Part 9 (1/2)

Labitte mounted the extemporised platform. The proceedings had to be suspended for a few moments as the attention of the audience was suddenly drawn to the high road by the galloping past of two generals in full uniform, with their staff officers, from St.-Omer. There was no nomination of a chairman or a secretary, none of the inevitable formalities of an English or American political gathering. M. Labitte called the meeting to order by the simple process of beginning to address it. Nothing could be more direct and business-like than his speech. It was exactly what he told his hearers he meant it to be, an account of his stewards.h.i.+p as their councillor-general. He said not a word about the personal aspects of the party conflicts raging in France, and very little about the national aspects of that conflict. Speaking in a frank conversational way, and referring to his notes only for figures and dates, he gave his const.i.tuents a succinct picture of the effect upon their own local interests of the policy pursued by the Government of the Republic. He told them how much of their money had been spent under the action of the Council-General during the six years of his term, and on what it had been spent, and with what results. If they liked the picture, well and good; if not, the remedy was in their own hands at the next election. He had forewarned me to expect nothing demonstrative in the att.i.tude of his audience. 'They listen most attentively,' he said, 'but they give you no sign either of agreement or disagreement, of satisfaction or dissatisfaction. At night, after the meeting is over, they will break up into little knots and coteries, and talk it all over among themselves. If they are pleased on the whole, one of the group finally will say: ”Well, Labitte told us the truth,” and that being admitted by the rest, the conference will be a success!'

On this occasion the auditors were much more outspoken during the conference. Speaking of the unequal pressure upon the different communes of the military service, M. Labitte told them a story of a youth who came to him to get an exemption from service. 'I told him,' said M.

Labitte, 'that I should be very glad to get it for him, but that his commune was not at that moment ent.i.tled to an exemption, and that I could not be a party to putting an injustice upon another commune. He was annoyed at this, and thought I ought to do him a favour, no matter at whose cost. I declined, and he went away. Some time after I met him, when he exultingly told me that he had seen one of my colleagues, a Republican, and had got from him the exemption he wanted. After that I heard stories put about to the effect that Labitte cared nothing about the pressure of the military service on the labouring people! Was I not right? Was it not my duty to see no favouritism shown to one commune at the expense of another?'

To these queries there was a prompt and general response, 'Yes! yes! You were quite right,' and several voices cried out, 'Bravo!--quite right, Labitte.'

Again, in dealing with the question of education, M. Labitte told his hearers of three instances in which small communes had been made to expend sums inordinately disproportionate to their resources upon what he called 'scholastic palaces,' although a great majority of the people in each instance distinctly refused to send their children to the lay schools established in these 'palaces.' One case was that of a commune of some seven hundred souls compelled to expend more than sixty thousand francs, or 2,400_l._ sterling, upon a 'scholastic palace'! 'I opposed these expenditures,' he said, 'for I think it is part of the duty of a councillor-general to look closely into the use made of your money.'

This, also, the hearers applauded, not noisily at all, but with a kind of gratified murmur, not unlike the very loud purring of a very large cat. By this time it was evident that the speaker had his audience well in hand, and M. Labitte took up some points of attack made on himself.

One of these was that he was a 'clerical.' He said that he certainly was a 'clerical,' if that meant a man who had a religion and respected it, and wished to see the religion of other people respected; and gliding on from this to the question of the religious education of children, he asked the people whether they wished to see the curates forbidden to teach their children the principles of their religion. He was instantly answered by a man standing in the crowd just outside the door of the barn, who, in a loud and rather husky voice, shouted out that 'the priest had no business in the school.' Several of the audience met this interruption with derisive laughter, and two or three of them sharply invited the man to hold his tongue and go about his business. For a moment it seemed as if we were about to have a scene. But M. Labitte interposed. With perfect good temper he replied to the man that he was quite of his opinion as to the proper place of a priest, and that he had no wish to see the children at school interfered with in their school hours by any instruction not a part of the school programme. He suggested, however, that, instead of shouting and clamouring, the man should wait till he, M. Labitte, had got through, and then come up 'amiably and prettily' on the platform and state his own views as fully as he liked. This made the man in the doorway angrier than ever, and as the audience good-naturedly laughed at him, he began to use rather abusive language. Upon this several stalwart peasants rose and made their way towards him with very plain intimations that if he did not take to the highway he would be carried there. The uproar was all over in five minutes. Some companions of the anti-clerical gentleman, not liking the look of the audience, contrived to surround him and led him off, and he disappeared uttering a threat or two of incoherent defiance as he went out of the farmyard. A burly farmer seated near me explained that 'the fellow was drunk. But,' he added, 'he was sent here to do all this, and I know who sent him. Do you see that high chimney across the road some way off among the trees? Well, he is a factory hand there.

There are a number of them--they don't belong to this country, and the manufacturer is an intriguer. He wanted to be a councillor-general, and we beat him off. He doesn't like it--and that's at the bottom of it all.'

M. Labitte spoke for about an hour, the audience gradually increasing and listening with close attention. At the end the farmer, who had arranged the conference, got up and thanked the councillor-general for the account he had given of his services, and then the meeting broke up as quietly as it had a.s.sembled, and with as little ceremony.

Before the company began to leave the barn, a young man near the door asked for some information as to the duties likely to be imposed to protect the farmers, and getting a brief and clear reply, he said that would be very satisfactory--if only 'some proprietors would not put such high prices on their land.' The Count, who sat just in front of me and who had kept his hawk eye fixed on the speaker, chuckled to himself and said to me, 'That shot was meant for me!'

Altogether the proceedings gave me a very favourable notion of the intelligence and the practical sense of the people. If all the const.i.tuencies in France could be handled in this direct fas.h.i.+on at the national elections in September, the result of those elections might be at least the approximative expression of the sense of the nation.

But this is not to be expected. There is much more canva.s.sing done, I think, by legislative candidates in France, and much less public speaking than in America or in England, and the pressure of the Government upon the voters is very much greater here even than it is in America. The proportion of office-holders to the population is much more considerable, and the recent governments have made the tenure of office in France even more dependent upon the political activity of the officials than it has ever been in the United States. This is one of the many evil legacies of the First Republic. The maxim that, 'to the victors belong the spoils,' I am sorry to say has been pretty extensively reduced to practice on my side of the Atlantic; but it was first formulated, not by Jackson, but by Danton. Louis Blanc tells us that this brutal Boanerges of the Jacobins startled even his allies one day, by cynically declaring that 'the revolution was a battle, and, like all battles, ought to end by the division of the spoils among the victors.'

Gabriel Charmes, a republican of the republicans, reviewing the conduct of the governments which have succeeded each other in France with such kaleidoscope rapidity since the death of Thiers, deliberately declares that 'epuration is the watchword, and the true aim of Republican politics' in France. And 'epuration' is the euphemism invented to describe the simple process of kicking out the office-holder who is in, to make room for the office-seeker who is out. Gambetta began this process in December 1870, when he wrote to the Government at Paris: 'Authorise me and all my colleagues to ”purify” the _personnel_ of the public administration, and it shall be done in very short order.' Within a month, the Minister of the Interior telegraphed to the prefects, 'you are authorised to make all the changes among the public school teachers, which, from a republican and political point of view, you may think desirable.' M. Cremieux, Minister of Justice, followed the work up so energetically, that by the end of the year 1871 he declared that he had 'weeded out eighteen hundred justices of the peace, and two hundred and eighty-nine magistrates of the courts and tribunals.' When the republicans of the different Radical shades got into power in 1877, the newly elected deputies, according to M. Floquet, held a meeting, and insisted upon a further 'epuration.' They were of the mind of the sub-prefect of Roanne, who telegraphed to his superior, 'If Republicans alone are not put into office, the Republicans will rise and we shall have civil war.' In January 1880, M. de Freycinet, then, as now, a Minister, loudly called for a 'reform of the _personnel_ of the Administration; and M. Gabriel Charmes, speaking of the then situation in France, tells us that only one prefect of the previous Republican Administration had escaped 'purification,' and not one procureur-general. 'Has a single justice of the peace,' he added, 'or a single public school teacher in the slightest degree open to suspicion, escaped the avenging hands of MM. Le Royes and Jules Ferry? Certainly not.'

This was nine years ago. So thorough was the weeding, M. Charmes tells us, that, 'even the rural constables had not escaped, and the epuration policy had carried terror and anarchy into all branches of the public service.'

In 1885 more than three millions of voters recorded their protest against these methods of government, and against the deputies who had identified these methods with the Republican form of government. This protest was met by M. de Freycinet, on January 16, 1886, with a speech, in the course of which he calmly said, 'Let no one henceforth forget that liberty to oppose the Government does not exist for the servants of the State.'

That is to say, the Republican Government, which is itself the servant, and the paid servant, of the State, will not permit any of its fellow-servants and subordinates, who are also presumably French citizens and taxpayers, to form and express at the polls any opinion on public affairs differing from the opinions held by the ministers who make up the Government.

It was upon this simple and beautiful principle that Mr. Tweed and his colleagues consolidated the local administration of affairs of the city of New York. Applied to the administration of the affairs of thirty-six millions of people in France, it ought certainly to produce results far transcending in splendour any achieved by the Tammany Ring. For M.

Gabriel Charmes is quite in the right when he says that 'under this word of ”epuration” lie concealed the most deplorable forms of personal greed, and the least avowable personal spites and rancours.' Like other clever devices, however, 'epuration' may possibly be carried too far. If it comes to pa.s.s that no actual functionary thinks his head safe, while, at the same time, every office the Government has to give represents a dozen or twenty 'expurgated,' and therefore exasperated and disaffected, previous holders of that office, the confidence of the garrison may be shaken while the animosity of the a.s.sailants is intensified. This point may possibly have been reached in France. If it has not been reached, the influence of the Government upon the voters must be very formidable.

For the average French voter is hemmed in and hedged about by innumerable small functionaries who have it in their power to oblige or to disoblige him, to gratify or to vex him in all sorts of ways; and though the ballot is supposed to be sacred and secret in France, it can hardly be more sacred or more secret there than in other countries. And whatever protection against annoyance the ballot may give to the voter, nothing can protect the candidate.

What I have heard in other regions I hear in Artois, that nothing is so difficult as to persuade men of position and character to take upon themselves the troubles, and expose themselves to the inconveniences, of an important political candidacy. There are a hundred ways in which a triumphant Administration conducted on the principles of the 'epuration'

policy may hara.s.s and annoy an unsuccessful banner-bearer of the Opposition. The question of expense is another obstacle in the way of a thorough organisation of public opinion against such a Government.

An average outlay of 400,000 francs per department would be required, I was told by an experienced friend in Paris, adequately to put into the line of political battle all the departments of France, large and small together. As there are eighty-three departments in France, this gives us a total of 33,200,000 francs, or some 1,300,000_l._ sterling, as the cost of a thorough political campaign against an established French Government. If we suppose each deputy to make a personal contribution of 20,000 francs to this war-chest, that will give us only about one-third of the necessary amount. The rest must be made up by the personal contributions of public-spirited citizens, and my own observation of public affairs, going back, now, over a good many lively and interesting political conflicts in the United States, leads me to believe that liberal contributions of this sort are, as a rule, more easily collected by the beneficiaries of a more or less unscrupulous Government actually in power, than by the disinterested advocates of a real political reformation.

We wound up the day of the Conference with a delightful little dinner at St.-Quentin. The traditions of the old French _cuisine_ are not yet extinct in the provinces, nor, for that matter, in the private life of the true Parisians of Paris. They all centre in the famous saying of Brillat-Savarin, that a man may learn how to cook, but must be born to roast--a saying worthy of the philosophic magistrate who, coming to America, under the impression that he was to be fed upon roots and raw meat, went back to France convinced that a New England roast turkey and an Indian pudding were not to be matched in the old world. It is one of the many curious things of this curious world of the nineteenth century, that a _cuisine_ of made dishes of which Grimod de La Reyniere long ago gave us the origin, in the downfall of the kitchens of the prince-bishops along the Rhine, should be gravely and generally accepted by Frenchmen themselves, or at least by the Parisians of literature and the boulevards, as the national _cuisine_ of France. The charming daughter of my host at St.-Quentin knew better; and she received with a graceful, housewifely satisfaction the neatly-turned compliments which one of the guests was old-fas.h.i.+oned and sensible enough to pay her upon the skill of her cook.

The city of Aire-sur-la-Lys itself, like St.-Omer, shows traces still of its connection with Flanders and with Spain. I do not know if it is true of Aire as M. Lauwereyns de Roosendaele, writing about Jacqueline Robins, declares it to be of St.-Omer, that there are people there, even now, who think of the days of the Spanish rule as the 'good old times.'

But there is a certain Castilian stateliness about the older buildings of Aire; and the portals of the larger residences, leading from the street into charming secluded courts, gay with trees and flowers, remind one of the zaguans of the Andalusian houses. Very Spanish, too, is the Jesuit Church, despite some extraordinary decorations due to the zeal of its more recent possessors.

The Flemish past of the city is commemorated especially by a very remarkable little building known as the Corps de Garde, and by certain portions of the Church of St.-Pierre.

Aire formerly had a cathedral, but during the worst period of the Terror that exemplary ruffian, Joseph Lebon of Arras, the unfrocked priest, who organised pillage and ma.s.sacre throughout the Pas-de-Calais, frightened the good people of Aire into a frenzy of destruction and devilry. The Church of St.-Pierre was then a collegiate church, but it was turned over to the wors.h.i.+p of the Supreme Being invented by Robespierre, desecrated and defaced and left in a deplorable state. It had already suffered, like so many other churches all over France and England, from the ingenious 'restorers' of the eighteenth century, who have left their sign-manual on the upper part of the edifice and on the ma.s.s of a huge organ loft which crushes and disfigures the main entrance. The greater part of the building is of the fifteenth century; and it has been restored within our own times as tastefully and effectively as in the circ.u.mstances was possible, under the supervision and in part, I believe, at the cost of a devoted and conscientious curate, a member of a Scotch family long fixed in Artois, the Abbe Scott, who took charge of the church at the end of the reign of Charles X. and who now lies buried in the building he did so much to preserve. It is a very considerable church, measuring three hundred feet in length and a hundred-and-twenty in width; with a height of seventy feet in the main nave. The ogival windows are filled with rich, stained gla.s.s; all the ancient monuments which escaped the fury of 1793 have been excellently restored, and the church bears witness in its condition to the active piety of the faithful of Aire.

The 'Corps de Garde' is a quadrilateral jewel of Flemish architecture of the end of the sixteenth century. It was of old the central point of the city, where the armed citizens met who patrolled the streets like the burghers of Rembrandt's magnificent 'Ronde de Nuit.' A gallery runs round it of arcades, and brickwork supported by monolithic columns.

Above these arcades runs a frieze of trophies of arms with the attributes of St. James--the mayor of the city in whose time it was built bore the name of this apostle--and the cross of Burgundy.