made every concession possible to the reactionaries, and warned them not to miss perhaps the only chance of founding a firm, legal, and moderate republic.

It was after this that Gambetta frankly adopted an opportunist policy. In one of his speeches he openly stated: "I make my policy square with my philosophy. I deny the absolute in everything; so you will quite understand that I am not likely to introduce it into my political beliefs. I belong to a school which believes only in the relative, in analysis, in observation, in the study of facts, in the comparison and combination of ideas; to a school which takes into consideration surroundings, race, tendencies, prejudices, and enmities. A political creed never is, never can be, always the same. The policy of to-day, in 1876, will not be the policy of 1877, nor of 1878, nor of 1880. It will change with our interests, with our needs, with our enmities, with what will happen in Europe, in such-and-such a market, in the face of such-and-such economical, financial, and military conditions which may displace the axis of this policy. And thus I say that it is expedient to modify our political conduct according to the changes through which the world passes. You see, therefore, that politics require tact, study, observation, and exactitude."

The importance of the above speech lies in its negativing the assertions of some of Gambetta's biographers, who represent him as being all of one piece, which he certainly was not. He was a series of incarnations, not a full-fledged prophet.

Again and again, but in vain, Gambetta attempted to reconcile the republican parties of all shades in the Chamber; no easy task, for each of these men had an idea of his own as to what a republic should be, and they are not willing to merge their personal fancies for the purposes of patriotic unity. He next attacked clericalism. Speaking in the Chamber of the election of M. de Mun, the well-known clerical deputy, he said: "It is no question here of defending religion, which no one is attacking or threatening; and when we speak of the clerical party we mean neither religion, nor sincere catholicism, nor the national clergy. What we want to do is to bring the clergy back into the Church, and not allow the pulpit to be made a political rostrum; it is to have the liberty of the elector recognized, it is to insure a fair field for political opinions which have nothing to do with clerical questions." He summed up the clerical question in the words, "Le péril social le voilà."

Accused, later, of dictatorship, he defended himself at Belleville by declaring that he had twice helped to overturn despotism, by which he referred to Napoleon III. and MacMahon. But his own government much resembled a despotism wielded in the name of liberty. He himself, perhaps, became aware of this later, for, when speaking of the moral condition of the democracy and bourgeoisie, he said: “This is what inspired me to break with the past, and to say to myself, 'Your life must be consecrated to doing away with the spirit of violence which has so often led democracy, to keep it from making a fetish of absolute formulas, to direct it towards the study of facts, to teach it to take into consideration traditions, customs, prejudices, which are forces only to be overcome by persuasion. You must endeavor to remove the incentives to fear which might push the bourgeoisie into reactionary measures; you must present yourself as a kind of peacemaker between the interests of both parties; and, if you can succeed in obtaining this alliance of the people and the bourgeoisie, you will have founded a republic on an immutable basis.""

In 1881 Gambetta was charged to form a ministry. Most of the men whom he would have selected to form a Cabinet refused to serve under him, with the result that he had to select minor men, and was then charged with having made a ministry of his own followers. His programme, among other matters, aimed at freeing the administrative functionaries from personal influence and local rivalries. Members who had been accustomed to ask for places and favors for their electors and protégés were up in arms. The word "dictatorship" was heard both on the left and right of the Chamber. The ministry was doomed, and when Gambetta further expounded his programme, which included a revision of the Constitution, the project set the whole Chamber in a blaze. He had been but four months in office when he saw himself obliged to resign. The excitement in France at the fall of the ministry was great, for Gambetta was very popular throughout the provinces. The most notable of his political schemes and the one that survived him was the introduction of the system of voting known as the scrutin de liste.

He was succeeded by De Freycinet. The minister and dictator became once more a simple deputy. He was, however, not inactive, and showed himself especially eager as a partisan of an alliance with En

gland. He wished France to act in concert with her in Egypt, and clearly foretold the future, which has come about, if she did not do so.

On November 28, 1882, the news went forth that Gambetta, who was at that time staying in his country house, had wounded himself in the hand with a revolver. The bulletins issued announced that the accident was of no consequence, and that the wound was healing, but on December 16 fever declared itself, and on the last day of the year the dictator died. How did the accident happen? By the overloading of a pistol? Such was the official version. No one believed it. By the hand of a woman? All France believed it. Any how, no judicial investigation was made, and the matter was hushed up as far as might be.

When Gambetta died there was in office one of those mushroom ministries, surviving but a few weeks, of which France, to her misfortune, has seen but too many during the last two decades. Early in the year, M. Fallières was succeeded by M. Ferry, who found himself thus for the second time in office, and who was to hold the reins for the next two years.

Will M. Ferry's hour ever come again? This is a question that is often asked in France. He is recognized on all sides as a political force, but the extent to which he has pushed his anti-clerical views has made him a dangerous man in the eyes of many, while on the other hand his foreign policy has brought him much opprobrium. The Tonkinese," as he was called in disdain, became an object of popular loathing. For, with the ready ignorance and forgetfulness of the past that distinguishes nations, the people disregarded the fact that, though M. Jules Ferry conquered Tonquin, it was not he who first suggested the war, but rather those who reproached him with it at a later period. Recently there has been a slight reaction in favor of Tonquin affairs there being so much more prosperous. In any case the lesson taught by that difficult conquest has not been lost; and for the present the French nation, wiser by experience, no longer listens to the insinuating voice of those who recommend distant adventures.

Ferry's name is not, as some people have tried to make out, of Italian origin; Ferry is merely, in the patois of the Vosges, a contraction of Frederick, for from time immemorial his family have inhabited the little town of Saint Dié. His father was a lawyer of considerable means,

who devoted himself to the education of his two sons, bringing them up as pugnacious Republicans. Jules was destined for the bar, and was educated at the Lycée of Strasburg; hence he has, besides that tie of patriotism which appears to bind every Frenchman to Alsace now they have lost it (for before the war it was no offence to hear Alsace spoken of as Germany), the added one of a personal love for Strasburg, where in his youth he made many friendships to which he has remained true in later years. He also married an Alsacienne of a highly respected family.

After the death of his father, Ferry, finding himself possessed of a fair income, left the bar to enter upon the domain of politics. He soon grouped around him a number of men of merit, such as Floquet, Emile Ollivier, Hérold. The empire was in those days in its full tyrannical power, and these men, all discontented, discussed ways and means of opposing the government. The press was shackled; but, nevertheless, here and there, in articles of a literary form, this group managed to criticise the government of the Third Napoleon. They wrote for Emile de Girardin's paper, La Presse, and Clément Duvernois's Courrier de Paris. Emile Ollivier and Duvernois soon after abandoned the opposition party, and went over to the imperial camp; but Ferry stuck to his colors, and in 1863 published a book which involved him in a political trial. It consisted of a series of revelations about the means employed in official candidature, and was denounced by the government party as a Republican manifesto. Soon after this Ferry began to write in Le Temps, and there published his remarkable onslaught on the prefect of the Seine, entitled "Comptes fantastiques de Haussmann." Elected deputy for the sixth arrondissement of Paris in 1869, he continued in the House his double campaign against official candidature and the administration of Baron Haussmann. All his efforts at amendment were thwarted by a servile majority. But he soon became one of the most formidable antagonists of his aforetime colleague, Emile Ollivier, and, in the frequent struggles between them in the House, Ferry generally got the better of the arguments.

In 1870 came the war-that war upon which Emile Ollivier embarked so lightheartedly, and which was to prove so utterly disastrous to his party and to France. Ferry took an active part in the opposition made by the little group of the Left to the government project, whose criminal fool

elected for the Chambers, it is uncertain whether he will ever for a third time find himself head of the government, though he regained a certain amount of popularity as one of the principal suppressors of Boulanger, whom he called in a public speech," Saint Arnaud de café concert." For that epithet, indeed, he was challenged by the general, but, owing to the seconds differing, the duel did not take place.

After a brief interval, during which M. Brisson held the reins of office, there followed a Cabinet presided over by M. de Freycinet.

Charles de Freycinet, who finds himself for the fourth time at the head of the French Cabinet, comes of an old family of the department of La Drôme. His forefathers were distinguished navigators, several of whom enjoyed a high reputation for pluck and sang-froid, and in their present descendant we may distinguish more than one of the characteristic traits of his ancestors. He has stood more than one parliamentary broadside without giving in; and, like his great-uncle, he, too, has been an explorer, and in his cruise around the political globe has discovered, so say his detractors, two groups of islands, one in the Centre and the other on the borders of the Extreme Left. With great skill he has steered just clear of political shipwreck, and managed to rise to the highest ranks in the government.

Educated for an engineer, he became, in 1850, the manager of the railways of the South. In this post his admirable administrative genius showed itself, and many of the regulations drawn up by him then are still in force. He also published some valuable mathematical works, as well as a study on the sanitation of towns. Unlike most mathematicians, M. de Freycinet's genius is a mobile one. His career contains three or four sharp turns. After throwing up his post in the railway, he entered the government service, and was employed on foreign missions to England, Belgium, and Germany. When the empire fell, M. de Freycinet offered his service to the government of the National Defence, and, although he had no special qualification for military affairs, he distinguished himself, and stood well in the breach, literally creating two regiments a day. Gambetta, with his keen eye for men, was struck by De Freycinet's talent, clearheadedness, and self-confidence, and bestowed upon him a post of importance. After the peace De Freycinet retired

back into private life, and dedicated his days to study, but he resumed his public career in 1876, when he stood for a seat in the Senate, warmly supported by Gambetta. His profession of political faith he couched on this occasion in the following words :

"Politically, I date from 1870; if I entered the Republic late, I came in by the front door, and received a baptism not of water but of fire, for it was in the fiery furnace of the National Defence that for five months I wrestled for my country with all my might and main. What I did it would ill become me to tell, but my master and friend, M. Gambetta, will tell you if I did my whole duty. . . . Side by side with great geniuses there are men who apply themselves to questions of administration and organization entailed by the application of a new order of ideas. I am one of those men, and, to sum up everything in one word, I would wish to be called by you to form one of the scientific phalanx of the Republic."

M. de Freycinet was duly elected, and he sat in the Chamber with the Republican Left, always voting in the Senate in harmony with the Republican majority of the Chamber of Deputies. The cause and the explanation, as he himself had said, of his political career was the National Defence, and the man in whom that National Defence was incorporated - namely, Gambetta. Soon, however, M. de Freycinet could stand before the Senate and the public on his own merits. When he arose to address the senators for the first time, it was evident that a new orator and a new kind of eloquence were revealed in him. From that moment, slowly but surely, by paths curiously tortuous, De Freycinet climbed the political mountain. In 1882 he nearly missed being re-elected for the Senate. Paris had, in the meantime, become ferociously Radical, and De Freycinet was not fierce enough for its taste. When, after a few brief weeks of existence, "le grand ministère," as Gambet ta's Cabinet was nicknamed, fell under the weight of its chief, M. de Freycinet took in hand the reins of government. The programme he put forth was the exact contrary of Gambetta's. There were to be no constitutional questions, no scrutin de liste, no policy, no reforms, or rather, there were to be reforms, but of a strictly practical character. Nevertheless, his Cabinet, too, did not live long. After a brief six months M. de Freycinet had to resign and wait another three years before he once more resumed office.