault, on the field of Sedan in September 1870, followed in the early months of 1871 by the proclamation of the German empire at Versailles and the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine under the treaty of peace of Frankfort, France descended from its primacy among the nations of continental Europe, which it had gradually acquired in the halfcentury subsequent to Waterloo. It was the design of Bismarck that united Germany, which had been finally established under his direction by the war of 1870, should take the place hitherto occupied by France in Europe. The situation of France in 1871 in no wise resembled that after the French defeat of 1815, when the First Empire, ,issue of the Revolution, had been upset by a coalition of the European monarchies which brought back and supported on his restored throne the legitimate heir to the French crown. In 1871 the Republic was founded in isolation. France was without allies, and outside its frontiers the form of its executive government was a matter of interest only to its German conquerors. Bismarck desired that France should remain isolated in Europe and divided at home. He thought that the Republican form of government would best serve, these ends. The revolutionary tradition of France would, under a Republic, keep aloof the monarchies of Europe, whereas, in the words of the German ambassador at Paris, Prince Hohenlohe, 2. monarchy would strengthen France and place her in a.bettee ~osjtion to make alliances and would threaten our alliances. ~tt the same time Bismarck counted on governmental instability ander a Republic to bring about domestic disorganization which would so disintegrate the French nation as to render it unformidIble as a foe and ineffective as an ally. The Franco-German War thus produced a situation unprecedented in the, mutual relations of two great European powers. From that situation resulted all the exterior policy of France, for a whole generation, colonial as well as foreign.

In 1875 Germany saw France in possession of a constitution which gave promise of durability if not of permanence. German, pinion had already been perturbed by the facility and speed with which France had paid off the colossal war indemnity exacted by the conqueror, thus giving proof of the inexhaustible resources of the country and of its powers of recuperation. The successful reorganization of the French army under the military law of 1872 caused further alarm when there appeared to be some possibility of the withdrawal of Russia from the Dreikaiserbund, which had set the seal on Germanys triumph and Frances abasement in Europe. It seemed, therefore, as though it might be expedient for Germany to make a sudden aggression upon France before that country was adequately prepared for war, in order to crush the nation irreparably and to remove it from among the great powers of Europe.

The constitution of the Third Republic was voted by the National Assembly on the 25th of February 1875. The new constitution had to be completed by electoral laws and other complementary provisions, so it could not become effective until the following year, after the first elections of the newly founded Senate and Chamber of Deputies. M. Buffet was then charged by the president of the republic, Marshal MacMahon, to form a provisional ministry in which the duc Decazes, who had been foreign minister since 1873, was retained at the Quai dOrsay. The cabinet met for the first time on the 11th of March, and, ten days later the National Assembly adjourned for a long recess.

lEt was during that interval that occurred the incident known as The Scare of 1875. The Kulturkampf had left Prince Bismarck in a state of nervous irritation. In all The crisis of 1875. directions he was on the look out for traces of Ultramontane intrigue. The clericals in France after the fall of Thiers had behaved with great indiscretion in their desire to see the temporal power of the pope revived. But when the reactionaries had placed MacMahon at the head of the state, their divisions and their political ineptitude had shown that the government cf France would soon pass from their hands, and of this the voting of the Republican constitution by a monarchical assembly was the visible proof. Nevertheless Bismarck, influenced by the presence at Berlin of a French ambassador, M. de Gontaut-Biron, whom he regarded as an Ultramontane agent, seems to have thought otherwise. A military party at Berlin affected alarm at a law passed by the French Assembly on the 12th of March, which continued a provision increasing from three to four the battalions of each infantry regiment, and certain journals, supposed to be inspired by Bismarck, argued that as the French were ~reparing, it might be well to anticipate their designs before they were ready. Europe was scared by an article on the 6th of May in The Times, professing to reveal the designs of Bismarck, from its Paris correspondent, Blo~iitz, who was in relations with the French foreign minister, the duc Decazes, and with Prince Hohenlohe, German ambassador to France, both being prudent diploniatists, and, though Catholics, opposed to Ultramontane pretensions. Europe was astounded at the revelation and alarmed at the alleged imminence of war. In England the Disraeli ministry addressed the governments of Russia, Austria and Italy, with a view to restraining Germany from its aggressive designs, and Queen Victoria wrote to the German emperor to plead the cause of peace. It is probable that there was no need either for this intervention or for the panic which had produced it. We know now that the old emperor William was steadfastly opposed to a fresh war, while his son, the crown prince Frederick, who then seemed likely soon to succeed him for a long reign, was also determined that peace should be maintained. The scare had, however, a most important result, in sowing the seeds of the subsequent Franco-Russian alliance. Notwithstanding that the tsar Alexander II. was on terms of affectionate intimacy with his uncle, the emperor William, he gave a personal assurance to General Le Fl, French ambassador at St Petersburg, that France should have the moral support of Russia in the case of an aggression on the part of Germany. It is possible that the danger of war was exaggerated by the French foreign minister and his ambassador at Berlin, as is the opinion of certain French historians, who think that M. de Gontaut-Biron, as an old royalist, was only too glad to see the Republic under the protection, as it were, of the most reactionary monarchy of Europe. At the same time Bismarcks denials of having acted with terrorizing intent cannot be accepted. He was more sincere when he criticized the ostentation with which the Russian Chancellor, Prince Gortchakoff, had claimed for his master the character of the defender of France and the obstacle to German ambitions. It was in memory of this that, in 1878 at the congress of Berlin, Bismarck did his best to impair the advantages which Russia had obtained under the treaty of San Stefano.

The events which led to that congress put into abeyance the prospect of a serious understanding between France and Russia. The insurrection in Herzegovina in July 1875 reopened the Eastern question, and in the Orient the interests of France and Russia had been for many years conflicting, as witness the controversy concerning the Holy Places, which was one of the causes of the Crimean War. France had from the reign of Louis XIV. claimed the exclusive right of protecting Roman Catholic interests in the East. This claim was supported not only by the monarchists, for the most part friendly to Russia, in other respects, who directed the foreign policy of the Third Republic until the Russo-Turkish War of 1877, but by the Republicans, who were coming into perpetual power at the time of the congress of Berlinthe ablest of the anti-clericals, Gambetta, declaring in this connection that anti-clericalism was not an article of exportation. The defeat of the monarchists at the elections of 1877, after the Seize Mai, and the departure from office of the due Decazes, whose policy had tended to prepare the way for an alliance with the tsar, changed the attitude of French diplomacy towards Russia. M. Waddington, the first Republican minister for foreign affairs, was not a Russophil, while Gambetta was ardently anti-Russian, and he, though not a minister, was exercising that preponderant influence in French politics which he retained until 1882, the last year of his life. Many Republicans considered that the monarchists1 whom they had turned out, favored the support of Russia not only as a defence against Germany, which was -not likely to be effective so long as a friendly uncle and nephew were reigning at Berlin and at St Petersburg respectively, but also as a possible means of facilitating a monarchical restoration in France. Consequently at the congress of Berlin M. Waddington and the other French delegates maintained a very independent attitude towards Russia. They supported the resolutions which aimed at diminishing the advantages obtained by Russia in the war, they affirmed the rights of France over the Holy Places, and they opposed. the anti-Semitic views of the Russian representatives. The result of the congress of Berlin seemed therefore to draw France and Russia farther apart, especially as Gambetta and the Republicans now in power were more disposed towards an understanding with England. The contrary, however, happened. The treaty of Berlin, which took the place of the treaty of San Stefano, was the ruin of Russian hopes. It was attributed to the support given by Bismarck to the anti-Russian policy of England and Austria at the congress, the German chancellor having previously discouraged the project of an alliance between Russia and Germany. The consequence was that the tsar withdrew from the Dreikaiserbund, and Germany, finding the support of Austria inadequate for its purposes, sought an understanding with Italy. Hence arose the Triple Alliance of 1882, which was the work of Bismarck, who thus became eventually the author of the Franco-Russian alliance, which was rather a sedative for the nervous temperament of the French than a remedy necessary for their protection. The twofold aim of the Triplice was the development of the Bismarckian policy of the continLied isolation of France and of the maintenance of the situation in Europe acquired by the German empire in i8~i. The most obvious alliance for Germany was that with Russia, but it was clear t4iat it could be obtained only at the price of Russia having a free hand to satisfy, its ambitions in the East. This not only would have irritated England against Germany, but also Austria, and so might have brought about a Franco-Austrian alliance, and a day of reckoning for Germany for the combined rancours of two nations, left by 1866 and 1871. It was thus that Germany allied itself first with Austria and then with Italy, leaving Russia eventually to unite with France.

As the congress of Berlin took in review the general situation of the Turkish empire, it was natural that the French delegates should formulate the position of France in Egypt. Thus the powers of Europe accepted the maintenance of the condominium in Egypt, financial and administrative, of England and France. Egypt, nominally a province of the Turkish empire, had been invested with a large degree of autonomy, guaranteed by an agreement made in 1840 and 1841 between the Porte and the then five great powers, though some opposition was made to France being a party to this compact. By degrees Austria, Prussia and Russia (as well as Italy when it attained the rank of a great power) had left the international control of Egypt to France and England by reason of the preponderance of the interests of those two powers on the Nile.

In 1875 the interests of England in Egypt, which had hitherto been considered inferior to those of France, gained a superiority owing to the purchase by the British government of the shares of the khedive Ismail in the Suez Canal. Whatever rivalry there may have been between England and France, they had to present a united front to the pretensions of Ismail, whose prodigalities made him impatient of the control which they exercised over his finances. This led to his deposition and exile. The control was re-established by his successor Tewfik on the 4th of September 1879. The revival ensued of a so-called national party, which Ismail for his own purposes had encouraged in its movement hostile to foreign domination. In September 1881 took place the rising led by Arabi, by whose action an assembly of notables was convoked for the purpose of deposing the government authorized by the European powers. The fear lest the sultan should intervene gave an appearance of harmony to the policy of England and France, whose interests were too great to permit of any such interference. At the end of 1879 the first Freycinet cabinet had succeeded that of M. Waddington and had in turn been succeeded in September 188o by the first Ferry cabinet. In the latter the foreign minister was M. Barthlemy SaintHilaire, an aged philosopher who had first taken part in politics when he helped to dethrone Charles X. in 1830. In September 1881 he categorically invited the British government to join France in a military intervention to oppose any interference which the Porte might attempt, and the two powers each sent a war-ship to Alexandria. On the i4th of November Gambetta formed his grand ministre, in which he was foreign minister. Though it lasted less than eleven weeks, important measures were taken by it, as Arabi had become under-secretary for war at Cairo, and was receiving secret encouragement from the sultan. On the 7th of January 1882, at the instance of Gambetta, a joint note was presented by the British and French consuls to the khedive, to the effect that their governments were resolved to maintain the status quo, Gambetta having designed this as a consecration of the Anglo-French alliance in the East Thereupon the Porte protested, by a circular addressed to the powers, against this infringement of its suzerainty in Egypt. Meanwhile, the assembly of notables claimed the right of voting the taxes and administering the finances of the country, and Gambetta, considering this as an attempt to emancipate Egypt from the financial control of Europe, moved the British government to join with France in protesting against any interference on the part of the notables in the budget. But when Lord Granville accepted this proposal Gambetta had fallen, on the 26th of January, being succeeded by M. de Freycinet, who for the second time became president of the council and foreign minister, Gambetta fell nominally on a scheme of partial revision of the constitution. It included the re-establishment of scriain de liste, a method of voting to ~thich many Republicans were hostile, so this gave his enemies in his own party their opportunity. He thus fell the victim of republican jealousy, nearly half the Republicans in the chamber voting against him in the fatal division. The subsequent debates of 1882 show that many of Gambettas adversaries were also opposed to his policy of uniting with England sn the Egyptian queotioin. Henceforth the interior affairs of Egypt have little todo with the subject we are treating; but some of the incidents in France which led to the English occupation of Egypt ought to be mentioned. M. de Freycinet was opposed to any armed intervention by France; but in the face of the feeling in the country in. favor of maintaining the traditional influence of France in Egypt, his declarations of policy were vague. On the 23rd of February 1882 he said that he would assure the non-exclusive preponderance in Egypt of France and England by means of an understanding with Europe, and on the 11th of May that he wished to retain for France its peculiar position of privileged influence. England and France sent to Alexandria a combined squadron, which did not prevent a massacre of Europeans there on the 11th of June, the khedive being now in the hands of the military party under Arabi. On the 11th of July the English fleet bombarded Alexandria, the French ships in anticipation of that action having departed the previous day~ On the 18th of July the Chamber debated the supplementary vote for the fleet in the Mediterranean, M. de Freycinet declaring that France would take no active part in Egypt except as the mandatory of the European powers. This was the occasion for the last great speech of Gambetta in parliament. In it he earnestly urged close co-operation with England, which he predicted would otherwise become the mistress of Egypt, and in his concluding sentences he uttered the famous Ne rompez jamais ~alliance anglaise. A further vote, proposed in consequence of Arabis open rebellion, was abandoned, as M. de Freycinet announced that the European powers declined to give France and England a collective mandate to intervene in their name. In the Senate on the 25th of July M. Scherer, better known as a philosopher than as a politician, who had Gambettas confidence,read a report on the supplementary votes which severely criticized the timidity and vacillation of the government in Egyptian policy. Four days later in the Chamber M. de Freycinet proposed an understanding with England limited to the protection of the Suez Canal. Attacked by M. Clmenceau on the impossibility of separating the question of the canal from the general Egyptian question, the ministry was defeated by a huge majority, and M. de Freycinet fell, having achieved the distinction of being the chief instrument in. removing Egypt from the sphere of French interest.

Some of the Republicans whose votes turned out M. de Freycinet wanted Jules Ferry to take his place, as he was considered to be a strong man in foreign policy, and Gambetta, for this reason, was willing to see his personal enemy at the head of public affairs. But this was prevented by M. Clmenceau and the extreme Left, and the new ministry was formed by M. Duclerc, an old senator whose previous official experience had been. under the Second Republic. On. its taking office on the 7th of August, the ministerial declaration announced that its policy would be in conformity with the vote which, by refusing supplies for the occupation of the Suez Canal, had overthrown M. de Freycinet. The declaration characterized this vote as a measure of reserve and of prudence -but not as an abdication. Nevertheless the action of the Chamberwhich was due to the hostility to Gambetta of rival leaders, who had little mutual affection, including MM. de Freycinet, Jules Ferry, Clmenceau and the president of the Republic, M. Grvy, rather than to a desire to abandon Egyptdid result in the abdication of France. After England single-handed had subdued the rebellion and restored the authority of the khedive, the latter signed a decree on the 11th of January 1883 abolishing the joint control of England and France. Henceforth Egypt continued to be a frequent topic of debate in the Chambers; the interests of France in respect of the Egyptian finances, the judicial system and other instittitions formed the subject of diplomatic correspondence, as did the irritating question of the eventual evacuation of Egypt by England. But though it caused constant friction between the two countries up to the Anglo-French convention of the 8th of April 1904, there was no longer a French active policy with regard to Egypt. The lost predominance of France in that country did, however, quicken French activity in other regions of northern Africa.

The idea that the Mediterranean might become a French lake has, in different senses, been a preoccupation for France and for A ~ its rivals in Europe ever since Algeria became a French ~ province by a series of fortuitous incidentsan insult offered by the dey to a French consul, his refusal to make reparation, and the occasion it afforded of diverting public attention in France from interior affairs after the Revolution of 1830. The French policy of preponderance in Egypt had only for a secondary aim the domination. of the Mediterranean. The French tradition in Egypt was a relic of Napoleons vain scheme to become emperor of the Orient even before he had made himself emperor of the West. It was because Egypt was the highway to India that under Napoleon III. the French had constructed the Suez Canal, and for the same reason England could never permit them to become masters of the Nile delta. But the possessors of Algeria could extend their coast-line of North Africa without seriously ~nenacing the power which held Gibraltar and Malta. It was Italy which objected to a French occupation of Tunis. Algeria has never been officially a French colony. It is in many respects administered as an integral portion of French territory, the governor-general, as agent of the central power, exercising wide jurisdiction. Although the Europeans in Algeria are less than a seventh of the population, and although the French are actually a minority of the European inhabitantsSpaniards prevailing in the west, Italians and Maltese in the eastthe three departments of Constantine, Algiers and Oran are administered like three French departments. Consequently, when. disturbances occurred on the borderland separating Constantine from Tunis, the French were able to say to Europe that the integrity of their national frontier was threatened by the proximity of a turbulent neighbor. The history of the relations between Tunis and France were set forth, from the French staiidpoint, in a circular, of which Jules Ferry was said to be theauthor, addressed bytheforeignminister, M. Barthlemy Saint-Hilaire on the oth of May 1881, to, the diplomatic agents of France abroad. The most important point emphasized by Tunis. the French minister was the independence of Tunis from the Porte, a situation which would obviate difficulties with Turkey such as had always hampered the European powers in Egypt. In support of this contention a protest made by the British government in. 1830, against the French conquest of Algiers, was quoted, as in it Lord Aberdeen had declared that Europe had always treated the Barbary states as independent powers. On the other hand, there was the incident of the bey of Tunis having furnished to Turkey a contingent during the Crimean War, which suggested a recognition of its vassalage to the Sublime Porte. But in 1864, when the sultan had sent a fleet to La Goulette to affirm his rights in. Tunis, the French ambassador at Constantinople intimated that France declined to have Turkey for a neighbor in Algeria. France also in 1868 essayed to obtain control over the finances of the regency; but England and Italy had also large interests in the country, so an international financial commission was appointed. In 1871, when France was disabled after the war, the bey obtained from Constantinople a firman of investiture, thus recognizing the suzerainty of the Porte. Certain English writers have reproached the ForeignOffice for its lack of foresight in not taking advantage of Frances disablement by establishing England as the preponderant power in Tunis. The fact that five-sixths of the commerce of Tunis is now with France and Algeria may seem to justify such regrets. Yet by the light of subsequent events it seems probable that England would have been diverted from more profitable undertakings had she been saddled with the virtual administration and military occupation of a vast territory which such preponderance would have entailed. The wonder is that this opportunity was not seized by Italy; for Mazzini and other workers in the cause of Italian unity, before the Bourbons had been driven from Naples, had cast lyes on Tunis, lying over against the coasts of Sicily at a distance of barely ioo m.. as a favorable field for colonization and as the key of the African Mediterranean. But when Rome became once more the capital of Italy, Carthage was not fated to fall again under its domination and the occasion offered by Frances temporary impotence was neglected. In 1875 when France was rapidly recovering, there went to Tunis as consul an able Frenchman, M. Roustaxi, who became virtual ruler of the regency in spite of the resistance of the representative of Italy. French action was facilitated by the attitude of England. On the 26th of July 1878 M. Waddington wrote to the marquis dHarcourt, French ambassador in London, that at the congress of Berlin Lord Salisbury had said to himthe two delegates being the foreign ministers of their respective ~governmentsin reply to his protest, on behalf of France, against the proposed English occupation of Cyprus, Do what you think proper in Tunis: England will offer no opposition. This was confirmed by Lord Salisbury in a despatch to Lord Lyons, British ambassador in Paris, on the 8th of August, and it was followed in October by an intimation made by the French ambassador at Rome that France intended to exercise a preponderant influence in Tunis. Italy was not willing to accept this situation. In January 1881 a tour made by King Humbert in Sicily, where he received a Tunisian mission, was taken to signify that Italy had not done with Tunis, and it was answered in April by a French expedition in the regency sent from Algeria, on the pretext of punishing the Kroumirs who had been marauding on the frontier of Constantine. It wason this occasion that M. Barthlemy Saint-Hilaire issued the circular quoted above. France nominally was never at war with Tunis; yet the result of the invasion was that that country became virtually a French possession, although officially it is only under the protection of France. The treaty of El Bardo of the 12th of May 1881, confirmed by the decree of the 22nd of April 1882, placed Tunis under the protectorate of France. The country is administered under the direction of the French Foreign Office, in which there is a department of Tunisian affairs. The governor is called minister resident-general of France, and he also acts as foreign minister, being assisted by seven French and two native ministers.

The annexation of Tunis was important for many reasons. It was the first successful achievement of France after the disasters of the Franco.-German War, and it was the first enterprise of serious utility to France undertaken ~

beyond its frontiers since the early period of the Second te,1*o~. Empire. It was also important as establishing the hegemony of France on the southern shores of the Mediterranean. When M~ Jules Cambon became governor-general of Algeria, his brother M. Paul Cambon having been previously French resident in Tunis and remaining the vigilant ambassador to a Mediterranean power, a Parisian wit said that just as Switzerland had its Lac des quatre Cantons, so France had made of the midland sea its Lac des deux Cambotf s. The jeu des~rjt indicated what was the primary significance to the French of their becoming masters of the Barbary coast from the boundary of Morocco to that of Tripoli. Apart from the Mediterranean question, when the scramble for Africa began and the Hinterland doctrine was asserted by European powers, the possession of this extended coast-line resulted in France laying claim to the Sahara and the western Sudan. Consequently, on the maps, the whole of northwest Africa, from Tunis to the Congo, is claimed by France with the exception of the relatively small areas on the coast belonging to Morocco, Spain, Portugal, Liberia, Germany and England. On this basis, in point of area, France is the greatest African power, in spite of British annexations in south and equatorial Africa, its area being estimated at 3,866,950 sq. m. (including 227,950 in Madagascar) as against 2,101,411 more effectively possessed by Great Britain. The immensity of its domain on paper is no doubt a satisfaction to a people which prefers to pursue its policy of colonial expansion without the aid of emigration. The acquisition of Tunis by France is also important as~ an example of the system of protectorate as applied to coloniza~tion. Open annexation might have more gravely irritated the powers having interests in the country. England, in spite of Lord Salisburys suggestions to the French foreign minister, was none too pleased with Frances policy; while Italy, with its subjects outnumbering all other European settlers in the~

regency, was in a mood to accept a pretext for a quarrel for the reasons already mentioned. Apart from these considerations the French government favored a protectorate because it did not wish to make of Tunis a second ~yste~ii. Algeria. While the annexation of the latter had excellent commercial results for France, it had not been followed by successful colonization, though it had cost France 160 millions sterling in the first sixty years after it became French territory. The French cannot govern at home or abroad without a centralized system of administration. The organization of Algeria, as departments of France with their administrative divisions, was not an example to imitate. In the beylical government France found, ready-made, a sufficiently centralized system, such as did not exist in Algeria under native rule, which could form a basis of administration by French functionaries under the direction of the Quai dOrsay. The result has not been unpleasing to the numerous advocates in France of protectorates as a means of colonization. According to M. Paul Leroy-B eaulieu, the most eminent French authority on colonization, who knows Tunis well, a protectorate is the most pacific, the most supple, and the least costly method of colonization in countries where an organized form of native government exists; it is the system in which the French can most nearly approach that of English crown colonies. One evil which it avoids is the so-called representative system, under which senators and deputies are sent to the French parliament not only from Algeria as an integral part of France, but from the colonies of Martinique, Guadeloupe and French India, while CochinChina, Guiana and Senegal send deputies alone. These sixteen deputies and seven senators attach themselves to the various Moderate, Radical and Socialist groups in parliament, which have no connection with the interests of the colonies; and the consequent introduction of French political controversies into colonial elections has not been of advantage to the oversea possessions of France. From this the protectorate system has spared Tunis, and the paucity of French immigration will continue to safeguard that country from parliamentary representation. After twenty years of French rule, of 120,000 European residents in Tunis, not counting the army, only 22,000 were French, while nearly 70,000 were Italian. If under a so-called representative system the Italians had demanded nationalization, for the purpose of obtaining the franchise, complications might have arisen which are not to be feared under a protectorate.

But of all the results of the French annexation of Tunis, the most important was undoubtedly the Triple Alliance, into which Italy entered in resentment at having been ~ deprived of the African territory which seemed marked Alliance, out as ts natural field for colonial expansion. The most manifest cause of Italian hostility towards France had passed away four years before the annexation of Tunis, when the reactionaries,who had favored the restitution of the temporal power of the pope, fell for ever from power. The clericalism of the anti-republicans, who favored ,a revival of the fatal policy of the Second Empire whereby France, after Magenta and Solferino, had by leaving its garrison at St Angelo, been the last obstacle to Italian unity, was one of the chief causes of their downfall. For after the war with Germany, the mutilated land and the vanquished nation had need to avoid wanton provocations of foreign powers. Henceforth the French Republic, governed by Republicans, was to be an anti-clerical force in Europe, sympathizing with the Italian occupation of Rome. But to make Italy realize that France was no longer the enemy of complete Italian unity it would have been necessary that all causes of irritation between the two Latin sister nations were removed. Such causes of dissension did, however, remain, arising from economic questions. The maritime relations of the two chief Mediterranean powers were based on a treaty of navigation of 1862when Venice was no party to it being an Austrian portwhich Crispi denounced as a relic of Italian servility towards Napoleon III. Commercial rivalry was induced by the industrial development of northern Italy, when freed from Austrian rule. Moreover, the emigrant propensity of the Italians flooded certain regions of France with Italian cheap labor, with the natural result of bitter animosity between the intruders and the inhabitants of the districts thus invaded. The annexation of Tunis, coming on the top of these causes of irritation, exasperated Italy. A new treaty of commerce was nevertheless signed between the two countries on the 3rd of November 1881. Unfortunately for its stability, King Humbert the previous week had gone to Vienna to see the emperor of Austria. In visiting in his capital the former archenemy of Italian unity, who could never return the courtesy, Rome being interdicted for Catholic sovereigns by the prisoner of the Vatican, Humbert had only followed the example ofhis father Victor Emmanuel, who went both to Berlin and to Vienna in 1873. But that was when in France the duc de Broglie was prime minister of a clerical government of which many of the supporters were clamouring for the restitution of the temporal power. King Humberts visit to Vienna at the moment when Gambetta, the great anti-clerical champion, was at the height of his influence was significant for other reasons. Since the 7th of October 1879 Germany and Austria had been united by a defensive treaty, and though its provisions were not published until 1888, the two central empires were known to be in the closest alliance. The king of Italys visit to Vienna, where he was accompanied by his ministers Depretis and Mancini, had therefore the same significance as though he had gone to Berlin also. On the 20th of May 1882 was signed the treaty of the Triple Alliance, which for many years bound Italy to Germany in its relations with the continental powers. The alliance was first publicly announced on the i3th of March 1883, in the Italian Chamber, by Signor Mancini, minister for foreign affairs. The aim of Italy in joining the combination was alliance with Germany, the enemy of France. The connection with Austria was only tolerated because it secured a union with the powerful government of Berlin. It effected the complete isolation of France in Europe. An understanding between the French Republic and Russia, which alone could alter that situation, was impracticable, as its only basis seemed to be the possibility of having a common enemy in Germany or even in England~ But that double eventuality was anticipated by a secret convention concluded at Skiernewice in September 1884 by the tsar and the German emperor, in which they guaranteed to one another a benevolent neutrality in case of hostilities between England and Russia arising out of the Afghan question.

It will be convenient here to refer to the relations of France with Germany and Italy respectively in the years succeeding the signature of the Triple Alliance. With Germany both Gambetta, who died ten weeks before the treaty was announced and who was a strong Russophobe, and his adversary Jules Ferry were inclined to come to an understanding. But in this they had not the support of French opinion. In September 4883 the king of Spain had visited the sovereigns of Austria and Germany~ Alphonso XII.,, to prove that this journey was not a sign of hostility to France, came to Paris on his way home on Michaelmas Day on an official visit to President Grvy. Unfortunately it was announced that the German emperor had made the king colonel of a~ regiment of Uhlans garrisoned at Strassburg, the anniversary of the taking of which city was being celebrated by the emperor by the inauguration of a monument made out of cannon taken from the French, on the very eve of King Alphonsos arrival. Violent protests were made in Paris in the monarchical and in not a few republican journals, with the result that the king of Spain was hooted by the crowd as he drove with the president from the station to his embassy, and again on his way to dine the same night at the Elysee. The incident was closed by M. Grvys apologies and by the retirement of the minister of war, General Thibaudin, who under pressure from the extreme Left had declined to meet le roi uhlan. Though, it displayed the bitter hostility of the population towards Germany, the incident did not aggravate Franco-German relations. This was due to the policy of the prime ministers Jules Ferry, who to carry it out made himself foreign minister in November, in the place of Challemel-Lacour, who resigned.

Jules Ferrys idea was that colonial expansion was the surest means for France to recover its prestige, and that this could be obtained only by maintaining peaceful relations with all the powers of Europe. His consequent relations, unpopularity caused his fall in April 1885, and the next year a violent change of military policy was marked by the arrival of General Boulanger at the ministry of war, where he remained, in the Freycinet and Goblet cabinets, from January 1886 to the 17th of May 1887. His growing popularity in France was answered by Bismarck, who asked for an increased vote for the German army, indicating that he considered Boulanger the coming dictator for the war of revenge; so when the Reichstag, on the 14th of January 1887, voted the supplies for three years, instead of for the seven demanded by the chancellor, it was dissolved. Bismarck redoubled his efforts in the press and in diplomacy, vainly attempting to come to an understanding with Russia and with more success moving the Vatican to order the German Catholics to support him. He obtained his vote for seven years in March, and the same month renewed the Triple Alliance. In April the Schnaebel incident seemed nearly to cause war between France and Germany. The ,commissary-special, an agent of the ministry of the interior, at Pagny-sur-Moselle, the last French station on the frontier of the annexed territory of Lorraine, having stepped across the boundary to regulate some official matter with the corresponding functionary on the German side, was arrested. It was said that Schnaebel was arrested actually on French soil, and on whichever side of the line he was standing he had gone to meet.the German official at the request of the latter. Bismarck justified the outrage in a speech in the Prussian Landtag which suggested that it was impossible to live at peace with a nation so bellicose as the French. In France the incident was regarded as a trap laid by the chancellor to excite French opinion under the aggressive guidance of Boulanger, and to produce events which would precipitate a war. The French remained calm, in spite of the growing popularity of Boulanger. The Goblet ministry resigned on the i7th of May 1887 after a hostile division on the budget, and the opportunity was taken to get rid of the minister of war, who posed as the coming restorer of Alsace and Lorraine to France. The Boulangist movement soon became anti-Republican, and the opposition to it of successive ministries improved the official relations of the French and German governments. The circumstances attending the fall of President Grvy the same year strengthened the Boulangist agitation, and Jules Ferry, who seemed indicated as his successor, was discarded by the Republican majority in the electoral congress, as a revolution was threatened in Paris if the choice fell on the German Ferry. Sadi Carnot was consequently elected president of the Republic on the 3rd of December 1887. Three months later, on the 9th of March 1888, died the old emperor William who had personified the conquest of France by Germany. His son, the pacific emperor Frederick, died too, on the 15th of June, so the accession of William II., the pupil of Bismarck, at a moment when Boulanger threatened to become plebiscitary dictator of France, was ominous for the peace of Europe. But in April 1889 BoulaLger ignominiously fled the country, and in March 1890 Bismarck fell. France none the less rejected all friendly overtures made by the young emperor. In February 1891 his mother came to Paris and was unluckily induced to visit the scenes of German triumph near the capitalthe ruins of St Cloud and the Chteau of Versailles where the German empire was proclaimed. The incident called forth such an explosion of wrath from the French press that it was clear that France had not forgotten 1871. By this time, however, France was no longer isolated and at the mercy of Germany, which by reason of the increase of its population while that of France had remained almost stationary, was, under the system of compulsory military service in the two countries, more than a match for its neighbor in a singlehanded conflict. Even the Triple Alliance ceased to be a terror for France. An understanding arose between France and Russia preliminary to the Franco-Russian alliance, which became the pivot of French exterior relations until the defeat of Russia in the Japanese war of 1904. So the second renewal of the Triplic was forthwith answered by a visit of the French squadron toKronstadt in July 1891.

While such were the relations between France and the principal party to the Triple Alliance, the same period was marked by bitter dissension between France and Italy. Tunis had made Italy GalIophobe, but the diplomatic ~ relations between the two countries had been courteous ft~ly. until the death of Depretis in 1887. When Crispi succeeded him as prime minister, and till 1891 was the director of the exterior policy of Italy, a change took place. Crispi, though not the author of the Triple Alliance, entered with enthusiasm into its spirit of hostility to France. The old Sicilian revolutionary hastened to pay his respects to Bismarck at Friedrichsruh in October 1887, the visit being highly approved in Italy. Before that the French Chamber had, in July 1886, by a small majority, rejected a new treaty of navigation between France and Italy, this being followed by the failure to renew the commercial treaty of 1881. Irritating incidents were of constant occurrence. In 1888 a conflict between the French consul at Massowah and the Italians who occupied thatAbyssinia1l port induced Bismarck to instruct the German ambassador in Paris to tell M. Goblet, minister for foreign affairs in the Floquet cabinet, in case he should refer to the matter, that if Italy were invOlved thereby in complications it would not stand alone this menace being communicated to Crispi by the Italian ambassador at Berlin and officially printed in a green-book. But after Bismarcks fall relations improved a little, and in April I 89o the Italian fleet was sent to Toulon to salute President Carnot in the name of King Humbert, though this did not prevent the Fiench government being suspected of having designs on Tripoli. Italian opinion was again incensed against France by the action of the French clericals, represented by a band of Catholic pilgrims who went to Rome to offer their sympathy to the pope in the autumn of 1891, and outraged the burial-place of Victor Emmanuel by writing in the visitors register kept at the Pantheon the words Vive le pape. In August 1893 a fight took place at Aigues Mortes, the medieval walled city on the salt marshes of the Gulf of Lyons, between French and Italian workmen, in which seven Italians were killed. But Crispi had gone out of office early in 1891, and the ministers who succeeded him were more disposed to prevent a rupture between Italy and France. Crispi became prime minister again in December 1893, but this time without the portfolio of foreign affairs. He placed at the Consulta Baron Blanc, who though a strong partisan of the Triple Alliance was closely attached to France, being a native of Savoy, where he spent his yearly vacations on French soil. That the relations between the two nations were better was shown by what occurred after the murder of President Carnot in June 1894. The fact that the assassin was an Italian might have caused trouble a little earlier; but the grief of the Italians was so sincere, as shown by popular demonstrations at Rome, that no anti-Italian violence took place in France, and in the words of the French ambassador, M. Billot, Caserios crime seemed likely to further an understanding between the two peoples. The movement was very slight and made no progress during the short presidency of M. Csimir-Prier. On the 1st of November 1894 Alexander III. died, when the Italian press gave proof of the importance attributed by the Triplice to the Franco-Russian understanding by expressing a hope that the new tsar would put an end to it. But on the 1 oth of June 1895, the foreign minister, M. Hanotaux, intimated to the French Chamber that the understanding had become an alliance, and on the 17th the Russian ambassador in Paris conveyed to M. Felix Faure, who was now president of the Republic, the collar of St Andrew, while the same day the French and Russian men-of-war, invited to the opening of the Kiel Canal, entered German waters together. The union of France with Russia was no doubt one cause of the cessation of Italian hostility to France; but others were at work. The inauguration of the statue of MacMahon at Magenta the same seek as the announcement of the Franco-Russian alliance showed that there was a disposition to revive the old sentiment of fraternity which had once united France with Italy. More important was the necessity felt by the Italians of improved commercial relations with the Frepch. Crispi fellon the 4th of March 1896, after the news of the disaster to the Italian troops at Adowa, the war with Abyssinia being a disastrous legacy left by him. The previous year he had caused the withdrawal from Paris of the Italian ambassador Signor Ressmann, a friend of France, transferring thither Count Tornielli, who during his mission in London had made a speech, after the visit of the Italian fleet to Toulon, which qualified him to rank as a misogallo. But with the final disappearance of Crispi the relatiqns of the two Latin neighbors became more natural. Cofnmerce between them had diminished, and the business men of both countries, excepting certain protectionists, felt that the commercial rupture was mutually prejudicial. Friendly negotiations were initiated on both sides, and almost the last act of President Felix Faure before his sudden deathM. Delcass being then foreign minister was to promulgate, or. the 2nd of February 1899, a new commercial arrangement between France and Italy which the French parliament had adopted. By that time M. Barrre was ambassador at the Quirinal and was engaged in promoting cordial relations between Italy and France, of which Count Tornielli in Paris had already become an ardent advocate. Italy remained a party to the Triple Alliance, which was renewed, for a third period in 1902. But so changed had its significance become that in October 1903 the French Republic received for the first time an official visit from the sovereigns of Italy. This reconciliation of France and Italy was destined tohave most important results outside the sphere of the Triple Alliance. The return visit which President Loubet paid to Victor Emmanuel III. in April 1904, it being the first time that a French chief of the state had gone to Rome since the pope had lost the temporal sovereignty, provoked a protest from the Vatican which caused the rupture of diplomatic relations between France arid the Holy See, followed by the repudiation of the Concordat by ,an act passed in France, in 1905, separating the church from the state.

While the decadence of the Triple Alliance had this important effect on the domestic affairs of France, its inception had produced the Franco-Russian alliance, which took France out of its isolation in Europe, and became the pivot of its exterior policy. It has been noted ,that in the years succeeding the Franco-Prussian War the tsar Alexander II. had shown a disposition to support France against German aggression, as though to make up for his neutrality during the war, which was so benevolent for Germany that his uncle William I. had ascribed to it a large share of the German victory. The assassination of Alexander II. by revolutionaries iii 1881 made it difficult for the new autocrat to cultivate closer relations with a Republican government, although the Third Republic, under the influence of Gambetta, to whom its consolidation was chiefly due, had repudiated that proselytizing spirit, inherited from the great Revolution, which had disquieted the monarchies of Europe in 1848 and had provoked their hostility to the Second Republic. But the Triple Alliance which was conclude4 the year after the murder of the tsar indicated the possible expediency of an understanding between the two great powers of the West and the East, in response to the combination of the three central powers of Europe,though Bismarck after his fall revealed that in 1884 a secret treaty was concluded between Germany and Russia, which was, however, said to have in view a war between England and Russia. Internal dissension on the subject of colonial policy in the far East, followed by the fall of Jules Ferry and the Boulangist agitation were some of the causes which prevented France from strengthening its position in Europe by seeking a formal understanding with Russia in the first part of the reign of Alexander III. But when the Boulangist movement came to an end, entirely from the incompetency of its leader, it behoved the government of the Republic to find a means of satisfying the strong patriotic sentiment revealed, in the nation, which, directed by a capable and daring soldier, would have swept away the parliamentary republic and estab lished a military dictatorship in its place. The Franco-Russian understanding provided that means, and Russia was ready for it,, having become, by the termination in 1890 of the secret treaty with Germany, not less isolated in Europe than Fratice. In July 1891, when the French fleet visited Kronstadt the incident caused such enthusiasm throughout the French nation that the exiled General Boulangers existence would have been forgotten, except among his dwindling personal followers, had he not put an, end to it by suicide two months later at Brussels. The Franco-Russian undelstanding united all parties, not in love for one another but in the idea that France was thereby about to resume its place in Europe. The Catholic Royalists ceased to talk of the restitution of the temporal power of the pope in their joy at the deference of the government of the republic for the most autocratic monarchy of Christendom; the Boulangists, now called Nationalists, hoped that it would lead to the war of revenge with Germany, and that it might also be the means of humiliating England, as shown by their resentment at the visit of the French squadron to Portsmouth on its way home from Kronstadt. It is, however, extremely improbable that the understanding and subsequent alliance would have been effected had the Boulangist. movement succeeded. For the last thing that the Russian government desired was war with Germany. What it needed and obtained was security against German aggression on its frontier and financial aid from France; so a French plebiscitary government, having for its aim the restitution of Alsace and Lorraine, would have found no support in Russia. As the German chancellor, Count von Caprivi, said in the Reichstag on the 27th of November 1891, a few weeks after a Russian loan had been subscribed in France nearly eight times over, the naval visit to Kronstadt had not brought war nearer by one single inch. Nevertheless when in 1893 the Russian fleet paid, a somewhat tardy return visit to Toulon, where it was reviewed by President Carnot, a party of Russian officers who came to Paris was received by the population of the capital, which less than five years before had acclaimed General Boulanger, with raptures which could not have been exceeded had they brought back to France the territory lost in 1871. In November 1894, Alexander III. died, and in January 1895, M. Casimir-Prier resigned the presidency of the Republic, to which he had succeeded only six months before on the assassination of M. Carnot. So it was left to Nicholas II. and President Felix Faure to proclaim the existence of a formal alliance between France and Russia. It appears that in I891 and I892, at the time of the first public manifestations of friendship between France and Russia, in the words of M. Ribot, secret conventions were signed by him, being foreign minister, and M. de Freycinet, president of the council, which secured for France the support of Russia for the maintenance of the equilibrium in Europe; and on a later occasion the same statesman said that it was after the visit of the empress Frederick to Paris in 1891 that Alexander III. made to France certain offers which were accepted. The word alliance was not publicly used by any minister to connote the relations of France with Russia until the roth of June 1895, when M. Hanotaux used the term with cautious vagueness amid the applause of the Chamber of Deputies. Yet not even when Nicholas II. came to France in October 1896 was the word alliance formally pronounced in any of the official speeches. But the reception given to the tsar and tsaritsa in Paris, where no European sovereign had come officially since William of Germany passed down the Champs Elyses as a conqueror, was of such a character that none could doubt that this was the consecration of the alliance. It was at last formally proclaimed by Nicholas II., on board a French man-of-war, on the occasion of the visit of the president of the Republic to Russia in August 1897. From that date until the formation of M. Briands cabinet in 1909, nine different ministries succeeded one another and five ministers of foreign affairs; but they all loyally supported the Franco-Russian alliance, although its popularity diminished in France long before the war between Russia and Japan, which deprived it of its efficacy in Europe. In 1901 Nicholas II. came again to France and was the guest of President Loubet at Compigne. His visit excited little enthusiasm in the nation, which was disposed to attribute it to Russias financial need of France; while the Socialists, now a strong party which provided the Waldeck-Rousseau ministry with an important part of its majority in the Chamber, violently attacked the alliance of the Republic with a reactionary autocracy. However anomalous that may have been it did not prevent the whole French nation from welcoming the friendship between the governments of Russia and of France in its early stages~ Nor can there be any doubt that the popular instinct was right in according it that welcome. France in its international relations was strengthened morally by the understanding and by the alliance, which also served as a check to Germany. But its association with Russia had not the results hoped for by the French reactionaries. It encouraged them in their opposition to the parliamentary Republic during the Dreyfus agitation, the more so because the Russian autocracy is anti-Semitic. It also made a Nationalist of one president of the Republic, Felix Faure, whose head was so turned by his imperial frequentations that he adopted some of the less admirable practices of princes, and also seemed ready to assume the bearing of an autocrat. His sudden death was as great a relief to the parliamentary Republicans as it was a disappointment to the plebiscitary party, which anti-Dreyfusism, with its patriotic pretensions, had again made a formidable force in the land. But the election of the pacific and constitutional M. Loubet as president of the Republic at this critical moment in its history counteracted any reactionary influence which the Russian alliance might have had in France; so the general effect of the alliance was to strengthen the Republic and to add to its prestige. The visit of the tsar to Paris, the first paid by a friendly sovereign since the Second Empire, impressed a population, proud of its capital, by an outward sign which seemed to show that the Republic was not an obstacle to the recognition by the monarchies of Europe of the place still held by France among the great powers. Before M. Loubet laid down office the nation, grown more republican, saw the visit of the tsar followed by those of the kings of England and of Italy, who might never have been moved to present their respects to the French Republic had not Russia shown them the way.

While the French rejoiced at the Russian alliance chiefly as a check to the aggressive designs of Germany, they also liked the association of Fl~ance with a power regarded as Re1~atIons hostile to England. This traditional feeling was not England. discouraged by one of the chief artificers of the alliance, Baron Mohrenheim, Russian ambassador in Paris, who until 1884 had filled the same position in London, where he had not learned to love England, and who enjoyed in France a popularity rarely accorded to the diplomatic agent of a foreign power. An entente cordiale has since been initiated between England and France. But it is necessary to refer to the less agreeable relations which existed between the two countries, as they had some influence on the exterior policy of the Third Republic. England and France had no causes of friction within Europe. But in its policy of colonial expansion, during the last twenty years of the f 9th century, France constantly encountered England allover theglobe. Thefirstimportant enterprisebeyond the seas seriously undertaken by France after the FrancoGerman War, was, as we have seen, in Tunis. But even before that question had been mentioned at the congress of Berlin, in 1878, France had become involved in an adventure in the Far East, which in its developments attracted more public attention at home than the extension of French territory in northern Africa. Had these pages been written before the end of the I oth century it would have seemed necessary to trace the operations of France in Indo-China with not less detail than has been given to the establishment of the protectorate in Tunis. But French hopes of founding a great empire in the Far East came to an end with the partial resuscitation of China and the rise to power of Japan. As we have seen, Jules Ferrys idea wa~ that in coonial expansion France would find the best means of recovering prestige after the defeat of 187071 in the years of recuperation when it was essential to be diverted from European complications. Jules Ferry was not a friend of Gambetta, in spite of later republican legends. But the policy of colonial expansion in Tunis and in Indo-China, associated with Ferrys name, was projected by Gambetta to give satisfaction to France for the necessity, imposed, in his opinion, on the French government, of taking its lead in foreign affairs from Berlin. How Jules Ferry developed that system we know now from Bismarcks subsequent expressions of regret at Ferrys fall. He believed that, had Ferry remained in power, an amicable arrangement would have been made between France and Germany, a formal agreement having been almost concluded to the effect that France should maintain peaceable and friendly relations with Germany, while Bismarck supported France in Tunis, in Indo-China and generally in its schemes of oversea colonization. Even though the friendly attitude of Germany towards those schemes was not official the contrast was manifest between the benevolent tone of the German press and that of the English, which was generally hostile. Jules Ferry took his stand on the position that his policy was one not of colonial conquest, but of colonial conservation, that without Tunis, Algeria was insecure~ that without Tongking and Annam, there was danger of losing Cochin-China, where the French had beeu in possession since 1861. It was on the Tongking question that Ferry fell. On the 3oth of March 1885, onthe news of the defeat of the French troops at Lang-Son, the Chamber refused to vote the money for carrying on the campaign by a majority of 306 to 149. Since that day public opinion in France has made amends to the memory of Jules Ferry. Hispatriotic foresight has been extolled. Criticism has not been spared for the opponents of his policy in parliament of whom themostconspicuous, M. Clmenceau and M. Ribot,havesurvived to take a leading part in public affairs in the 20th century. The attitude of the Parisian press, which compared Lang-Son with Sedan and Jules Ferry with Emile Offivier, has been generally deplored, as has that of the public which was ready to offer violence to the fallen minister, and which was still so hostile to him in t887 that the congress at Versailles was per~ suaded that there would be a revolution in Paris if it elected the German Ferry president of the Republic. Nevertheless his adversaries in parliament, in the press and in the street have been justifiednot owing to their stiperior sagacity, but owing to a series of unexpected events which the most foreseeing statesmen of the world never anticipated. The Indo-China dream of Jules Ferry might have led to a magnificent empire in the East to compensate for that which Dupleix lost and Napoleon failed to reconquer.

The Russian alliance, which came at the time when Ferrys policy was justified in the eyes of the public, too late for him to enjoy any credit, gave a new impetus to the French idea of establishing an empire in the Far East. In the opinion of all the prophets of Europe the great international struggle in the near future was to he that of England with Russia for the possession of india. If Russia won, France might have a share in the dismembered Indian empire, of which part of the frontier now marched with that of French Indo-China, since Burma had become British and Tongking French. Such aspirations were not formulated in white-books or in parliamentary speeches. Indeed, the apprehension of difficulty with England limited French ambition on the Siamese frontier. That did not prevent dangerous friction arising between England and France on the question of the Mekong, the river which flows from China almost due south into the China Sea traversing the whole length of French Indo-China, and forming part of the eastern boundary of Upper Burma and Siam. The aim of France was to secure the whale of the left bank of the Mekong, the highway of commerce from southern China. The opposition of Siam to this delimitation Was believed by the French to be inspired by England, the supremacy of France on the Mekong river being prejudicial to British commerce with China. The inevitable rivalry between the two powers reached an acute crisis in 1893, the British ambassador in Paris being Lord lhjfferin, who well understood the question, upper Bmtrma having been annexed to India under his viceroyalty in 1885. The matter was not settled until 1894; when not only was the French daim to the left bank of the Mekong allowed, but the neutrality of a 25-kilometre zone on the Siamese bank was conceded as open to French trade. It is said that at one moment in July 1893 England and France were more nearly at war than at any other international crisis under the Third Republic, not excluding that of Fashoda, though the acute tension between the governments was unknown to the public.

The Panama affair had left French public opinion in a nervous condition. Fantastic charges were brought not only in the press, but in the chamber of deputies, against newspapers and politicians of having accepted bribes from the British government. At the general election in August and September 1893 M. Clmenceau was pursued into his distant constituency in the Var by a crowd of Parisian politicians, who brought about his defeat less by alleging his connection with the Panama scandal than by propagating the legend that he was the paid agent of England. The official republic, which changed its prime minister three times and its foreign minister twice in 1893, M. Develle filling that post in the Ribot and Dupuy ministries and M. Casimir-Prier in his own, repudiated with energy the calumnies as to the attempted interference of England in French domestic affairs. But the successive governments were not in a mood to make concessions in foreign questions, as all France was under the glamour of the preliminary manifestations of the Russian alliance. This was seen, a few weeks after the elections, in the wild enthusiasm with which Paris received Admiral Avelane and his officers, who had brought the Russian fleet to Toulon to return the visit of the French fleet to Kronstadt in 1891. The death of Marshal MacMahon, who had won his first renown in the Crimea, and his funeral at the Invalides while the Russians were in Paris, were used to emphasize the fact that the allies before Sebastopol were no longer friends. The projector of the French empire in the Far East did not live to see this phase of the seeming justification of the policy which had cost him place and popularity. Jules Ferry had died on the 17th of March 1893, only three weeks after his triumphant rehabilitation in the political world by his election to the presidency of the Senate, the second post in the state. The year he died it seemed as though with the active aid of Russia and the sympathy.of Germany the possessions of France in south-eastern Asia might have indefinitely expanded into southern China. A few years later the defeat of Russia by Japan and the rise of the sea-power of the Japanese practically ended the French empire in Indo-China. What the French already had at the end of the last century is virtually guaranteed to them only by the Anglo-Japanese alliance. It is in the irony of things that these possessions which were a sign of French rivalry with England should now be secured to France by Englands friendliness. For it is now recognized by the French that the defence of Indo-China is impossible.

Had the French dream been realized of a large expansion of territory into southern China, the success of the new empire would have been based on free Chinese labor. This migbt have counterbalanced an initial obstacle to all French colonial schemes, more important than those which arise from international difficultiesthe reluctance of ,the French to establish themselves as serious colonists in their oversea possessions. We have noted how Algeria, which is nearer to Toulon and Marseilles than arc Paris and Havre, has been comparatively neglected by the French,, after eighty years of occupation, in spite of the amenity of its climate and its soil for European settlers. The new French colonial school advocates the withdrawal of France from adventures in distant tropical countries which can be reached only by long sea voyages, and the.concentration of French activity in the northern half of the African continent. Madagascar is, as we have seeti, counted as Africa In computing the area of French colonial territory. But it lies entirely outside the, scheme of African colonization, and in spite of the loss of life and money incurred in its conquest, its retention is not popular with the new school, although the first claim of France to it was as long ago as the reign of Louis XIII., when in 2642 a company was founded under the protectionof Richelieu for the colonization of the island. The French of the i9th and 20th centuries may well be considered less enterprising in both hemispheres than were their ancestors of the 17th, and Madagascar, after having been the cause of much ill-feeling between England and France under the Third Republic down to the time of its formal annexation, by the law of the 9th of August 1896, is not now the object of much interest among French politicians. On the African continent it is different. When the Republic succeeded to the Second Empire the French African possessions outside Algiers were inconsiderable in area. The chief was Senegal, which though founded as a French station under Louis XIII., was virtually the creation of Faidherbe under the Second Empire, even in a greater degree than were Tunis and Tongking of Jules Ferry under the Third Republic. There was also Gabun, which is now included in French Congo. Those outposts in the tropics became the starting-points for the expansion of a French sphere of influence in north Africa, which by the beginning of the 20th century made France the nominal possessor of a vast territory stretching from the equatorial region on the gulf of Guinea to the Mediterranean. A large portion of it is of no importance, including the once mysterious Timbuktu and the wilds of the waterless Sahara desert. But the steps whereby these wide tracts of wilderness and of valuable territory came to French be marked on the maps in French colors, by inter- and national agreement, are important, as they were English associated with the last serious official dispute between rivalry. England and France before the period of entente. M. Hanotaux, who was foreign minister for the then unprecedented term of four years, from 1894 to 1898, with one short interval of a few moiljhs, has thrown an instructive light on the feeling with which French politicians up to the end of the I9th century regarded England. He declared in 1909, with the high authority of one who was during years of Anglo-French tension the mouthpiece of the Republic in its relations with other powers, that every move in the direction of colonial expansion made by France disquieted and irritated England. He complained that when France, under the stimulating guidance of Jules Ferry, undertook the reconstitution of an oversea domain, England barred the wayin Egypt, in Tunis, in Madagascar, in Indo-China, in the, Congo, in Oceania. Writing with the knowledge of an ex-foreign minister, who had enjoyed many years of retirement to enable him to weigh his words, M. Hanotaux asserted without any qualification that when he took office England had conceived a triple design, to assume the position of heir to the Portuguese possessions in Africa, to destroy the independence of the South African republics, and to remain in perpetuity in Egypt. We have not to discuss the truth of those propositions, we have only to note the tendency of French policy; and in so doing it is useful to remark that the official belief of thefl Third Republic in the last period of the I9th century was that England was the enemy of French colonial expansion all over the globe, and that in the so-called scramble for Africa English ambition was the chief obstacle to the schemes of France. M. Hanotaux, with the authority of official knowledge, indicated that the English project of a railway from the Cape of Good Hope to Cairo was the provocation which stimulated the French to essay a similar adventure; though he denied that the Marchand mission and other similar expeditions about to be mentioned were conceived with the specific object of preventing the accomplishment of the British plan. The explorations of Stanley had demonstrated that access to the Great Lakes and the Upper Nile could be effected as easily from the west coast of Africa as from other directions. The French, from their ancient possession of Gabun, had extended their operations far to the east, and had by treaties with European powers obtained the right bank of the Ubanghl, a great affluent of the Congo, as a frontier between their territory and that of the Congo Independent State. They thus found themselves, with respect to Europe, in possession of a region which approached the valley of the Upper Nile. Between. the fall of Jules Ferry in i885 and the beginning of the Russian alliance came a period of decreased activity in French colonial expansion. The unpopularity of the Tongking expedition was one of the causes of the popularity of General Boulanger, who diverted the French public from distant enterprises to a contemplation of the German frontier, and when Boulangism came to an end the Panama affair took its place in the interest it excited. But the colonial party in France did not lose sight of the possibility of establishing Upper a position on the Upper Nile. The partition of Africa fJlie seemed to offer an occasion for France to take cornexpiora- pensation for the English occupation of Egypt. In.

on. 1892 the Budget Commission, on the proposal of M. Etienne, deputy for Oran, who had three times been colonial under secretary, voted 300,000 francs for the despatch of a mission to explore and report on those regions, which had not had much attention since the days of Emin. But the project was not then carried out. Later, parliament voted a sum six times larger for strengthening the French positions on the Upper Ubanghi and their means of communication with the coast. But Colonel Monteils expedition, which was the consequence of this vote, was diverted, and the 1,800,000 francs were spent at Loango, the southern port of French Congo, and on the Ivory Coast, the French territory which lies between Liberia and the British Gold Coast Colony, where a prolonged war ensued with Samory, a Nigerian chieftain. In September 1894, M. Delcass being colonial minister, M. Liotard was appointed commissioner of the Upper Ubanghi with instructions to extend French influence in the Bahr-el-Ghazal up to the Nile. In addition to official missions, numerous expeditions of French explorers took place in Central Africa during this period, and negotiations were continually going on between the British and French governments. Towards the end of 1895 Lord Salisbury, who had succeeded Lord Kimberley at the foreign office, informed Baron de Courcel, the French ambassador, that an expedition to the Upper Nile was projected for the purpose of putting an end to Mahdism. M. Hanotaux was not at this moment minister of foreign affairs. He had been succeeded by M. Berthelot, the eminent chemist, who resigned that office on the 26th of March 1896, a month before the fall of the Bourgeois cabinet of which he was a member, in consequence of a question raised in the chamber on this subject of the English expedition to the Soudan. According to M. Hanotaux, who returned to the Quai dOrsay, in the Mline ministry, on the 29th of April 1896, Lord Salisbury at the end of the pTevious year, in announcing the expedition confidentially to M. de Courcel, had assured him that it would not go beyond Dongola without a preliminary understanding with France. There must have been a misunderstanding on this point, as after reaching Dongola in September 1896 the Anglo-Egyptian army proceeded up the Nile in the direction of Khartoum. Before M. Hanotaux resumed office the Marchand mission had been formally Marchand mission, planned. On the 24th of February 1896 M. Guieysse, colonial minister in the Bourgeois ministry, had signed Captain Marchands instructions to the effect that he must march through the Upper Ubanghi, in order to extend French influence as far as the Nile, and try to reach that river before Colonel Colvile, who was leading an expedition from the East. He was also advised to conciliate the Mahdi if the aim of the mission could be benefited thereby. M. Liotard was raised to the rank of governor of the Upper Ubanghi, and in a despatch to him the new colonial minister, M. Andr Lebon, wrote that the Marchand mission was not to be considered a military enterprise, it being sent out with the intention of maintaining the political line which for two years M. Liotard had persistently been following, and of which the establishment of France in the basin of the Nile ought to be the cr-awning reward. Two days later, on the 25th of June 1896, Captain Marchand embarked for Africa. This is not the place for a description of his adventures in crossing the continent or when Pashoda. he encountered General Kitchener at Fashoda, two months after his arrival there in July 1898 and a fortnight after the battle of Orndurman and the capture of Khartoum. The news was made known to Europe by the sirdars telegrams to the British government in September announcing the presence of the French mission at Fashoda. Then ensued a period of acute tension between the French and English governments, which gave the impression to the public that witr between the two countries was inevitable. But those who were watching the situation in France on the spot knew that there was no question of fighting. France was unprepared, and was also involved in the toils of the Dreyfus affair. Had the situation been that of a year later, when the French domestic controversy was ending and the Transvaal War beginning, England might have been in a very difficult position. General Kitchener declined to recognize a French occupation of any part of the Nile valley. A long discussion ensued between the British and French governments, which was ended by the latter deciding on the 6th of November 1898 not to maintain the Marchand mission at Fashoda. Captain Marchand refused to return to Europe by way of the Nile and Lower Egypt, marching across Abyssinia to Jibuti in French Somaliland, where he embarked for France. He was received with well-merited enthusiasm in Paris. But the most remarkable feature of his reception was that the ministry became so alarmed lest the popularity of the hero of Fashoda should be at the expense of that of the parliamentary republic, that it put an end to the public acclamations by despatching him ~ecretly from the capitala somewhat simi~ar treatment having been accorded to General Dodds in 1893 on his return to France after conquering Dahomey. The Marchand mission had little effect on African questions at issue between France and Great Britain, as a great settlement had been effected while it was on its way Con yen- across the continent. On the 14th of June 1898, the LIon of day before the fall of the Mline ministry, when M. 1898. Hanotaux finally quitted the Quai dOrsay, a convention of general delimitation was signed at Paris by that minister and by the British ambassador, Sir Edmund Monson, which as regards the respective claims of England and France covered in its scope the whole of the northern half of Africa from Senegambia and the C&ngo to the valley of the Nile. Comparatively little attention was paid to it amid the exciting events which followed, so little that M. de Courcel has officially recorded that three months later, on the eve of the Fashoda incident, Lord Salisbury declared to him that he was not sufficiently acquainted with the geography of Africa to express an opinion on certain questions of delimitation arising out of the success of the British expedition on the Upper Nile. The convention of June 1898 was, however, of the highest importance, as it affirmed the junction into one vast territory of the three chief African domains of France, Algeria and Tunis, Senegal and the Niger, Chad and the Congo, thus conceding to France the whole of the north-western continent with the exception of Morocco, Liberia and the European colonies on the Atlantic. This arrangement, which was completed by an additional convention on the 21st of March 1899, made Morocco a legitimate object of French ambition.

The other questions which caused mutual animosity between England and France in the decline of the I9th century had nothing whatever to do with their conflicting inter- The national interests. The offensive attitude of the en~ente English press towards France on account of the Dreyfus affair was repaid by the French in their criticism of the Boer War. When those sentimental causes of mutual irritation had become less acute, the press of the two countries was moved by certain influences to recognize that rt was in their interest to be on good terms with one another. The importance of their commerical relations was brought into relief as though it were a new fact. At last in 1903 state visits between the rulers of England and of France took place in their respective capitals, for the first time since the early days of the Second Empire, followed by an Anglo-French convention signed on the 8th of April 1904. By this an arrangement was come to on outstanding questions of controversy between England and France in various parts of the world. France undertook not to interfere with the action of England in Egypt, while England made a like undertaking as to French influence in Morocco. France conceded certain of its fishing rights in Newfoundland which had been a perpetual source of irritation between the two countries for nearly two hundred years since the treaty of Utrecht of 1713. In return England made several concessions to France in Africa, including that of the Los Islands off Sierra Leone and some rectifications of frontier on the Gambia and between the Niger and Lake Chad. Other points of difference were arranged as to Siam, the New Hebrides and Madagascar. The convention of 2904 was on the whole more advantageous for England than for France. The free hand which England conceded to France in dealing with Morocco was a somewhat burdensome gift owing to German interference; but the incidents which arose from the Franco-German conflict in that country are as yet too recent for any estimate of their possible consequences.

One result was the retirement of M. Delcass from the foreign office on the 6th of June 2905. He had been foreign minister for seven years, a consecutive period of rare length, Tke~ fM only o~ice ei~ceeded in England since the creation of the office, when Castlereagh held it for ten years, and one of prodigious duration in the history of the Third Republic. J~-Ie first went to the Quai dOrsay in the Brisson ministry of June 1898, remained there during the Dupuy ministry of the same year, was reappointed by M. Waldeck-Rousseau in his cabinet which lasted from June 1899 to June 1902, was retained in the post by M. Com,bes till his ministry fell in January 1905, and again by his successor M. Rouvier till his own resignation in June of that year. M.Delcass had thusan uninterrupted reign at the foreign office during a long critical period of transition both in the interior politics of France and in its exterior relations. He went to the Quai dOrsay when the Dreyfus agitation was most acute, and left it when parliament was absorbed in discussing the separation of church and state. He saw the FrancoRussian alliance lose its popularity in the country even before the Russian defeat by the Japanese in the last days of his ministry. Although in the course of his official duties at the colonial office he had been partly responsible for some of the expeditions sent to Africa for the purpose of checking British influence, he was fully disposed to pursue a policy which might lead, to a friendly understanding with England. In this he differed from M. Hanotaux, who was essentially the man of the Franco-Russian alliance, owing to it much of his prestige, including his election to the French Academy, and Russia, to which he gave exclusive allegiance, was then deemed to be primarily the enemy of England. M. Delcass on the contrary, from the first, desired to assist a rapprochement between England and Russia as preliminary to the arrangement he proposed between England and France. He was foreign minister when the, tsar paid his second visit to France, but there was no longer the national unanimity which welcomed him in 1896. M. Delcass also accompanied President Loubet to Russia when he returned the tsars second visit in 2902. But exchange of compliments between France and Russia were no longer to be the sole international ceremonials within the attributes of the French foreign office; M. Delcass was minister when the procession of European sovereigns headed by the kings of England and of Italy in 1903 came officially to Paris, and he went with M. Loubet to London and to Rome on the presidents return visits to those capitals the latter being the immediate cause of the rupture of the concordat with the Vatican, though M. Delcass was essentially a concordatory minister. His retirement from the Rouvier ministry in June 1905 was due to pressure from Germany in conseqi1ence of his opposition to German interference in Morocco. His resignation took place just a week after the news had arrived of the destruction of the Russian fleet by the Japanese, which completed the disablement of the one ally of France. The impression was current in France that Germany wished to give the French nation a fright before the understanding with England had reached an effective stage, and it was actually believed that the resignation of M. Delcass averted a declaration of war. Although that belief revived to some. extent the fading enmity of the French towards the conquerors of Alsace-Lorraine, the fear which accompanied it moved a considerable section of the nation to favor an understanding with Germany in preference to, or even at the expense of, friendly relations with England.

M. Clmenceau, who only late in life came into office, and attained it at the moment when a better understanding with England was progressing, had been throughout his long career, of all French public men in all .political groups, the most, consistent friend of England. His presence at the head of affairs was a guarantee of amicable Anglo-French relations, so far as they could be protected by statesmanship.

By reason of the increased duration and stability of ministries, the personal influence of ministers in directing the foreign policy of Frajice has in one sense become greater in the 20th century than in those earlier periods when France had first to recuperate its strength after the war and then to take its exterior policy from Germany. Moreover, not only have cabinets lasted longer, but the foreign minister has often been retained in a succession of them. Of the thirty years which 111 1909 had elapsed since Marshal MacMahon retired and the republic was governed by republicans, in the first fifteen years from 1879 to 1894 fourteen different persons held the office of minister of foreign affairs, while six sufficed for the fifteen years succeeding the latter date. One must not, however, exaggerate the effect of this greater stability in office-holding upon continuity of policy, which was well maintained even in the days when there was on an average a new foreign minister every year. Indeed the most marked breach in the continuity of the foreign policy of France has been made in that later period of long terms of office, which, with the repudiation of the Concordat, has seen the withdrawal of the French protectorate over Roman Catholic missions in the Ea~t-~-though it is too soon to estimate the result. In another respect France has under the republic departed a long way from a tradition of the Quai dOrsay. It no longer troubles ,itself on the subject of nationalities. Napoleon III., who had more French temperament than French blood in his constitution, was an idealist on this question, and one of the causes of his own downfall and the defeat of France was his sympathy in this direction with German unity. Since Sedan little has been done in France to further the doctrine of nationalities. A faint echo of it was heard during the Boer war, but French sympathy with the struggling Dutch republics of South Africa was based rather on anti-English sentiment than on any abstract theory. (J. E. C. B)

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF FRENCH HIsTORY.The scientific study of the history of France only begins with the 16th century. It was hampered at first by the traditions of the middle ages and by a servile imitation of antiquity. Paulus Aemilius of Verona (De rebus gestis Francorwm, 1517), who may be called the first of modern historians, merely applies the oratorical methods of the Latin historiographers. It is not till the second half of the century that history emancipates itself; Catholics and Protestants alike turn to it for arguments in their religious and political controversies. Francois Hotman published (1574) his Franco-Gailia; Claude Fauchet his. Antiquilis gauloises et francoises (1579); ~tienne Pasquier his Recherches de la France (16ff), the only work of erudition of the 16th century which one can read through without being bored. Amateurs like Petau, A. de Thou, Bongars and Peiresc collected libraries to which men of learning went to draw. their knowledge of the past; Pierre Pithou, one of the authors of the Satire Minippie, published the earliest annals of France (Annales Francomum, 1588, and Historiae Francorum scriptores coetanei XI., 1596), Jacques Bongars collected in his Gesta Dei per Francos (i61f 1617) the principal chroniclers of the Crusades. Others made a study of chronology like J. J. Scaliger (De emendatione tern pomum, 1583; Thesaurus temporum, 1606), sketched the history of literature, Like FrancoisGrudh, sieur of La Croix in Maine (Biblzothhquefranoise, 1584), and Antoine du Verdier (Catalogue de tous les auteurs qui ont ecrit ou tro4uit enfrancois, 1585), or discussed the actual principles of historical research, like Jean Bodin (Method us ad facilem historiarum cognthonem, 1566) and Henri Lancelot Voisin de La Popelinihr (Histoire des histoires, 1399). -

But the writers of history are as yet very inexpert; the Histosre enral-e des rois de France of Bernard de Girard, seigneur de HailLar~ ~I576), the Grandes Annales de France of Francois de Belleforest (1579), the Inventaire giniral de lhistoire de France of Jean de Serre~ (1597), the Histoire gnrale de France depu-is Pharamon4 of Scipion Dupleix (1621-1645), the Histo-ire de France (1643-1651). of Francois Eudes de Mzeray, and above all his Abrgi chronologique de lhistoire de France (1668), are compilations which were eagerly read when they appeared, but are worthless nowadays. Historical research lacked method, leaders and trained workers; it found them all in the 17th century, the golden age of learning which was honored alike by laymen, priests and members of the monastic orders, especially the Benedictines of the congregation of St Maur. The publication of original documents was carried on with enthusiasm. To Andr Duchesne we owe two great coilections of chronicles: the Historiae Normannorum scrip~ores antiqui (1619) and the Histori-ae Francorum scriptores, continued by his son Francois (5 vols., 1636-1649). These publications were due to a part only of his prodigious activity; his papers and manuscripts, preserved in the Bibliothque Nationale at Paris, are an inexhaustible mine. Charles du Fresne, seigneur du Cange, published Villehardouin (1657) and Joinville (1668); Etienne Baluze, the Capitularia regum Francorum (1674), the Nova collecilo conciliorum (1677), the Vitae paparum Avenionens-lum (1693). The clergy were very much aided in their work by their private libraries and by their co-operation; Pre Philippe Labbe published his Bibliotheca nova manuscriptorurn (1657), and began (1671) his Collection des conc-iles, which was successfully completed by his colleague Pbre Cossart (18 vols.). Iii 1643 the Jesuit Jean Bolland brought out vol. i. of the Acta sanctorum, a vast collection of stories and legends which has not yet been completed beyond the 4th of November. (See B0LLANDI5rs.) The Benedictines, for their part, published the Actc,t sanctorum ordinis sancti Benedicti (~ vols., 1668-1701). One of the chief editors of this collection, Dom Jean Mabillon, published on his own account the Vetera analecta (4 vols., 1675f 685) and prepared the Annales ordinis sancti Benedicti (6 vols., 1703-1793). To Dom Thierri Ruiiiart we owe good editions of Gregory of Tours and Fredegarius (1699). The learning of the 17th century further inaugurated those specialized studies which are important aids to history. Mabillon in his Dere diplomatica (1681) creates the science of documents or diplomatics. Adrien de Valois lays a sound foundation for historical geography by his critical edition of the Notitia Galliarum (1675). Numismatics finds an enlightened pioneer in Francois Leblanc (Trait historique des monnaies de France, 1690). Du Cange, one of the greatest of the French scholars who have studied the middle ages, has defined terms bearing on institutions in his Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis (1678), recast by the Benedictines (1733), with an important supplement by Dom Carpentier (1768), republished twice during the 19th century, with additions, by F. Didot (184oI85o). and by L. Favre at Niort (1883-1888); this work is still indispensable to every student of medieval history. Finally, great biographical or bibliographical works were undertaken; the Gallia christlana, which gave a chronological list of the archbishops, bishops and abbots of the Gauls and of France, was compiled by two twin brothers, Scvole and Louis de Sainte-Marthe, and by the two sons of Louis (4 vols., 1656); a fresh edition, on a better plan, and with great additions, was begun in 1715 by Denys de Sainte-Marthe, continued throughout the 18th century by the Benedictines, and finished in the 19th century by Barthlemy Haurau (1856186I).

As to the nobility, a series of researches and publications, begun by Pierre dHozier (d. 1660) and continued well on into the i9th century by several of his descendants, developed into the Armorial gneral de Ia France, which was remodelled several times. A similar work, of a more critical nature, was carried out by Pre Anselme (Histoire gnialogique de Ia maison de France et des grands officiers de la courOnfle, I674) and by Pre Ange and Pbre Simplicien, who completed the work (3rd ed. in 9 vols., 1726-1733). Critical bibliography is especially represented by certain Protestants, expelled from France by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Pierre Bayle, the sceptic, famous for his Dictionnaire critique (1699), which is in part a refutation of the Dictionnaire historique et giographique published in 1673 by the Abb Louis Morri, was the first to publish the Nouvelles de la rpublique des lettres (1684-1687), which was continued by Henri J3asnage de Beauval under the title of Histoire des ouvrages des savants (24 vols.). In imitation of this, Jean Le Clerc successively edited a Biblzolhhque universelleet historique (1686-1693), a Bsbliothhque choisie (1703-1713), and a Bibl?othque ancienne et moderne (1714-1727). These were the first of our periodicals.

The 18th century continues the traditions of the 17th. The Benedictines still for some time hold the first place. Dom Edmond Marthne visited numerous archives (which were then closed) in France and neighboring countries, and drew from them the material for two important collections: Thesaurus novus anecdotorum (~ vols., 1717, in collaboration with Dom Ursin Durand) and Veterum scripLorum collectio (~ vols., I7241733). Dom Bernard de Montfaucon also travelled in search of illustrated records of antiquity; private collections, among others the celebrated collection of Gaignires (now in the Bibliothque Nationale), provided him with the illustrations which he published in his Monuments de la monarchie fran~oise (5 vols., 1729-1733). The text is in two languages, Latin and French. Dom Martin Bouquet took up the work begun by the two Duchesnes, and in 1738 published vol. i. of the Historians of France (Rerum Gallecarum et Francicarum scriptores), an enormous collection which was intended to include all the sources of the history of France, grouped under centuries and reigns. He produced the first eight volumes himself; his work was continued by several collaborators, the most active of whom was Dom Michel J. Brial, and already comprised thirteen volumes when it was interrupted by the Revolution. In 1733, Antoine Rivet de La Grange produced vol. i. of the Histoire littiraire de 2a France, which in 1789 numbered twelve volumes. While Dom C. Francois Toustaint and Dont Ren Prosper Tassin published a Nouveau Trait4 de diplomatique (6 vols., 1750-1765), others were undertaking the Art de verifier les dates (1750; new and much enlarged edition in 1770). Still others, with more or less success, attempted histories of the provinces.

In the second half of the 18th century, the ardour of the Benedic.. tines of St Maur diminished, and scientific work passed more and more into the hands of laymen. The Acadmie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres, founded in 1663 and reorganized in 1701, became its chief instrument, numbering among its members Denis Francois Secousse, who continued the collection of Ordonnances des rois de France, begun (1723) by J. de Laurihre; J.-B. de La Curne de Sainte Palaye (Mimoires sur lancien~Ie chevalerie, 1759-1781; Glossaire de la tongue franaise depuis son origine jusqu Ia fin de Louis X1V, printed only in 1875-1882); J.-B. dAnville (Notice sur lancienne Gaule tire des monuments, 1760); and L. G. de Brquigny, the greatest of them all, who continued the publication of the Ordonnances, began the Table chronologique des diplmes concernan! lhistoire de France (~ vols., 1769-1783), published the Diplomata, chartae, ad res Francicas spectanticr (1791, with the collaboration of La Porte du Theil), and directed fruitful researches in the archives in London, to enrich the Cabinet des charles, where Henri Bertin (1719-1792), an enlightened minister of Louis XV., had in 1764 set himself the task of collecting the documentary sources of the national history. The example set by the religious orders and the government bore fruit. The general assembly of the clergy gave orders that its Procs verbaux (9 vols., 1767-1789) should be printed; some of the provinces decided to have their history written, and mostly applied to the Benedictines to have this done. Brittany was treated by Dom Lobineau (1707) and Dom Morice (1742); the duchy of Burgundy by Dom Urbain Plancher (1739-1748); Lan~uedoc by Doni Dominique Vaisste (1730-1749, in collaboration with Dom Claude de Vic; new ed. 1873-1893); for Paris, its secular history was treated by DoIn Michel Flibien and Dom Lobineau (1725), and its ecclesiastical history by the abb Lebeuf (1745-1760; new ed.

1883-1890).

This ever-increasing stream of new evidence aroused curiosity, gave rise to pregnant comparisons, developed and sharpened the critical sense, but further led to a more and more urgent need for exact information. The Academic des Inscriptions brought out its Histoire de lAcadmie avec les mmoires de littrature tires de ses regisires (vol. i. 1717; 51 vols. appeared before the Revolution, with five indexes; vide the Bibliographic of Lasteyrie, vol. iii. pp. 256 et seq.). Other collections, mostly of the nature of bibliographies, were the Journal des savants (III vols., from 1665 to 1792; ride the Table mit/zodique by H. Cocheris, 1860); the Journal de Trvoux, or Mmoires pour lhIstoire des sciences et des beaux-arts, edited by Jesuits (265 vols., 1701-1790); the Mercure de France (~77 vols., from 1724 to 1791). To these must be added the dictionaries and encyclopaedias: the Dictionnaire de Morri, the last edition of which numbers 10 vols. (1759); the Dietionnaire gographique, historique ci politique des Gaules et de la France, by the abb J. J. Expilly (6 vols., 1762-1770; unfinished); the Repertoire universel ci raisonnC de jurisprudence civile, criminelle, canonique ci bnficiale, by Guyot (64 vols., 1775-1786; supplement in 17 vols., 1784-1785), reorganized and continued by Merlin de Douai, who was afterwards one of the Montagnards, a member of the Directory, and a count under the Empire.

The historians did not use to the greatest advantage the treasures of learning provided for them; they were br the most part superficial, and dominated by their political or religious prejudices. Thus works like that of Pre Gabriel Daniel (Histoire de France, 3 vols., 1713), of Prsident Hnault (Abrgi chronologique, I744; 25 editions between 1770 and 1834), of the abb Paul Francois Velly and those who completed his work (Histoire de France, 33 vols., 1765 to 1783), of G. H. Gaillard (Hisloire de la rivaliti de la France et de lAngleterre, II vols., 1771-1777), and of L. P. Anquetil (1805), in spite of the brilliant success with which they met at first, have fallen into a just oblivion. A separate place must be given to the works of the theorists and philosophers: Histoire de lanci en gouvernemeat dc la France, by the Comte de Boulainvilhiers (1727), Hisloire critique de Itablissement de Ia monarchic francoise dans les deux Gaules, by the abb f. B. Dubos ~I734); LEsprit des lois, by the prsident de Montesquieu (1748); the Observations sur lhistoire de France, by the abb de Mably (1765); the Thiorie de Ia politique de la monarchic francaise, by Marie Pauline de Lzardire (1792). These works have, if nothing else, the merit of provoking reflection.

At the time of the Revolution this activity was checked. The religious communities and royal academies were suppressed, and France violently broke with even her most recent past, which was considered to belong to the ancien rgime. When peace was reestablished, she began the task of making good the damage which had been done, but a greater effort was now necessary in order to revive the spirit of the institutions which had been overthrown. The new state, which was, in spite of all, bound by so many ties to the former order of things, seconded this effort, and during the whole of the 19th century, and even longer, had a strong influence on historical production. The section of the Institut de France, which in 1816 assumed the old name of Academic des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres, began to reissue the two series of the Mimoires and of the Notices et extraits des manuscritslires de Ia- bibliothque royale (the first volume had appeared in 1787); began (1844) that of the Mmoires prsents par divers savants and the Corn ptes rendus (subject index 1857-1900, by G. Ledos, 1906); and continued the Recueil des historsens de France, the plan of which was enlarged by degrees (Historiens des croisades, obituaires, poullls, comptes, &c.), the Ordonnances and the Table chronologique des diplsfes. During the reign of Louis Philippe, the ministry pf the interior reorganized the administration of the archives of the departments, communes and hospitals, of which the Inventaires sommaires are a mine of precious information (see the Rapport au miistre, by G. Servois, 1902). In 1834 the ministry of public instruction founded a committee, which has been called since 1881 the Comit des Travaux historiques et scientifiques, under the direction of which have been published: (I) the Collection des documents indits relatifs a lhistoire de France (more than 260 vols. have appeared since 1836); (2) the Catalogue ginral des manuscrits des b-ibliothques de France; (3) the Dictionnaires topographiques (25 vols. have appeared)); and the Ripertoires archologiques of the French departments (8 vols. between 1861 and 1888); (4) several series ofBulletins, the details of which will be found in the BibliographIc of Lasteyrie. At the same time were founded or reorganized, both in Paris and the departments, numerous societies, devoted sometimes partially and sometimes exclusively to history and archaeology; the Acadmie Celtique (1804), which in 1813 became the Societe des Antiquaires de France (general index by M~ Prou, 1894); the Socit de lHist&re de France (1834); the Socit delEcole des Chartes (1839); the Socit de lHistoire de Paris et de lIle-de-France (1874; four decennial indexes), &c. The details will be found in the excellent Bibliographic gnrale des travaux h-istor-iques et archeologiques publics par les societis savantes de France, which has appeared since 1885 under the direction of Robert de Lasteyrie.

Individual scholars also associated themselves with this great literary movement. Guizot published a Collection de memoires relatifs a lhistoire de France (31 vols., 1824-1835); Buchon, a Collection des chroniques nation ales francaises crites en langue vulgaire du XIII au XVI sicle (47 vols., 1824-1829), and a Choix de chron-iques et mimoires sur lhistoire de France (14 vols., 1836-1841); Petitot and Monmerqu, a Collection de milnoires relatifs a lhistoire de France (131 vols., 1819-1829); Michaud and Poujoulat, a Nouvelle Collection de memoires pour servir a lhistoire de France (32 vols., 1836-1839); Barrihre and de Lescure, a Bibliothque de mimoires relatifs a lhistoire de France pendant le XVIII sicle (30 vols., 1855-1875); and finally Berville and Barrire, a Collection des memoires relatifs a la Revolution Francaise (55 vols., 1820-1827). The details are to be found in the Sources de lhistoire de France, by Alfred Franklin (1876). The abb J. P. Migne in his Patro.ogia Latina (221 vols.,1844-1864), re-edited a number of texts anterior to the 13th century. Under the second empire, the actministration of the imperial archives at Paris published ten volumes of documents (Monuments historiques, 1866; Layettes du tresor des chartes, 1863, which were afterwards continued up to 1270; Actes du parlemeiit de Paris, 1863-1867), not to mention several volumes of Inventaires. The administration of the Bibliothque impriale had printed the Catalogue ~nral de lhistoire de France (Io vols., 1855-1870; Vol. xi., containing the alphabetical index to the names of the authors, appeared in 1895). Other countries also supplied a number of useful texts; there is much in the English Rolls series, in the collection of Chroniques bet ges, and especially in the Monurnenta Germaniae historica.

At the same time the scope of history and its auxiliary sciences becomes more clearly defined; the cole des Chartes produces some excellent palaeographers, as for instance Natalis de Wailly (Elements de paliographie, 1838), and L. Delisle (q.v.), who has also left traces of his profound researches in the most varied departments of medieval history (Bibliographic des travaux de M. Leopold Delisle, 1902); Anatole de Barthelemy made a study of coins and medals, Dout dArcq and G. Demay of seals. The works of Alexandre Lenoir (Muse des monuments Jrancais, 1800-1822), of Arcisse de Caumont (Histoire de larchitecture du mo yen age, I837; Abcidaire ou rudiment darchfologie, 1850), of A. Napoleon Didron (Annales archiologiques, 1844), of Jules Quicherat (Mlanges darchologie ci dhistoire, published after his death, 1886), and the diction~tries of Viollet le Duc (Dictionnaire rafsonni de larchitecture fruncaise, 1853-1868 Dictionnaire du mobilier franais, 1855) displayed to the best advantage one of the most brilliant sides of the French intellect, while other sciences, such as geology, anthropology, the comparative study of languages, religions and folk-lore, and political economy, continued to enlarge the horizon of history. The task of writing the general history of a country became more and more difficult, especially for one man, but the task was none the less undertaken by several historians, and by some of eminence. Franois Guizot treated of the Histoire de Ia civilisation en France (1828-1830); Augustin Thierry after the Rcits des t-emps mrovingiens (1840) published the Monuments de lhistoire du tiers tat (1849-1856), the introduction to which was expanded into a book (1855); Charles Simonde de Sismondi produced a mediocre Histoire des franca-is in 31 vols. (1821-1844), and Henri Martin a Histoire de France in 16 vols. (1847-1854), now of small use except for the two or three last centuries of the ancien rgime. Finally J. Michelet, in his Histoire de France (17 vols., 1833f 856) and his Histoire de la Revolution (7 vols., 1847-1853), aims at reviving the very soul of the nations past.

After the Franco-German War begins a better organization of scientific, studies, modelled on that of Germany. The cole des Hautes Etudes, established in 1868, included in its programme the critical study of the sources, both Latin and French, of the history of France; and from the siminaire of Gabriel Mpnod came men of learning, already prepared by studying at the Ecole des Chartes:

Paul Viollet, who revived the study of the history of French law; Julien Havet, who revived that of Merovingian diplomatics; Arthur Giry, who resumed the study of municipal institutions where it had been left by A. Thierry, prepared the A nnales carolingiennes (written by his pupils, Eckel, Favre, Laucr, Lot, Poupardin), and brought back into honor the study of diplomatics (Manuel de diplomatique, 1894); Auguste Molinier, author of the Sources de lhistoire de France (19o219q4; general index, I96), &c. Auguste Longnon introduced at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes the study of historical geography (Atlas historique de la France, in course of publication since 1888). The universities, at last reorganized, popularized the employment of the new methods. The books of Fustel de Coulanges and Achille Luchaire on the middle ages, and those of A. Aulard on the revolution, gave, a strong, though wellregulated, impetus to historical production. The cole du Louvre (1881) increased the value of the museums and placed the history of art among the studies of higher education, while the MurCe archCologique of St-Germain-en-Laye offered a fruitful field for research on Gallic and Gallo-Roman antiquities. Rich archives, hitherto inaccessible, were thrown open to students; at Rome those of the Vatican (Registres pontificaux, published by students at the French school of archaeology, since 1884); at Paris, those of the Foreign Office (Recueil des instructions donnes aux ambassadeurs depuis le trait de Westphalie, 16 vols., 1885-1901; besides various collections of diplomatic papers, inventories, &c.). Those of the War Office were used by officers who published numerous documents bearing on the wars of the Revolution and the Empire, and on that of 1870-1871). In 1904 a commission, generously endowed by the French parlement, was entrusted with the task of publishing the documents relating to economic and social life of the time of the Revolution, and four volumes had appeared by 1908. Certain towns, Paris, Bordeaux, &c., have made it a point of honor to have their chief historical monuments printed. The work now becomes more and more specialized. LHistoire de France, by Ernest Lavisse (1900, &c.), is the work of fifteen different authors. It is therefore more than ever necessary that the work should be under sound direction. The Manuel de bibliographic historique of Ch. V. Langlois (2nd ,edition, 1901-1904) is a good guide, as is his Archives de lhistoire de France (1891, in collaboration with H. Stein).

Besides the special bibliographies mentioned above, it will be useful to consult the Bibliothique historique of Pre Jacques Lelong (1719; new ed. by Fevret de Fontette, 5 vols., 1768f778); the Geschichte der historischen Forschung und Kunst of Ludwig Wachler (2 vols., 1812-1816); the Bibliographic de la France, established in 1811 (1st series, I8111856, 45 vols; 2nd series, 1 vol. per annum since 1857); the publications of the Socit de Bibliographie (Polybiblion, from 1868 on, &c.); the Bibliographic de lhistoire de France, by Gabriel Monod (1888); the Repertoire of the abb Ulysse Chevalier (Biobibliographie; new ed. 1903-1907; and Topobibliographie, 1894-1899). Bearing exclusively on the middle ages are the Bibliotheca historica mcdii aevi of August Potthast (new ad. 1896) and the Manuel (Les Sources de lhistoire de France, 1901, &c.) of A. Molinier; but the latter is to be continued up to modern times, the I 6th century having already been begun by Henri Hausser (1st part, 1906). Finally, various special reviews, besides teaching historical method by criticism and by example, try to keep their readers an courant with literary production; the Revue critique dhisioire ci de litterature (1866 fol), the Revue des questions historiques (1866 fol.), the Revue historique (1876 fol-), the Revue dhistoire moderne et contemporaine, accompanied annually by a valuable Repertoire mthodique (1898 01.); the Revue de synthse historique (1900 fol.), &c. (C. B.5)

FRENCH LAW AND INSTITUTIONS

Celtic Period .The remotest times to which history gives us access with reference to the law and institutions formerly existing in the country which is now called France are those in which the dominant race at least was Celtic. On the whole, our knowledge is small of the law and institutions of these Celts, or Gauls, whose tribes constituted independent Gaul. For their reconstruction, modern scholars draw upon two sources; firstly, there is the information furnished by the classical writers and by Caesai and Strabo in particular, which is trustworthy but somewhat scanty; the other source, which is not so pure, consists in the accounts found in those legal works of the middle ages written in the. neo-Celtic dialects, the most important and the greater number of which belong to Ireland. A reconstruction from them is always hazardous, however delicate and scientific be the criticism which is brought to bear on it, as in the case of dArbois de Jubainville, for example. Moreover, in the historical evolution of French institutions those of the Celts or Gauls are of little importance. Not one of them can be shown to have survived in later law. What has survived of the Celtic race is the blood and temperament, still found in a great many Frenchmen, certain traits which the ancients remarked in the Gauls being still recognizable: bellum gerere et argute loqui.

-Roman Period.It was the Roman conquest and rule which really formed Gaul, for she was Romanized to the point of losing almost complet~ly that which persists most stubbornly in a conquered nation, namely, tile language; the Breton-speaking population came to France later, from Britain. The institutions of Roman Gaul became identical with those of the Roman empire, provincial and municipal government undergoing the same evolution as in the other parts of the empire. It was under Roman supremacy too, as M. dArbois de Jubainville has shown, that the ownership of land became personal and free in Gaul. The law for the Gallo-Romans was that which was administered by the conventus of the magistrate; there are only a few peculiarities, mere Gallicisms, resulting from conventions or usage, which are pointed out by Roman jurisconsults of the classical age. The administrative reforms of Diocletian and Constantine applied to Gaul as to the rest of the empire. Gaul under this rule consisted of seventeen provinces, divided between two dioceses, ten in the diocese of the Gauls, under the authority of the praetorian prefect, who resided at Treves; and the other seven in the dicecesis septem provinciarum, under the authority of a vicarius. The Gallo-Romans became Christian with the other subjects of the empire; the Church extended thither her powerful organization modelled on the administrative organiza-. tion, each civitas having a bishop, just as it had a curia and municipal magistrates. But, although endowed with privileges I)y the Christian emperors, the Church did not yet encroach upon the civil power. She had the, right of acquiring property, of holding councils, subject to the imperial authority, and of the free election of bishops. But only the first germs of ecclesiastical jurisdiction are to be traced. In virtue of the laws, the bishops were privileged arbitrators, and in the matter of public sins exercised a disciplinary jurisdiction over the clergy and the faithful. In the second half of the 4th century, monasteries appeared in Gaul. After the fall of the Western empire, there was left to the Gallo-Romans as an expression of its law, which was also theirs, a written legislation. It consisted of the imperial constitutions, contained in the Gregorian, Hermogenian and Theodosian codes (the two former being private compilations, and the third an official collection), and the writings of the five jurists (Gaius, Papinian, Paulus, Ulpian and Modestinus), to which Valentinian III. had in 426 given the force of law.

The Barbarian In-vasion.-The invasions and settlements of the barbarians open. a new period. Though there were robbery and violence in every case, the various barbarian kingdoms set~ up in Gaul were established under different conditions. In those of the Burgundians and Visigoths, the owners of the great estates, which had been the prevailing form of landed property in Roman Gaul, suffered partial dispossession, according to a system the rules regulating which can, in. the case of the Burgundians, be traced almost exactly. It is doubtful whether a similar process took place in the case of the Frankish settlements, but their first conquests in the north and east seem to have led tQ the extermination or total expulsion of the Gallo-Roman population. It is impossible to say to what extent, in these various settlements, the system of collective property prevailing arpong the Germanic tribes was adopted. Another important difference was that, in embracing Christianity, some of the barbarians became Arians, as in the case of the Visigoths and Rnrgundians; others Catholic, as in the case of the Franks. This was probably the main cause of the absorption of the other kingdoms into the Frankish monarchy. In each case, however, the barbarian king appeared as wishing not to overthrow the Roman administration, but to profit by its continuation. The kings of the Visigoths and Burgundians were at first actually representatives of the Western empire, and Clovis himself was ready to accept from the emperor Anastasius the title of consul; but these were but empty forms, similar to the fictitious ties which long existed or still exist between China or Turkey and certain parts of their former empires, now separated from them for ever.

As soon as the Merovingian monarch had made himself master of Gaul, he set himself to maintain and keep in working order the administrative machinery of the Romans, save that the administrative unit was henceforth no longer the provincia but the civitas, which generally took the name of pagus, and was placed under the authority of a count, comes or graflo (Graf). Perhaps this was not entirely an innovation, for it appears that at the end of the Roman supremacy certain civitates had already a comes. Further, several pagi could be united under the authority of a dux. The pagus seems to have generally been divided into hundreds (centcnae).

But the Roman administrative machinery was too delicate to be handled by barbarians; it could not survive fOr long, but underwent changes and finally disappeared. Thus the Metovingians tried to levy the same direct taxes as the Romans had done, the capitatio terrcna and the capitaiio liumana, but they ceased to be imposts reasse~sed periodically in accordance with the total sum fixed as necessary to meet the needs of the state, and became fixed annual taxes on lands or persons; finally, they disappeared as general imposts, continuing to exist only as personal or territorial dues. In the same way the Roman municipal organization, that of the curiae, survived for a considerable time under the Merovingians, but was used only for the registration of written deeds; under the Carolingians it disappeared, and with it the old senatorial nobility which had been that of the Empire. The administration of justice (apart from the kings tribunal) seems to have been organized on a system borrowed partly from Roman and partly from Germanic institutions; it naturally tends to assume popular forms. Justice is administered by the count (comes) or his deputy (centenarius or vicarius), but on the verdict of notables called in the texts boni Izomines or rachimburgii. This takes place in an assembly of all the free subjects, called mallus, at which every free man is bound to attend at least a certain number of times a year, and in which are promulgated the general acts emanating from the king. The latter could issue commands or prohibitions under the name of bannus, the violation of which entailed a fine of 60 sclidi; the king also administered justice (in palatio), assisted by t~e officers of his household, his jurisdiction being unlimited and at the same time undefined. He could hear all causes, but was not bound to hear any, except, apparently, accusations of deliberate failure of justice and breach of trust on the part of the rachimburgii.

But what proved the great disturbing element in Gallo-Roman society was the fact that the conquerors, owing to their former customs and the degree of their civilization, were all warriors, men whose chief interest was to become practised in the handling of arms, arid whose normal state was that of war. It is tru~ that under the Roman empire all the men of a civ-itas were obliged, in case of necessity, to march against the enemy, and under the Frankish monarchy the count still called together his pagenses for this object. But the condition of the barbarian was very different; he lived essentially, for fighting. Hence those gatherings or annual reviews of the Campus Martins., which continued so long, in Austrasia at least. They constituted the chief armed force; for mercenary troops, in spite of the assertions of some to the contrary, play at this period only a small part. But this military class, though not an aristocracy (for among the Franks the royal race alone was noble), was to a large extent independent, and the king had to attach these leudes or fideles to himself by gifts and favors. At. the same time the authority of the king gradually underwent a change in character, though he always claimed to be the successor of the Roman emperor. It gradually assumed that Character domestic or personal character that, among the .iu,. Germans, marked most of the relations between Merovl~- men. The household of the king gained in political kiship importance, by reason that the heads of the principal fl offices in the palace became at the same time high public officials. There was, moreover, a body of men more especially attached to the king, the antrustions (q.v.) and the commensals (convivae regis) whose were geld (i.e. the price of a mans life in the system of compensation then prevalent) was three times greater than that of the other subjects of the same race.

The Frankish monarch had also the power of making laws, which he exercised after consulting the chief men of the kingdom, both lay and ecclesiastical, in the placita, which were meetings differing from the Campus Martius and apparently modelled principally on the councils of the Church. But throughout the kingdom in many places the direct authority of the king over the people ceased to make itself felt. The immunitates, granted chiefly to the great ecclesiastical properties, limited this authority in a curious way by forbidding public officials to exercise their functions in the precinct of land which was immunis. The judicial and fiscal rights frequently passed to the landowner, who in any case became of necessity the intermediary between the supreme power and the people. In regard to this last point, moreover, the case seems to have been the same with all the great landowners or potentes, whose territory was called potestas, and who gained a real authority over those living within it; later in the middle ages they were called homines potestatis (hommes de poeste).

Other principles, arising perhaps less from Germanic custom strictly speaking than from an inferior level of civilization, also contributed towards the weakening of the royal power. The monarch, like his contemporaries, considered the kingdom and the rights of the king over it to be his property; consequently, he had the power of dealing with it as if it were a private possession; it is this which gave rise to the concessions of royal rights to individuals, and later to the partitions of the kingdom, and then of the empire, between the sons of the king or emperor, to the exclusion of the daughters, as in the division of an inheritance in land. This proved one of the chief weaknesses of the Merovingian monarchy.

In order to rule the Gallo-Romans, the barbarians had had inevitably to ask the help of the Church, which was the representative of Roman civilization. Further, the MeroPo&.tIoa vingian monarch and the Catholic Church had come Church. into close alliance in their struggle with the Arians.

The result for the Church had been that she gained new privileges, but at the same time beonme to a certain extent dependent. Under the Merovingians the election of the bishop a clero et populo is only valid if it obtains the assent (a~ssensus) of the king, who often directly nominates the prelate. But at the same time the Church retains her full right of acquiring property, and has her jurisdiction partially recognized; that is to say, she not only exercises more freely than ever a disciplinary jurisdiction, but the bishop, in place of the civil power, administers civil and criminal justice over the clergy. The councils had for a long time forbidden the clergy to cite one another before secular tribunals; they had also, in the 6th century, forbidden secular judges under pain of excommunication to cite before them and judge the clergy, without permission of the bishop. A decree of Clotaire II. (614) acknowledged the validity of these claims, but not completely; a precise interpretation of the text is, however, difficult.

The Merovingian dynasty perished of decay, amid increasing anarchy. The crown passed, with the approval of the papacy, to an Austrasian mayor of the palace and his family, Casolin- one of those mayors of the palace (i.e. chief officer of P~,~Iod. the kings household) who had been the last support of the preceding dynasty. It was then that thefe developed a certain number of institutions, which offered themselves as useful means of consolidating the political organism, and were in reality the direct pre~rsOrs of feudalism. One was the royal benefice (beneficiuin), of which, without doubt, the Church provided both the model and, in the first instance, the material. The mOdel was the precaria, a form of concession by which it was customary for the Church to grant the possession of her lands to free ~men; this practice she herself had -copied from the five-years leases granted by the Ron-ian exchequer~ Gradually, however, the precaria had become a concession made, in most cases, free and for life. As regards the material, when the Austrasian mayors of the palace (probably Charles Martel) wished to secure the support of the fideles otugs by fresh benefits, the royal treasury being exhausted, of the they turned to the Church. which was at that time the ~

greatest landowner, and took lands from her to give to 8~~m. their warriors. In order to disguise the robbery it was decided perhaps as an afterthoughtthat these lands should be held as precariae from the Church, or from the monastic houses which had furnished them. Later, when the royal treasury was reorganized, the grants of land made by the kings naturally took a similar form: the beneficium, as a free grant for life. Under the Merovingians royal grants of land were in principle made in full ownership, except, as Brunner has shown, that provision was made for a revocation under certain circumstances. No special services seem to have been attached to the benefice, whether granted by the king or by some other person, but, in the second half of the oth century at least; the possession of the benefice is found as the characteristic of the military class and the form of their pay. This we find clearly set forth in the treatise de ecclesiis et capellis of Hincmar of Reims. The beneficiunz, fri obedience to a natural law, soon tended to crystallize into a perpetual and hereditary right. Another institution akin to the beneficium was the senioratus; by the commendatio, a form of solemn contract, probably of Germanic origin, and chiefly characterized by the placing of the hands between those of the lord, a man swore absolute fidelity to another man, who became his senior. It became the generally received idea (as expressed in the capitularies) that it was natural and normal for every free man to have a senior. At the same time a benefice was never granted unless accompanied by the commendalio of the beneficiary to the grantor. As the most important seniores were thus bound to the king and received from him their benefices, he expected through them to command their then; but in reality the king disappeared little by little in the senior. The king granted as benefices not only lands, but public functions, such as those of count or dux, which thus became possessions, held, first for life, and later as hereditary properties. The Capitulary of Kiersy-sur-Oise (877), which was formerly considered to have made fiefs legally and generally hereditary, only proves that it was already the custom for benefices of this kind, honores, to pass from the father to one of the sons.

Charlemagne, while sanctioning these institutions, tried to arrest the political decomposition. He reorganized the administration of justice, fixing the respective jurisdictions of the count and the centenarius, substituting for the rachim- ~bo~? 0,1 burgii permanent scabini, chosen by the count in the presence of the people, and defining the relations of the count, as the representative of the central authority, with the advocati or judices of immunittes and potestates. He reorganized the army, determining the obligations and the military outfit of free men according to their means. Finally, he stablished those regular inspections by the tnissi dominici which are the subject of so many of his capitularies. From the De ordine palatii of Hincmar of Reims, who follows the account of a contemporary of the great emperor, we learn that he also regularly established two general assemblies, conventus or placita, in tb~ year, one in the autumn, the other in the spring, which were attended by the chief officials, lay and ecclesiastical. It was here that the capitularies (q.v.) and all important measures were first drawn up and then promulgated. The revenues of the Carolingian monarch (which are no longer indentical with the finances of the state) consisted chiefly in the produce of the royal lands(villae), which the king and his suite often came and consumed on the spot; and it is known how carefully Charlemagne regulated the administration of the vitae. There were also the free gifts which the great men were bound, according to custom, to bring to the conventus, the contributions of this character from the monasteries practically system. amounting to a tax; the regular personal or territorial dues into which the old taxes had resolved themselves; the profits arising from the courts (the royal bannus, and the fredum, or part of the compensation-money which went to the king); finally, numberless requisitions in kind, a usage which had without doubt existed continuously since Roman times. The Church was loaded with honors and had added a fresh prerogative to her former privileges, namely, the right of levying a real tax in kind, the tithe. Since the 3rd century she had tried to exact the payment of tithes from the faithful, interpreting as applicable to theChristian clergy the texts in the Old Testament bearing on the Levites; Gallican councils had repeatedly proclaimed it as an obligation, though, it appears, with little success. But from the reign of Pippin the Short onwards the civil law recognized and sanctioned this obligation, and the capitularies of Charlemagne and Louis the Debonnaire contain numerous provisions dealing with it. Ecclesiastical jurisdiction Th. extended farther and farther, but Charlemagne, the Chur~h protector of the papacy, maintained firmly his authority under over the Church. He nominated its dignitaries, both Charle- bishops and abbots, who were true ecclesiastical magne. officials, parallel with the lay officials. In each pagus, bishop and count owed each other mutual support, and the missi on the same circuit were ordinarily a count and a bishop. In the first collection of capitularies, that of Ansegisus, two books out of four are devoted to ecclesiastical capitularies.

What, then, was the private and criminal law of this Frankish monarchy which had come to embrace so many different races?

The law The men of Roman descent continued under the Roman under the law, and the conquerors could not hope to impose their Frank customs upon them. The authorized expression of lnOflaXChy. the Roman law was henceforth to be found in the Lex romana Wisigothorum or Breviarium Alarici. drawn up by order of Alaric II. in 5o6. It is an abridgment of the codes, of that of Theodosius especially, and of certain of the writings of the jurists included under the Law of Citations. As to the barbarians, they had hitherto had nothing but customs, and these customs, of which the type nearest to the original is to be found in the oldest text of the I.ex Salica, were nothing more than a series of tariffs of compensations, that is to say, sums of money due to the injured party or ~is family in case of crimes committed against individuals, for which crimes these compensations were the only penalty. They also introduced a barbarous system of trial, that by cornpurgation, i.e. exculpation by the oath of the defendant supported by a certain number of cojurantes, and that by ordeal, later called judicium Dei. In each new kingdom the barbarians naturally kept their own laws, and when these men of different races all became subject to the Frankish monarchy, there evolved itself a system (called the personnalit des lois) by which every subject had, in principle, the right to be tried by the law of the race to which he belonged by birth (or sometimes for some other reason, such as emancipation or marriage). When the two adversaries were of different race, it was the law of the defendant which had to be applied. The customs of the barbarians had been drawn up in Latin. Sometimes, as in the case of the first text of the Salic law, the system on which they were compiled is not exactly kno~n; but it was generally done under the royal authority. At this period only these written documents bear the name of law (1-eges romanor urn; leges barbarorum), and at least the tacit consent of the people seems to have been required for these collections of laws, in accordance with an axiom laid down in a later capitulary; lex fit consensu populi et constitutione regis. It is noteworthy, too, that in the process of being drawn up in Latin, most of the leges barbarorum were very much Romanized.

In the midst of this diversity, a certain number of causes tended to produce a partial unity. The capitularies, which had in themselves the force of law, when there was no question of modifying the leges, constituted a legislation which was thesame for all; often they inflicted corporal punishment for grave off ences, which applied to all subjects without distinction. Usage and individual convenience led to the same result. The GabRomans, and even the Church itself, to a certain extent, adopted the methods of trial introduced by the Germans, as was likely in a country relapsing into barbarism. On the other hand, written acts became prevalent among the barbarians, and at the same time they assimilated a certain amount of Roman law; for these acts continued to be drawn up in Latin, after Roman models, which were in most cases simply misinterpreted owing to the general ignorance. The type is preserved for us in those collections of Formulae, of which complete and scientific editions have been published by Eugene de Rozire and Carl Zeumer. During this period, too, the Gallican Church adopted the collection of councils and decretals, called later the Coder canonum ecclesiae Gallicanac, which she continued to preserve. This collection was that of Dionysius Exiguus, which was sent to Charlemagne in 774 by Pope Adrian I. But in the course of the oth century apocryphal collections were also formed ,in the Gallican Church: the False Capitularies of Benedictus Levita, and the False Decretals of Isidorus Mercator (see DECRETALS).

All the subjects of the Frankish monarchy were not of equal status. There was, strictly speaking, no nobility, both the Roman and the Germanic nobility having died out; but slavery continued to exist. The Church, however, was preparing the transformation of the slave into the serf, by giving force and validity to their marriages, in cases, at least, when the master had approved of them, and by forbidding the latter unjustly to seize the slaves peculium. But between the free man (ingenfsas) and the slave lay a number of persons of intermediate status; they possessed legal personality but were subject to incapacities of various kinds, and had to perform various duties towards other men. There was, to begin with, the Roman colohist (colmus), a class as to the origin of which there is still a controversy, and of which there is no clear mention in the laws before the 4th century; they and their children after them were attached perpetually to a certain piece of land, which they were allowed to cultivate on payment of a rent. There were, further, the liii (titus or lidus), a similar class of Germanic origin; also the greater number of the freedmen or descendants of freedmen. Many free men who had fled to the great landowners for protection took, by arrangement or by custom, a similar position. Under the Merovingian rgime, and especially under the Carolingians, the occupation of the land tended to assume the character of tenure; but free ownership of land continued to exist under the name of alod (alodis), and there is even evidence for the existence of this in the form of small properties, held by free men; the capitularies contain numerous complaints and threats against the counts, who endeavoured by the abuse of their power to obtain the surrender of these properties.

Period of Anarchy and the Rise of Feudalism.The 10th and 11th centuries were a period of profound anarchy, during which feudalism was free to develop itself and to take definitive shape. At that time the French people may be ~7C~aI said to have lived without laws, without even fixed or1gIna~ customs and without government. The legislative power was no longer exercised, for the last Carolingian capitularies date from the year 884, and the first laws of the Capetian kings (if they may be called laws) do not appear till during the 12th century. During this period the old capitularies and leges fell into disuse and in their place territorial customs tended to grow up, their main constituents being furnished by the law of former times, but which were at the outset ill-defined and strictly local. As to the government, if the part played by the Church be excepted, we shall see that it could be nothing but the application of brute force. In this anarchy, as always happens under similar conditions, men drew together and formed themselves into groups for mutual defence. A nucleus was formed which was to become the new social unit, that is to say, the feudal group. Of this the centre was a chief, around whom gathered men capable of bearing arms, who commended themselves to him according to the old form of vassalage, per manus. They owed him fidelity and assistance, the support of their arms but not of their purse, save in quite exceptional cases; while he owed them protection. Some of them lived in his castle or fortified house, receiving their equipment only and eating at his table. Others received lands from him, which were, or later became, fiefs, on which they lived casati. The name fief,feudum, does not appear, however, till towards the end of this period; these lands are frequently called beneficia as before; the term most in use at first, in many parts, is casamenluin. The fief, moreover, was generally held for life and did not become generally hereditary till the second half of the 11th century. The lands kept by the chief and those which he granted to his men were for the most part rented from him, or from them, for a certain amount in money or in kind. All these conditions had already existed previously in mueh the same form; but the new development is that the chief was no longer, as before, merely an intermediary between his men and the royal power. The group had become in effect independent, so organized as to be socially and politically self-sufficient. It constituted a small army, led, naturally, by the chief, and composed of his feudatories, supplemented in case of need by the ruslici. It also formed an assembly in which, common interests were discussed, the lord, according to custom, being bound to consult his feudatories and they to advise him to the best of their power. It also formed a court of justice, in which the feudatories gave judgment under the presidency of their lord; and all of them claimed to be subject only to the jurisdiction of this tribunal composed of their peers. Generally they also judged the villeins (villani) and the serfs dependent on the group, except in cases where the latter obtained as a favor judges of their own status, which was, however, at that time a very rare occurrence.

Under these conditions a nobility was formed, those men becoming nobles who were able to devote themselves to the profession of arms and were either chiefs or soldiers in one of the groups which have just been described. The term designating a nOble, miles, corresponds also to that of knight (Fr. chevalier, Low Lat. caballerisss), for the reason that chivalry, of which the origins are uncertain, represents essentially the technical skill and professional duties of this military class. Every noble was destined on coming of age to become a knight, and the knight equally as a matter of course received a fief, if he had not one already by hereditary title. This nobility, moreover, was not a caste but could be indefinitely recruited by the granting of fiefs and admission to knighthood (see KNIGHTHOOD AND

CHIVALRY).

The state of anarchy was by now so far advanced that war became an individual right, and the custom of private war arose.

Every man had in principle the right of making war Private to defend his rights or to avenge his wrongs. Later on, doubtless, in the 13th century, this was a privilege of the noble (gentilliomme); but the texts defining the limits which ,the Church endeavoured to set to this abuse, namely, the Peace of God and the Truce of God, show that this was at the outset a power possessed by men of all classes. Even a man who had appeared in a court of law and received judgment had the choice of refusing to accept the judgment and of making war instead. Justice, moreover, with its frequent employment of trial by combat, did not essentially differ from private war.

It is unnecessary to go further and to affirm, with certain historians of our time, for example Guilhermoz and See, that the only free men at that time, besides the clergy, were the nobles, all the rest being serfs. There are many indications which lead us to assume, not only in the towns but even in the country districts, the existence of a class of men of free status who were not milites, the class later known in the 13th century as vilains, hommes de poesle, and, later, roturiers. The fact more probably was that only the nobles and ecclesiastics were exempt from the exactions of the feudal lords; while from all the others the seigneurs could at pleasure levy the laille (a direct and arbitrary tax), and those innumerable rights then called consuetudines.

Free ownership, the allodium, even under the form of small freeholds, still existed by way of exception in many parts..

Had, then, the main public authority disappeared? This is practically the contention of certain writers, who, like M. See, maintain that real property, the possession of a domain, conferred on the big landed proprietor all rights of taxation, commhnd and coercion over the inhabitants of his domain, who, according to this view, were always serfs. But this is an exaggeration of the thesis upheld by old French authors, who saw in feudalism, though in. a different sense, a confusion of property with sovereignty. It appears that in this state of political disintegration each part of the country which had a homogeneous character tended to form itself into a higher unit. In this unit there arose a powerful lord, generally a duke, a count, or a viscount, who sometimes came to be called the capitalis dominus. He was either a former official of the monarchy, whose function had become hereditary, or a usurper who had formed himself on this model. He laid claim to an authority other than that conferred by the possession of, real property. He still claimed, to exercise over the whole of his former district certain rights, which we see him sometimes surrendering for the benefit of churches or monasteries. His court of justice was held in the highest honor, and to it were referred the most important affairs. But in this district there were generally a number of more or less powerful lords, who as a rule had as yet no particular feudal title and are often given the name of principes. Often, but not always, they had commended themselves to this duke or count by doing homage.

On the other hand, the royal power continued to exist, being recognized by a considerable part of old Gaul, the regnurn Francorum. But under the last of the Carolingians it had in fact become elective, as is shown by the elections of Odo and Robert before that of Hugh Capet. The electors were the chief lords and prelates of the regnum Francorum. But following a clever policy, each king during, his lifetime took as partner of his kingdom his eldest son and consecrated and crowned him in advance, so that the first of the Capetians revived the principle of heredity in favor of the eldest son, while establishing the, hereditary indivisibility of the kingdom. This custom was recognized at the accession of Louis the Fat, but the authority of the king was very weak, being merely a vague allegiance. His only real authority lay where his own possessions were, or where there had not arisen a duke, a count, or lord of equal rank with them. He maintained, however, a general right of administering justice, a curia, the jurisdiction of which seems to have been universal. ~t is true that the parties in a suit had to submit themselves to it voluntarily, and could accept or reject the judgment given, but this was at that time the general rule. The king dispensed justice surrounded by the officers of his household (domestici), who thus formed his council; but these were not the only ones to assist him, whether in court or council. Periodically, at the great yearly festivals, he called together the chief lords and prelates of his kingdom, thus carrying on the tradition of the Carolingian placita or convent us; but little by little, with the appropriation of the !zonores, the character of the gathering changed; it was no Longer an assembly of officials but of independent lords. This was now called the curia regis.

While the power of the State was almost disappearing, that Df the Church, apart from the particular acts of violence of which she was often the victim, continued to grow. Th Her jurisdiction gained ground, since her procedure Chu1,mh, was reasonable and comparatively scientific (except Lhat she admitted to a certain extent compurgation by oath and the judicia Dei, with the exception of trial by combat). N7ot only was the privilege of clergy, by which accused clerks were brought under her jurisdiction, almost absolute, but she had cognizance of a number of causes in which laymen only were :oncerned, marriage and everything nearly or remotely affecting it, wills, crimes and offences against religion; and even contracts, when the two parti~is wished it or when the agreement was made)fl. oath, came within her competence. Such, then, were the ecclesiastical or Christian courts (coups dglise, course de chrtient). The Church, moreover, remained in close connection with the crown, the king preserving a quasi-ecclesiastical character, while the royal prerogatives with regard to the election of bishops were maintained more successfully than the rights of the crown, though in many of the great fiefs they none the less passed to the count or the duke. It was at this time too that the Church tried to break the last ties which still kept her more or less dependent on the civil power; this was the true import of the Investiture Contest (see INVESTITURE, and CHURCH HISTORY), though this was not very acute in France. -

The period of the true feudal monarchy is embraced by the 12th and I3th centuries, that is to say, it was at this time that the crown again assumed real strength and authorit-y; ?uiai but so far it had no organs and instruments save those monarchy. which were furnished by feudalism, now organized under a regular hierarchy, of which the king was the head, the sovereign enfeoffer of the kingdom (souverain fie,ffeux dii royaume), as he came later on to be called. This new position of affairs was the result of three great factors: the revival of Roman Law, the final organization of feudalism and the rise of the privileged towns. The revival of Roman law began in France and Italy in the second half ,oman of the I ith century, developing with extraordinary brilliance in the latter country at the university of Bologna, which was destined for a long time to dominate Europe. Roman law spread rapidly in the French schools and universities, except that of Paris, which was closed to it by the papacy; and the influence of this study was so great that it transformed, society. On the one hand it contributed largely to the reconstitution of the royal power, modelling the rights of the king on those of the Roman emperor. On the other hand it wrought a no less profound change in private law. From this time dates the division of old France into the Pays de droil crit, in which Roman law, under the form in which it was codified by Justinian, Th was received as the ordinary law; and the Pays de cus~oms. coulume, where it played only a secondary part, being generally valid only as ratio scripta and not as lex scripta. In this period the customs also took definitive form, and over and above the local customs properly so called there were formed customs known as general, which held good through a whole province or bailliage, and were based on the jurisprudence of the higher jurisdictions.

The final organization of feudalism resulted from the struggle for organization which was proceeding in each district where Final the more powerful lords compelled the others to do orgaai~za- them homage and become their vassals; the capitaUs Vion of dominus had beneath him a whole hierarchy, and was feudalism, himself a part of the feudal system of France (see FEUDALISM). Doubtless in the case of lords like the dukes of Brittany and Burgundy, the king could not actually demand the strict fulfilment of the feudal obligations; but the principle was established. The question now arises, did free and absolute property, the allodium, entirely disappear in this process, and were all lands held as tenures? It continued to exist, by way of exception, in most districts, unchanged save in the burden of proof of ownership, with which, according to the customs, sometimes the lord and sometimes the holder of the land was held charged. In one respect, however, namely in the cEngelser administration of justice, the feudal hierarchy had of Just ice, absolute sway. Towards the end of the 13th century Beaumanoir clearly laid down this principle: All secular jurisdiction in France is held from the king as a fief or an arriere-fief. Henceforth it could ,also be said that All justice emanates from the king. The law concerning fiefs became settled also from another point of view, the fief becoming patrimonial; that is to say, not only hereditary, but freely alienable by the vassal, subject in both cases to certain rights of transfer due to the lord, which were at first fixed by agreement and later by custom. The most salient features of feudal succession were the right of primogeniture and the perference given to heirs-male; but from the 13th century onwards the right of primogeniture, which had at first involved the total exclusion of the younger members of a family, tended to be modified, except in the case of the chief lords, the eldest son obtaining the preponderant share or prciput. Non-noble (roturier) tenancies also became patrimonial in similar circumstances, except that in their case there was no right of primogeniture nor any privilege of males. The tenure of serfs did not become alienable, and only became hereditary by certain devices.

Feudal society next saw the rise of a new element within it:

the privileged towns. At this time many towns acquired privileges, the movement beginning towards the end of the 11th century; they ~iere sanctioned by a formal ~ concession from the lord to whom the town was subject, the concession being embodied in a charter or in a record of customs (coulume). Some towns won for themselves true political rights, for instance the right of self-administration, rights of justice over the inhabitants, the right of not being taxed except by their own consent, of maintaining an armed force, and of controlling it themselves. Others only obtained civil rights, e.g. guarantees against the arbitrary rights of justice and taxation of the lord or his provost. The chief forms of municipal organization at this time were the commune jure of the north and east, and the considat, which came from Italy and penetrated as far as Auvergne and Limousin. The towns with important privileges formed in feudal society as it were a, new class of lordships; but their lords, that is to say their burgesses, were inspired by quite a new spirit. The crown courted their support, taking them under its protection, and championing the causes in which they were interested (see COMMUNE). Finally, it is in this period, under Philip Augustus, that the great fiefs began to be effectually reannexed to the crown, a process which, continued by the kings up to the end of the ancien rgime, refounded for their profit the territorial sovereignty of France.

The crown maintained the machinery of feudalism, the chief central instruments of which were the great officers of the crown, the seneschal, butler, constable and chancellor, who Great were to become irremovable officials, those at least o,y,~ers of who survived~ But this period saw the rise of a the crown special college of dignitaries that of the Twelve Peers and peers of France.

of France, consisting of six laymen and six ecclesiastics, which took definitive shape at the beginning of the x3th century. We cannot yet discern with any certainty by what process it was formed, why those six prelates and those six great feudatories in particular were selected rather than others equally eligible. But there is no doubt that we have here a result of that process of feudal organization mentioned above; the formation of a similar assembly of twelve peers occurs also in a certain number of the great fiefs. Besides the part which they played at the consecration of kings, the peers of France formed a court in which they judged one another under the presidency of the king, their overlord, according to feudal custom. But the cour des pairs in this sense was not separate from the curia regis, and later from the parlement of Paris, of which the peers of France were by right members. From this time, too, dates another important institution, that of the maltres des r~qutes.

The legislative power of the crown again began to beexercised during the 12th century, and in the 13th century had full authority over all the territories subject to the crown. Beaumanoir has a very interesting theory on this subject. a The right of war tends to regain its natural equilibrium, ~ the royal power following the Church in the endeavour to check private wars. Hence arose the quaranlaine le roi, due to Philip Augustus or Saint Louis, by which those relatives of the parties to a quarrel who had not been present at the quarrel were rendered immune from attack for forty days after it; and above all the asszrjements imposed by the king or lord; on these points too Beaumanoir has an interesting theory. The rule was, moreover, already in force by which private wars had to cease during the time that the king was engaged in a foreign war. But the most appreciable progress took place in the administrative and judicial institutions. Under Philip Augustus arose the royal baillis (see BAILIFF: section Bailli), and seneschaIs (q.v.), who were the representatives of the king in the provinces, and superior judges. At the same time the form of the feudal courts tended to change, as they began more and more to be influenced by the Romano-canonical law. Saint Louis had striven to abolish trial by combat, and the Church had condemned other forms of ordeal, the purgatio v-ulgaris. in most parts of the country the feudal lords began to give place in the courts of law to the provosts (pr~vts) and baihis of the lords or of the crown, who were the judges, having as their councillors the avocals (advocates) and pro~ureurs (procurators) of the assize. The feudal courts, which were found~d solely on the relations of, homage and tenure, before which the vassals and tenants as such appeared, disappeared in part from the I3th century on. Of the seigniorial jurisdictions there soon remained only the hai4es or basses justices (in the 14th century aroSe an intermediate grade, the moyenne justice), all of which were considered to be concessions of the royal power, and so delegations of the public authority. As a result of the application of Roman and canon law, there arose the appeal strictly so called, both in the class of royal and of seigniorial jurisdictions, the case in the latter instance going finally before a royal court, from which henceforth there was no appeal. In the I3th century too appeared the theory of crown cases (cas royaux), cases which the lords became incompetent to try and which were reserved for the royal court. Finally, the curia regis was gradually transformed into a regular court of justice, the Parleinent (q.v.), as it was already called in the second half of the 13th century. At this time the king no longer appeared in it regularly, and before each session (for it was not yet a permanent body) a list of properly qualified men was drawn up in advance to form the parlement, only those whose names were on the list being capable of sitting in it. Its main function had come to be that of a final court of appeal. At the various sessions, which were regularly held at Paris, appeared the baihis and seneschals, who were called upon to answer for the cases they had judged and also for their administration. Thefl accounts were received by members of the parlement at the Temple, and this was the origin of the Cour or Chambre des Coniptes.

,At the end of this period the nobility became an exclusive class. It became an established rule that a man had to be noble in order to be made a knight, and even in order to ~ acquire a fief; but in this latter respect the king and the made exceptions in the case of rotu4ers, who were Clzurvh In licensed to take up fiefs, subject to a payment known as the droits de franc~fief. The roturiers, or villeins who were not in a state of thraldom, were already a numerous class not only in the towns but in the country. The Church maintained her privileges; a few attempts only were made to restrain the abuse, not the extent, of her jurisdiction. This jurisdiction was, during the 12th century, to a certain extent regularized, the bishop nominating a special functionary to hold his court; this was the officialis (Fr. official), whence the name of officiahit later applied in France to the ecclesiastical jurisdictions. On one point, however, her former rights were diminished. She preserved the right of freely acquiring personal and real property, but though she could still acquire feudal tenures she could not keep them; the customs decided that she must vider las mains, that is, alienate the property again within a year.and a day. The reason for this new rule was that the Church, the ecclesiastical establishment, is a proprietor who does not die and in principle does not surrender herproperty; consequently, the lords had no longer the right of exacting the transfer duties on those tenures which she acquired. It was rossible, however, to compromise and allow the Church to keep ..he tenure on condition of the consent not only. of the lord directly concerned, but of all the higher lords up to the capitali.s dominus; it goes without saying that this concession was only obtained by the payment of pecuniary compensations, the chief of whjch was the droil damnrtis.crrnenl. paid to these (hiferent lords. In this period the form of the episcopal elections under- went a change, the electoral college coming to-consist only ofth canons composing the chapter of the cathedral church~ But except for the official candidatures, which were abused ~ the kings and great lords, the elections were regular; the Pragmatic Sanction, attributed to Saint -Louis, which-implies the contrary, is nowadays considered apocryphal by the best critics.

Finally, it must be added that during the I3th century criminal law was profoundly modified. Under the influence of Roman law a system of arbitrary penalties replaced those k laid down by the customs, which had usually been ~

fixed and cruel. The criminal procedure of the feudal jaw.

Courts had been based on the right of accusation vested only In the person wronged and his relations; for this was substituted the inquisitorial procedure (processus per inquisilionein),which had developed in the canon law at the very end of the 12th century, and was to become the proc~duse a lextraordinaire of the aucie,t rgime, which was conducted in secret and without free ~defence and debate. Of this procedure torture came to be an ordinary and regular part.

The customs, which at that time contained almost the whole of the law for a great part of France, were not fixed by being written down. In that part of France which was Th subject to customary law (In France coutumire) they c~1r were defined when necessary by the verdict of a jury of practitioners in what was called the enq-uie par turbes; some of them, however, were, in part at least, authentically recorded in seigniorial charters, charles de ville or charles de coulume~ Their rules were also recorded by experts in private works or collections called liores cent utniers, or simply coutumiers (customaries). The most notable of these are Las Coutumes de Beauvoisis of Philippe de Beaumanoir, which Montesquieu justly quotes as throwing light on those times; also the Trs ancienne coubume de Normandie and the Grand Coutumier de Normandie; the Conseil d un ami of Pierre des Fontaines, the Etabhissements de Saint Louis; the Livre de jslice et de plel~ At the same time the clerks of impoitant judges began to colle~ in registers notable decisions; it is in this way that we have preserved to us the old decisions of the exchequer of, Normandy, and the Ohi,n registers of the parlement of Paris. ,

The Limited Monarchy.The 14th and 15th centuries were the age of the limited monarchy. Feudal institutions kept their political importance; but side by side with them arose others of which the object was the direct exercise of the royal authority;, others also arose from the very heart of feudalism, but at the same time transformed its laws in-order fe adapt them to the new needs of the crown. In this period certain rules for the succession to the throne were fixed by precedents: the exclusion of women and of male descendants in the female line, and the principle that a king could not by an act of Will change the succession of the crown. The old curia regis disappeared and was replaced by the parlement as to its judicial functions, while to fulfil its deliberative functions there was formed a new body, the royal council (conseil du rol), an administrative and governing council, which was in no way of a feudal character. The number of its members was at first small, but they tended to increase; soon ,the brevet of conseihler du roi en ses conseils was given to numerous representatives of the clergy and nobility, the great officers of the crown becoming members by right. Side by side with these officials, whose power was then at its height, there were gradually evolved mtr~ subservient ministers who could be dispensed with at will; the secrtaires des comnsandemnents du red of the 15th century, who in the 16th century developed into the secrtaires detat, and were themselves descended from the dercs du secret and secrtaires des finances of the I4th century. The College of the Twelve Peers of France had not its full numbers at. the end of the 13th century; the six ecclesiastical peerages existed arid continued to exist to the end, together with the archbishopric and bishoprics to which they were attached, not being suppressed; but several of the great fiefs to which six lay peerages bad been attached had been annexed to the crown. To fill these vacancies, Phdip the Fair raised the duchies of Brittany and Anjou and the countship of Artois to the rank of peerages of France. This really amounted to changing the nature of the institution; for the new peers held their rank merely at the kings will, though the rank eontinued to belong to a great barony and to behanded down with It. Before long peers began to be created when there were no gaps in the ranks of the College, and there was a constant increase in the numbers of the lay peers.

At the beginning of the i4th century appeared the states general (tatsg~nraux), which were often convoked, though not at fixed intervals, throughout the whole of the I4th ~ century and the greater part of the 15th. Their and pro- power reached its height at a critical moment of the vincial Hundred Years War during the reign of King John. S & At the same time there arose side by side with them, and from the same causes, the provincial estates, which were in miniature for each province what the states general were for the whole kingdom. Of these provincial assemblies some were founded in one or other of the great fiefs, being convoked by the duke or count under the pressure of the same needs which led the king- to convoke the states general; others, in provinces which had already been annexed to the crown, probably had their origin in the councils summoned by the bailli or seneschal to aidhim in his administration. Later it became a privilege for a province to have its own assembly; those which did so were never of right subject to the royal taile, and kept, at least formally, the right of sanctioning, by means of the assembly, the subsidies which took itsplace. Hence it became the endeavour of the crown to suppress these provincial assemblies, which in the x4th century were to be found everywhere; from the outset of the 15th century they began to disappear in central France.

The most characteristic feature of this period was the institution of universal taxation by the crown. So far the kings sole revenues were those which he exacted, in his capacity ~ of feudal lord, wherever another lord did not intervene between him and the inhabitants, in addition to the income arising from certain crown rights which he had preserved or regaIned. But these revenues, known later as the income of the royal domain and later still as the finances ordinaires, became insufficient in proportion as the royal power increased; it became a necessity for the monarch to be able to levy imposts throughout the whole extent of the provinces annexed to the crown, even upon the subjects of the different lords. This he could only do by means of the co-operation of those lords, lay and ecclesiastical, who alone had the right of taxing their subjects; the co-operation of the privileged towns, which had the right to tax themselves, was also necessary. It was in order to obtain this consent that the states general, in most cases, and the provinc~al assemblies, in all cases, were convoked. In some cases, however, the king adopted different methods; for instance, he sometimes utilized the principle of the feudal aids. In cases where his vassals owed him, as overlord, a pecuniary aid, he substituted for the sum paid directly by his vassals a tax levied by his own authority on their subjects. It is in this way that for thirty years the necessary sums were raised, without any vote from the states general, to pay the ransom of King John. But in principle the taxes were in the 14th century sanctioned by the states general. Whatever form they took, they were given the generic name of Aids or auxilia, and were considered as occasional and extraordinary subsidies, the king being obliged in principle to live of his Own (vivre de son domaine). Certain aids, it is true, tended to become permanent under the reign of Charles VI.; but the taxes subject to the consent of the states general were at first the sole resource of Charles VII. In the second half of his reign the two chief taxes became permanent:

in 1435 that of the aids (a tax on the sale of articles of consumption, especially on wine), with the formal consent of the states general, and that of the taille in 5439. In the latter case the consent of the states general was not given; but only the nobility protested, for at the same time as the royal taille became permanent the seigniorial laille was suppressed. These imposts were increased, on the royal authority, by Louis XI. After his death the states general, which met at Tours in 1484, endeavoured to re-establish the periodical vote of the tax, and only granted it for two years, reducing it to the sum which it had reached at the death of Charles VII. But the promise that they would agnin be convoked before the expiry of two years was not kept. These imposts and that of the gabelle were henceforth permanent. Together with the taxes there was evolved the system of their administration. Their main outlines were laid down by the states general in the reign of King John, in 1355 and the following years. For the administration of the subsidies which they granted, they nominated from among their own numbers surinkndants gnftaux or gn~raiux des finances, and further, for each diocese or equivalent district, plus. Both had not only the active administration but also judicial rights, the latter constituting courts of the first instance and the former courts of final appeal. After 1360 the crown again adopted this organization, which had before been only temporary; but henceforth g~n~raux and lus were nominated by the king. The elus, or officiers de-s elections, only existed in districts which were subject to the royal taille; hence the division, so important in old France, into pays d~lections and pays d~tats. The lus kept both administration and jurisdiction; but in the higher stage a differentiation was made: the gntraux des finances, who numbered four, kept the administration, while their jurisdiction as a court of final appeal was handed over to another body, the cour des aides, which had already been founded at the end of the 14th, century. Besides the four gn~raux des finances, who administered the taxation, there were four Treasurers of France (trsoriers de France), who administered the royal domain; and these eight officials together formed in the 15th century a kind of ministry of finance to the monarchy.

The army also was organized. On the one hand, the military service attached to the fiefs was transformed for the profit of the king, who alone had the right of making war: Th it became the arrire-ban, a term which had formerly ~ applied to the levee en masse of all the inhabitants in times of national danger. Before the 14th century the king had only had the power of callingupon his own immediate vassals for service. Henceforth all possessors of fiefs owed him, whether within the kingdom or on the frontiers, military service without pay and at their own expense. This was for long an important resource for the king. But Charles VII. organized an army on another footing. It comprised the francs-archers furnished by the parishes, a militia which was only summoned in case of war, but in time of peace had to practise archery, and companies of gendarmerie or heavy cavalry, forming a permanent establishment, which were called coin pagnies dordonnance. It was chiefly to provide for the expense of the first nucleus of a permanent army that the taille itself had been made permanent.

The new army led to the institution of the governors of provinces, who were to command the troops quartered there. At first they were only appointed for the frontiers and fortified places, but later the kingdom was divided into gouvernements gtnraux. There were at first twelve of these, which were called in the middle of the 16th century the douse anciens gouvernernents. Although, strictly speaking, they had only military powers, the governors, always chosen from among the great lords, became in the provinces the direct representatives of the king and caused the baihis and seneschals to take a secondary place.

The courts of law continued to develop on the lines already laid down. The parlement, which had come to be a judicial committee nominated every year, but always consisting in fact of the samepersons, changed in the course of the ~ 14th century into a body of magistrates who were permanent but as yet subject to removal. During this period were evolved its organization and definitive features (see PARLEMENT). The provincial parlemeitts had arisen after and in imitation of that of Paris, and had for the most part taken the place of some superior jurisdiction which had formerly existed in the same district when it had been independent (like Provence) or had formed one of the great fiefs (like Normandy or Burgundy)~ It was during this period also that the parlements acquired the right of opposing the registration, that is to say, the promulgation of laws, of revising them, and of making representations (re,nontrances) to the king when they refused the registration, giving the reasons for such refusal. The other royal jurisdictions were completed (see BA1LIrF, CHATELET). Besides them arose another of great importance, which was of military origin, but came to include all citizens under its sway. These were the provosts of the marshals of France (pr~vts des marc/aux de France), who were officers of the Marchausse (the gendarmerie of the time); they exercised criminal jurisdiction without appeal in the case of crimes committed by vagabonds and fugitives from justice, this class being called their gibier (game), and of a number of crimes of violence, whatever the rank of the offender. Further, another class of officers was created in connection with the law courts: the kings men (gens du roi), the procureurs and avocats du roi, who were at first simply those lawyers who represented the king in the law courts, or pleaded for him when he had some interest to follow up or to defend. Later they became officers of the crown. Iii the case of the procureurs du roi this development took place in the firsthalf of the 14th century. Their duty was not only to represent the king in the law courts, whether as plaintiff or defendant, but also to take care that in. each case the law was applied, and to demand its application. From this time on the procureurs du roi had full control over matters concerning the public interest, and especially over public prosecution. in this period, too, appeared what was afterwards called justice retenue, that is to say, the justice which the king administered, or was supposed to administer, in person. It was based on the idea that, since all justice ~nd all judicial power reside in the king, he could not deprive himself of them by delegating their exercise to his officers and to the feudal lords. Consequently he could, if he thought fit, take the place of the judges and call up a case before his own council. He could reverse even the decisions of the courts~of final appeal, and in some cases used this means of appealing against the decrees of the parlements (proposition derreur, requ&e ci vile, pourvoi en re~vision). In these cases the king was supposed to judge in person; in reality they were examined by the ma fires des requtes and submitted to the royal council (conseil du roi), at which~the king was always supposed to be present and which had in itself no power of giving a decision. For this purpose there was soon formed a special committee of the council, which was called the conseil prize or de justice. At the -end of the 15th century, Charles VIII., in order to relieve the council of some of its functions, created a new final court, the grand conseil, to deal with a number of these cases. But before long it again became the custom to appeal to the conseil du roi, so that the grand conseil became almost useless. The king frequently, by means of leitres de justice, intervened in the procedure of the courts, by granting benefices, by which rules which were too severe were modified, and faculties or facilities for overcoming difficulties arising from flaws in contracts or judgments, cases at that time not covered by the common law. By lellres de grdce he granted reprieve or pardon in individual cases. The most extreme form of intervention by the king was made by means of letires de cachet (q.v.), which ordered a subject to go without trial into a state prison or into exile.

The condition of the Church changed greatly during this period. The jurisdiction of the officialiles was very much reduced, even Tb over the clergy. They ceased to be competent to Church. judge actions concerning the possession of real property, in which the clergy were defendants. In criminal law the theory of the cas privilegie, which appears in the I 4th century, enabled the royal judges to take action against and judge the clergy for all serious crimes, though without the power of inflicting any penalties but arbitrary fines, the ecclesiastical judge remaining competent, in accordance with the privileges of clergy, to try the offender for the same crime as what was technically called a dlil commun. The development of jurisprudence graduall,y removed from the qfficialiies causes of a purely secular character in which laymen only were concerned, such as wills and contracts; and in matrimonial cases their jurisdiction was limited to those in which the foedus matr-imonii was in question. For the acquisition of real property by ecclesiastical establishments the consent of the king to the amortizement was always necessary, even in the case of allodial lands; and if it was a case of feudal tenures the king and the direct overlords alone kept their rights, the intermediate lords being left out of the question.

As regards the conferring of ecclesiastical benefices, from the i4th century onwards the papacy encroached more and more upon the rights of the bishops, in whose gift the inferior benefices generally were, and of the electors, who usually conferred the superior benefices; at the same meets. time it exacted from newly appointed incumbents heavy dues, which were included under the generic name of annates. During the Great Schism of the Western Church, these abuses became more and more crying, until by a series of edicts, promulgated with the consent and advice of the parlement and the clergy, the Gallican Church was restored to the possession of its former Liberties, under the royal authority. Thus France was ready to accept the decrees of reform issued by the council of Basel, which she did, with a few modifications, in the Pragmatic Sanction of Charles VII., adopted after a solemn assembly of the, clergy and nobles at Bourges and registered by the parlement of Paris in. 1438. It suppressed the annats and most of the means by which the popes disposed of the inferior benefices: the reservations and the gratiae expect ativae. - For the choice of bishops and abbots, it restored election by~ the chapters and convents. The Pragmatic Sanction, however, was never recognized by the papacy, nor was it consistently and strictly applied by the royal power. The transformation of the civil and criminal law under the influence of Roman and canon law had become more and more marked. The production of the coututniers, or livres de pratiques, also continued. The chief of them were: in the I4th century, the Stylus Vetus Curiae Parlamenti of Guillaume de Breuil; the Trs ancienne coutume d~ Bretagne; the Grand Coutumier de France, or -Cautumier de Charles VI.; the Somme rural of Boutillier; in the 15th century, for Auvergne, the Practica forensis of Masuer. Charles VII., in an article of the Grand Ordonnance of Montil-les-Tours (1453), ordered the general customs tO be officially recorxled under -the supervision of the crown. It was an enormous work, which would almost have transformed them into written laws; but up to the 16th century little recording was done, the procedure established by the Ordonnance for the purpose not being very suitable.

The Absolute Mon,archy.From the 16th century to the Revolution was the period of the absolute monarchy, but it can be further divided into two periods: that of the Oover~establishment of this rgime, from 1515 to about meat 1673; and that of the ancien regime when definitively under bc established, from 1673 to 1789. The reigns of Francis abselute monarchy.

I. and Henry II. clearly laid down the principle of the absolute power of the crown and applied it effectually, as is plainly seen from the temporary disappearance of the states general, which were not assembled under these two reigns. There were merely a few assemblies of notables chosen by the royal power, the most important of which was that of Cognac, under Francis I., summoned to advise on the non-fulfilment of the treaty of Madrid. It is true that in the second half of the 16th century the states general reappeared. They were summoned in 1560 at Orleans, then iii I 561 at Pontoise, and in 1576 and 1588 at Blois. The League even convoked one, which was held at Paris in 1593. This represented a crucial and final struggle. Two points were then at issue: firstly, whether France was to be Protestant or Catholic; secondly, whether she was to have a limited or an absolute monarchy. The two problems were not necessarily bound up with one another. For if the Protestants desired political liberty, many of the Catholics wished for it too, as is proved by the writings of the time, and even by the fact that the League summoned the estates. But the states general of the 16th century, in spite of their good in~ tentions and the great talents which were at their service, were dominated by religious passions, which made them powerless for any practical purpose. They only produced a few great ordinances of reform, which were not well observed. They were, however, to be called together yet again, as a result of the disturbances which followed the death of Henry IV.; but their dissensions and powerlessness were again strikingly exemplified and they did not reappear until I ~8q. Other bodies, however, which the royal power had created, were to carry on the struggle against it. There were the parlements, the political rivals of the states general. Thanks to the principle according to which no law came into effect so long as it had not been registered by them, they had, as we have seen, won for themselves the right of a preliminary discussion of those laws which were presented to them, and of refusing registration, explaining their reasons to the king by means of the remontrances. The royal power saw in this merely a concession from itself, a consultative power, which ought to yield before the royal will, when the latter was clearly manifested, either by lettres de jussion or by the actual words and presence of the king, when he came in person to procure the registration of a law in a so-called lit de justice. But from the 16th century onwards the members of the parlements claimed, on the strength of a historical theory, to have inherited the powers of the ancient assemblies (the Merovingian. and Carolingian placila and the curia regis), powers which they, moreover, greatly exaggerated. The successful assertion of this claim would have made them at once independent of and necessary to the crown. During the minority of kings, they had possessed, in fact, special opportunities for asserting their pretensions, particularly when they had been called upon to intervene in the organization of the regency. It is on this account that at the beginning of the reign of Louis XIV. the parlement of Paris wished to take part in the government, and in 1648, in concert with the other supreme courts of the capital, temporarily imposed a sort of charter of liberties. But the first Fronde, of which the parlement was the centre and soul, led to its downfall, which was completed when later on Louis XIV. became all-powerful. The ordinance of 1667 on civil procedure, and above all a declaration of 1673, ordered the parlement to register the laws as soon as it received them and without any modification. It was only after this registration that they were allowed to draw up remonstrances, which were henceforth futile. The nobles, as a body, had also become politically impotent. They had been sorely tried by the wars of religion, and Richelieu, in his struggles against the governors of the provinces, had crushed their chief leaders. The second Fronde was their last effort (see FRONDE). At the same time the central government underwent changes. The great officers of the crown disappeared one by one. The office of constable of France was suppressed by purchase during the first half of the 17th century, and of those in the first rank only the chancellor survived till the Revolution. But though his title could only be taken from him by condemnation on a capital charge, the king was able to deprive him of his functions by taking from him the custody and use of the seal of France, which were entrusted to a garde des sceaux. Apart from the latter, the kings real ministers were the secretaries of state, generally four in number, who were always removable and were not chosen from among the great nobles. For purposes of internal administration, the provinces were divided among them, each of them corresponding by despatches with those which were assigned to him. Any other business (with the exception of legal affairs, which belonged to the chancellor, and finance, of which we shall speak later) was divided among them according to convenience. At the end of the 16th century, however, were evolved two regular departments, those of war and foreign affairs. Under Francis I. and Henry II., the chief administration of finance underwent a change; for the four g~nraux des finances, who had become too powerful, were substituted the intendants des finances, one of whom soon became a chief minister of finance, with the title surintendant. The gnraux des finances, like the trsoriers de France, became provincial officials, each at the head of a genralil (a superior administrative district for purposes of finance); under Henry III. the two functions were combined and assigned to the bisreaux des finances. The fall of Fouquet led to the suppression of the office of surintendant; but soon Colbert again became practically a minister of finance, under the name of contrleur gnral des finances, both title and office continuing to exist up to the Revolution.

The conseil du rol, the origin of which we have described, was an important organ of the central government, and for a long time included among its members a large number of representatives of the nobility and clergy. Besides the councillors of state (conseillers detat), its ordinary members, the great officers of the crown and secretaries of state, princes of the blood and peers of France were members of it by right. Further, the king was accustomed to grant the brevet of councillor to a great number of the nobility and clergy, who could be called upon to sit in the council and give an opinion on matters of importance. But in the 17th century the council tended to differentiate its functions, forming three principal sections, one for political, one for financial, and the third for legal affairs. Under Louis XIV. it took a definitely professional, administrative and technical character. The conseillers a brevet were all suppressed in 1673, and the peers of France ceased to be members of the council. The political council, or conseil den haut, had no ex officio members, not even, the chancellor; the secretary of state for foreign affairs, however, necessarily had entry to it; it also included a small number of persons chosen by the king and bearing the title of ministers of state (ministres detat). The other important sections of the conse-il du roi were the conseji des finances, organized after the fall of Fouquet, and the conseil des depeches, in which sat the four secretaries of state and where everything concerned with internal administration (except finance) was dealt with, including the legal business connected with this administration., As to the government and the preparation of laws, under Louis XIV. and Louis XV., the conseil du roi often passed into the background, when, as the saying went, a minister who was projecting some important measure travaillait seul avec le roi (worked alone with the king), having from the outset gained the kings ear.

The chief authority in the provincial administration belonged in the 16th century to the governors of the provinces, though, strictly speaking, the governor had only military powers in his gouvernement; for, as we have seen, he was the direct representative of the king for general tranon. purposes. But at the end, of this century were created the intendants of the provinces, who, after a period of conflict with the governors and the parlements, became absolute masters of the administration in all those provinces which had no provincial estates, and the instruments of a complete administrative centralization (see INTENDANT).

The towns having a corps de yule, that is to say, a municipal organization, preserved in the 16th century a fairly wide autonomy, and played animportant part in the wars Th of religion, especially under the League. But under toi,,s. Louis XIV. their independence rapidly declined. They were placed under the tutelage of the intendants, whose sanction, or that of the conseil du roi, was necessary for all acts of any importance. In the closing years of the 17th century, the municipal officials ceased, even in principle, to be elective. Their functions ranked as offices which were, like royal offices, saleable and heritable., The pretext given by the edicts were the intrigues and dissei~ieins caused by the elections; the real cause was that the government wanted to sell these offices, which is proved by the fact that it frequently allowed towns to redeem them and to:re-establish the elections.

The sale of royal offices is one of the characteristic features of the ancien regime. It had begun early, and, apparently, with the office of councillor of the parlement of Paris, when ~ this became permanent, in the second half of the I4th ~ century. It was first practised b~ magistrates who wished to dispose of their office in favor of a successor of their own choice. The resigna~io infavorem of ecclesiastical benefices served as model, and at first care was taken to conceal the money transaction between the parties. The crown winked at these resignations in consideration of a payment in money.

But in the 16th century, under Francis I. at the latest, the crown itself began officially to sell offices, whether newly created or vacant by the death of their occupiers, taking a fee from those upon whom they were conMrred. Under Charles IX. the right of resigning in favorem was recognized by law in the case of royal officials, in return for a payment to the treasury of a certain proportion of the price. In the case of judicial offices there was a struggle for at least two centuries between the system of sale and another, also imitated from canon law, i.e. the election or presentation of candidates by the legal corporations. The ordinances of the second half of the 16th century, granted in answer to complaints of the states general, restored and confirmed the latter system, giving a share in thepresentation to the towns or provincial notables and forbidding sales. The system of sale, however, triumphed in the end, and, in the case of judges, had, moreover, a favorable result, assuring to them that irremovability which Louis XI. had promised in vain; for, under this system, the king could not reasonably dismiss an official arbitrarily without refunding the fee which he had paid. On the other hand, it contributed to the development of the spices, or dues paid by litigants to the judges. The system of sale, and with it irremovability, was extended to all official functions, even to financial posts. The process was completed by the recognition of the rights in the sale of offices as hereditary, i.e. the right of resigning the office on payment of a fee, either in favor of a competent descendant or of a third party, passed to the heirs of an official who had died without having exercised this right himself. It was established under Henry IV. in 1604 by the system called the Paulette, in return for the payment by the official of an annual fee (droit annuel) which was definitely fixed at a hundredth part of the price of the office. Thus these offices, though the royal nomination was still required as well as the professional qualifications required by the law, became heritable property in virtue of the finance attached to them. This led to the formation of a class of men who, though bound in many ways to the crown, were actually independent. Hence the tendency in the 18th century to create new and important functions under the form, not of offices, but of simple commissions. In this period of the history of France were evolved and defined the essential principles of the old public law, There were, Funda- in the first place, the fundamental laws of the realm, menial which were true constitutional principles, established laws of for the most part not by law but by custom, and Franc., considered as binding in respect of the king himself; so that, although he was sovereign, he could neither abrogate, nor modify, nor violate them. There was, however, some discussion as to what rules actually came under this category, except in the case of two series about which there was no doubt. These were, on the one hand, those which dealt with the succession to the crown and forbade the king to change its order, and those which proclaimed the inalienability of the royal domain, against which no title by prescription was valid. This last principle, introduced in the i4th century, had been laid down and defined by the edict of Moulins in 1566; it admitted only two exceptions:

the formation of appanages (q.v.), and selling (engagement), to meet the necessities of war, with a perpetual option of redeeming it.

There was in the second place the theory of the rights, franchises and liberties of the Gallican Church, formed of elements some of which were of great antiquity, and based on the conditions which had determined the relations of the Gallican Church with the crown and papacy during the Great Schism and under the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, and defined at the end of the 16th and the beginning of the I7th century. This body of doctrine was defined by the writings of three men especially, Guy Coquille, Pierre Pithou and Pierre Dupuy, and was solemnly confirmed by the declaration of the clergy of France, or D~claralion des quatres articles of 1682, and by the edict which promulgated it. Its substance was based chiefly on three principles:

firstly, that the temporal power was absolutely independent of the spiritual power; secondly, that the pope had authority over the clergy of France in temporal matters and matters of discipline only by the consent of the king; thirdly, that the king had authority over and could legislate for the Gallican Church in temporal matters and matters of discipline. The old public law provided a safeguard against the violation of these rules. This was the process known as the appel comme dabus, formed of various elements, some of them very ancient, and definitely established during the 16th century. It was heard before the parlements, but could, like every other case, be evoked before the royal council. Its effect was to annul any act of the ecclesiastical authority due to abuse or contrary to French law. The clergy were, when necessary, reduced to obedience by means of arbitrary fines and by the seizure of their temporalities. The Pragmatic Sanction ,had been abrogated and replaced by the Concordat of 1515, concluded between Francis I. and Leo X., which remained in force until suppressed by the Constituent Assembly. The Concordat, moreover, preserved many of the enactments of the Pragmatic Sanction, notably those which protected the collation of the inferior benefices from the encroachments of the papacy, and which had introduced reforms in certain points of discipline. But in the case of the superior benefices (bishoprics and abbeys) election by the chapters was suppressed. The king of France nominated the candidate, to whom the pope gave canonical institution. As a matter of fact, the pope had no choice; he had to institute the nominee of the king, unless he could show his unworthiness or incapacity, as~ the result of inquiries regularly conducted in France; for the pope it was, as the ancient French authors used to say, a case of compulsory collation. The annates were re-established at the time of the Concordat, but considerably diminished in comparison with what they had been before the Pragmatic Sanction. We must add, to complete this account, that many of the inferior benefices, in France as in the rest of Christendom, were conferred according to the rules of patronage, the patron, whether lay or ecclesiastic, presenting, a candidate whom the bishop was bound to appoint, provided he was neither incapable nor unsuitable. There was some difficulty in getting the Concordat registered by the parlement of Paris, and the latter even announced its intention of not taking the Concordat into account in those cases concerning benefices which might come before it. The crown found an easy method of making this opposition ineffectual, namely, to transfer to the Grand Conseil the decision of cases arising out of the application of the Concordat.

In the 16th century also, contributions to the public services drawn from the immense possessions of the clergy were regularized. Since the second half of the 12th century at least, the kings had in times of urgent need asked for subsidies from the church, and ever since the Saladin tithe (dime saladine) of Philip Augustus this contribution. had assumed the form of a tithe, taking a tenth part of the revenue of the benefices for a given period. Tithes of this kind were fairly frequently granted by the clergy of France, either with the popes consent or without (this being a disputed point). After the conclusion of the Concordat, Leo X. granted the king a tithe (dci-me) under the pretext of a projected war against the Turks; hitherto concessions of this kind had been made by the papacy in view of the Crusades or of wars against heretics. The concession was several times renewed, until, by force of custom, the levying of these tithes became permanent. But in the middle of the 16th century the system changed. The crown was heavily in debt, and its needs had increased. The property of the clergy having been threatened by the states general of 1560 arid 1561, the king proposed to them to remit the bulk of the tithes and other dues, in return for the payment by them of a sum equivalent to the proceeds of the taxes which he had mortgaged. A formal contract to this effect was concluded at Poissy in 1561 between the king and the clergy of France, represented by the prelates who were then gathered together for the Colloquy of Poissy with the Protestants, and some of those who had been sitting at the states general of Pontoise. The fulfilment of this agreement was, however, evaded by the king, who diverted part of the funds provided by the clergy from their proper purpose. In i~8o, after a period of ten years which had been agreed on, a new assembly of the clergy was called together and, after protesting against this action, renewed the agreement, which was hencefor ward always renewed every ten years. Such was the definitive form of the contribution of the clergy, who also acquired the right of themselves assessing and levying these taxes on the holders of benefices. Thus every ten years there was a great assembly of the clergy, the members of which were elected. There were two stages in the election, a preliminary one in the dioceses and a further election in the ecclesiastical provinces, each province sending four deputies to the general assembly, two of the first rank, that is to say, chosen from the episcopate, and two of the second rank, which included all the other clergy. The dons gratuits (benevolences) voted by the assembly comprised a fixed sum equivalent to the old tithes and supplementary sums paid on one occasion only, which were sometimes considerable. The church, on her side, profited by this arrangement in order to obtain the commutation or redemption of the taxes affecting ecclesiastics considered as individuals. This settlement only applied to the clergy of France, that is to say, to the clergy of those districts which were united to the crown before the end of the 16th century. The provinces annexed later, called pays lrangers, or pays conquis, had in this matter, as in many others, an arrangement of their own. At last, under Louis XV. the edict of 1749, concernant les tablissements et acquisitions des gens de mainmorte, was completely effective in subordinating the acquisition of property by ecclesiastical establishments to the consent and control of the crown, rendering them incapable of acquiring real property by bequests.

At the end of the 16th century a wise law had been made which, in spite of the traces which it bore of past struggles, had established a reasonable balance among the Christians of France. The edict of Nantes, in 1598, granted the Protestants full civil rights, liberty of conscience and public worship in many places, and notably in all the royal baihiages. The Catholics, whose religion was essentially a state religion, had never accepted this arrangement as final, and at last, in 1685, under Louis XIV., the edict of Nantes was revoked and the Protestant pastors expelled from France. Their followers were forbidden to leave the country, but many succeeded nevertheless in escaping abroad. The position of those who remained behind was peculiar. Laws passed in 1715 and 1724 established the legal theory that there were no longer any Protestants in France, but only vieux ca/holiques and nouveaux convertis. The result was that henceforth they had no longer any regular civil status, the registers containing the lists of Catholics enjoying civil rights being kept by the Catholic clergy.

The form of government established under Louis XIV. was preserved without any fundamental modification under Louis XV. After the death of Louis XIV., however, the regent, under the inspiration of the duc de St Simon, made trial of a system of which the latter had made a study while in a close correspondence with the duke of Burgundy. It consisted in substituting for the authority of the ministers, secretaries of state and controllergeneral councils, or governmental bodies, mainly composed of great lords and prelates. These only lasted for a few years, when a return was made to the former organization. The panements had regained their ancient rights in consequence of the parlement of Paris having, in 1715, set aside the will of Louis XIV. as being contrary to the fundamental laws of the kingdom, in that it laid down rules for the composition of the council of regency, and limited the power of the regent. This newly revived power they exercised freely, and all the more so since they were the last surviving check on the royal authority. During this reign there were numerous conflicts between them and the government, the causes of this being primarily the innumerable incidents to which the bull Unigenitus gave rise, and the increase of taxation; proceedings against Jesuits also figure conspicuously in the action of the pariements. They became at thi5 period the avowed representatives of the nation; they contested the validity of the registration of laws in the li/s de ju;ctice, asserting that laws could only be made obligatory when the registration had been freely endorsed by themselves. Before the registration of edicts concerning taxation they demanded a statement of the financial situation and the right o examining the accounts. Finally, by the theory of the classes, which considered the various parlements of France as parts of one and the same body, they established among them a political union. These pretensions the crown refused to recognizes Louis XV. solemnly condemned them in a lit dejustice of December ~ and in 1771 the chancellor Maupeou took drastic measures against them. The magistrates of the parlement of Paris were removed, and a new parlement was constituted, including the members of the grand conseil, which had also been abolished. The cour des aides of Paris, which had made common cause with the panlement, was also suppressed. Many of the provincial parlements were reorganized, and a certain number of useful reforms were carried out in the jurisdiction of the parlement of Paris; the object of these, however, was in most cases that of diminishing its importance. These actions, the coup detat of the chancellor Maupeou, as they were called, produced an immense sensation. The repeated conflicts of the reign of Louis XV. had already given rise tO a whole literature of books, pamphlets and tracts in which the rights of the crown were discussed~ At the same time the political philosophy of the 18th century was disseminating new, principles, and especially those of the supremacy of the people and the differentiation of powers, the government of England also became known among the French. Thus mens minds were being prepared for the Revolution.

The personal government of Louis XVI. from 1774 to 1789 was chiefly marked by two series of facts. Firstly, there was the partial application of the principles propounded by the French economists of this period, the Physiocrats, who had a political doctrine peculiar to themselves. They were not in favor of political liberty, but attached on the contrary to the absolute monarchy, of which they did not fear the abuses because they were convinced that so soon as they should be known, reason (evidence) alone would suffice to make the crown respect the natural and essential laws of bodies politic (Lois naturehles et essentielles des socits pol~ques, the title of a book by Mercier de La Rivire). On the other hand, they favored civil and economic liberty. They wished, in particular, to decentralize the administration and restore to the landed proprietors the administration and levying of taxes, which they wished to reduce to a tax on land only. This school came into power with Turgot, who was appointed controller-general of the finances, and laid the foundations of many reforms. He actually accomplished for the moment one very important reform, namely, the suppression of the trade and craft gilds (communautes, jurandes 8/ maftrises). This organization, which was common to the whole of Europe (see GILDs), had taken definitive shape in France in the I3th and 14th centuries, but had subsequently been much abused. Turgot suppressed the privileges of the maftres, who alone had been able to work on their own account, or to open shops and workshops, and thus proclaimed the freedom of labor, industry and commerce. However, the old organization, slightly amended, was restored under his successor Necker. If was Turgots purpose to organize provincial and other inferior assemblies, whose chief business was to be the assessment of taxes. Necker applied this idea, partially and experimentally, by creating a few of these provincial assemblies in various generahites of the pays dlections. A general reform on these lines and on a very liberal basis was proposed by Calonne to the assembly of notables in 1787, and it was brought into force for all the, pays delections,. though not under such good conditions, by an edict of the same year. Louis XVI. had inaugurated his reign by the restoration of the parlements; all the bodies which had been suppressed by Maupeou and all the officials whom he had dismissed were restored, and all the bodies and officials cieated by him wcre suppressed. But it was not long before the old struggle between the crown and parlements again broke out. It began by the conservative opposition offered by the parlement of Paris to Turgots reforms, But the real struggle broke out in 1787

over the edicts coming from the assembly of notables, and particularly over the two new taxes, the stamp duty and the land tax. The parlement of Paris refused to register them, asserting that the consent of the taxpayers, as represented by the states general, was necessary to fresh taxation. The struggle seemed to have come to an end in September; but in the following November it again broke out, in spite of the kings promise to summon the states general. It reached its height in May 1788, when the king had created a cour plenire distinct from the parlements, the chief function of which was to register the laws in their stead. A widespi-ead agitation arose, amounting to actual anarchy, and was only ended by the recall of Necker to power and the promise to convoke the states general for 1789.

Various Inst it utions .T he permanent army which, as has been stated above, was first established under Charles VII., The army. was developed and organized during the ancien rgime. The gendarmerie or heavy cavalry was continuously increased in numbers. On the other hand, the francs archers fell into disuse after Louis XI.; and, after a fruitless attempt had been made under Francis I. to establish a national infantry, the system was adopted for this also of recruiting permanent bodies of mercenaries by voluntary enlistment. First there were the old bands (vieilles bandes), chiefly those of Picardy and Piedmont, and at the end of the 16th century appeared the first regiments, the number of which was from time to time increased. There were also in the service and pay of the king French and foreign regiments, the latter principally Swiss, Germans and Scots. The system of purchase penetrated also to the army. Each regiment was the property of a great lord; the captain was, so to speak, owner of his company, or rather a contractor, who, in return for the sums paid him by the king, recruited his men and gave them their uniform, arms and equipment. In the second half of the reign of Louis XIV. appeared the militia (milices). To this force each parish had to furnish one recruit, who was at first chosen by the assembly of the inhabitants, later by drawing lots among the bachelors or widowers without children, who were not exempt. The militia was very rarely raised from the towns. The purpose for which these men were employed varied from time to time. Sometimes, as under Louis XIV., they were formed into special active regiments. Under Louis XV. and Louis XVI. they were formed into regiments provinciaux, which constituted an organized reserve. But their chief use was during war, when they were individually incorporated into various regiments to fill up the gaps.

tinder Louis XV., with the duc de Choiseul as minister of war, great and useful reforms were effected in the army. Choiseul suppressed what he called the farming of companies (cornpagnie-ferme); recruiting became a function of the state, and voluntary enlistment a contract between the recruit and the state. Arms, uniform and equipment were furnished by the king. Choiseul also equalized the numbers of the military units, and his reforms, together with a few others effected under Louis XVI., produced the army which fought the first campaigns of the Revolution.

One of the most distinctive ~features of the ancien rgime was excessive taxation. The taxes imposed by the king were numerous, and, moreover, hardly any of them fell on System of.. .

taxation, all partsof the krngdom. To this territorial inequality was added the inequality arising from privileges.

Ecclesiastics, nobles, and many of the crown officials were exempted from the heaviest imposts. The chief taxes were the taille (q.v.), the aides and the gabelle,or monopoly of salt, the consumption of which was generally made compulsory up to the amount determined by regulations. In the I7th and 18th centuries certain important new taxes - were established: from 1695 to 1698 the capita~ion, which was re-established in 1701 with considerable modifications, and in 1710 the tax of the dixirne, which became under Louis XV. the tax of the vingtimes. These two imposts had been established on the principle of equality, being designed to affect every subject in proportion to his income; but so strong was the system of privileges, that as a matter of fact the chief burden fell upon the roturiers. The income of a roturier who was not exempt was thus subject in turn to three direct imposts: the taille, the capitation and the vingtimes, and the apportioning or assessment of these was extremely arbitrary. In addition to indirect taxation strictly so called, which was very extensive in the 17th and 18th centuries, France under the ancien rgime was subject to the traites, or customs, which were not only levied at the frontiers on foreign trade, but also included many internal custom-houses for trade between different provinces. Their origin was generally due to historical reasons; thus, among the provinces reputCcs trangres were those which in the 14th century had refused to pay the aids for the ransom of King John, also certain provinces which had refused to allow customs offices to be established on their foreign frontier. Colbert had tried to abolish these internar duties, but had only succeeded to a limited extent.

The indirect taxes, the trailes and the revenues of the royal domain. were farmed out by the crown. At first a separate contract had been made for each impost in each election, but later they were combined into larger lots, as is shown by the name of one of the customs districts, lenceinle des cinq grosses fermes. From the reign of Henry IV. on the levying of each indirect impost was farmed en bloc for the whole kingdom, a system known as the fermes gnerales; but the realferme gnrale, including all the imposts and revenues which~ were farmed in:

the whole of France, was only established under Colbert. The ferme gnrale was a powerful, company, employing a vast number of men, most Of whom enjoyed various privileges. Besides the royal taxes, seigniorial imposts survived under the form of tolls and market dues. The lords also often possessed local monopolies, e.g. the right of the common bakehouse (four banal), which were called the banal its.

The organization of the royal courts of justice underwent but few modifications during the ancien rgime. The number of parlements, of cours des aides and of cours des compte.s~ increased; in the 17th century the name of conseil ~?t~ of superiezir was given to some new bodies which actually discharged the functions of the parlement, this being the period of the decline of the parlement. In the 16th century, under Henry II., had been created prsidiaux, or courts of final jurisdiction, intended to avoid numerous appeals in small cases, and above all to avoid a final appeal to the parlements.. Seigniorial courts survived, but were entirely suboYdinate to the royal jurisdictions and were badly officered by ill-paul and ignorant judges, the lords having long ago lost the right to sit in them in person. Their chief use was to deal with cases concerning the payment of feudal dues to the lord. Both lawyers and people would have preferred only two degrees of justice; and an ordinance of May 1788 realized this desire in the main. It did not suppress the seigniorial jurisdictions, but made their extinction a certainty by allowing litigants to ignore them and go straight to the royal judges. This was, however, reversed on the recall of Necker and the temporary triumph of the parlements.

The ecclesiastical jurisdictions survived to the end, but with diminished scope. Their competency had been considerably reduced by the Ordinance of Villers Cotterets of 539, and by an edict of 1693. But a series of ingenious legal ~ theories had been principally efficacious in gradually ~ depriving them of most of the cases which had hitherto come under them. In. the 18th century the privilege of clergy did not prevent civil suits in which the clergy were defendants from being almost always taken before secular tribunals, and ever since the first half of the 17th century, for all grave offences, or cas privilegies, the royal judge could pronounce a sentence of corporal punishment on a guilty cleric without this necessitating his previous degradation. The inquiry into the case was, it is true, conducted jointly by the royal and the ecclesiastical judge, but each of them pronounced his sentence independently. All cases concerning benefices came before the royal judges. Finally, the officialits had no longer as a rule any jurisdiction over laymen, even in the matter of marriage, except in questions of betrothals, and sometimes in cases of opposition to marriages.

The parish priests, however, continued to enter declarations of baptisms, marriages and burials in registers kept according to the civil laws.

The general customs of the pays coutumiers were almost all officially recorded in the 16th century, definite procedure for Th this purpose having been adopted at the end of the of the royal courts in the chief town of the district in which the particular customs were valid, and were then submitted to the government. The king then appointed commissioners to visit the district and promulgate the customs on the spot. For the purpose of this publication the lords, lay and ecclesiastical, of the district, with representatives of the towns and of various bodies of the inhabitants, were summoned for a given day to the chief town. In this assembly each article was read, discussed and put to the vote. Those which were approved by the majority were thereupon decreed (dcrts) by the commissioners in the kings name; those which gave rise to difficulties were put aside for the parlement to settle when it registered the coutume. The coutumes in this form became practically written law; henceforward their text could only be modified by a formal revision carried out according to the same procedure as the first version. Throughout the 16th century a fair number of coutumes were thus revised (ref ormes), with the express object of profiting by the observations and criticisms on the first text which had appeared in published commentaries and notes, the most important of which were those of Charles Dumoulin. In the 16th century there had been a revival of the study of Roman law, thanks to the historical school, among the most illustrious representatives of which were Jacques Cujas, Hugues Doneau and Jacques Godefroy; but this study had only slight influence on practical jurisprudence. Certain institutions, however, such as contracts and obligations, were regulated throughout the whole of France by the principles of Roman law.

- Legislation by ordonnances, edits, declarations or lettres patentes, emanating from the king, became more and more frequent; but the character of the grandes ordonnances, which were of a far-reaching and comprehensive nature, underwent a change during this period. Inthe i4th, 1 5th and 16th centuries they had been mainly ordonnan-ces de reformation (i.e. revising previous laws), which were most frequently drawn up after a sitting of the states general, in accordance with the suggestions submitted by the deputies. The last of this type was the ordinance of 1629, promulgated after the states general of 1614 and the assemblies of notables which had followed it. In the 17th and 18th centuries they became essentially codifications, comprising a systematic and detailed statement of the whole branch of law. There are two of these series of codifying ordinances: the first under Louis XIV., inspired by Colbert and carried out under his direction. The chief ordinances of this group are that of 1667 on civil procedure (code of civil procedure); that of 1670 on the examination of criminal cases (code of penal procedure); that of 1673 on the commerce of merchants, and that of 1681 on the regulation of shipping, which form between them a complete code of commerce by land and sea. The ordinance of 1670 determined the formalities of that secret and written criminal procedure, as opposed to the hearing of both parties in a suit, which formerly obtained in France; it even increased its severity, continuing the employment of torture, binding the accused by oath to speak the truth, and refusing them counsel save in exceptional cases, The second series of codifications was made under Louis XV., through the action of the chancellor dAguesseau. Its chief result was the regulation, by the ordinances of 1731, 1735 and 1747, of deeds of gift between living persons, wills, and property left in trust. Under Louis XVI. some mitigation was made of the criminal law, notably the abolition of torture.

The feudal rgime, in spite of the survival of seigniorial couits and tolls, was no longer of any political importance; but it still furnished the common form of real property. The fief, although it still implied homage from the vassal, no longer involved any service on his part (excepting that of the arrirc-ban due to the king); but when a fief changed hands the lord still exacted his profits. Tenures held by roturiers, in addition to some similar rights of transfer, were generally subject to periodical d and fixed contributions for the profit of the lord. This ~

system was still further complicated by tenures which were simply real and not feudal, e.g. that by payment of ground rent, which were superadded to the others, and had become all the heavier since, in the 18th century, royal rights of transfer had been added to the feudal rights. The inhabitants of the country districts were longing for the liberation of real property.

Serfdom had disappeared from most of the provinces of the kingdom; among all the coutumes which were officially codified, not more than ten or so still recognized this institution. SCrMOm. This had been brought about especially by the agency of the custom by which serfs bad been transformed into roturiers. An edict of Louis XVI. of 1779 abolished serfdom on crown lands, and mitigated the condition of the serfs who still existed on the domains of individual lords. The nobility still remained a privileged class, exempt from certain taxes. Certain offices were restricted to the nobility; according to an edict of Louis XVI. (1781) it was even necessary to be a noble in order to become an officer in the army. In fact, ~~e~e the royal favors were reserved for the nobility.

Certain rules of civil and criminal procedure also distinguished nobles from roturiers. The acquisition of fiefs had ceased to bring nobility with it, but the latter was derived from three sources: birth, lettres danoblissement granted by the king and appointment to certain offices. In the 17th and 18th centuries the~peers of France can be reckoned among the nobility, forming indeed its highest grade, though the rank of peer was still attached to a fief, which was handed down with it; on the eve of the Revolution there were thirty-eight lay peers. The rest of the nation, apart from the ecclesiastics, consisted of the roturiers, who were not subject to the disabilities of the serfs, but had not the privileges of the nobility. Hence the three orders (estates) of the kingdom: the clergy, the nobility and the tiers tat (third estate). An edict of Louis XVI. had made a regular civil status possible to the Protestants, and had thrown open offices and professions to them, though not entirely; but the exercise of ,their religion was still forbidden.

The Revoiution.--With the Revolution France entered the ranks of constitutional countries, in which the liberty of men is guaranteed by fixed and definite laws; from this time on, she has had always (except in the interval between two revolutions) a written constitution, which could not be touched by the ordinary legislative power. The first constitution was that of 1791; the states general of 1789, transformed by their own will, backed by public opinion, into the Constituent Assembly, drew it up on their own authority. But their work did not stop there. They abolished the whole of the old public law of France and part of the criminal law, or rather, transformed it in accordance with the principles laid down by the political philosophy of the 18th century. The principles which were then proclaimed are still, on most points, the foundation of modern French law. The development resulting from this extraordinary impetus can be divided into two quite distinct phases: the first, from 1789 to the coup detat of the x8th Brumaire in the year VIII., was the continuation of the impulse of the Revolution; the second includes the Consulate and the first Empire, and was, as it were, the marriage or fusion of the institutions arising from the Revolution with those of the ancien rgime.

On the whole, the constitutional law of the Revolution is a remarkably united whole, if we consider only the two consitutions which were effectively applied during ~this first phase, The Con~ that of the 3rd of September 1791, and that of the stijutlons 5th Fructidor in the year III. It is true that between of the them occurred the ultra-democratic constitution of the 24th of June 1793, the fif st voted by the Convention; but although this was ratified by the popular vote, to which it had been directly submitted, in accordance with a principle proclaimed by the Convention and kept in force under the Consulate and the Empire, it was never carried into effect. It was first suspended by the establishment of the revolutionary government strictly so called, and after Thermidor, under the pretext of completing it, the Convention put it aside and thade a new one, being taught by experience. As long as it existed it was the sovereign assembly of the Convention itself which really exercised the executive power, governing chiefly by means of its great, committees.

The constitution of 1791 was without doubt monarchical, in so far as it preserved royalty. The constitution of the year III. was, on the contrary, republican. The horror of monarchy was still so strong at that time that an executive college was created, a Directory of five members, one of whom retired every year; they were elected by a complicated and curious procedure, in which each of the two legislative councils played a distinct part. But this difference,though apparently essential, was not in reality very profound; this is proved, for example, by the fact that the Directory had dist.inctly more extensive powers than those conferred on Louis XVI. by the Constituent Assembly. On almost all points of importance the two constitutions were similar. They were both preceded by a statement of principles, a Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. They were both based on two principles Which they construed alike:, the sovereignty of the people and the separation of powers. Both ~f them (with the exception of what has been said with regard to the ratification of constitutions after 1793) recognized only representative government. From the principle of the sovereignty of the people they had not deduced universal suffrage; though, short of this, they had extended the suffrage as far as possible. According to the constitution of 179, in addition to the conditicms of age and residence, an elector was bound to pay a direct contribution equivalent to three days work; the constitution of the year III. recognized the payment of any direct contribution as sufficient; it even conferred on every citizen the right of having himself enrolled, without any other qualification than ,a payment equivalent to three days work, and thus to become an- elector. Further, neither of the two constitutions admitted of a direct suffrage; the elections were carried out in two stages, and only those who paid at a higher rating could be chosen as electors for the second stage. The executive power, which was in the case of both constitutions clearly separated from the legislative, could not initiate legislation. The Directory had no veto; Louis XVI. had with difficulty obtained a merely suspensive~ veto, which was overridden in the event of three legislatures successively voting against it. The right of dissolution was possessed by neither the king nor the Directory. Neither the kings ministers nor those of the Directory could be members of the legislative body, nor could they even be chosen from among its ranks. The ministers of Louis XVI. had, however, thanks to an unfortunste inspiration of the Constituent Assembly of 1791, theright of entry to, and, to a certain eztent, of speaking in the Legislative Assembly; the constitution of the year Ill, showed greater wisdom in not bringing them in any way into contact with the legislative power. The greatest and most notable difference between the twO constitutions was that that of 1791 established a single chamber which was entirely renewed every two years; that of the year III., on the contrary, profiting by the lessons of the past, established two chambers, one-third of the members of which were renewed every year. Moreover, the two chambers, the Council of Five Hundred and the Council of Ancients, were appointed by the same electors, and almost the only difference between their members was that of age.

The Revolution entirely abolished the ancien rgime, and in the first instance whatever remained of feudalism. The ConAboiltio~ stituer~t Assembly, in the course of its immense work of the of settlement, wished to draw distinctions, abolishing ~e~! absolutely, without indemnity, all rights which had amounted in the beginning to a usurpation and could not be justified, e.g. serfdom and seigniorial courts of justice.

On the other hand, it declared subject to redemption such feudal charges as had been the subject of contract or of a concession of lands. But as it was almost impossible to discover the exact originof various feudal righth~ the Assembly had proceeded to do this by means of certain legal assumptions which sometimes admitted of a proof to the contrary. It carefully regulated the conditions and rate of repurchase, and forbade the creation in the future of any perpetual charge which could not be redeemed:

a principle that has remained permanent in French law. This was a rational and equitable solution; but in a period of such violent excitement it could not be maintained. The Legislative Assembly declared the abolishment without indemnity of all feudal rights for which the original deed of concession could not be produced; and to produce this was, of course, in most cases impossible. Finally, the Convention entirely abolished all feudal rights, and commanded that the old deeds should be destroyed; it maintained on the contrary, though subject to redemption, those tenures and charges which were solely connected with landed property and not feudal.

With feudalism had been abolished serfdom. Further, the Constituent Assembly suppressed nobility; it even forbade any one to assume and bear the titles, emblems and arms of nobility. Thus was established the equality of citizens before the law. TheAssembly also proclaimed the liberty of labor and industry, and suppressed the corporations of artisans and workmen, the jurandes and tneitrises, as Turgot had done. But, in. order to maintain this liberty of the individual, It forbade all associations between workers or employers, fearing that such contracts~ would again lead ,to the formation of corporations similar to the old ones. It even forbade and declared punishable, as being contrary to the declaration of the rights of man and the citizen, combinations or strikes, or an agreement between workmen it employers to refuse to work or to give work except on given conditions. Such, for a long time, was French legislation on this point.

The Constituent Assembly gave to France a new administrative division, that into departments, districts, cantons and communes; and this division, which was intended to make the AdmInL~old provincial distinctions disappear, had to serve all trative purposes, the department being the unit for all public za services. This settlement was definitive, with the exception of certain modifications in detail, and e~cists to the present day. But there was a peculiar administrative organism depending on this arrangement. The constitution of 1791, it is true, made the king the titulary head of the executive power; but the internal administration of the kingdom was not actually in his hands. It was deputed, under his orders, to bodies elected in each department, district and commune. The municipal bodies were directly elected by citizens duly qualified; other bodies were chosen by the method of double election. Each body consisted of two parts: a council, for deliberative purposes, and a bureau or directoire chosen by the council from among its numbers to form the executive. These were the only instruments for the general administration and for that of the direct taxes. The king could, it is true, annul the illegal acts of these bodies, but not dismiss their members; he could merely suspend them from exercising their functions, but the matter then went before the Legislative Assembly,~, which could maintain or remit the suspension as it thought fit. The king had not a single agent chosen by himself for general administrative purposes. This was a reaction, though a very exaggerated one, against the excessive centralization of the ancien rgime, and resulted in an absolute administrative anarchy. The organization of the revolutionary government partly restored the central authority; the councils of the departments were suppressed; the Committee of Public Safety and the representatives of the people on mission were able to remove and replace the members of the elected bodies; and also, by an ingenious arrangement, national agents were established, in the districts. The constitution of the year III. continued in this course, simplifying the organization established by the Constituent Assembly, while maintaining its principle. The department had an administration of five members, elected as in the past, but having executive as well as deliberative functions. The district was suppressed. The communes retained only a municipal agent elected by themselves, and the~ actual municipal body, the importance of which was considerably increased, was removed to the canton, and cof-fsisted of the municipal agents from each commune, and a president elected by the duly qualified citizens of the canton. The Directory was represented in each departmental and communal administration by a commissary appointed and removable by itself, and could dismiss the members of these administrations.

The Constituent Assembly decided on the complete reorganization of the judicial organization. This was accomplished on a~

~ dkl ~ very simple plan, which realized that ideal of the two ~e,. degrees of justice which, as we have noticed, was that of France under the ancien regime. In the lower degrees it created in each canton a justice of the peace (juge de pair), the idea and name of which were borrowed from England, but which differed, very much from the English justice of the peace. He judged, both with and without appeal, civil cases of small importance; and, in cases which did not come within his competency, it was his duty to try to reconcile the parties. In each district was established a civil court composed of five judges. This completed the judicial organization, except for the court of cassation, which had functipns peculiar to itself, never judging the facts of the case but only the application of the law. For cases coming under the district court, the Assembly had not thought fit to abolish the guarantee of the appeal in cases involving sums above a certain figure. But by a curious arrangement the district tribunals could hear appeals from one another. With regard to penal prosecutions, there was in each department a criminal court which judged crimes with the assistance of a jury; itconsisted of judges borrowed from district courts, and had its own president and public prosecutor. Correctional tribunals, composed of juges de paix, dealt with misdemeanours. The Assembly preserved the commercial courts, or consular jurisdictions, of the a-ncien rgime. There was a court of cassation, the purpose of which was to preserve the unity of jurisprudence in France; it dealt -with matters of law and not of fact, considering appeals based on the violation of law, whether in point of matter or of form, and if such violation were proved, sending the matter before another tribun.al of the same rank for re-trial. All judges were elected for a term of years; the juges de paix by the primary assembly of the canton, the district judges by the electoral assembly consisting of the electors of the second degree for the district, the members of the court of cassation by the electors of the departments, who were divided for the purpose into two series, which voted alternately. The Constituent Assembly did, it is true, require professional guarantees, by proof of a more or less extended exercise of the profession of lawyer from all judges except the juges de paix. But the system was really the same as that of the administrative organization. The king only appointed ~he commissaires du roi attached to the district courts, criminal tribunals and the court of cassation; but the appointment once made could not be revoked by him. ,These commissaries fulfilled one of the functions of the old minisire public, their duty being, to demand the application of laws. The Convention did not change this general organization; but it suppressed the professional guarantees required in the case of candidates for a judgeship, so that henceforth all citizens were eligible; and it also caused new elections to take place. Moreover, the Convention, either directly or by means of one of its committees, not infrequently removed and replaced judges without further election. The constitution of the year III. preserved this system, but introduced one considerable modification. It suppressed the district courts, and in their place created in each department a civil tribunal consisting of twenty judges. The idea was a happy one, for it gave the courts more importance, and therefore more weight and dignity. But this reform, beneficial as it would be nowadays, was at the time premature, in view of the backward condition of means of communication.

The Constituent Assembly suppressed the militia and maintained the standing army, according to the old type, the numbers jf which were henceforth to be fixed every year by the Legis lative Assembly. The army was to be recruited by voluntary enlistment, careful rules for which were drawn up.; the. only change was in the system of appointment to ranks; The ann promotion went chiefly by seniority, and in the lower, ranks a system of nomination by equals or inferiors was organized. The Assembly proclaimed, however, the principle of compulsory and personal service, but under a particular form, that of the National Guard, to which- all qualified citizens belonged, and in which almost all ranks were conferred by election. Its chief purpose was to maintain order at home; but it could be called upon to furnish detachments for defence against foreign invasion. This was an institution which, with many successive modifications, and after various long periods of inactivity followed by a revival, lasted more than threequarters of a century, and was not suppressed till, 1871. For purposes of war the Convention, in addition to voluntary. enlist.meats and the resources furnished by the National Guards, and setting aside the forced levy of ~oo,ooo men in 1793, decided on the expedient of calling upon the communes to furnish, men, a course which revived the principle of the old militia. But the Directory drew up an important military law, that of the 6th Fructidor of the year VI., which established compulsory military service for all, under the form of coascription. strictlyso caljed. Frenchmen aged from 20 to 25 (defenseurs conscrits) were divided into five classes, each including the men born in the same year, and were liable until they were 25 years old to be called up for active service, the whole period of service not exceeding four years. No class was called upon until the younger classes had been exhausted, and the sending of substitutes was forbidden. This law, with a few later modifications, provided for the Fre~ieh armies up to the end of the Empire.

The, Constituent Assembly abolished nearly all the taxes of the ancien rgime. Almost the only taxes preserved were the stamp duty and that on the registration of acts ,(the old contrle and centime denier), and these were axa on. completely reorganized; the customs were maintained only at the frontiers for foreign trade. In the establishment of new taxes the Assembly was influenced by two sentiments; the hatred which had been, inspired by the former arbitrary taxation, and the influence of the school of the Physiocrats. Consequently it did away with indirect taxation on objects of consumption, and made the principal direct tax the tax on land. Next in importance were the contribution personnelle el nwbilire and the patentes. The essential elements of the former were a sort of capitation-tax equivalent to three days work, which was the distinctive and definite sign of a qualified citizen, and a tax on personal income, calculated according to the rent paid. The pal entes were paid by traders, and were also based on the amount of rent. These taxes, though considerably modified later, are still essentially the basis of the French system of direct taxation. The Constituent Assembly had on principle repudiated the tax on the gross income, much favored under the ancien regime, which everybody had felt to be arbitrary and oppressive. The system of public contributions under the Convention was arbitrary and revolutionary, but the councils of the Directory, side by side with certain bad laws devised to tide over temporary crises, made some excellent laws on the subject of taxation. They resumed the regulation 9f the land tax, improving and partly altering it, and also dealt with the contribution personnelle el mobilire, the pcitentes, and the stamp and registration duties. It was at this time, too, that the door and window tax, which still exists, was provisionally established; there was also a partial reappearance of indirect taxation, in particular the octrois of the towns, which had been suppressed by the Constituent Assembly.

The Constituent Assembly gave the Protestants liberty of worship and full rights; it also gave Jews the- status of citizen, which they had not had under, the ancien rgime, together with political rights. With regard to the ~ Catholic Church, the Assembly placed at the disposal of the nation the property of the clergy,, which had already, in the course of the 18th century, been regarded by most political writers as a national possession; at the same time it provided for salaries for the members of the clergy and pensions for those who had been monks. It abolished tithes and the religious orders, and forbade the re-formation of the latter in the future. The ecclesiastical districts were next reorganized, the department being always taken as the chief unit, and a new church was ~organized by. the civil constitution of the clergy, the bishops being elected by the electoral assembly of the department (the usual electors), and the cures by the electoral assembly of the district. This was an unfortunate piece of legislation, inspired partly by the old Gallican spirit, partly by the theories on civil religion of J. J. Rousseau and his school, and, together with the civic oath imposed on the clergy, it was a source of endless troubles. The constitutional church established in this way was, however, abolished as a state institution by the Convention. By laws of the years III. and IV. the Convention and the Directory, in proclaiming the liberty of worship, declared that the Republic neither endowed nor recognized any f-orm of worship. Buildings formerly consecrated to worship, which had not been alienated, were again placed at the disposal of worshippers for this purpose, but under conditions which were hard for them to accept.

The Assemblies of the Revolution, besides the laws which, by abolishing feudalism, altered the character of real property, Civil law passed many others concerning civil law. The most important are those of 1792, passed by the Legislative Assembly, which organized the registers of the itat civil kept by the municipalities, and laid down rules for marriage as a purely civil contract. Divorce was admitted to a practically unlimited extent; it was possible not only for causes determined by law, and by mutual consent, but also for incompatibility of temper and character proved, by either husband or wife, to be of a persistent nature. Next came the law,s of the Convention as to inheritance, imposing perfect equality among the natural heirs and endeavouring to ensure the divisionof properties. Illegitimate children were considered by these laws as on the same level with legitimate children. The Convention and the councils of the Directory also made excellent laws on the administration of hypothques, and worked at the preparation of a Civil Code (see CODE NAPOLEON). In criminal law ~rlminal their work was still more important. In 1791 the Constituent Assembly gave France her first penal code. It was inspired by humanitarian ideas, still admitting capital punishment, though accompanied by no cruelty in the execution; but none of the remaining punishments was for life. Long imprisonment with hard labor was introduced. Finally, as a reaction against the former system of arbitrary penalties, there came a system of fixed penalties determined, both as to its assessment and its nature, for each offence, which the judge could not modify. The Constituent Assembly also reformed the procedure of criminal trials, taking English law as model. It introduced the jury, with the double form of jury daccusation and jury de jugement. Before the judges procedure was always public and oral. The prosecution was left in principle to the parties concerned, plaintiffs or d~nonciateurs civiques, and the preliminary investigation was handed over to two magistrates; one was the juge de paix, as in English procedure at this period, and the other a magistrate chosen from the district court and called the directeur du jury. The Convention, before separating, passed the Code des dlits el des peines of the 3rd Brumaire in the year IV. This piece of work, which was due to Merlin de Douai, was intended to deal with criminal procedure and penal law; but only the first part could be completed. It was the procedure established by the Constituent Assembly, but further organized and improved.

The Consulate and tile Empire.The constitutional law of the Consulate and the Empire is to be found in a series of documents called later the Constitutions de lEmpire, the constitution promulgated during the Hundred Days being consequently given the name of Acte additionnel aux Constitutions de lEmpire. These documents consist of (I) the Constitution of the 22nd Frimairc of the year VIII., the work of Sieys and Bonaparte, the text on which the others were based; (2) the senalus consulte of the 16th Thermidor in the year X., establishing the consulate for life; and (3) the senatus consulte of the 28th Floral in the year XII., which created the Empire. These constitutional acts, which were all, whether in their full text or in principle, submitted to the popular vote by means of a plebiscite, had all the same object: to assure absolute power to Napoleon, while preserving the forms and appearance of liberty. Popular suffrage was maintained, and even became universal; but, since the system was that of suffrage in many stages, which, moreover, varied very much, the citizens in effect merely nominated the candidates, and it was the Senate, playing the part of grand lecteur which Sieys had dreamed of as his own, which chose from among them the members of the various so-called elected bodies, even those of the political assemblies. According to the constitution of the year VIII., the first consul (to whom had been added two colleagues, the second and third consuls, who did not disappear until the Empire) possessed the executive power in the widest sense of the word, and he alone could initiate legislation. There were three representative assemblies in existence, elected as we have seen; but one of them, the Corps Lgislatif, passed laws without discussing them, and without the power of amehding the suggestions of the government. The Tribunate, on the contrary, discussed them, but its vote was not necessary for the passing of the law. The Senate was the guardian and preserver of the constitution; in addition to its role of grand ~lecteur, its chief function was to annul laws and acts submitted to it by the Tribunate as being unconstitutional. This original organization was naturally modified during the course of the Consulate and the Empire; not only did the emperor obtain the right of directly nominating senators, and the princes of the imperial family, and grant dignitaries of the Empire that of entering the Senate by right; but a whole body, the Tribunate, which was the only one which could preserve some independence, disappeared, without resort having been had to a plebiscite; it was modified and weakened by senatus consulle of the year X., and was suppressed in 1807 by a mere senatus consulte. The importance of another body, on the contrary, the conseil detat, which had been formed on~ the improved type of the ancient conseil du roi, and consisted of members appointed by Napoleon and carefully chosen, continually increased. It was this body which really prepared and discussed the laws; and it was its members who advocated them before the Corps Lgislatif, to which the Tribunate also sent orators to speak on its behalf. The ministers, who had no relation with the legislative power, were merely the agents of the head of the state, freely chosen by himself. Napoleon, however, found these powers insufficient, and arrogated to himself others, a fact which the Senate did not forget when it proclaimed his downfall. Thus he frequently declared war upon his own authority, in spite of the provisions to the contrary made by the constitution of the year VIII.; and similarly, under the form of dcrets, made what were really laws. They were afterwards called dcrets-lois, and those that were not indissolubly associated with the political rgime of the Empire, and survived it, were subsequently declared valid by the court of cassation, on the ground that they had not been submitted to the Senate as unconstitutional, as had been provided by the constitution of the year VIII.

This period saw the rise of a whole new series of great organic laws. For administrative organization, the most important was that of the 28th Pluvise in the year VIII. It established as chief authority for each department a prefect, and side by side with him a conseil general chan~ez for deliberative purposes; for each arrondissement under (corresponding to the old disfrict) a sub-prefect (sous- ~ prefet) and a conseil darrondissement; and for each Pjnplr..

commune, a mayor and a municipal council. But all these officials, both the members of the councils and the individual agents, were appointed by the head of the state or by the prefect, so that Centralization was restored more completely than ever. Together with the prefect there was also established a conseil de prefecture, having administrative functions, and generally acting as a court of the first instance in disputes and litigation arising out of the acts of the administration; for the Constituent Assembly had removed such cases from the jurisdiction. of the civil tribunals, and referred them to the administrative bodies themselves. The final appeal in these disputes was to the conseil detat, which was supreme judge in these matters. In 1807 was created another great administrative jurisdiction, the cour des comptes, after the pattern of that which had existed under the ancien rgime.

Judicial organization had also been fundamentally altered. The system of election was preserved for a time in the case of the juges de paix and the members of the court of ~ cassation, but finally disappeared there, even where it had already been no more than a form. The magistrates were in principle appointed for life, but under the Empire a device was found for evading the rule of irremovability. For the judgment of civil cases there was a court of first instance in every arrondissemeut, and above these a certain number of courts of appeal, each of which had within its province several departments. The separate criminal tribunals were abolished in 1809 by the Code dInstruction Criminelle, and the magistrates forming the cour dassises, which judged crimes with the aid of a jury, were drawn from the courts of appeal and from the civil tribunals. The jury daccusation was also abolished by the Code dInstruction Criminelle, and the right of pronouncing the indictment was transferred to a chamber of the court of appeal. The correctional tribunals were amalgamated with the civil tribunals of the first instance. The tribunal de cassation, which took under the Empire the name of cour de cassfilion, consisted of magistrates appointed for life, and still kept its powers. The mini stre public (consisting of imperial avocats and procureurs) was restored in practically the same form as under the ancien rgime.

The former system of taxation was preserved in principle, but with one considerable addition: Napoleon re-established indirect taxation on articles of consumption, which Taxation.

had been abolished by the Constituent Assembly; the chief of these were the duties on. liquor (droits rnnis, or excise) and the monopoly of tobacco.

The Concordat concluded by Napoleon with the papacy on the 26th Messidor of the year IX. re-established the Catholic religion in France as the form of worship recognized T~~on- and endowed by the state. It was in principle drawn up on the lines of that of 1516, and assured to the head of the French state in his dealings with the papacy the same prerogatives as had formerly been enjoyed by the kings; the chief of these was that he appointed the bishops, who afterwards had to ask the pope for canonical institution. The territorial distribution of dioceses was preserved practically as it had been left by the civil constitution of the clergy. The state guaranteed the payment of salaries to bishops and cures; and the pope agreed to renounce all claims referring to the appropriation of the goods of the clergy made by the Constituent Assembly. Later on, a decree restored to the fabriq-ues (vestries) such of their former possessions as had not been alienated, and the churches which had not been alienated were restored for the purposes of worship. The law of the 18th Germinal in the year X., ratifying the Concordat, reasserted, under the name of articles organiques du culte cat holiq-ue, all the main principles contained in the old doctrine of the liberties of the Gallican Church. The Concordat did not include the restoration of the religious orders and congregations; Napoleon sanctioned by decrees only a few establishments of this kind.

One important creation of the Empire was the university. The ancien rgime had had its universities for p~irposes of instruction and for the conlerring of degrees; it had ~ alsO, though without any definite organization, such secondary schools as the towns admitted within their walls, and the primary schools of the parishes. The Revolution suppressed the universities and the teaching congregations. The constitution of the year III. proclaimed the liberty of instruction and commanded that public schools, both elementary and secondary, should be~ established. Under the Directory there was in each department an cole centrale, in which all branches of human knowledge were taught. Napoleon, developing ideas which had been started in.the second half of the 18th century, founded by laws and decrees of 1806, 1808 and 1811 the Universit de France, which provided and organized higher, secondary and primary education; this was to be the monopoly of the state, carried on by its facults, lyces and primary schools. No private educational establishment could be opened without the authorization of the state.

But chief among the documents dating from this period are the Codes, which still give laws to France. These are the Civil Code of 1804, the Code de Procedure Civile of 1806, Th the Code de Commerce of 1807, the Code dInstruction codes. Criminelle of 1809, and the Code Penal of 1810.

These monumental works, in the elaboration of which the conseil detat took the chief part, contributed, to a greater or less extent, towards the fusion of the old law of France with the laws of the Revolution. It was in the case of the Code Civil that this task presented the greatest difficulty (see CODE NAPOL~ON). The Code de Commerce was scarcely more than a revised and emended edition of the ordonnances of 1673 and i68t; while the Code de PrOcedure Civile bnrrowed its chief elements from the ordonnance of 1667. In the case of the Code dIns1ructio~ Criminelle a distinctly new departure was made; the procedure introduced by the Revolution into courts where judgment was given remained public and oral, with full liberty of defence; the preliminary procedure, however, before the examining court (juge dinstruction or cliambre des mises en accusation) was borrowed from the ordonnance of 1670; it was the procedure of the old law, without its cruelty, but secret and written, and generally not in the presence of both parties. The Code Penal maintained theprinciples of the Revolution, but increased the penalties. It substituted for the system of fixed penalties; in cases of tempOrary punishment, a maximum and a minimum, between the limits of which judges could assess the amount. Even in the case of misdemeanours, it admitted the system of extenuating circumstances, which allowed them still further to decrease and alter the penaltyin so far as the offence was mitigated by such circumstances. (See further under NAPOLEON I.)

The Restored Monarch y.~The Restoration and the Monarchy of July, though separated by a revolution, form one period in the history of French institutions, a period in which the same rgime was continued and developed. This ConstI

was the constitutional monarchy, with a parliamentary ~r~hy body cofisisting of two chambers, a system imitated from England. The same constitution was preserved under these two monarchiesthe charter granted by Louis XVIII in 1814. The revolution of 1830 took place in defence of the charter which Charles X. had violated by the ordonnances of July, so that this charter was naturally preserved under the ~ July Monarchy. It was merely revised by the Chamber of Deputies, which had been one of the movers of the revolution, and by what remained of the House of Peers. In order to give the constitution the appearance of originating in the will of the people, the preface, which made it appear to be a favor granted by the king, was destroyed. The two chambers acquired the initiative in legislation, which had not been recognized as theirs under the Restoration, but from this time on belonged to them equally with the king. The sittings of the House of Peers were henceforth held in public; but this chamber underwent another and more ftrndamental transformation. The peers were nominated by the king, with no limit of numbers, and according tO the charter of 1814 their appointment could be either for life or hereditary; but, in execution of an ordinance of Louis XVIII., during the Restoration they were always appointed under the latter condition. Under the July Monarchy their tenure Of office was for life, and the king had to choose them from amOng twenty-two classes of notables fixed by law. The franchls~ for the election of the Chamber of Deputies had been limited by a system of money qualifications; but while, under the Restoration, it had been necessary, in order to be an elector, to pay three hundred francs in direct taxation, this sum was reduced in 1831 to two hundred francs, while in certain cases even a smaller amount sufficed. In order to be elected as a deputy it was necessary, according to the charter of 1814, to pay a thousand francs in direct taxation, and according to that of 1830 five hundred francs. From 1817 onwards there was direct suffrage, the electors directly electing the deputies. The idea of those who had framed the charter of 1814 had been to give the chief influence to the great landed proprietors, though the means adopted to this end were not adequate: in 1830 the chief aim had been to give a preponderating influence to the middle and lower middle classes, and this had met with greater success. The House of Peers, under the name of cour des pairs, had also the function of judging attempts and plots against the security of the state, and it had frequently ,to exercise this function both under the Restoration and the July Monarchy.

This was a period of parliamentary government; that is, of government by a cabinet, resting on the responsibility of the ministers to the Chamber of Deputies. The only interruption was that caused by the resistance of Charles X. at the end of his reign, which led to the revolution of July. Parliamentary government was practised regularly and in an enlightened spirit under the Restoration, although the Chamber had not then all the powers which it has since acquired. It is noteworthy that dur&ng this period the right of the House of Peers to force a ministry to resign by a hostile vote was not recognized. By the creation of a certain number of new peers, a fournee de pairs, as it was then called, the majority in this House could be changed when necessary. But the government of the Restoration hadto deal with two extreme parties of a very opposite nature: the Uliras, who wished to restore as far as possible the ancien r~girne, to whom were due the acts of the chambre in~rouvable of 1816, and later the laws of the ministry of Villle, especially the law of sacrilege and that voting compensation to the dispossessed nobles, known as the milliard des migrs; and on the other hand the Liberals, including the Bonapartists and Republicans, who were attached to the principles of the Revolution. In order to prevent either of these parties from predominating in the chamber, the government made a free use of its power of dissolution. It further employed two means to check the progress of the Liberals; firstly, there were various alterations successively made in the electoral law, and the press laws, frequentlyrestrictive in their effect, which introduced the censorship and a preliminary authorization in the case of periodical publications, and gave the correctional tribunals jurisdiction in cases of press offences. The best electoral,law was that of 1817, and the best press laws were those of 1819; but these were not of long duration. Under the July Monarchy parliamentary government, although its machinery was further perfected, was not so brilliant. The majorities in the Chamber of Deputies were often uncertain, so much so, that more than once the right of dissolution was exercised in order to try by new elections to arrive at an undivided and certain majority. King Louis Philippe, though soberminded, wished to exercise a personal influence on the policy of the cabinet, so that there were then two schools, represented respectively by Thiers and Guizot, one of which held the theory that the king reigns but does not govern; while the other maintained that he might exercise a personal influence, provided that he could rely on a ministry supported by a majority of the Chamber of Deputies. But the weak point in the July Monarchy was above all the question of the franchise. A powerful.movemeat of opinion set in towards demanding an extension, some wishing for universal suffrage, but the majority proposing what was called the adjonction des capacit~s, that is to say, that to the number of qualified electors should be added those citizens who, by virtue of their professions, capacity or acquirements~ were inscribed after them on. the general list for juries. But the government obstinately refused all electoral reform, and held to the law of 1831. It also refused parliamentary reform, by which was meant a rule which would have made most public offices incompatible with the position of deputy, the Chamber of Deputies he~ig at that time full ofoflicials. The press, thanks to the Charter, was perfectly free, withoilt either censorship or preliminary authorization, and press offences ~vere judged by ajury.

In another respect also the Restoration and the July Monarchy were at one, the second continuing the spirit of the first, viz:

in maintainingin principle the civil, legal and,adminis- The trative institutions of the Empire. The preface to system the charter of 1814 sanctioned and guaranteed most of the of the legal rights won by the Revolution; even the retained alienation of national property .w~s confirmed. It was said, it is true, that the old nobility regained their titles, and that the nobility of the Empire kept those which Napoleon had given them; but these were merely, titles and nothing rnore~ there was no privileged nobility, and the equality of citizens before the law was maintained. Judicial and administrative organization, the system of taxatior1~ military organization, the relations of church andstate,remained the same, gad the university also continued to exist. The government did, it is true, negotiate a new Concordat with the, papacy in 1817, but did ~ot dare even to submit it to the chambers,. The most important reform was that of the law concerning recruiting f0r the army:

The charter of 1814 had promised the abolition of conscription, in the form in which it had been created by the law of the year VI. The law of the roth of March 1818 actually established a new system. The contingent voted by the chambers for annual incorporation into the standing army was divided up among all the cantons; and, in order to furnish it, lots were drawn among all the men of a certain class, that is to say, among the yowig Frenchmen who arrived at their majority that year. Those who were not chosen by lot were definitely set free, from military service. The sending of substitutes, a custom which had, been permitted by Napoleon, was recognized. This was the type of all the laws on recruiting in France, of which there were a gool number in succession up to 1867. On other points they vary, in particular as to the duration of service, which was six years, and later .eight years, under the Restoration; but the system remained the same.

The Restoration produced .a code, the Code forestier of 1827, for the regulation of forests (eaux et forts), In 1816 a law had abolished divorce, making marriage indissoluble, as it had been in the old law. But the best laws of this period were those on finance. Now, for the first time, was introduced the practice of drawing up regular budgets, voted before the year to which they applied, and divided since 1819 into the budget of expendittire and budget of receipts.

Together with other institutions of the Empire, the Restoration had preserved the exaggerated system of administrative centralization established in the year VIII.; and proposals for its relaxation submitted to the chambers had come to nothing. It was only under the July Monarchy that it was relaxed. The municipal law of the 1st of March 1831 made the municipal councils elective, and extended widely the right of voting in the elections for them; the maires and their assistants coi~tinued to be appointed by the, government, but had to be chosen from among the members of the municipal councils. ,The law of the 22ndof June 1833 made the general councils of the departments also elective, and brought the adjonction des capacits into effect for their election. The powers of these bodies were enlarged in 1838, and they gained the right of electing .their president. In 1833 was granted another liberty, that of primary education; but in spite of violent protestations, coming especially from the Catholics, secondary and higher education continued to be a monopoly of the state. Many organic laws were promulgated, one concerning the National Guard, which was reorganized in order to adapt it to the system of, citizen qualifications; one in 1832 on the recruiting of-the army, fixing the period of service at seven years; and, another in 1834 securing the status of o~cers. A law of the 11th of June 1842 established the great railway lines.. In 1832 the Code Penal and Code dInstruction Criminelle were revised, with the object of lightening penaltIes; the system of extenuating circumstances, as recognized by ,a jury, was extended~ to the judgment of, all crimes. There was also a revision of Book III. of the Code de Com.inerce, treating of bankruptcy. Finally,from this period date the laws of the 3rd of May 1841, On expropriation for purposes of public utility, and of the 3oth of June 1838, on the treatment of the insane, which is still in force. Judicial organization remained as it was, but the amount of the sum up to which civil tribunals of the first instance could judge without appeal was raised from Iooo francs to 1500, and the competency of the juges de paix was widened.

The Second Republic and the Second Empire.From the point of view of constitutional law, the Second Republic and the Second Empire were each in a certain sense a return to the past. The former revived the tradition of the Assemblies of the Revolution; the latter was obviously and avowedly an imitation of the Consulate and the First Empire.

The provisional government set up by the revolution of the 24th of February 1848 proclaimed universal suffrage, and by Repubil- this means was elected a Constituent Assembly, which Ga,, con- sat till May 1849, and, after first organizing various ztftulion forms of another provisional government, passed the of 1848. Republican constitution of the 4th of November 1848.

This constitution, which was preceded by a preface recalling the Declarations of Rights of the Revolution, gave the legislative power to a single permanent assembly, electeci by direct universal suffrage, and entirely renewed every three years. The executive authority, with very extensive powers, was given to a president of the Republic, also elected by the universal and direct suffrage of the French citizens. The constitution was not very clear upon the point of whether it adopted parliamentary government in the strict sense, or whether the president, who was declared responsible, was free to choose his ministers and to retain or dismiss them at his own pleasure. This gave rise to an almost permanent dispute between the president, who claimed to have his own political opinions and to direct the government, and the Assembly, which wished to carry on the traditions of cabinet government and to make the ministers fully responsible to itself. Consequently, in January 1851, a solemn debate was held, which ended in the affirmation of the responsibility of ministers to the Assembly. On the other hand, the president, though very properly given great power by the constitution, was not immediately eligible for re-election on giving up his office, Now Louis Napoleon, who was elected president on the xoth of,December 1848 by a huge majority, wished to be re-elected. Various propositions were submitted to the Assembly in July 1851 with a view to modifying the constitution; but they could not succeed, as the number of votes demanded by the constitution for the convocation of a Constituent Assembly was not reached. Moreover, the Legislative Assembly elected in May 1849 was very, different from the Constituent Assembly of 1848. The latter was animated by that spirit of harmony and, in the main, of adhesion to the Republic which had followed on the February Revolution. The new assembly, on the contrary, was composed for the most part of representatives of the old parties, and had monarchist aspirations. By the unfortunate law of the 31st of May 185o it even tried by a subterfuge to restrict the universal suffrage guaranteed by the constitution. It suspended the right of holding meetings, but, on the whole, respected the liberty of the press. It was especially impelled to these measures by the growing fear of socialism. The result was the coup detat of the 2nd of December 1851. A detail of some constitutional importance is to be noticed in this period. The conseil dflat, which had remained under the Restoration and the July Monarchy an administrative council and the supreme arbiter in administrative trials, acquired new importance under the Second Republic. The ordinary conseillers detat (en service ordinaire) were elected by the Legislative Assembly, and consultation, with the conseil detat was often insisted on by the constitution or by law., This was the means of obtaining a certain modifying power as a sub. stitute for the second chamber, which had not met with popular approval. During its short existence the Second Republic iwodueed many important laws. It aboiisbed the penalty of death for political crim~, and supprcs~ed negro slavcry in the colonies. The election of conseillers gneraux was thrown open to universal suffrage, and the municipal councils were allowed to elect the maires and their colleagues. Thd law of the 15th of March 1850 established the liberty of secondary education, but it conferred certain privileges on the Catholic clergy, a clear sign of the spirit of social conservatism which was the leading motive for its enactment. Certain humanitarian laws were passed, applying to the working classes.

With the coup detat of the 2nd of December 1851 began a new era of constitutional plebiscites and disguised absolutism. The proclamations of Napoleon on the 2nd of December COnSWUcontained a criticism of parliamentary government, lion of and formulated the wish to testore to France the Jan. 14, constitutional institutions of the Consulate and the ~es~

Empire, just as she had preserved their civil, administrative and military institutions. Napoleon asked the people for the powers necesSary to draw up a constitution on these principles; the plebiscite issued in a vast majority of votes in his favor, and the constitution of the I4th of January 1852 was the result. It bore a strong resemblance to the constitution. of the First Empire after 1807. The executive power was conferred on Louis Napoleon for ten years, with the title of president of the Republic and very extended powers. Two assemblies were created. The conservative Senate, composed of ex officio members (cardinals, marshals of France and admirals) and life members appointed by the head of the state, was charged with the task of seeing that~ the laws were constitutional, of opposing the promulgation of unconstitutional laws, and of receiving the petitions of citizens; it had also the duty of providing everything not already provided but necessary for the proper working of the constitution. The second assembly was the Corps Legislatif, elected by direct universal suffrage for six years, which passed the laws, the government having the initiative in legislation. This body was not altogether a corps des muets, as in the year VIII., but its powers were very limited; thus the general session assured to it by the constitution was only for three months, and it could only discuss and put to the vote amendments approved by the conseil detat; the ministers did not in any way come into contact, with it and could not be members of it, being responsible only to the head of the state, and only the Senate having the right of accusing them before a high court of justice. The conseil detat was composed in the same way and had the same authority as it had possessed from the year VIII. to 1814; and it was the members of it who supported projected laws before the Corps Lgislatif. To this was added a Draconian press legislation; not only were press offences, many of wllici were mere expressions of opinion, judged not by a jury but by the correctional tribunals; but further, political papers could not be founded without an authorization, and were subject to a regular administrative discipline; they could be warned, suspended or suppressed without a trial, by a simple act of the administration, The constitution of January 1852 was still Republican in name, though less so than that of the year VIII. The period corresponding with the Consulate was also shorter in the case of Louis Napoleon. The year 1852 had not come to an end before a senatus consulte, that of the soth of November, ratified by a plebiscite, re-established the imperial rank in favor of Napoleon III.; it also conferred on him certain new powers, especially with reference to the budget and foreign treaties; thus various cracks, which experience had revealed in the Emp1i~e. original structure of the Empire, were filled up. This period was called that of the empire autoritaire. Further features of it were the free appointment of the tnaires by the emperor, the oath of fidelity to him imposed on all officials, and the legal organization of official candidatures for the elections. Twp measures marked the highest point reached by this system:

the~ loi de surete generals of the 27th of February 185$, which allowed the government to intern in France or, Algeria, or t~ exile certain French citizens, without a trial. The other was the senatus consultc of the 17th of F~hruary 1858, which made the validity of candidatures for th~ Corps Lgislatif sub)ect to a preliminary oath of fidelity on the part of the candidate. But for various causes, which cannot be examined here, a series of measures was soon to be initiated which were gradually to lead back again to political liberty, and definitively The to found what has been called the empire liberal.

~ One by one the different rules and proceedings~ of parliamentary government as it had existed in France regained their force. The first step was the decree of the 24th of November 1860, which re-established for each ordinary session the address voted by the chambers in response to the speech from the throne. In 1867 this movement took a more decisive form. It led to a new constitution, that of the 21st of May 1870, which was again ratified by popular suffrage. While maintaining the Empire and the imperial dynasty, it organized parliamentary government practically in the form in which it had operated under the July Monarchy, with two legislative chambers, the Senate and the Corps Lgislatif, the consent of both of which was necessary for legislation, and which, together with the emperor, had the initiative in this matter. The laws of the 11th of May 1868 and the 6th of June 1868 restored to a certain extent the liberty of the pressand of holding meetings, though without abolishing offences of opinion, or again bringing press offences under the jurisdiction of a jury., Laws of the 22nd and 23rd of July 1870 gave the conseils gnraux, whose powers had been somewhat widened, the right of electing their presidents, and provided that the maires and their colleagues should be chosen from among the members of the municipal councils.

The legislation of the Second Empire led to a considerable number of reforms. Its chief aim was the development of commerce, industry and agriculture, and generally the and social material prosperity of the country. The Empire, reforms though restricting liberty in political matters, increased under the it in economic matters. Such were the decrees and laws of 1852 and 1853 relating to land-banks (lablissemenis de credit foncier) and that of 1857 on trade-marks, those of 1863 and 1867 on commercial companies, that of 1858 on general stores (magasins generaux) and warrants, that of 1856 on drainage, that of 1865 on.,the associations syndicales de propritaires, that of 1866 on the mercantile marine. The law of the 14th of June 1865 introduced into France the institutiOn, borrowed from England, of cheques. But of still greater importance for economic development than all these laws were the treaties concluded by the emperor with foreign powers, Corn- in order to introduce, as far as possible, free exchange of commodities; the chief of these, which was the model of all the others, was that concluded with Great Britain on the 23rd of January 1860. Moreover, the law of the 25th of May 1864 admitted for the first time the right of strikes and lock-outs among workmen or employers, annulling articles 414 and following of the Code Penal, which had so far made them a penal offence, even when not accompanied by fraudulent practices, threats or violence, tending to hinder the liberty of labor. The superannuation fund (caisse des retraites pour la vieiliesse), supported by voluntary payments from those participating in it, which had been created by the law of the 18th of June 1850, was reorganized and perfected, and a law of the 11th of July 1868 established, with the guarantee of the state, two funds for voluntary insurance, one in case of death, the other, against accidents occurring in industrial or agricultural employment. A decree of 1863 established in principle the freedom of bakeries, and another in 1864 that of theatrical management.

Criminal law was the subject of important legislation. Two codes were promulgated on special points, the codes of military Reforms justice for the land forces (1857) and for the naval in the forces (1858). But the common law was also largely criminal remodelled. A law of the 10th of June 1858, it istrue, law, created certain new crimes, with a view to protecting the members of the imperial family, and that of the 17th of July 1856 increased the powers and independence of the juges dinstruction; but, on the other hand, useful improvements were introduced by laws of 1856 and 1865, and notably with regard to nrCcautionary detention and provisional release with or without bail. A law of the 20th of May 1863 organized a simple and rapid procedure, copied from that followed in England before the police courts, for summary jurisdiction. A law of 1868 permitted the revision of criminal trials after the death of the condemned person. But the most far-reaching reforms took place in 1854, namely, the abolition of the total loss of civil rights which formerly accompanied condemnation to imprisonment for life, and the law of the 3oth of May on penal servitude (travaux forces) which substituted transportation to the colonies for the system of continental convict prisons. Finally, in 1863, there was a revision of the Code Penal, which, in the process of lightening penalties, made a certain number of crimes into misdemeanours, and in consequence transferred the judgment of them from the assize courts to the correctional tribunals. In civil legislation may be Clvii noted the law of the 23rd of March 1855 on hypothecs ~ (see CODE NAPOLEON); that of the 22nd of July i857, which abolished seizure of the person (contrainte par corps) for civil and commercial debts; and finally, the law of the 141h of July i866, on literary copyright. The system of taxation was hardly modified at all, except for the establishment of a tax on the income arising from investments, T8x5#on (shares and bonds of companies) in 1857, and the tax on carriages (1862). On the 1st of February 1868 was promulgated an impOrtant military law, which, however, passed the Corps Lgislatif with some difficulty. It asserted the principle of universal compulsory military service, at least~ in time of war. It preserved, however, the system of drawing lots ~to determine the annual contingent to be incorporated into the standing army; the term of service was fixed at five years, and it was still permissible to send a substittfte. But able-bodied men who were not included in theannual contingent formed a reserve force called the garde nationale mobile, each department organizing its own section. These gardcs mobiles, though they were not effectively organized or exercised under the Empire, took part in thewar of 187071.

The Third Republic.The Third Republic had at first a provisional government, unanimously acclaimed by the people of Paris. It was accepted by France, exercised full powerS, and sustained by no means ingloriously a desperate struggle against the enemy; a certain number of its dcrets-lois are still in force. After the capitulation of Paris, a National Assembly was elected to treat with Germany. It was elected in accordance with the electoral law of 1849, which had been revived with a few modifications, and it met at Bordeaux to the number of 753 members on the 13th of February 1871. It was a sovereign assembly, since France had no longer a constitution, and for this very reason it claimed from the outset constituent powers; the Republican party at the time, however, contested this claim, the majority in the assembly being frankly monarchist, though dividedas tothe choice of a monarch. But for some time the National Assembly either could not or would not exercise this power, and up to 1875 affairs remained in a provisional state, legalized and regulated this time by the Assembly. This was an application, though unconscious, of a form of government which M. Grvy had proposed to the Constituent Assembly in 1848. There was a single assembly, with one man elected by it as head of the executive power (the: first to be elected was M. Thiers, who received the title of president of the Republic in August 1871), who was responsible to the Assembly and governed with the help of ministers chosen by himself, who were also responsible to it. Thiers fellon the 24th of May 1873. His place was taken by Marshal MacMahon, on whom the Assembly later conferred, in November 1873, the position of president of the Republic for seven years, when the refusal of the comte de Chambord to accept the tricolour in place of the white flag of the Bourbons had made any attempt to restore the monarchy impossible. Henceforth the definitive adoption of the Republican form of government became inevitable, and the opinion of the country began to turn in this direction, as was shown by the elections of deputies which took place to fill up the gaps occurring in the Assembly. The Assembly, however, shrank from the inevitable solution, and when a discussion was begun in January 1875 on the projected constitutional laws prepared by the commission des trente, the only proposals made by the latter were for a more complete organization of the powers of one man, Marshal MacMahon. But on the 30th of January 1875 was adopted, by 353 votes to 352, an amendment by M. Wallon which provided for the election of an indefinite succession of presidents of the o a u~ Republic; this amounted to a definitive recognition e,a~biis of the Republic. In this connection it has often been mentof said that the Republic was established by a majority the of one. This is not an accurate statement, for it was Republic. only the case on the first reading of the law; the majority on the second and third readings increased until it became considerable. There was a strong movement in the direction of a reconciliation between the parties; and there had been a rapprochement between the Republicans and the Right Centre. At the end of February were passed and promulgated two constitutional laws, that of the 25th of February 1875, on the organization of the public powers, and that of the 24th of February 1875, On the organization of the senate. In the middle of the year they were supplemented by a third, that of the 16th of July 1875, on the relations between the public powers.

Thus was built up the actual constitution of France. It differs fundamentally, both in form and contents, from previous The constitutions. As to its form, instead of a single French methodical text divided into an uninterrupted series of Constitu. articles, it consisted of three distinct laws. As to tlon. matter, it is obviously a work of an essentially practical nature, the result of compromise and reciprocal concessions. It does not lay down any theoretical principles, and its provisions, which were arrived at with difficulty, confine themselves strictly to what is necessary to ensure the proper operation of the governmental machinery. The result is a compromise between Republican principles and the rules of constitutional and parliamentary monarchy. On this account it has been accused, though unjustly, of being too monarchical. Its duration, by far the longest of any French constitution since 1791, is a sign of its value and vitality. It is in fact a product of history, and not of imagination. Its composition is as follows. The legislative power was given to two elective chambers, having equal powers, the vote of both of which is necessary for legislation, and both having the right of initiating and amending laws. The constitution assures them an ordinary session of five months, which opens by right on the second Tuesday in January. One house, the Chamber of Deputies, is elected by direct universal suffrage and is entirely renewed every four years; the other, the Senate, consists of 300 members, divided by the law of the 27th of February 1875 into two categories; 75 of the senators were elected for life and irremovable, and the first of them were elected by the National Assembly, but afterwards it was the Senate itself which held elections to fill up vacancies. The 225 remaining senators were elected by the departments and by certain colonies, among which they were apportioned in proportion to the population; they are elected for nine years, a third of the house being renewed every three years. The electoral college in each department which nominated them included the deputies, the members of the general council of the department and of the councils of the arrondissements, and one delegate elected by each municipal council, whatever the importance of the commune. This was practically a system of election in two and, partly, three degrees, but with this distinguishing feature, that the electors of the second degree had not been chosen purely with a view to this election, but chiefly for the exercise of~ other functions. The most important elements in this electoral college were the delegates from the municipal councils, and by giving one delegate to each, to Paris just as to the smallest commune in Fran.ce, the National Assembly intended to counterbalance the power of numbers, which governed the elections for the Chamber of Deputies, and, at the same time, to give a preponderance to the country districts. The 75 irremovable senators were another precaution against the danger from violent waves of public opinion. The executive power was entrusted to a president, elected for,seven years (asMarshal MacMahon had been in 1873), by the Chamber and the Senate, combined into a single body under the name of National Assembly. He is always eligible for re-election, and is irresponsible except in case of high treason. His powers are of the widest, including the initiative in legislation jointly with the two chambers, the appointment to all civil and military offices, the disposition, and, if he wish it, the leadership of the armed forces, the right of pardon, the right of negotiating treaties with foreign powers, and, in principle, of ratifying them on his own authority, the consent of the two chambers being required only in certain cases defined by the constitution. The nomination of conseillers detat for ordinary service, whom the National Assembly had made elective, as in 1848, and elected itself, was restored to the president of the Republic, together with the right of dismissing them. But these powers he can only exercise through the medium of a ministry, politically and jointly responsible to the ~chambers, and forming a council, over which the president usually presides.

The French Republic is essentially a parliamentary republic. The right of dissolving the Chamber of Deputies before the expiration. of its term of office belongs to the president, but i1 order to do so he must have, besides a ministry which will take the responsibility for it, the preliminary sanction of the Senate. The Senate is at the sametime a high court of justice, which can judge the president of the Republic and ministers accused of crimes committed by them in the exercise of their functions; in these two cases the prosecution is instituted by the Chamber of Deputies. The Senate can also be called upon to judge any person accused of an attempt upon the safety of the state, who is then seized by a decree of the president of the Republic, drawn up in the council of ministers. Possible revision of the constitution is provided for very simply: it has to be proposed as a law, and for its acceptance a resolution passed by each chamber separately, by an absolute majority, is necessary. The revision is then carried out by the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies to form a National Assembly. There have been two revisions since 1875. The first time, in 1879, it was simply a question of transferring the seat of the government and of the chambers back to Paris from Versailles, where it had been fixed by one of the constitutional laws. The second time, in 1884, more fundamental modifications were required. The ,most importalit point was to change the composition and election of the Senate. With a view to this, the new constitutional law of the 14th of August 1884 abolished the constitutional character of a certain number of articles of the law of the 24th of February S75, thus making it possible to modify them by an ordinary law. This took place in the same year; the 75 senators for life were suppressed for the future by a process of extinction, and their seats divided among the most populous departments. Further, in the electoral college which elects the senators, there was allotted to the municipal councils a number of delegates proportionate to the number of members of the councils, which depends on the importance of the commune. The law of the 14th of August 1884 also modified the constitution in another important respect. The law of the 25th of February 1875 ha,d admitted the possibility not only of a partial, but even of a total revision, which could affect and even change the form of the state. The law of the 14th of August 1884, however, declared that no proposition for a, revision could be accepted which aimed at changing the republican form of government. The composition of the Chamber of Deputies was not fixed by the constitution, and consequently admitted more easily of variation. Since 1871 the mode of election has oscillated between the scrutin de liste for the departments and the scrulin uninominal for the arron.dissements. The organic law of the 3oth of November 1875 had established the latter system; in 1885 the scrutin de liste was established by law, hut in 1889 the scrutin darrondisseme,zt was restored; and in this same year, on account of the ambitiops of General Boulanger andthe suggestion which was made for a sort of plebiscite in his favor, was passed the law on plural candidatures, which forbids anyope to become a candidate fo~ the Chamber of Deputies in more than one district at a time.

The system established by the constitution of 1875 has worked excellently in some of its departments; for instance, the mode of working electing the president of the Republic. Between 1875 of the and ioo there were seven elections, sometimes under cOiiStNil. tragic or very difficult conditions; the election has On. always taken place without delay or obstruction, and the choice has been of the best. The high court of justice, which has twice been called into requisition, in 1889 and in 189919o0, has acted as an efficient check, in spite of the difficulties confronting such a tribunal when feeling runs high. Parliamentary government in the form set up by the constitution, besides the criticism to which this system is open in all countries where it is established, even in England, met with special difficulties in France. In the first place, the useful but rather secondary role a~signed to the president of the Republic has by no means satisfied all those who have occupied this high office. Two presidents have resigned on the ground that their powers were insufficient. Another, even after re~election, had to withdraw in face of the opposition of the two chambers, being no longer able to obtaina parliamentary ministry. It is difficult, however, to accept the theory of an eminent American political writer, Mr John W. Burgess,i that in order to attain to a position of stable equilibrium, the French Republic ought to adopt the presidential system of the UnitedStates. In France this sharp division between the two powers has never been observed except in those periods when the representative assemblies were powerless, under the First and Second Empires. It is true that the apparent multiplicity of parties and their lack of discipline, together with the French procedure of interpellations and the orders of the day by which they are concluded, make the formationof homogeneous and lasting cabinets difficult; but since the end of the Ioth century there has been great progress in this respect. Another difficulty arose in 1896. The Senate, appealing to the letter of the constitution and relying on its elective character, claimed the right of forcing a ministry to resign by its vote, in the same way as the Chamber of Deputies. The Senate was victorious in the struggle, and forced the ministry presided over by M. Leon Bourgeois to resign; but the precedent is not decisive, for in order to gain its ends the Senate had recourse to the means of refusing to sanction the taxes, declining to consider the proposals for the supplies necessary for the Madagascar expedition so long as the ministry which it was attacking was in existence. The weakest point in the French parliamentary organism is perhaps the right of dissolution. It is difficult of application, for the reason that the president must obtain the preliminary consent of the Senate before exercising it; moreover, this valuable right has been discredited by its abuse by Marshal MacMahon in the campaign of the 16th of May 1877, on which occasion he exercised his right of dissolution against a chamber, the moderate but decidedly republican majority in which was re-elected by the country.

The legislative reforms carried out under the Third Republic are very numerous. As to public law, it is only possible to Reforms mention here those of a really organic character, under the chief among which are those which safeguard and Third regulate the exercise of the liberties of the individual. R.PUbIIC The law of the 30th of June 1881, modified in 1901,

established the right of holding meetings. Public meetings, whether for ordinary or electoral purposeS, may be held without preliminary authorization; the law of 1881 prescribed a declara~ tion made by a certain number of citizens enjoying full civil and political rights, which is now remitted. The only really restrictive provision is that which does not allow them to be held in the public highway, but only in an enclosed space. But this is made necessary by the customs of France. The, law of the 21St of July 1881 on the press is one of the most liberal in the world. By it all offences committed by any kind of publication are submitted to a jury; the punishment for the mere expression of obnoxious opinions is abolished, the only punishment being for slander, libel, defamation, inciting to crime, and in certain Polibical Science and Corn parative Constitutional Law (Boston, i896).

cases the publi~ation of false news. The law of the 1st of July 1901 established in France the right of forming associations. It recognizes the legality of all associations strictly so called, the objects of which are not contrary to law or to public order or morality. On condition of a simple declaration to the administrative authority, it grants them a civil status in a wide sense of the term. Religious congregations, on the contrary, which are not authorized by a law, are forbidden bythis law. The This was not a new principle, but the traditional rule religious, in France both before and after the Revolution, COfli~ega. except that under certain governments authorization tions.

by decree had sufficed. As a matter of fact the unauthorized congregations had been tolerated for a long time, although on various occasions, and especially in 1881, their partial dissolution had been proclaimed by decrees. The law of 1901 dissolved them all, and made it an offence to belong to such a congregation. The thembers of unauthorized congregations, and later, in 1904, even those of the authorized congregations, were disqualified from teaching in any kind of establishment. The liberty of primary eduuation was ~confirmed and reorganized by the law of the 3oth of October 1886, which simply deprived the clergy of the privileges granted them by the law of 1850, though the latter remains in force with regard to the liberty of secondary education. A law passed by the National Assembly (July 12, 1875) established the liberty of higher education. It even went beyond this, for it granted to students in private ~ facult~s who aspired to state degrees the right of being examined before a board composed partly of private and partly of state professors. The law of the 18th of March 188o abolished this privilege. Another law, that of the 22nd of March 1882, made primary education obligatory, though allowing parents to send their children either to private schools or to those of the state; the law of the i6thof June 1881 established secular (l&ique) education in the caseof the latter. The Third Republic also organized secondary education for girls in lyces or special colleges (colleges de flUe). Finally, a law of the joth of July 1896 dealing with higher education and the faculties of the statC reorganized the universities, whichform distinct bodies, enjoying a fairly wide autonomy. A law of the 19th of December 1905, abrogating that of the 18th Germinal in the year X., which had sanctioned the Concordat, proclaimed the separa- ~ tion of the church from the state. It is based on the a.n of principle of the secular state (tat lafq-ne) which recog- chureb nizes no form of religion, though respecting the right and state.

of every citizen to worship according to his beliefs, arid it aimed at organizing associations of citizens, the object of *hich was to collect the funds and acquire the property necessary for the maintenance of worship, under the form of associations ci4iuelles, differing in certain respects from the associations sanctioned by the law of the ist of July 1901, but having a *ider scope. It also handed over to these regularlyformed associations the property of the ecclesiastical establishments formerly in existence; while taking precautions to ensure their proper application, and allowed the associations the free use of the churches and places of worship belonging to the state, the departments or the communes. If no association cuiluelle was founded in a parish, the property of the former fabrique should devolve to the commune. But this law was condemned by the papacy, as contrary to the church hierarchy; and almost nowhere were associations cultuelles formed, except by Protestants and Jews, who complied with the law. After many incidents, but no church having been closed, a new law of the 2nd of January 1907 was enacted. It permits the public exercise of any cult, by means Of ordinary associations regulated by the law of the 1st of July r91, and even of public meetings summoned by individuals. Failing all associtions, either cultudlles or ot4~ers, churches, with their, ornaments and furniture, are left to the disposition of the faithful and ministers, for the purpose of exercising the cult; and, on certain conditions, the long use of them can he granted as a free gift to ministers of the cult.

Among the organic laws concerning administrative affairs there are two of primary importance; that of the roth of August 1871, on the conseils gniraul, considerably increased the powers and independence o~ these elective bodies, Admial- which have become important deliberative assemblies, strative.. .

changes. their sessions being held in public. The law of 1871 created a new administrative organ for the departments, the commission di4parlmenlale, elected by the councilgeneral of the department from among its own members and associated with the administration of the prefect. The other law is the municipal law of the 5th of April 1884, which effected a widespread decentralization; the ~naires and their adjoints are elected by the municipal council.

The war of 187071 necessarily led to a modification of the military organization. The law of the 25th of July 1872 estabReorgani- lished the principle of compulsory service for all, first in zatlon the standing army, the period of service in which was .1 th, fixed at five years, then in the reserve, and finally in armY. the territorial army. Buttheapplicationofthisprinciple was by no means absolute, only holding good in time of war. Each annual class was divided into two parts, by means of drawing lots, and in time of peace one of these parts had only a year of service with the active army. The previous exemptions, based either on the position of supporter of the family (as in the case of the son of a widow or aged father, &c.) or on equivalent services rendered to the state (as in the case of young ecclesiastics or members of the teaching profession), were preserved, but only held good for service in the active army in times of peace. Finally, the system of conditional engagement for a year allowed young men, for the purposes of study or apprenticeship to their profession, only to serve a year with the active army in time of peace. fly this means it was sought to combine the advantages of an army of veterans with those of a numerous and truly national army. But the conditional volunteering (vol ont anal condilionnel) for a year was open to too great a number of people, and so brought the system into discredit. As those who profited by it had to be clothed and maintained at their own expense, and the sum which they had to furnish for this purpose was generally fixed at x5oo francs, it came to be considered the privilege of those who could pay this sum. A new law of the 15th of July 1889 lessened the difference between the two terms which it attempted to reconcile. It reduced the term of service in the active army to three years, and the exemptions, which were still preserved, merely reduced the period to a year in times of peace. The same reduction was also granted to those who were, really pursuing important scientific, technical or professional studies; the system was so strict on this point that the number of those who profited by those exemptions did not amount to aooo in a year. This was a compromise between two opposing principles; the democratic principle of equality, being the stronger, was bound to triumph. The law of the 21St of March 1905 reduced the term of service in the active army to two years, but made it equal for all, admitting of no exemption, but only certain facilities as to the age at which it had to be accomplished.

In 1883 the judicial personnel was reorganized and reduced in number. With the exception of a few modifications the main lines of judicial organization remained the same. In 1879 the conseil detat was also reorganized. The ~xatloa. whole fabricof administrative jurisdiction was carefully organized, and almost entirely separated from the active administration.

The system of taxation has remained essentially unaltered; we may notice, however, the laws of 1897, 1898 and igoo, which abolished or lessened the duties on so called hygienic drinks (wine, beer, cider), and the financial law of 19o1, which rearranged and increased the transfer fees, and eStablished a system of progressive taxation in the case of succession dues.

The labor laws, which generally partook of the nature both of public and of private law, are a sign of our times. Under the Third Republic they have been numerous, the Laboer most notable being: the law of the 21st of March ~ 884 on professional syndicates, which introduced the liberty of association in matters of this kind before it became part of the common law (see TRArJE UNIONS);

the law of the 9th of April 1898 oil the liability for accidents incurred during work, ,and those which have completed It; that of the 22nd of December 1892 on conciliation and arbitration in the case of collective disputes between employers and workmen; that of the 29th of June 1893 on the hygiene and safeguarding of workers in industrial establishments, and the laws which regulate the work of children and women in factories; finally, that of the 15th of July 1893 on free medical attendance (see LASOIJR LEGISLATION).

As to criminal law, there have been more than fifty enactments, mostly involving important modifications, due to more scientific ideas of punishment, so that we may say that it has been almost entirely recast since the establishment of the Third Republic. The separate system applied in cases of preventive detention and imprisonment for short periods; liberation before the expiry of the term of sentence, subject to the condition that no fresh offence shall be committed within a given time; transportation to the colonies of habitual offenders; the remission of the penalty in the case of first offenders, and the lapsing of the penalty when a certain time has gone by without a fresh condemnation; greater facilities for the rehabilitation of condemned persons, which now became simply a matter for the courts, and occurred as a matter of course at the end of a certain time; such were the chief results of this legislation. Finally, the law of the 8th of December 1897 completely altered the form of the preliminary examination before the juge dinstruclion, which had been the weakest point in the French criminal procedure, though it was still held in private; the new law made this examination really a hearing of both sides, and niade the appearance of counsel for the defence practically compulsory.

As to private law, both civil and commercial, we could enumerate between 1871 and 1906 more than a hundred laws which have modified it, sometimes profoundly, and have for the most part done very useful work without attracting much attention. They are generally examined and drawn up by commissions of competent men, and pass both chambers almost without discussion. There have, however, been a few which aroused public interest and even deep feeling. Firstly, there was the law of the 27th of July 1884, and those which completed it; this law re-established divorce, which had been abolished since 1816, but only permitted it for certain definite causes determined by law. On the other hand, the law of the 6th of February 1893 increased the liberty and independence of a woman who was simply judicially separated, in order to encourage separation,as opposed to divorce, when the conditions all@wed it. The law of the 25th of March 1896 on the succession of illegitimate children, who were recognized by the parents, treated them not in the same way as legitimate children, but gave them the title of heirs in the succession of their father and mother, together with much greater rights than they had possessed under the Code Civil. The law of the 24th of July 1899, on the protection of children who are ill-treated or morally neglected, also modified some of the provisions of the law as applied to the family, with a view to greater justice and humanity. Finally, on the occasion of the centenary of the Code Civil (see CODE NAPOL~0N), a commission, composed of members of the chambers, magistrates, professors of law, lawyers, political writers, and even novelists and dramatic authors, was given the task of revising the whole structure uf the code.

See generally Adhmar Esmein, Cours elementaire dhistoire du droll frdnais (6th ed., 1906); J. Brissand, Cours dhistcire ginrale du droit francais public et pniv (1904); Ernest Glasson, Hislo-ire du droll el des institutions en France (1887-1904); Paul Viollet, Histoire des inslilutions politiques et administratives - de la France (3rd ed.5 1903); Fustel de Coulangos, Hustoire des institutions polit-ique,c de lancienne France; Jacques Flach, Les Origines de lancienne France (1875-1889); Achille Luchaire, Histoire des institutions monarchiques de Ia France sons les premiers Capitiens (2nd ed., 1900); Hippolyte Tame, Les Or-i gines de la France contemporaine (1878-1894); Adhmar Es~tiein, Elements de droll constitutionnel francais et corn pare (4thed., 1906): Leon Duguit et Henry Monnier, Les Constitutions riles principales lois politiques de Ia France depuis 1789 (I 898). Ci - P. H.)

August 1871, on the conseils gniraul, considerably increased the powers and independence o~ these elective bodies, Admial- which have become important deliberative assemblies, strative.. .

changes. their sessions being held in public. The law of 1871 created a new administrative organ for the departments, the commission di4parlmenlale, elected by the councilgeneral of the department from among its own members and associated with the administration of the prefect. The other law is the municipal law of the 5th of April 1884, which effected a widespread decentralization; the ~naires and their adjoints are elected by the municipal council.

The war of 187071 necessarily led to a modification of the military organization. The law of the 25th of July 1872 estabReorgani- lished the principle of compulsory service for all, first in zatlon the standing army, the period of service in which was .1 th, fixed at five years, then in the reserve, and finally in armY. the territorial army. Buttheapplicationofthisprinciple was by no means absolute, only holding good in time of war. Each annual class was divided into two parts, by means of drawing lots, and in time of peace one of these parts had only a year of service with the active army. The previous exemptions, based either on the position of supporter of the family (as in the case of the son of a widow or aged father, &c.) or on equivalent services rendered to the state (as in the case of young ecclesiastics or members of the teaching profession), were preserved, but only held good for service in the active army in times of peace. Finally, the system of conditional engagement for a year allowed young men, for the purposes of study or apprenticeship to their profession, only to serve a year with the active army in time of peace. fly this means it was sought to combine the advantages of an army of veterans with those of a numerous and truly national army. But the conditional volunteering (vol ont anal condilionnel) for a year was open to too great a number of people, and so brought the system into discredit. As those who profited by it had to be clothed and maintained at their own expense, and the sum which they had to furnish for this purpose was generally fixed at x5oo francs, it came to be considered the privilege of those who could pay this sum. A new law of the 15th of July 1889 lessened the difference between the two terms which it attempted to reconcile. It reduced the term of service in the active army to three years, and the exemptions, which were still preserved, merely reduced the period to a year in times of peace. The same reduction was also granted to those who were, really pursuing important scientific, technical or professional studies; the system was so strict on this point that the number of those who profited by those exemptions did not amount to aooo in a year. This was a compromise between two opposing principles; the democratic principle of equality, being the stronger, was bound to triumph. The law of the 21St of March 1905 reduced the term of service in the active army to two years, but made it equal for all, admitting of no exemption, but only certain facilities as to the age at which it had to be accomplished.

In 1883 the judicial personnel was reorganized and reduced in number. With the exception of a few modifications the main lines of judicial organization remained the same. In 1879 the conseil detat was also reorganized. The ~xatloa. whole fabricof administrative jurisdiction was carefully organized, and almost entirely separated from the active administration.

The system of taxation has remained essentially unaltered; we may notice, however, the laws of 1897, 1898 and igoo, which abolished or lessened the duties on so called hygienic drinks (wine, beer, cider), and the financial law of 19o1, which rearranged and increased the transfer fees, and eStablished a system of progressive taxation in the case of succession dues.

The labor laws, which generally partook of the nature both of public and of private law, are a sign of our times. Under the Third Republic they have been numerous, the Laboer most notable being: the law of the 21st of March ~ 884 on professional syndicates, which introduced the liberty of association in matters of this kind before it became part of the common law (see TRArJE UNIONS);

the law of the 9th of April 1898 oil the liability for accidents incurred during work, ,and those which have completed It; that of the 22nd of December 1892 on conciliation and arbitration in the case of collective disputes between employers and workmen; that of the 29th of June 1893 on the hygiene and safeguarding of workers in industrial establishments, and the laws which regulate the work of children and women in factories; finally, that of the 15th of July 1893 on free medical attendance (see LASOIJR LEGISLATION).

As to criminal law, there have been more than fifty enactments, mostly involving important modifications, due to more scientific ideas of punishment, so that we may say that it has been almost entirely recast since the establishment of the Third Republic. The separate system applied in cases of preventive detention and imprisonment for short periods; liberation before the expiry of the term of sentence, subject to the condition that no fresh offence shall be committed within a given time; transportation to the colonies of habitual offenders; the remission of the penalty in the case of first offenders, and the lapsing of the penalty when a certain time has gone by without a fresh condemnation; greater facilities for the rehabilitation of condemned persons, which now became simply a matter for the courts, and occurred as a matter of course at the end of a certain time; such were the chief results of this legislation. Finally, the law of the 8th of December 1897 completely altered the form of the preliminary examination before the juge dinstruclion, which had been the weakest point in the French criminal procedure, though it was still held in private; the new law made this examination really a hearing of both sides, and niade the appearance of counsel for the defence practically compulsory.

As to private law, both civil and commercial, we could enumerate between 1871 and 1906 more than a hundred laws which have modified it, sometimes profoundly, and have for the most part done very useful work without attracting much attention. They are generally examined and drawn up by commissions of competent men, and pass both chambers almost without discussion. There have, however, been a few which aroused public interest and even deep feeling. Firstly, there was the law of the 27th of July 1884, and those which completed it; this law re-established divorce, which had been abolished since 1816, but only permitted it for certain definite causes determined by law. On the other hand, the law of the 6th of February 1893 increased the liberty and independence of a woman who was simply judicially separated, in order to encourage separation,as opposed to divorce, when the conditions all@wed it. The law of the 25th of March 1896 on the succession of illegitimate children, who were recognized by the parents, treated them not in the same way as legitimate children, but gave them the title of heirs in the succession of their father and mother, together with much greater rights than they had possessed under the Code Civil. The law of the 24th of July 1899, on the protection of children who are ill-treated or morally neglected, also modified some of the provisions of the law as applied to the family, with a view to greater justice and humanity. Finally, on the occasion of the centenary of the Code Civil (see CODE NAPOL~0N), a commission, composed of members of the chambers, magistrates, professors of law, lawyers, political writers, and even novelists and dramatic authors, was given the task of revising the whole structure uf the code.

See generally Adhmar Esmein, Cours elementaire dhistoire du droll frdnais (6th ed., 1906); J. Brissand, Cours dhistcire ginrale du droit francais public et pniv (1904); Ernest Glasson, Hislo-ire du droll el des institutions en France (1887-1904); Paul Viollet, Histoire des inslilutions politiques et administratives - de la France (3rd ed.5 1903); Fustel de Coulangos, Hustoire des institutions polit-ique,c de lancienne France; Jacques Flach, Les Origines de lancienne France (1875-1889); Achille Luchaire, Histoire des institutions monarchiques de Ia France sons les premiers Capitiens (2nd ed., 1900); Hippolyte Tame, Les Or-i gines de la France contemporaine (1878-1894); Adhmar Es~tiein, Elements de droll constitutionnel francais et corn pare (4thed., 1906): Leon Duguit et Henry Monnier, Les Constitutions riles principales lois politiques de Ia France depuis 1789 (I 898). Ci - P. H.)