FRANCE. 



321 



ceiving enormous sums under the pretense of a 



syudiratr, and especially I In- allegation tliut 104 

 memben '>f Parliament hud been bribed, which 



; lowed t<> go unchallenged, and the <!'.<- 

 trines that had been |irn|Hiiinded that it was a 



iiry feature of French politics that " finan- 

 ciers should now and then offer their alms and 

 gifts to the Government, or that leading states- 

 in. 11 -hould interfere with the distribution of 

 the funds of financial corporations for state 

 reasons." 



The bribery trial began on March 8. Baihaut 

 had made a confession, us well as Lessaps and 

 Fontane, but he asserted that the temptation had 

 come from them. Blondin had acted as go-be- 

 tween. Sans Leroy, whose change of vote had 

 carried the lottery bill after M. Cantagrel had 

 ivtu-fd a bribe of 500,000 francs, and who was 

 found to have deposited 200,000 francs in the 

 bank immediately afterward, and was on Rei- 

 nach's list as the recipient of a check for 300,- 

 000 francs, offered to snow that the deposits rep- 

 resented his wife's dowry, Gobron offered to 

 show that the check for 20,000 francs in his 

 name was payment for shares in a tanning com- 

 pany. Proust, who at first denied having any 

 relations with Reinach, claimed that the 25,000 

 francs paid to him represented his profits in the 

 syndicate. Dugue de la Fauconnerie explained 

 the receipt of the same amount in the same way. 

 Senator Beral, who made a speech in favor of 

 the lottery bill and received 40,000 francs, as- 

 serted that he had inspected Russian mines for 

 Baron Reinach. On the third day of the trial 

 Madame Cottu appeared and testified that im- 

 mediately after her husband's arrest, in Decem- 

 ber, the director of the detective department, M. 

 Soinoury, had sent for her and intimated that 

 the proceedings against Cottu would be dropped 

 if he would only furnish documentary evidence 

 implicating some member of the Right in the 

 scandal. The police official did not deny that 

 he had sought to obtain from Madame Cottu 

 such e-vidence, but declared that he had acted on 

 his own authority and had held out no prom- 

 ises. Minister Rouvier came into court to deny 

 with indignation that he had connived in such 

 proceedings, and on the same day. not wishing 

 the suspicion of an act that would be contrary 

 to his honor to remain, he resigned his portfolio. 

 On March 13 independent Republicans inter- 

 pellated the Government, demanding a full ex- 

 planation of the incident, and M. Bourgeois 

 declared that the Minister of the Interior, M. 

 Loubet, had granted the police official leave to 

 receive Madame Cottu and allow her to visit 

 her husband, supposing that she had requested 

 it, and intimated that the woman and her Royal- 

 ist friends had planned to entrap the Govern- 

 ment. After a stormy sitting the Chamber 

 passed a vote of confidence, and enabled M. 

 Bourgeois to resume the portfolio of Justice, by 

 a vote of 297 to 228, thus defeating a coalition 

 of the Left Center, part of the Moderate Left, 

 the Boulangists, and the members of the Right 

 who had rallied to the republic, whose success 

 would have led to the transfer of power from 

 the Radical Left to Conservative Republicans 

 who had accepted M. Cavaignac as their leader. 



The jury on March 21 found Charles de Les- 

 sens guilty, with extenuating circumstances, and 

 VOL. xxxiii. 21 A 



he was sentenced to one year's imprisonment, to 



run coni-iirn-ntly with his other sentence. Blon- 

 din was found guilty, with extenuating circum- 

 stances, and was sentenced for two years. Bai- 

 haut, in whose case no extenuating circumstances 

 were found, was sentenced to serve for five yi ;u ~. 

 with civic degradation, to pay a fine of 750,000 

 francs, while the three were ordered jointly to 

 pay to the liquidator the 375,000 francs received 

 by BaThaut. Fontane, Gobron, Beral, Dugue de 

 la Fauconnerie, Sans Leroy, and Proust were 

 acquitted. 



6n June 15 the Court of Cassation quashed 

 the judgment in the first trial on the ground 

 that the acts had been committed more than 

 three years before the institution of proceedings, 

 reversing the ruling of the trial court that a pre- 

 liminary investigation begun in 1891 suspended 

 the three years' prescription. Fontane and 

 Eiffel were set. at liberty, but Charles de Lesseps 

 had still to serve out the sentence for corrupt ion. 



The name of the beneficiary of a check for 

 500.000 francs, who was also the payee of others, 

 had been obliterated from the counterfoils which 

 furnished the incriminating evidence on which 

 the bribery trial was brought when the docu- 

 ments fell into the hands of the police. M. An- 

 drieux, ex-Prefect of Police, who had been in- 

 strumental in first bringing the scandal to light 

 in the interest of the Boulangists, knew this 

 name and many other secrets which he would 

 not divulge. 



Expulsion of Foreign Journalists. On 

 Jan. 15 M. Ribot ordered the arrest and expulsion 

 from France of M. Seleckyi, "who as correspond- 

 ent of the " Hirlap," of Buda-Pesth, had repeated 

 the rumor that Baron Mohrenheim, the Russian 

 ambassador, had received Panama money. Rich- 

 ard Alt, correspondent of the " Corriere^" of Na- 

 ples, and a German correspondent named Wed- 

 dell, received notice to quit the country. On 

 March 28 Otto Brandes, correspondent of the 

 Berlin " Tageblatt," left Paris in obedience to a 

 decree of expulsion. He had reproduced a story 

 implicating Ernest Carnot, son of the President of 

 the republic, in the Panama bribery scandal, and 

 when his family were on the way to the station 

 at Asnieres they were hooted by the populace. 



Reconstruction of theRibot Cabinet. The 

 Panama revelations made necessary the elimina- 

 tion from the Cabinet of the two members who 

 had endeavored to prevent the scandal bv inter- 

 vening between Reinach and Herz. Rouvier 

 had resigned at once, in December, 1892. M. 

 de Freycinet, whose great work of military re- 

 organization had made him an indispensable 

 Minister of War in many successive govern- 

 ments, could not step out so easily. Before the 

 reassembly of the Chambers a reformation of the 

 Cabinet involving his retirement and that of 

 Loubet, who was known to be opposed to the 

 trials, was seen to be requisite to reassure the 

 public of the earnestness of the Panama prose- 

 cutions, and on Jan. 10 Premier Ribot announced 

 to President Carnot the collective resignation of 

 the ministers, and was intrusted with the task 

 of reconstruction. The new Cabinet was an- 

 nounced on the 12th, as follows: Premier and 

 Minister of the Interior, A. Felix J. Ribot : Min- 

 ister of Foreign Affairs. Jules Develle : Minister 

 of Finance, Pierre Emmanuel Tirard; Minister 



