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gradual development of Order.

On all these grounds, although on so many a recent question I hold Clémenceau right and Gambetta. wrong, we would have held to the party of Gambetta and not to that of Clémenceau. If we must choose between the Irreconcilables and the Opportunists, then Opportunism means practical government, and Irreconcilability means a pedantic doctrine. To have thrown over Gambetta for Clémenceau, is the very type of the Democratic frenzy.

The one hope for France is the rise of a great Republican chief. And circumstances had so worked that for the moment Gambetta was the only possible Republican chief. Power in France rests in the hands of some seven or eight millions of electors; and these seven or eight millions know it, and mean to keep the power. Since the death of Louis Napoléon and Thiers, Gambetta's name was the one name of living Frenchmen which was known to every one of these millions. Grévy's is unknown to one-third of them, perhaps; the name of Clémenceau is unknown to two-thirds of them. The extraordinary events of 1870 had carried the name and the fame of Gambetta into every cottage and garret in France. Nothing that Clémenccau, or Grévy, or Jules Simon, or Rochefort, or any one of these could do, could bring their names or their characters before the mass of the electors. The good sense of Grévy, the political logic of Clémenceau, are admirable forces; but they cannot reach the men who hold the power. They cannot speak in the tones which are heard through France; they cannot rouse the ideas of the distant sluggish millions. Grévy may issue a hundred messages, and Clémenceau may deliver a hundred speeches, but not one word of these will reach the dull ear of the herdsmen in the Morbihan, and the vinedressers of the Gironde, and the woodcutters of the Jura, and the ploughmen of the Beauce. But when Gambetta spoke, France heard it and knew it, from the North Sea to the Mediterranean. The stout farmers and the shepherds and the peasants, from the Pas de Calais to the Pyrenées, and the workmen of Belleville, and of Perrache, and of the Cannebière, of Lille, and Bordeaux, and Rouen, and Hâvre -every Frenchman knew it and understood it, and, more or less, was moved or influenced by it. France is politically a bilingual nation. One-half speaks a political language, and lives in a political world, which is wholly unknown to the other. They who address one-half of the nation are incomprehensible to the other. Gambetta alone of modern Frenchmen was bilingual too. He found a language that both understood, and he alone could address France. He combined Order and Progress-that is, Revolutionary ends and a Conservative spirit. Here, then, was the political force. France is a Democratic Republic, whose only possible government is a popular chief, Revolutionary by his genius and Conservative by his instincts. Such an one was Gambetta, and for my part, I see no other.

But

IV. I pass to the last of the points which remain to notice, and my words on this great man, or this great torso of a great man, are ended. He is the one European statesman of this century who systematically and formally repudiated any kind of acceptance of theology. His Opportunist theory of a State Church was no doubt as wrong in principle as his persecution of the Catholic Orders. about his formal rejection of all theology there can be no doubt; his life, his death, his burial, all alike bear witness to it. It is common enough with minor politicians of all types in France. But when we see the way in which the responsible rulers of France have entered into partnership with theology, when we remember all that in that line was done by the Bourbons, Napoléons, and Orleans, by men like Guizot and Thiers, Macmahon and de Broglie, we see here a new thing a statesman of the first rank in Europe who formally repudiates theology in any shape, the first ruler of France in this century who has chosen to rule on purely human sanctions. tion of theology been simply negative, had he been a like Thiers, or an empty scoffer like Rochefort, it is should find to honour and respect in his secular belief. But the soul of Gambetta was not the soul of scoffer or sceptic. He had a religion in his soul, though he had neither God nor saint, though he never bowed the knee in the temple of Rimmon. His religion was France, an imperfect and but narrow image indeed of that Humanity which we meet here to acknowledge and to serve, but a part of that Humanity and an organ and an emblem of it. His religious life, like his political life, remained but a fragment and a hope. Both have closed at the age of forty-four. What a future might have lain beyond had he lived to the age of Thiers or Guizot!

Had his rejec

mere sceptic little that we

It is a thing which the world will remember one day-that vast ceremony in Paris on the 6th of January last-such a funeral as no emperor ever had, a day that recalled the gathering of the dawn of the Revolution in 1789; when all France helped to bury the one Frenchman who stood before Europe as Bismarck and Gladstone alone of living men stand before Europe to-day, and from first to last in that throng where Paris did honour to the son of the dealer of Cahors, no Catholic emblem or priest was seen; not a thought but for the great human loss and human sorrow, not a word but of human and earthly hopes. For the first time in this century Europe looked on and saw one of its foremost men laid in his rest by a nation in grief without priest or church, prayer or hymn.

The nation laid him in his rest with an honour that no service of theology could equal. For death is peculiarly the sphere of the power and resources of the religion of man. It will find for the last offices of its great sons noble words and affecting ceremonies, before which the requiems and the canticles of the Prayer-book will sound

hollow and puerile enough. It will clothe the memory of the great man with all the memories of the servants of Humanity, whose work he has helped, and whose great company he has joined at last. On this day, in our calendar, we recall the hero-poet of Athens, the glorious Eschylus, who sang the song of the great battle with the Persian host, in which he bore so valiant a part. Methinks we hear again in his drama the chant of the warriors of the Republic, as the ships of the Athenians bore down on the invader: "Sons of the Greeks, come on, to free your country and your wives, your children and your homes!" And in the spirit of this immortal tradition of patriotic defence, let us remember with honour the great citizen who has been borne to the premature grave, wherein were laid the unrevealed future of Danton, and Hoche, and Condorcet, and Carrel.

FREDERIC HARRISON.

DISCHARGED PRISONERS: HOW TO AID

THEM.

THE

HERE are few persons in misfortune who command more general sympathy than discharged prisoners. Occasionally the commiseration is bestowed upon unworthy subjects—those who have no desire to retrieve their characters or to live by the fruits of honest industry, who are radically vicious or idle, irreconcilable enemies to society. For such persons sentences of imprisonment cannot be too long, nor the punishment too severe. When they are at liberty they must be placed under stringent supervision, not indeed of a character to prevent their living honestly, but so strict as to confine their power for evil within the smallest possible compass.

But a very large proportion of those who are daily discharged from her Majesty's convict establishments and local prisons do not come under this category. Many of them have infringed the criminal law under circumstances not in themselves excusable, but not evincing that moral cancer which pervades the whole nature of an habitual criminal. It is hard to say how we ourselves should have acted under like temptation, or what we should have done to find means to meet the distress which drives so many to crime. It is for this class of offenders that societies formed for the assistance of discharged prisoners principally exist. The aid they are able to extend to deserving cases is not only of advantage to the individual, but of great service to the State.

The difficulties with which a person once convicted has to contend are enormous. It is impossible for the general public, or, indeed, for his immediate kindred, to take cognizance of the peculiar facts of the case. He has been in prison, and that is enough. His employment, his friends, have disappeared; his home is broken up; none will associate with him; he undergoes his punishment over and over again

in the fear of his antecedents being discovered. True, this is part of the unwritten sentence of the law, and it is well that it is so. I would not for one moment diminish the consequences of crime. On the contrary, I would increase them if it were possible. The certainty and severity of punishment are alone capable of exercising a deterrent influence, not only upon the criminal mind, but upon the mind. assailed with passing temptations. What the public might sacrifice, in money, by the increase and improvement of the police, and in the curtailment of a pernicious liberty to purchase stolen goods, would be amply compensated for by the diminution of crime and the increased security of property.

It is upon this principle, which has been recognized by every judge who has administered the laws of England-namely that the prevention of crime is far more desirable than its detection or punishment-that assistance to well-disposed discharged prisoners is a matter of national concern. I have drawn no exaggerated picture of the life of one who bears the prison taint. Unaided he cannot find work, he cannot get a fresh start. Opportunity to retrieve his character he has none. He must eat to live, and, cut off from all ordinary sources of livelihood, in order to eat he steals. Once re-embarked on a criminal career, the voyage is for life; and he who, with timely help, might have become a useful citizen, is left a permanent burden upon the country. It is, therefore, on this ground mainly that I claim for Discharged Prisoners' Aid Societies a public utility second to

none.

Let me briefly consider the position of the associations in the Metropolitan Police District. There are eleven different societies devoting their resources exclusively to the assistance of discharged prisoners. The Tables on the opposite page give a rough summary of their work and resources.

In point of the number of societies assisting discharged prisoners, London has every reason to be satisfied. But, without in any way disparaging the excellent character of the work done by each association, it may be open to some question whether the maximum amount of benefit is derived from the resources available. The balancesheets are not in all cases so clear as might be desired, and it is not quite satisfactory to find that the establishment expenses absorb a sum so nearly equivalent to the amount expended in relief, although in several cases it would appear to cover the cost of keeping the discharged prisoners in refuges or other houses. Taking the cases assisted at 4,310, according to Table I., we find that each case costs on an average about £4 6s. 9d. This, in itself, would not perhaps be excessive, supposing some real good to have been accomplished in a fair proportion of instances. But the number of 4,310 cases is of itself unreliable, because many of the societies work

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