Part 21 (1/2)

The second balloting was to take place on March 31. Suppose that General Boulanger should take it into his head to force the fighting on that day at Laon--worse still, try to make an 'arrangement' with the Conservative candidate? What would then become of M. Doumer? So, on March 28, M.

Doumer tells us he went up to Paris, from Laon in company with the chairman of one of the Republican committees, and there had an interview with a leading member of the committee of General Boulanger, the result of which was that the 'brav' General' published a letter, in which he announced to the electors of the Aisne that he could not accept a seat which he could only occupy to the detriment of compet.i.tors 'beside whom, and not against whom, he had allowed himself to be made a candidate.' He wound up by requesting his friends in the Aisne 'to vote at the second balloting for the candidate who would best support the honour of the country and the interests of the Republic.'

Then came, at Laon, a meeting of the Republican Committee of the Aisne, at which the chairman of the meeting, M. Lesguillier, was instructed to do his best to 'dissipate the somewhat equivocal effect' of the language used by General Boulanger in his letter, and to induce the Boulangist committee to work, on the 31st, for the election of M.

Doumer. And so, on March 31, 1888, M. Doumer was finally put into the seat, which enabled him to draw up his model report on the great question of 'co-operation.' That the Boulangists of Laon are not wholly delighted with the course of M. Doumer in the late Chamber, and that the working-men of Laon are not deeply impressed by the value to them of his model report on 'co-operation,' may be inferred from his defeat by the Boulangist candidate M. Castelin under the _scrutin d'arrondiss.e.m.e.nt_ in September, 1889.

But M. Doumer is a typical French politician of the Third Republic, and as his alliance with M. Floquet seems to be firmer than ever, my friend in the Aisne is probably right in thinking that M. Doumer will still be heard of perhaps as a prefect, perhaps as a deputy filling the seat of some 'invalidated' deputy from Paris, perhaps as a Tresorier-General, occupying one of the large number (I think there are eighty in all) of these lucrative posts, which it has been the custom of successive administrations under the Third Republic to distribute among their friends and supporters on retiring from power, as in England premiers, in like circ.u.mstances, distribute peerages and baronetcies and accolades of knighthood, one special difference between the two systems being that the rewards of political service bestowed in England not only entail no expense upon the taxpayers, but actually, I believe, bring a certain amount in the way of fees into the Treasury, whereas in France such rewards mean a steady increase of the public outlay.

As the late parliament on the very last day of its existence adopted a plan proposed by M. Doumer himself for re-organising the system of _Tresoriers-Generaux_, and making these officers regular members of the staff of the Finance Ministry with fixed salaries, my friend in the Aisne thinks it likely enough that one of these posts may fill the eventual perspective of M. Doumer's political career.

Meanwhile the defeated candidate for Laon has been comfortably lodged, at the public cost, in the Legislative Palace, as Secretary of the President of the Chamber, M. Floquet being President, and receives a salary of 15,000 francs, with perquisites and other advantages.

We do this sort of thing occasionally in the United States, for the benefit of defeated political candidates. But in one important respect the professional politician in France is better off than the professional politician in America. Our pension list is by far the largest in the world, but we do not offer any prospect of a pension to civil servants.

Nor have we so many paid legislative berths in which to lodge our professional politicians. The parliamentary business of the sixty millions of people who now inhabit the United States is done by eighty-four senators and 330 representatives, who receive something over $2,000,000 a year. The parliamentary business of less than forty millions of people inhabiting France is supposed to require the services of 300 senators and 578 deputies, who receive for doing it 11,937,940 francs, or, in round numbers, about $2,587,560. Whether the 878 French legislators really earn half a million of dollars more by their annual labours than do the 414 American legislators is a question which I leave my readers to settle after they shall have settled the previous question, whether either of those considerable sums of money is really earned by either body. But there can be no doubt, I think, that, under the existing economical conditions of society in the two republics, the aggregate number of professional politicians aiming at the 878 prizes of the profession in France is likely to be considerably in excess of the aggregate number of professional politicians aiming at the 414 prizes of the profession in the United States. Of course, too, this increase in the aggregate number of the compet.i.tors must necessarily be attended by a decline in the average standard of character and capacity among them: and as it is the settled policy of the French Republicans of the 'true Republic,' who have been in power for the past decade, to exclude all persons not of their party from any share in the general administration of the Republic, it is obvious that this lowering of the level of character and of capacity must be most marked among the professional politicians of the Republican party. This is a matter of scientific necessity, and not at all of sentiment; and it suffices to account for the unquestionable average inferiority of the Government members of the Senate and the Chamber to the Opposition members in point both of character and of capacity.

The intense centralisation of power in France is another and a very important force working in the same direction. Outside of the Federal field of political ambition in the United States we have the State governments. But there can be no more than forty-two State governors in the United States, whereas in France there are eighty-six prefects, and three in Algiers, without counting the administrative authorities in the Regency of Tunis and in the French colonies. The governors.h.i.+ps of the American States are elective offices, to be won only by local services and local combinations. But the administrative prizes of French politics can only be secured through the central administration at Paris, under pressure from the all-powerful cliques and combinations in the National Legislature. Briefly, therefore, it seems to me quite clear that under the Third Republic in France the profession of politics is rapidly becoming, if it has not already become, much more easy of access, and, in proportion to the capital of character and of ability required for entering upon it, much more remunerative, than it has ever yet been in the United States, unless perhaps during the domination of Mr. Tweed and the Tammany Ring over the taxpayers of New York.

CHAPTER XI

IN THE NORD

VALENCIENNES

It says but little for what Texans call the 'sabe' of the munic.i.p.al authorities of Valenciennes that this, which ought to be one of the most picturesque and attractive, is really one of the shabbiest historic towns of North-eastern France. The streets are ill-paved and ill-kept, the public buildings are untidy, and the whole place contrasts most unfavourably, from this point of view, with the rich and beautifully cultivated region through which you reach it by the railway from Douai.

This is the finest agricultural region in France--the old French Flanders, a 'fat' country as well as a flat. You hardly see a weed between Douai and Valenciennes. Great fields of beetroot are cultivated like flower-gardens, and the green and growing crops are as daintily ordered as the coils and plateaux of flowers with which it is the fas.h.i.+on to adorn dinner-tables _a la Russe_. It is not pleasant to be a.s.sured that the industrious dwellers in this land of Goshen are as fond of c.o.c.k-fighting as the Spaniards, who probably enough introduced the amus.e.m.e.nt here during their long domination over what is now known as French Flanders, and that they are addicted also in a systematic way to the abominable practice of blinding bullfinches to make them better singers. I am told that in many communes the authorities actually give prizes for the best singing birds thus produced, and that 'blind bullfinch societies' are among the many a.s.sociations regularly established and nouris.h.i.+ng among the fields and villages. The old Flemish love of strong drink also survives here, as is shown by the number and the prosperous appearance of the cabarets.

These average, for the whole Department of the Nord, no fewer than one to every sixty-six inhabitants, and around Valenciennes, the proportion rises as high as one to every forty-four. There is much subdivision of property, but it has not been pushed so far around Valenciennes as in some other portions of the department, a majority of the small properties extending to twenty-five hectares, and properties of from one hundred to three hundred hectares being considered large estates.

Thanks to the energy and intelligence of many considerable landholders, a great improvement has taken place of late years in the agricultural methods and instruments in use throughout this department: the open drains have practically disappeared, the country has become more wholesome, as well as more fertile, and the farmers in general are admittedly much better off, despite the crisis. This increasing prosperity is given as an explanation of the decreasing average number of children.

But French Flanders is nevertheless one of the densely populated parts of France, showing a population of 267 to the square league. It is proper to say, however, that this is chiefly due to the growth of certain great manufacturing centres. In the rural regions the population is much less dense, and the population of Valenciennes is actually declining. It fell from 23,291 in 1881 to 22,919 in 1886. The explanation is that people are moving out from Valenciennes into the new suburbs. Anzin, Thiers, Denain, and St.-Amand are increasing with the development of the manufactories which are growing up here around the great coal-fields.

While I was at Valenciennes, there was a terrible commotion in the Paris newspapers over a certain colonel in the army, who, being in the service of a well-known arms factory, loudly protested against the alleged sale of that factory to the Germans, and the threatened consequent closing of its works near Paris.

After much journalistic and parliamentary gunpowder had been burned, it came to light that the proprietors were simply making up their minds to transfer their works to the vicinity of Valenciennes as a necessary measure of economy.

Notwithstanding the slovenly 'edility' of Valenciennes, I found it a very interesting place. The Hotel du Commerce there is a very well-kept old-fas.h.i.+oned hostelry, installed in a stately and s.p.a.cious house, long the residence of a considerable family. Indeed, one of my friends in Valenciennes was quite severe in his comments upon the indifference of the head of this family, still a man of large property, to this conversion of the ancestral mansion into an inn. With its fine gateway, its porter's lodge on either hand, its large courtyard shaded with well-grown old trees, and its well-proportioned apartments, it is certainly a specimen worth preserving of such a house as King Louis need not have disdained to enter, when he made Valenciennes and French Flanders definitely French in 1677.

'We have a noisy, ignorant set of people in power here now,' said my friend, 'who pulled down, not long ago, the finest of the only three good gates we had left, out of sheer stupidity; and you can see how they let things go at sixes and sevens all over the city. But the old-established citizens of Valenciennes are to blame also, not for the decline of our population perhaps, but for the gradual disappearance of all the features of the city worth preserving. Like the head of this family, they care nothing about the past.'

In the course of a walk about the city, he showed me, in the Rue Notre-Dame, an edifice, the condition of which certainly excused his criticism of his fellow-citizens.

It is an ancient dwelling-house of the fifteenth century, standing at the corner of two streets. A most graceful _tourelle_ markes the facade, and strikingly resembles that which decorates still the house at Paris near the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, in the vaulted doorway of which Louis, Duc d'Orleans, was murdered, a crime avenged by the death, on the bridge of Montereau, of its real author, Jean Sans-Peur, Duc de Bourgogne. The exterior ornamentation of this house is admirable, nor is it too far gone in dilapidation to be successfully restored. The door was locked, boardings were fixed in some of the beautiful windows, and advertis.e.m.e.nts of Amer-Picon and auctions and political meetings defaced the front. Obviously the house belonged originally to some personage of importance at a time when Valenciennes, the city of the Emperor Valentinian, was still one of the great marts of Western Europe and a capital of the civilisation of the West. Its population was then much larger than it now is. By the Scheldt, it communicated with the sea, and in the thirteenth century it was a member of the famous Hanse of London, which included also, Reims, St.-Quentin, Douai, Arras, St.-Omer, Abbeville, Amiens, Bruges, Ypres, and Ghent. This league dominated over the Channel. Its chief, the Count of the Hanse, who seems to have been in a manner a successor of the Roman Counts of the Saxon Sh.o.r.e, was chosen by the leagued cities from among the great burghers of Bruges.

The privileges its representatives enjoyed in London were balanced by sundry rather monastic restrictions; but it was a great commercial corporation, and it played a great part in the social and economical history of mediaeval Europe. As early as the ninth century Valenciennes and Mons had been so rich and influential, that they were regarded as the pillars of the '_n.o.ble Comte de Hainault, tenu de Dieu et du Soleil_.' With the crusades, the importance of Valenciennes notably increased, and with its importance the independence of its burghers. The leading part taken by G.o.dfrey de Bouillon in the early crusades is a proof of the power of these Flemish towns. When Baldwin of Flanders a.s.sumed the imperial purple at Constantinople, he did it expressly to benefit the commerce of the Flemish cities. At this day it is believed that there exist, in some palace of the sultan at Constantinople, tapestries of Oudenarde taken to the East by Baldwin, who was born at Valenciennes in 1171. At Valenciennes, too, were born his sister, Isabelle of Hainault, the first wife of Philip Augustus of France, his brother Henry, Emperor of the East, and his two daughters. One of these daughters, Marguerite, grown to woman's estate, besieged Valenciennes because the burghers refused to recognise her as the born Countess of Hainault. Gilles Miniave, provost of the city, plainly said to her when he refused to surrender: 'We have taken and we intend to kill your soldiers, madame, as abettors of tyranny.' This was as much to the purpose in its way as the firing on the royal troops by the farmers of Lexington in America in 1775.

In the middle of the fourteenth century Valenciennes was so wealthy that Jean Party, provost in 1357, was regarded as the richest man in Europe.

He went to Paris during the fair of the Landit, and for his own account bought up all the goods brought there for sale at one swoop; he then retailed them at a great profit. He was invited to attend the court of France, and went there so magnificently attired as to excite the jealousy of the French n.o.bles, who treated him in consequence with undue arrogance. He took off his cloak, enriched with fur and jewels, as no seat was offered him, made it into a roll, and sate down on it. When he rose with the rest to leave, he left the cloak where he had sate on it.