*

this is the point made by St. Paul against Jews and Judaizers; the conflict between the two conceptions of religion runs through the Old Testament as a whole.

'The liberal Jew can only look at the Law from the historical point of view. He has to consider its genesis, the process by which it came to be what it is. He will hold that an ordinance which was of value two thousand years ago is not necessarily of value to-day. . . . But he will not refuse to obey a law, or regard its public observance as undesirable, merely because it is a ceremonial law, or merely because he can no longer believe that it was divinely revealed to Moses by God. Its observance may still be desirable from different motives.' (Liberal Judaism, p. 125.)

The departure from the legal standpoint, though a gain, is not perhaps a pure gain. A staff is of use, though crutches be discarded: and we cannot create institutions; we must avail ourselves of, while endeavouring to spiritualise, those that are to hand. As life ripens, not to say decays, around us, it is brought home to us that we must suffer some things with which we are out of sympathy quite gladly for the sake of the whole.

'No one has a right to withdraw himself from outward communion with his brethren on the inadequate plea that, owing to his liberal views and his "critical" estimate of the Pentateuch, the feasts and holy days of Judaism no longer appeal to him. Providentially, as we may not improperly say, they depend on conceptions so broad and essential, so rooted in human nature, that the date and manner of their institution are of quite secondary importance. . . . It is true that there are difficulties but these difficulties it is partly within our power to lessen and remove, and partly they should be tolerated for the sake of a greater and more permanent good. . . . If the difficulties are partly imaginary, partly soluble, and partly temporary, how can any liberal Jew be justified in abandoning Judaism? How can he even justify a mere listless and nominal adherence to his own conscience? (Liberal Judaism, pp. 165, 208.)

'Mutato nomine de te

Fabula narratur.'

The argument is of wider application. Secession is no new thing in religious history; but it is not the finer natures that secede. The best way to lead the higher life—or, in theological language, to save one's soul '-is not to think too much about it: there is such a thing as being righteous overmuch. Those are the most religious who are so unconsciously; who believe in general as those about them believe, laying stress, however, less on the points on which

*Gal. iii. 17.

Christians differ than on those on which they are agreed. 'La vérité est comme les femmes capricieuses que l'on perd, 'dit-on, pour les trop aimer. Un certain air d'indifférence ' réussit mieux avec elles.' The controversies, past and present, which have distracted Christendom have been of doubtful benefit to Christianity. With tact and temper many, perhaps most, of them might have been avoided; and, looking back at them, we see that not all the right was on one side. And we look for the ultimate triumph of good, of which faith assures us, the God all in all' of the Apostle, not so much to the preponderance of one set of theological opinions or one ecclesiastical polity--this is not easily brought about; and, were it possible, its results might be other than we imagine-as to the gradual leavening of the world and mankind by the Spirit, the slow but sure advance of virtue and knowledge. We need not, then, be either unduly cast down or unreasonably elated by the vicissitudes of fortune or the fluctuations of opinion: these movements are of the surface and transient; they neither retard nor accelerate the steady flow of the tide. In moments of depression we forget this. Truths which we hold dear are losing ground, it seems, in the world. Systems and institutions in which we have grown up, and without which we cannot conceive society in Church or State holding together, are, or appear to be, undermined. It may or it may not be so; but the end is certain: it is out of the clash of arms that freedom, it is out of the conflict of ideas that truth, is born. And those who, from love of truth here seen imperfectly, have taken different sides in those disputes which, above all other 'interests, seem to have for a time the power of absorbing 'men's minds and rousing their passions,' do well to carry 'their thoughts onward to the invisible world, and there 'behold, as in a glass, the great theological teachers of past 'ages, who have anathematised each other in their lives, resting together in the communion of the same Lord.'

VOL. CXCVIII. NO. COCOV.

G

ART. IV.—1. Histoire de la France Contemporaine. Vol. I.
Le Gouvernement de M. Thiers. Par GABRIEL HANOtaux.
Paris: Combet et Cie., 1903.

The same translated into English by J. C. TARVER.
London: Constable, 1903.

2. Discours et Plaidoyers politiques de Léon Gambetta. Vols. II. and III. Paris: Charpentier, 1881.

3. La Mission de M. de Gontaut-Biron à Berlin. Par LE DUC DE BROGLIE. Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1896.

4. Thiers, Saint-Vallier, de Manteuffel. Par M. DONIOL. Paris: Colin, 1897.

5. Reflections and Reminiscences of Prince Bismarck. Translated by A. J. BUTLER. London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1898.

THE

HE Parliamentary Republic in France has already reached its thirtieth year. Its existence, often threatened, seems at length to be assured, so long at least as it can refrain from a great war. One of the most clear-sighted of French publicists stated in private conversation not long ago that a great European conflict in which his country should become involved would be without doubt fatal to its present political system. In the case of defeat it could not last a week, while a victorious general would soon install himself at the head of affairs. Reasoning from the past, we might be tempted to accept this dictum as a truism, but the political situation in France to-day has had no counterpart in the past, nor are the factors in the problem she has to solve identical with those which have been presented to her before. She had, it is true, parliamentary government of a sort under the Restoration, but the suffrage was on SO limited a basis that real representation of the people was less nearly attained than it was in Great Britain before the first Reform Bill. Under the Empire, though there was universal suffrage, a general election was a plébiscite, not a decision on the retention or dismissal of a Cabinet. Its approval of the existing Government meant the ratification of Cæsarism for a new term of years, and had no real connexion with government by parliamentary means. It may be an interesting speculation for political philosophers whether the institution of the Liberal Empire' with universal suffrage would have lasted ten years, whether the Liberal element would not have absorbed the Imperial, or

whether Imperialism would not have reasserted itself at the expense of popular government. In spite of the ingenious pleading of M. Ollivier, we discern the Republic latent in the gift, whether voluntary or forced, of universal suffrage. The Emperor could not have dropped the garb of Cæsar and assumed that of a constitutional monarch without the lapse of a certain period which, even in France, would have extended to some years, and the patience of Paris would not have held out. The Emperor's entourage saw clearly that under the conditions of their fortunes in 1870, to use M. Hanotaux's phrase, war was a logical necessity of the Imperial policy.' The Mexican muddle and the aggrandisement of Prussia had irritated and humiliated a populace which demanded of an Imperial régime that it should at least make France great and glorious; the sop of parliamentary institutions was no equivalent. If this were the proper occasion to do so, we should combat M. Hanotaux's attacks upon English good faith. When we left Napoleon during the Mexican expedition, it was because he went far beyond the limits which we had imposed upon our collaboration from the first. Neither does the author point out how the policy of France irritated and alarmed Prussia after Sadowa. An open proffer of friendship without compensations should have then been made, instead of the sinister and inept proposals put forward by Drouyn de Lhuys, firstly of territorial acquisitions for France in Germany, and, when that was indignantly rejected, for a secret treaty giving Luxemburg to Prussia and Belgium to France. The revelation of this duplicity made by Bismarck to the Bavarian Minister threw Southern Germany into his arms and stereotyped his own distrust of the Emperor's designs, making war inevitable. To have ungrudgingly recognised the approaching unity of Germany would have been consistent with Napoleon III.'s own political theories, but he had become too lethargic to direct his own policy. Those who were really responsible for the war now saw the result of all these mistakes, and tried to re-establish the Napoleonic system in an incredibly blundering and short-sighted manner-the worst manner in which a forlorn and discredited system can try to rehabilitate itself by embarking unprepared on a war with an adversary who had been demonstrated by experience to be singularly well equipped for a life and death struggle.

The war was never popular in the Departments, nor even among thinking Parisians: the Parisian Deputies were opposed to it. The flame was stirred in Paris by the mob

and the courtiers, but it is possible that even after the early defeats the Empire might have continued to live on had MacMahon marched to Paris instead of to Sedan. Peace might have been made earlier and on easier terms, Strassburg would have fallen to the conqueror, and the halfsatiated German staff might have reluctantly let slip the greater quarry, and Lorraine remained French. But, after Sedan, with no army left in being, except that shut up with Bazaine, the Empire was clearly impossible. The Republic was the only régime that could fill the gap. Neither an empire nor a monarchy being in any way conceivable under the circumstances, there was nothing else left, whatever system the word 'republic' may be taken to cover, for it covers all others. The régime, which came into existence on September 4, 1870, was, of course, abnormal and temporary. M. Hanotaux has undertaken the task of showing how in these troublous conditions the Third Republic was born, developed into a parliamentary régime, and has endured to the present time.

The appearance of an historical work from the pen of an acknowledged master like M. Hanotaux would excite something more than a transitory interest. While still a Foreign Office clerk he had justly earned so great a reputation as a political historian that France, where literary achievement has more recognition among practical politicians than elsewhere, saw him without surprise appointed a Minister almost directly on his election as a Deputy. It is true that such an achievement does not mean so much as it would here, Mr. Morley's appearance in the Cabinet of 1886 being perhaps our nearest analogy; but it means a good deal, and M. Hanotaux, by his administration of foreign affairs, justified what might have seemed an over-bold experiment. What errors he did commit were expiated by others, and he could boast of enough solid achievement to justify his, admirers in linking his name with that of Jules Ferry as a 'Mehrer des Reichs' and himself in hoping for a renewed and prolonged lease of power. From a man with such antecedents, both literary and political, a great book might have been expected. Other things being equal, a statesman of judgement will probably write a better book on political history than the man with no practical knowledge of affairs; but in addition M. Hanotaux had had a long acquaintance with the working of a great government department, and that the one where the greatest secrecy and delicacy of treatment are demanded. He has, therefore, not only