liberté est comme la vérité : presque personne ne l'aime pour elle même; et cependant, par l'impossibilité des extrémes on y revient toujours."*

Unless we be greatly mistaken, the events of the last year in France have aroused to self-consciousness the principles of Liberalism in France. In a flash we saw that we had sat drowsing by the brink of an abyss. The real danger was not a 18 Brumaire, nor even a Deux-Décembre, but a Seize-Mai. And to-day hundreds, who a year ago inclined to regard the Orleanist princes as possible saviours of society, repeat with the hero of Renan's philosophical comedy: "Caliban nous rend plus services que Prospero restauré par les Jésuites et les Zouaves Pontificaux."

VII.

As a matter of fact, the external form of a Government in France, as elsewhere, matters little. Any system is good enough if we make good use of it, and the simpler the better. We have our work cut out, the difficult work of the organisation of a democracy; it can be done as well under a Moderate as under a Radical Republic; the president's name matters not one jot. A limited monarchy would serve our turn. A military pretender would certainly be an obstacle, but not for long. George Stephenson, when asked what would become of a train if a cow should cross the line at the moment of its traject, remarked tersely: ""Twould be the waur for the beastie!" It would be worse, we think, for the military pretender. Even Mr. Bodley has scant confidence in the duration of his reign. "It could not be predicted," he writes plainly. But he insists upon his advent:

"The day will come when no power will prevent France from hailing a hero of her choice. Whether he will bear the name of a once reigning dynasty, or whether he will be a statesman to inspire, or a soldier to lead to victory, the next generation will know."

Will it? Are the Bonapartes immortal? There would be no truth in the doctrine of development, no possibility of human progress, if what has been must always be, if the course of nations revolved in a restricted orbit, if history, poor dotard, never said a new word, but incessantly repeated the burden of the past.

VIII.

In brief Mr. Bodley does well to diagnose the initial symptoms of French misrule, as the anomaly of a centralised government associated with democracy. We, no less than he, perceive and admit the ill; * Ernest Renan, "Préface aux Souvenirs," xx.

If the

but we would fain advise a different course of treatment. French Parliamentary system be declared a failure, as much on account of the apathy of the voters as because of the inferiority of the elected, we believe the real cause of this inadequacy to consist in overgovernment. The French citizen, allowed only to vote and to deliberate, never to administer, has gradually withdrawn his stake from the game. He does not care to play for "love." His indifference to the politics of his nation takes its rise in his exclusion from the politics of his borough or village. Many who to-day abstain from the polls would vote if their opinion were asked directly on a practical question. Let the commune or canton become a focus of local life; let the Municipal Councils dispose of a certain amount of authority and financial responsibility; let the Mayors be entrusted with an increasing proportion of local government; let the Prefect of to-day, the mere electoral agent sent down from Paris, revert to the older type of the Intendant; let, from end to end of France, in every local centre, a whole population of intelligent men feel they have their share in governing and administering the nation of which they are a part; let them serve their country in the Municipal Council and the CouncilGeneral as gratuitously and as naturally as they serve her in the army, and France will again awake to a sense of political responsibility. The commune will become a school of energy, a centre of civic education.

Every medicine applied in excess is capable of acting as a poison. Mr. Bodley's dangerous remedy swiftly produces a state of tyranny. Mine, he may retort, exposes a society to the risk of anarchy. The peril, I think, is less. In any scheme of decentralisation the State would, of course, keep entire control of the police, of the army, of the public purse, and of the public health. She would have abundant. means of checking the possible extravagances of isolated communes. And the increased vitality of the local centres, by drawing off some of the superabundant population of the great towns, would diminish one of the likeliest causes of revolution. For the real danger of France to-day is the depopulation of her agricultural districts, the misery and the abundance of the poor in Paris. For to Paris, where rent and food are so cruelly dear, the provinces send their hundreds and their thousands attracted by the prestige of the capital.

"Les asiles de femmes à Paris sont presque uniquement remplis de filles venant de la province. A chaque train de plaisir on voit arriver des pro vinciaux qui croyent trouver une bonne place en descendant de wagon. Ils arrivent pleins d'illusions, avec les petites économies qu'ils ont faites, avec une petite somme d'argent que leurs parents leur ont donnée ou qu'ils ont empruntée pour eux. . . Tous ces ruraux qui meurent de faim à Paris, pourraient vivre heureux en province en cultivant les terres qu'ils aband

onnent. Dans certaines régions de la Provence, des coteaux plantés d'oliviers, des terres que autrefois produisaient du blé, ne sont plus cultivés. Dans certaines parties des Basses Alpes, l'émigration est si grande qu'on ne cultive plus que les terres qui sont près des villages."

"*

And, while ploughmen and vinedressers are lacking in the country, almost once a week, in Paris, some poor wretch, face to face with absolute hunger, hurries out of a world in which there seems no place for him. Nay, in June and July 1897, there were frequently three or four such suicides a day. Alas, for each starved wretch who disappears, the cheap trains hurrying to the centre from east, and west, and south, and north, bring more than one claimant to his terrible inheritance. In 1877 out of a total population of nearly 35,000,000, over 28,000,000 inhabited the provinces. In 1893 while the total population of France has risen to more than 38,000,000, the provinces have lost over 4,000,000 souls. If this goes on the nation must perish from a hypertrophy of the heart and brain.

But already the movement of decentralisation has begun, and we are surprised that Mr. Bodley has ignored it in his calculations. Decentralisation may be either intellectual, administrative or political; but the last is undreamed of in France and could only bring disaster. As M. Emile Faguet has observed,† the recent laws on the University are brilliant and bold reforms in decentralisation of the intellectual sort : "Les lois diverses qui ont établi en France la liberté des enseignements primaire, secondaire et supérieur sont des révolutions decentralisatrices. qui ont porté un rude coup aux institutions centralisatrices de l'Empire et à la terrible constitution de l'an VIII." Less evident, the work of administrative decentralisation has commenced, not less surely, not less progressively. The "terrible constitution of the year VIII.," or at least the law of the 28th pluviose of that year did allow to the communes that measure of personality which corresponds to the needs and rights of individuals associated in view of a common aim; the commune could acquire, contract, possess in its own right. But the consulate, the empire, the restoration, each in their turn checked the Liberal movement. The law of July 18, 1837, accorded at last a certain restricted responsibility and liberty to the local centres. A great advance was made thirty years later. The law of July 24, 1867, transfers the authority, controlling the decisions of the mayor and council, from the bureau in Paris to the Prefecture. Finally the laws of April 7, 1884,+ have very greatly increased the power of the mayor, and, by the institution of * Revue des Deux Mondes, May 1, 1898. L. Proal, "Les Suicides par Misère à

Paris."

+ Décentralisateurs et Fédéralistes."

See Finances Communales: Étude Theorique et Pratique :" par Renê Acollas (Paris: 1898); and especially "La Décentralisation," par Ferdinand-Dreyfus (Paris: 1897).

permanent committees, have enabled private citizens to partake, in some measure, of the affairs of the commonwealth. Finally, the law voted on October 27, 1896, gives a certain financial control to the Municipal Councils, and adds to their faculties. The commune has already a share, too, slight, but still a share, in the authorities and responsibilities of natural life. The day will dawn when, no longer a mere ward, a minor, whose nearest interests are entrusted to other hands, however wasteful, the commune will show herself a moral person, capable of rights and duties, willing to serve a superior end, but mistress of herself, and taking in the affairs of the commonwealth a share proportionate to the charges laid upon her.

IX.

We have perhaps shown some unfairness to Mr. Bodley, whose book appeared, we believe, in February of this year, by confuting him from volumes still newer than his own. Neither have we taken into consideration the fact that Mr. Bodley's "France" is as yet only in its second volune. The question of decentralisation will certainly be treated in the third or in the fourth. Meanwhile, an author of Mr. Bodley's value and independence will almost certainly prefer a criticism to a mere review. We submit to him, in all deference and without fear of offence, an opinion on the future of French government, which we know to be opposed to his own, but which we beg him to take into consideration. There is much truth in Mr. Bodley's view. A centralised bureaucracy is only a modern translation of the theory of absolute monarchy; so long as it endures we must own that, whether we regard it with dread or with desire, the offensive return of a Cæsar is still possible in France. But the opposite dénouement is at least equally probable. The revival of local government may serve as an apprenticeship to larger liberties; the new spirit of enterprise and private initiative may strengthen the national character whilst checking the dangerous encroachments of the State. In no spirit of animadversion or controversy, with no wish of converting so eminent a sociologist from his own opinion to our own, but in the simple and candid endeavour of setting forth as much of the truth as possible, we have examined a theory which, at the present hour, has many adepts among the most disinterested and public spirited of Frenchmen. Democracy may be a good or an evil, a phase of development or a stage of deliquescence: it is a fact. Its evolution is worth our most careful study. In a letter written to Gustave d'Erchthal in the last months of the Second Empire, John Stuart Mill recorded his belief "that the progress of opinion is constantly in the direction of republican convictions; convictions loftier and deeper than the

enthusiasm of our youth." We believe that in these words the sage showed himself the seer, that the spread of public instruction and the general diffusion of responsibility will confirm the democratic tendencies of the country. But the question is delicate: two great dangers threaten France. The oppression of the individual by the collectivity, which is a form of socialism, or the sacrifice of the many to the development of one immense personality; these are possibilities which we cannot refuse to consider. Revolution or war may yet, in the one shape or the other, subject the nation of France to an authoritative government. Absit omen!

MARY JAMES DARMESTETER: