HISTORY OF CONTEMPORARY FRANCE

1870-1900

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BOOK I 1870-1873

BOOK II 1873-1875

BOOK III (1875-1877)

BOOK IV 1877-1890

The men of the Third Republic

JULES GREVY

(1807-1891)

 

SINCE the day when M. Boissy d'Anglas, whilst presiding over the Convention, had the head of the representative Féraud thrust under his face at the top of a pike—from that day to this the Presidency of a French Assembly has never been in any sense a sinecure ; and M. Grévy has some reason to congratulate himself that he should not only have directed a turbulent Legislature with firmness, but that he should have secured an uncontested name for impartiality. There are two ways of being impartial : we may either be so by incurring the reproaches of all parties, or by satisfying all. M. Dupin, the most celebrated of M. Grévy's predecessors (he was President under the Second Republic, 1848-51), preferred the former course ; M. Grévy has selected the latter. Another difference between these two lies in their manner of presiding. M. Dupin, who was a species of human porcupine bristling with epigrams and unpleasant to tilt against, kept the members in order by using his tongue as a bludgeon. He was also a humorous President. Being in the chair one day when his intimate personal friend Berryer was pouring denunciations on one of Prince Louis Napoleon's devoted ministers, he shouted, "Monsieur Berryer, if you continue to speak like this I shall be obliged to call you to order"; then, leaning over his desk, he whispered in the orator's ear, "Pitch into him!" ("Tape dessus!") M. Grévy may, perhaps, have as much lurking humour as M. Dupin, but he does not show it. A short dapper man, with a face smooth shaved all but a trim fringing of grey whisker, thin firm lips, a square bald head, grey eyes, and a peremptory voice, he is the incarnation of dignity and presidential authority. Besides he has no need to resort to strong language or witty sallies to make himself respected ; respect is paid him unanimously by right of a career which has been spotless. M. Grévy is not one of those men who conscientiously alter their opinions to suit their changes of position, and who after a long life of such healthy see-sawing cannot move a step to the right or left without explaining away a whole ream of speeches delivered against the very step in question. You might take stock of all the political sentiments Grévy ever uttered ; there is not one that would testify against him. Such as he is now, such was he twenty, thirty, forty years ago ; and we may almost contemplate as a phenomenon this Frenchman who never sang Hosannah on Louis Philippe's path, who spoke of Napoleon III as he deserved, who thought Guizot a pedagogue, and Emile Ollivier a poor creature ; and who yet was always prepared to admit, rather to the scandal of the fanatics among his set, that there were plenty of rascals in the Republican as in other parties.

At the Revolution of '30, Grévy, then a Latin Quarter student, aged seventeen, took part in the fighting, and was one of the captors of the Babylone Barracks. He stood fire with cool bravery, forgot to brag about his doings, and went back to his books with the ambition of becoming a successful lawyer rather than a politician. But circumstances decided it otlierwise. He was retained to defend prosecuted journalists and conspirators; and thus a man who should have grown into a learned legist, skilled in abstruse cases, and byand by into a judge, was diverted from what was no doubt his instinctive bent. However, he was never a sensational pleader. Clients were astonished to see that he thought much more of getting them acquitted than of raising himself a pedestal out of their briefs. He argued quietly and never bawled ; there were even cases where, suspecting his clients of seeking to make themselves a charlatanic fame out of their prosecutions, he told them so with a frankness which was more new than complimentary. The events of 1848 found Jules Grévy in possession of a reputation for sense such as is not acquired every day of the week ; and the new-born Republic sent him to his native department, the Jura, to act as Chief Commissioner. There were no more difficult functions on earth to exercise than these. The provinces had been so scared by the unexpected collapse of the throne in which they trusted, that the arrival of a Republican Commissioner was everywhere regarded as a direct visitation from the Evil One. It must be added that the majority of commissioners neglected nothing to keep up this favourable impression. Ignorant and fussy young barristers, bangers-on whom the Government had imprudently despatched into the country so as to get them away from Paris, and whom it hastened to recall when it was too late to repair the mischief they had done—they raged about the departments, spreading disturbance and consternation around them. Even the Jura, which was then, as it is now, the best educated among the departments, took alarm at Republicanism preached in this fashion, and received M. Grévy more than coldly. A few days, however, set everything to rights. The new Commissioner omitted to serve the cause he had at heart by declaring everywhere how great a man Robespierre was. He kept aloof from party demonstrations, treated all opinions with respect, and snubbed, with a contempt that somewhat astonished them, those gentlemen who are the drones and gadflies of Republicanism. The Jura, content and prosperous under such management, which would have saved France a great deal of trouble had there been eigbty-six Grévys to bestow it upon all the departments instead of upon a single one, testified its gratitude by returning the Commissioner to the Constituent Assembly by 65,150 votes.

By this time Grdvy was a well-known character. Stamped in public esteem as a man of will, he was elected at once Vice-President of the Assembly and member of the Committee of Justice, and he took his seat on the Left of the House, where he soon achieved a position apart among those who were for giving France an intelligent and acceptable Republic—not that fierce and chafing thing made up of prickly laws, which sits upon a community like a hair shirt. It would have been a useful lesson for the rural intellect if a few of those monarchical bumpkins who were then being indoctrinated into the perils of a commonwealth by Prince Louis Napoleon's honest agents, had been brought up to Paris by some of the cheap trains which began to run at about this period, and been made to listen to M. Grevy's speeches. Their opaque but Kingloving minds might have been led to see that there could be nothing very dangeraus in measures advocated by so calm and conservative-looking a legislator as this one from the Jura. Not that Grévy, however, was ever half-hearted in his advocacies. He supported radical reforms, would have nothing to say to party coalitions, which are like the mariages de raison in private life, and generally terminate quite as stormily. On all important occasions his vote was opposed to that of M. Thiers, in whose liberalism, by the way, he then felt but a limited degree of confidence. His famous amendment with regard to the Presidency set the seal, as it were, to his opinions. Mistrusting both General Cavaignac and Louis Napoleon, he moved that the Chief of the Executive be styled "President of the Council of Ministers," be elected for no definite time, but be removable at the will of the House. Had this amendment been voted, Prince Louis would have remained President a couple of sessions at most, but it is doubtful whether Republicanism would have benefited by it, for the next President would certainly have been the Prince de Joinville. However, the amendment was lost by 643 votes to 158 : the Presidency lapsed into Bonapartist hands, and three years later M. Grévy, driven from political life by the coup d'état, which he had been one of the first to foresee, resumed his barrister's gown, and was little heard of, except in the law courts, till 1868. Re-elected in that year by his old friends of the Jura, his majority over the official candidate was so crushing that it roused a panic at the Tuileries. But the new deputy did not return to the House as a speaking member. Not fond of wasting words where no practical result was to be hoped for, he let the officially packed Chamber legislate as it pleased, and during the next two years his name was brought prominently before the public on two occasions only : first, when he voted in 1870 against the return of the Orleans Princes ; and secondly, when he declined to participate in the Revolution of the 4th of September. In both these emergencies he was at variance with the Liberal party. The Liberals voted for the Orleans Princes ; Grévy refused to do so, alleging that the presence of pretenders on French soil added strength to Royalist factions, and made the prospects of Republicanism more remote. He became President of the meetings in the Rue de la Sourdière, which took the name of the Gauche Fermée, in opposition to the Gauche Ouverte, presided over by M. Ernest Picard ; and declined to accept any compromise with the Imperialists. He offered a determined resistance to the Plebiscitum, and met all offers of public employment with a clear and resolute negative. Regarding the 4th September he was equally explicit. Opposed to violence in every shape, he could draw no distinction between popular or autocratical illegalities. The members of the Corps Législatif, said he, were many of them elected under pressure, but they were the people's representatives nevertheless, and it was a citizen's duty to accept their will as law till a new Assembly was returned. These sentiments, which were shared to the full by M. Thiers, established between the two a political friendship which has been on the increase ever since—despite the kind endeavours of mutual friends to convert these two first citizens of the Republic into rivals.

M. Grévy, who was chosen a third time for the Jura in 1871, has now two bugbears—Monarchy and M. Gambetta, but the former he has perhaps less dread of tlian the latter. He does not like M. Gambetta. The fervid, go-ahead, often reckless oratory of the popular Tribune not unnaturally grates on the cold, logical, and slightly punctilious mind of the "French Aristides," as many term him. Whilst Gambetta was at Tours struggling like ten ordinary Ministers against Prussian force, Bonapartist intrigues, and bureaucratic red tape combined, Grévy was among those who insisted that an Assembly should be convoked to give the Republican Government a legal sanction. Gambetta refused, adding in the heat of argument that the time was one for acting, not for deliberating—though deliberating was not the exact word he used. Whereat M. Grévy retorted, "Do what you may, you will never be a Republican ; you are fated to die in the skin of a rebel." It is well known that these words have been forgotten by neither of the disputants ; and the only occasions on which M. Grévy ever departs from his strict impartiality as a President are those when M. Gambetta is speaking. Fearful of letting his personal feelings sway his judgment, he allows the ex-Dictator to say things which he would scarcely tolerate from another quarter ; and on the days when it is certified beforehand that M. Gambetta is to ascend the tribune, he often leaves the task of chairmanship to one of his Vice-Presidents. Political rancours are, however, the shortest lived of all, and it requires no divination to foresee that if the Republic escapes being strangled either by avowed enemies or by indiscreet friends, Grévy and Gambetta may both of them at some future date sit side by side in a Republican Senate as ex-Presidents of the Commonwealth. Jules Grévy is, of all others, the man whose public virtues, talents, and private austerity best fit him to be M. Thiers's immediate successor; and after him Gambetta, whose blood will probably have grown more tepid by that time, may be installed in the Presidential chair without any chance of his entailing a fall of all the securities on Change. Is it presumption to dream so far into the future ? Perhaps ; but one may be pardoned for feeling confidence in coming events when one reflects that so long as M. Grévy is to the fore the Republic need not perish for want of that rare thing—a brave and steady man at the helm.

François Paul Jules Grévy was born at Montsous-Yaudrez, in the Department of the Jura, on the 15th of August, 1813. He was educated at the college of Poligny, and studied law in Paris. Very good men have not many marked days in their lives. They are too wise to go a hunting after the impossible ; and therefore meet with few aggressive obstacles. They do their duty without making a stir about it, as though it were among the necessary offices of life which should be performed in silence. They think there is no need to be noisy. Therefore they shock nobody, make few personal enemies, and are seldom maligned. They do not offer pay or place to any town crier for advertisements ; and that is the reason why no one thinks it worth while to get up early in the morning and praise them with a loud voice. Their existence is like the fertilising flow of a placid river in the summer time, and glides noiselessly to the sea which is at the end of its course.

 

Jules Grévy (1807-1891)