316 



GAMBETTA, LEON MICHEL. 



small groups of Intrantigeants, then headed 

 by Louis Blanc and Alfred Naquet. Through- 

 out the remainder of 1875, Gambetta was the 

 most formidable adversary of the Buffet Cabi- 

 net, though without any departure from those 

 principles of conciliation embodied in his own 

 maxim, "Moderation is the true course in 

 politics." In the ensuing senatorial elections, 

 his influence preponderated, as usual ; and in 

 those 1'or the Chamber he busied himself, be- 

 sides his own candidatures (Paris, Lille, Mar- 

 seilles, Bordeaux, and Avignon), in suggesting 

 or ratifying the choice of other candidates in 

 the several departments. 



In an address to his constituents of Belle- 

 ville he found occasion to explain the philoso- 

 phy of his political creed : " I deny the abso- 

 lute in all things, so you may well imagine that 

 I will not admit it in politics. I am of a school 

 that believes only in relation, analysis, and ob- 

 servation, the examination of facts, the com- 

 parison and combination of ideas; a school 

 that takes into account mediums, races, ten- 

 dencies, prejudices, and antagonisms. Politics 

 are not, nor can they be, always the same." 

 As the acknowledged leader of the Eepublican 

 majority in the new Chamber he again essayed, 

 but in vain, to accomplish the unification of 

 the Left ; and combated clericalism, denounc- 

 ing pulpit interference in electoral concerns. 



The position of President of the Budget 

 Committee (April 5, 1876) offered him an op- 

 portunity for the introduction of needed re- 

 forms. But the preparation of his vast finan- 

 cial schemes for the future, and in which he 

 revealed surprising skill, did not prevent him 

 from folio wing up the politigue opportuniste, on 

 which he had staked his name and parliament- 

 ary success. Thus he supported M. Margue's 

 proposition of amnesty by categories against 

 M. Raspail, the advocate of universal amnesty ; 

 adopted the bill for reducing the period of serv- 

 ice in the army to two years; protested en- 

 ergetically against the attacks leveled at him 

 from the rostrum and through the press by a 

 certain group of Intrawigeants ; and reiterated 

 his decisions in favor of amnesty by categories, 

 stigmatizing " those disreputable men who had 

 sought to turn the Commune's despair to their 

 own advantage." On January 28, 1877, he 

 was re-elected President of the Budget Com- 

 mittee. 



M. Jules Simon, appointed Premier and 

 Minister of the Interior in December, 1876, 

 was early assailed by the Bonapartists and the 

 prelates; but Gambetta's preponderant influ- 

 ence -*as such that he obtained the passage by 

 the Chamber of a resolution requesting the 

 Government " to use all the legal means at its 

 disposal to repress the anti-patriotic agitation." 

 Some time afterward, in a famous speech before 

 his Belleville constituents, he exclaimed, at the 

 close of a vehement tirade against the Church 

 party, and referring to the concluding words 

 of his address to the House in behalf of Jules 

 Simon : " Yesterday we said, ' Clericalism 



there is the enemy ! ' to-morrow we must be 

 able to say, 'Clericalism behold the van- 

 quished ! ' ' Yet the Premier had another 

 enemy behind the Churchmen. M. Simon 

 was the genuine representative of Thiers in 

 the Government, and MacMahon regarded his 

 presence in the Council as a check upon Ins 

 own movements, and the Marshal-President 

 preferred to be surrounded by men willing to 

 adopt his mode of thinking. More than all 

 this, there existed a strong personal animosity 

 between the two men, which was not likely 

 to be diminished by the recollection of the dis- 

 paraging if not contemptuous terms in which 

 Simon had spoken of MacMahon, when the re- 

 election of the latter had been proposed. On 

 May 16th the Premier received a note of dis- 

 missal from the President, who assigned as the 

 reason for such a sudden determination the at- 

 titude of the Cabinet in the debate on the press 

 law the day previous, when, by the immense 

 majority of 398 to 56, the House resolved to 

 abrogate the law passed by the reactionary As- 

 sembly of 1875. Gambetta protested, and the 

 resolution was adopted that "the Chamber, 

 considering that it is of importance in the 

 present crisis, and with a view to the fulfill- 

 ment of the mission which it has received from 

 the country, to remember that the preponder- 

 ance of the parliamentary power, exercising 

 itself through the ministerial responsibility, is 

 the first condition of the government of the 

 country by the country, declares that confi- 

 dence of the majority can not be obtained ex- 

 cept for a Cabinet free in its action, and re- 

 solved to govern according to those republican 

 principles which alone can guarantee order and 

 prosperity at home and peace abroad." 



M. Gambetta thenceforward concentrated all 

 his forces on the one grand object of forcing 

 the Marshal-President to resign, and triumphed 

 in the end, though he himself did not pass un- 

 scathed through the struggle. The time had 

 come to precipitate the overthrow of an admin- 

 istration now grown obnoxious to all parties, 

 save the two which were themselves most ob- 

 noxious to the majority of the French people 

 and to republicanism. Division had been ex- 

 tinguished in the republican ranks, and Gam- 

 betta held the command more firmly than ever. 

 To add to the unpopularity of the Government, 

 Jules Simon and his ministers had been suc- 

 ceeded by the Broglie-De Fourtou Cabinet, 

 called by Gambetta a " government of priests." 

 In the ensuing electoral campaign, the ubiqui- 

 tous orator kept the public mind vividly im- 

 pressed with the real interests at stake, re- 

 iterating at every stage of the crisis his protest 

 against personal regime. "When France makes 

 her sovereign voice heard," he cried, in his 

 speech of August 15th, at Lille, and pointedly 

 alluding to the Marshal-President, " he must 

 quit or submit (il faudra se soumettre ou se 

 demettre)" For his temerity he was sentenced 

 to three months' imprisonment, and fined two 

 thousand francs ; but the event proved the 





