368 



FRANCE. 



was done by straining an old army law of 

 1834. 



Revision Question. The question of the re- 

 vision of the Constitution was the first one 

 pressed upon the new ministry. Dr. Clemen- 

 ceau, at the head of the Radicals, made a vehe- 

 ment appeal to have the question with which 

 Gambetta had temporized finally decided, and 

 sentence pronounced upon the Senate after the 

 collision with the Chamber on the pretender 

 question. M. Ferry took a firm stand, refus- 

 ing to subject the country to the agitation of a 

 dissolution of the National Assembly and a 

 conflict with the foes of the republic over this 

 delic ite question. The Chamber, by a majority 

 of 150 votes, approved the decision to postpone 

 revision until after the general election of 1885. 



Socialist Agitations. While Prince Bonaparte 

 was undergoing internment, and the Floquet 

 proposal for the ostracism of the French princes 

 was before the Chamber, the trial of the Lyons 

 Anarchists came to an end. Prince Krapotkine 

 and the other accused, 52 in number, were 

 brought to trial under an act directed against 

 the International Society. They were arrested 

 after the labor riot at Montceau-les-Mines in 

 1882, and a disorderly demonstration in Lyons 

 occurring at that time, consisting of the explo- 

 sion of a dynamite cartridge in a coffee-house. 

 They acknowledged and defended their anarch- 

 ist and socialistic doctrines, but denied belong- 

 ing to the International Association, which had 

 gone out of existence. Prince Krapotkine re- 

 counted the story of his life, saying that wit- 

 nessing as the son of a Russian serf-proprietor 

 cruelties which matched the tales of " Uncle 

 Tom's Cabin," his sympathies were drawn to 

 the oppressed, while the vices and corruption 

 which he saw in the Russian military service 

 gave him a contempt for his own class. While 

 Professor of Mathematics in St. Petersburg he 

 was arrested as a Nihilist, and witnessed in 

 prison horrors which drove nine fellow -prison- 

 ers to madness and eleven to suicide. The ac- 

 cused Anarchists were convicted of belonging 

 to an international organization and were con- 

 demned, Prince Krapotkine with three others 

 to five years' imprisonment, ten years of police 

 surveillance, and five years' deprivation of civil 

 rights, and the rest to lesser punishments. 



Scarcely had fears from the Legitimists been 

 allayed by the adoption of the pretenders' bill, 

 and the assumption of the government by 

 firmer hands, when the opposite party of dis- 

 ruption, the heirs of the Commune, began to 

 lift their heads. An open-air meeting of Pa- 

 risian artisans out of work was convened for 

 March 9th by placards issued by the Carpenters' 

 Union, announcing as the order of the day '' To 

 call upon the Government to take immediate 

 measures to provide bread for those who have 

 none." The distress among the working-peo- 

 ple, owing to commercial stagnation and a se- 

 vere winter, was greater than it had been for 

 many years. " If our rich republic," the ad- 

 dress declared, u has no longer work to give 



us, it ought at least to feed the creator of its 

 wealth and its firmest bulwark the artisan." 

 The task of providing work for the unemployed 

 was tacitly assumed by the republic from the 

 beginning, though not freely acknowledged by 

 responsible statesmen. It was the principal 

 cause of the expenditures on public works 

 which created financial embarrassments for the 

 Government. The mechanics of Paris, Lyons, 

 and the few other large cities where revolu- 

 tions are enacted, stood as arbiters over the 

 republic; but, as they became more imbued 

 with socialistic theories, they became estranged 

 from the Government, and torn by internal 

 dissensions which prevented them from mak- 

 ing a direct impress on legislation ; their latent 

 power, however, increased, and after the am- 

 nesty of the communards the labor question 

 bore the character of an issue to be dealt with 

 in the near future. Clemenceau and the Radi- 

 cals adopted the less advanced propositions of 

 the Socialists, such as the revision of contracts 

 which have alienated public property, mines, 

 railroads, canals, etc., and the progressive in- 

 come-tax, as the platform by which they hoped 

 to succeed to power. 



French socialists are divided into three prin- 

 cipal schools Blanquists, Collectivists, and 

 Anarchists. The disciples of Blanqni, the most 

 conspicuous of whom is Eudes, general under 

 the Commune, is not a numerous group, but a 

 compact one, formed of bold and energetic 

 men. They are averse to the discussion of so- 

 cial theories. All that is clear in their pro- 

 gramme is the political method whereby they 

 would accomplish sweeping, but undefined, 

 changes in the constitution of society, which is 

 by concentrating the power of the revolution in 

 few hands, and^granting their leaders dictato- 

 rial authority. They are therefore pure revo- 

 lutionists, descendants of the Jacobins of 1792. 

 The Collectivists base their demands on the 

 familiar historical and economical arguments 

 of socialists, and hold in the main the doctrines 

 of the teachers of German democratic social- 

 ism. Their aim is to make machinery, raw 

 materials, and all the apparatus and means of 

 production the collective property of society, 

 and would accomplish this by a revolutionary 

 overthrow. To a small group, which has its 

 headquarters in Belgium, the appeal to physi- 

 cal force is repugnant. These, known as Colin- 

 sians, expect to effect the transfer gradually 

 by means of a tax of 25 per cent, on succes- 

 sion, and the reversion of property to the 

 state where there are no direct heirs. The 

 revolutionary Collectivists are split, through 

 personal rivalries, into two warring factions, 

 the larger of which is called the Union Federa- 

 tive, and the other the Federation du Centre. 

 The Anarchists, represented by the imprisoned 

 Prince Krapotkine and the geographer Elis6e 

 Reclus, like the Collectivists, desire to make 

 capital and the means of production social 

 property, and are opposed to all centralization 

 of authority or fixed political organization. 



