FRANCE. 



francs, of which 5,450,550 francs were for the sup- 

 port of the penal colony of Cayenne. This was 

 started in 1885, and is composed of habitual crim- 

 inals and convicts sentenced for more than eight 

 years. The tract between the Araguary and the 

 Oyapuk rivers, containing rich gold fields discov- 

 ered in recent years, was in dispute between Brazil 

 and France, which claimed that the river Vincent 

 Pinzon, defined as the boundary in the original 

 treaty, was identical with the Araguary. In the 

 beginning France laid claim to the whole region 

 between the Amazon, the Rio Branco, and the 

 Atlantic Ocean. After negotiations lasting four- 

 teen years, during which various arrangements 

 were made that failed to receive the ratification 

 of one party or the other, a treaty was made in 

 1897 leaving the whole dispute to be arbitrated 

 by the President of the Swiss Confederation, who 

 rendered his decision on Dec. I, 1900. The award 

 gives to Bra/il 147,000 square miles of the dis- 

 puted territory and only 3,000 square miles to 

 France, consisting of a strip north of the Tumuc 

 Huniac mountains. The boundary follows the 

 Thalweg of the Oyapuk river from its mouth up to 

 its source and from there to the boundary of Dutch 

 Guiana, the water parting in the Tumuc Humac 

 range. 



Political Events. The session of the Cham- 

 bers began on Jan. 9. Paul Deroulede, Andre 

 Buffet, Si. Guerin, and Comte de Lur-Saluces, the 

 chiefs of the Nationalist, Anti-Semite, and royal- 

 ist plotters of revolt, having been banished and the 

 lesser ones acquitted, the Government proposed 

 to efface all traces of the discord and bitterness 

 engendered by the Dreyfus affair by a general 

 amnesty. This was not acceptable to finale Zola 

 nor to ex-Col. Picquart, the champions of Dreyfus, 

 who were still under indictment, nor would it stop 

 the suit for slander brought by Mme. Henry 

 against Joseph Reinach, and similar actions. 



In the triennial elections for the renewal of one 

 third of the Senate the Nationalist candidates were 

 not successful except in the old strongholds of 

 Clerical and royalist opinion. Gen. Mercier was 

 elected in one of these, the department of the 

 Loire Inferieure. His success was due to a news- 

 paper in which a religious association, the As- 

 sumptionist Fathers, assailed the Government with 

 extravagant abuse. The Government suppressed 

 this confraternity by judicial process as an un- 

 authorized association. The Paris newspaper pub- 

 lished by these ecclesiastical politicians, who were 

 in receipt of enormous pecuniary contributions for 

 the support of their agitation against the existing 

 form of government, was called La Croix, and 

 its daily circulation was 250,000, while its articles 

 were reprinted in 50 provincial sheets published 

 for that purpose by the same society. The recru- 

 descence of clerical agitation for the overthrow 

 of the republic provoked the Republicans to fresh 

 anti-clerical legislation. The Government brought 

 in an educational bill requiring three years of pre- 

 liminary study in a state school as a condition 

 of appointment to any public office or of admit- 

 tance to any one of the special schools of the 

 state. The bill was intended to extinguish the re- 

 maining Catholic higher schools, and another 

 measure was proposed forbidding religious organ- 

 izations to establish primary or secondary schools. 

 The supporters of these measures justified them 

 by asserting that Catholic schools encouraged and 

 propagated a reactionary spirit hostile to the re- 

 public. 



Many of the clergy attacked the Government 

 bitterly in consequence of the condemnation of the 

 Assumptionist Fathers. Archbishop Gouthe-Sou- 

 lard, of the diocese of Aix, assailed the Premier in 



terms which it was impossible to ignore, and yet 

 it was inexpedient to apply the too rigorous rem- 

 edy of the penal code, which punishes offenses of 

 this sort with banishment. The occasion suggested 

 to M. Waldeck-Rousseau an amendment to the 

 code, substituting the milder and more practicable 

 penalty of imprisonment for terms ranging from 

 three months to two years for criticism of Govern- 

 ment measures introduced into pastoral letters, and 

 for criticism of acts of the supreme authority con- 

 tained in a speech or sermon or published in the 

 press the term of from two weeks to six months. 

 The minister took the familiar ground that eccle- 

 siastics who are functionaries and stipendiaries of 

 the state are bound to observe an attitude of re- 

 spect toward the Government. Cardinal Richard, 

 Archbishop of Paris, published letters in La Croix 

 condemning the suppression of the Assumptionists. 

 The Government, out of regard for his great age. 

 took no action in his case, but suspended the 

 stipends of other bishops who joined in the at- 

 tacks, refraining, however, from the application 

 of the press law, which the bishops sought to pro- 

 voke the ministry to put in force and which would 

 be more incontestably legal than the suspension 

 of stipends, though the latter course has the sanc- 

 tion of precedents going back for a long period. 



M. Meline failed in an attempt to upset the 

 Cabinet based on its Radical measures against 

 Clericalism and the presence of a Socialist, M. 

 Millerand. The fickle Parisian populace, which of 

 late years has given Socialist majorities, now 

 turned against the Government containing a rep- 

 resentative of the Socialists, which the depart- 

 ments had indorsed in the senatorial elections and 

 which held together its majority in the Chamber. 

 In the municipal elections, which took place in 

 May, Paris elected 32 Nationalists and 8 Mon- 

 archists to the municipal council. Algiers elected 

 Anti-Semites. Most of the French municipalities 

 elected Republicans, and the ministers asserted 

 that they were generally in harmony with the 

 Government, and a large proportion of the Oppo- 

 sition majority in the Paris council were Repub 

 licans, though opposed to the Government. The 

 Chamber by 286 votes to 237 approved the minis- 

 terial declaration of a continued policy of Repub- 

 lican reforms and defense of, the secular state. 

 The universal exposition necessitated political 

 quiet and a truce to party rancor. The ministerial 

 programme, besides the education bill, included a 

 bill on associations, an income tax, and a revision 

 of the death duties. M. Waldeck-Rousseau pro- 

 posed a new libel law. The Socialist party was 

 generally hostile to the presence of a Socialist in 

 a bourgeois ministry, and its general committee 

 drew up a protest against the action of the So- 

 cialist Deputies when these supported the Cabinet 

 against an interpellation of the Nationalists re- 

 flecting on the violent repression of strikers at 

 Chalons. 



On May 29 Gen. Gallifet, who was in poor health, 

 resigned his portfolio as Minister of War, and 

 Gen. Andre was appointed to succeed him. Hi? 

 retirement was not due to differences with hi> 

 colleagues, but to the attacks of the Nationalists 

 who charged the ministers with trying to reopen 

 the Dreyfus case, and who were joined by M 

 Meline and his section of the Republicans, while 

 M. Bourgeois with his band of Radicals came to 

 the rescue of the ministry with a motion express 

 ing confidence in the Government and in the de 

 votion of the army to the republic. Gen. Andre's 

 entrance into the Cabinet was followed by the 

 resignation of the commander in chief of the army, 

 Gen. Jamont, who protested against changing this 

 chief of the general staff. Gen. Brugere succeeded 



