In this task we have already achieved some small measure of success. The receipts of the three most prosperous Women's Trades' Unions of London have exceeded £1,500, and the members have been, consequently, able to tide over long periods of illness or slack work. But the propaganda necessary to create these institutions naturally costs a considerable sum. Women have to be educated to a true understanding of their interests, and therefore the League must appeal for help in money and in personal devotion. The Women's Unions are self-supporting once they are constituted, but considerable sums must be expended in getting the women together, and teaching them how organizations are managed. The general prevalence of vice is due, not so much to vicious tendencies, as to poverty and ignorance.

We submit that these two causes can only be removed by associated effort, by combinations among the workers, and by the elevating educational and moral influences that result from such organizations."

EDITOR.

A FRENCH POLITICIAN.

BY J. B. LATHAM.

THE first public man in France whose acquaintance I made was M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire. My introduction came at secondhand from a prominent English man of letters, whose reputation, apart from his literary work, is believed to consist in the modern faculty of seeing everything and knowing everybody. I do not remember, though, that his illustrious name was ever mentioned by the French statesman whose valued acquaintance it procured me. At that time-the autumn of 1877-France was in the thick of the crisis known as the Seize Mai. Things were approaching a tragic conclusion which, but for the grain of good sense and no small stock of humanity possessed by the Marshal-President, might have been brought about. It is true that, perhaps, the greatest safeguard of the situation was the weakness of his Ministers-men, for the most part, with one foot in the sacristy and the other in the salons of the Fauburg St. Germain, where no real fighting elements were to be found.

It is sometimes said, and written, that if the women of France had votes they would rise "like one man " to defend the temporal power of the pope. This is a mistake, founded on a misconception of the national character. However much the women of France may love the Church--and that love is of a mixed nature -they do not care to fight for it, or send their husbands and brothers to fight for it. Well, at the period above mentioned, the public had become sick of the strife and struggle commenced in the interest of a section of the population, and continued in a recklessly defiant manner. Scarcely any doubt existed as to the end of the conflict, the only question being in what particular form it would end. In spite of rumours of cannon planted on the heights of Belleville to overawe the Communists and hold the capital in check, few persons believed in the truth of these stories, or in the reality of the Marshal's resistance. They had measured the men at the head of affairs and found them wanting. To oppose the public will of a nation successfully there must be either a despot at the head of affairs, or the makings of a despot in the ruler. Now, in the case of Marshal MacMahon and his advisers, there was neither the one nor the other. Sincere, in a certain sense, so far as sincerity is compatible with the profession (complex bearings) of politics,-the President and his Ministers desired to establish what has since been happily termed the

"Orleanist state of mind "-that is to say, an orderly, pacific form of Government in which the roughs and their exponents should have no place. Unfortunately, this conception of a modern State was irreconcilable with the idea of the Republic as it had become engrained in the minds of the masses, and with the institution of universal suffrage. It savoured too much of the pays légal, the abhorred invention of M. Guizot.

It has been urged in apology of the men of the sixteenth May, by candid friends with one foot in the other camp, that their great mistake was to have anticipated matters, and sought to provoke a revolution, for which the public mind was not prepared. But this is questionable; there is no reason to suppose that an irregular appeal to the people, such as the Marshal and his lieutenants accomplished, would have been more favourable to moderate opinions if made later on the platform of the religious question. Possibly, however, moderate opinions would have gained in weight and numbers, but for the unfortunate interposition of the Seize Mai, which had the effect of driving politicians into the Radical or Reactionary camp. Perhaps a little more forbearance on the part of the so-called Conservatives might have led to the formation of the nucleus, at least, of a strong national party, which would have put country before party; but under the conditions this was almost impossible.

One man stood in the way of this desirable consummation— Gambetta. But for him union might for a while have been attainable. As the German Emperor expressed it, this " peacedisturber" was thoroughly dreaded and disliked in his public capacity, for in private the bon enfant side of the great leader's nature was ungrudgingly recognised by all but a few fanatical or morose opponents. The reason for Thiers' overthrow in 1873 was that after him would come the deluge, in the shape of the Dictator of Tours. But these strange Conservatives did not see that, by acting as they did in 1873 and 1877, the path was being prepared for this dread successor. Gambetta was nothing if he was not a tribune, and the sixteenth May gave him a pedestal that even the National Defence had not procured. Henceforth he became anew incarnate in the hearts of the people, who otherwise might have allowed his achievements to slumber, as they have since permitted his memory to fade.

At that time M. Saint-Hilaire inhabited a small private hotel, or self-contained house, in the Rue d'Astorg, off the Boulevard Malesherbes. The faithful secretary of M. Thiers had already turned seventy, but even in a slip-shoddy dressing-gown he still looked fresh and vigorous. The celebrated scholar, and no less renowned politician, is one of the few persons in France who practise teetotal principles. In his case total abstinence appears to have agreed with him, seeing that even now, at the age of seventy-eight, his eye is not dimmed, nor is his natural force

abated. The lamp was still burning when I was shown into his study between ten and eleven o'clock on a bright October morning. Like his master, M. Saint-Hilaire had ever been an early riser, which custom he has not relinquished. Until close upon noon it is his habit to consume the oil generally spent in the small hours of the morning, after which he proceeds to make his toilette and take luncheon. The statesman recluse has never been married, but it is not understood that he is a misogynist. What struck me most in the manner of the old scholar was his affability and candour-qualities that have since been displayed by him for the admiration of the world. It was a novel experience for one in as humble a position as myself to receive the confidences and hear the judgments of so distinguished a man freely offered, without any pressure being required to elicit them. One can hardly conceive of an Oxford don, still less an Oxford professor (Professor Jowett, for instance), invested with Parliamentary functions, being so utterly unreserved to a foreign stranger, whose name and station were alike unknown to him five minutes previously. Of course a certain allowance must be made for the natural excitement consequent on a period of agitation, even in the case of a calm sage who has attained the allotted span of human life. For the moment, on the autumnal morning in question, M. Saint-Hilaire was full of wrath against the would-be destroyers of the Republic-their inept folly, presumption, and incapacity to deal with the situation or read the signs of the times."

Since those days I have frequently heard another story from the same lips, but this is anticipating. In the important particular of Gambetta the judgment has notably varied with the times. In the full flush of his second and most successful epoch, Gambetta could not have been deemed capable of strangling the Republic of his own creation-a suspicion begotten, not without reason, in the minds of many of his followers at a later period. In 1877, even to calm spirits like M. Saint-Hilaire's, he appeared almost the necessary saviour of the Republic in opposition to the false prophet of the Marshal and his followers. “True, M. Gambetta was impetuous, young, comparatively, and still, to a certain extent, inexperienced; but he had admirable qualities ; he was the man of the situation." In face of his overwhelming popularity and growing influence, MacMahon could not escape one or the other horns of the dilemma on which the President had chosen to hang himself-viz., submission or demission. The first term of the alternative would very likely be only a prelude to the second, the President's situation as head of the Republic being seriously compromised. Had M. Thiers not been suddenly cut off six weeks previously, the post would naturally have reverted to him. As things were, no one was prepared to step into his shoes in the Republican interest. The country at large was quite

willing to put up with the Marshal, and had no desire to see him removed, if only he kept within the limits of the Constitution drawn up by the Assembly of Versailles, and accepted by the President two years before. "The Marshal," said the people, "is a good fellow, a very good fellow; only he does not understand; how to make him comprehend?" that was the question. Well, some heads are rather slow in taking in ideas, and, as far as politics go, this was believed to be the case with the Duke of Magenta. Since then that opinion has been somewhat modified, and it is pretty generally admitted that the Marshal-President was to use a familiar expression-not quite such a fool as he looked. That he did not act like a Solon or Themistocles was not altogether his fault. Caricaturists represented his horse as having "an intelligent eye"; but that was an ill-natured libel.

My esteemed new acquaintance was inclined to throw most of the blame on his advisers who had led him astray. The Duc de Broglie M. Saint-Hilaire described as a nervous sort of body, with abundance of literary talent, but little practical ability. Moreover, he was steeped in prejudices, and wedded to a caste. In the eyes of the French the Duc and his colleagues represented clericalism of the most offensive form-an aggressive spirit which manifested itself in the exclusion of everybody who would not pass by the church. Although not exactly haughty, the master of Broglie was unsympathetic to the masses, whose mistrust he returned with interest. As for M. De Fourtou, this energetic Home Secretary was nothing but a pushing, unscrupulous lawyer, who had set himself the ungrateful task of trying to make France march against her will. But she had kicked against this pseudosacristy sovereignty, and was resolved upon her being her own mistress. Seven years ago M. Saint-Hilaire did not see any harm in this; but in seven years, we are told, the whole man changes -his inner skin varying, sometimes, like his outer.

On subsequent occasions, at a few years' interval, a different tale was heard from the same lips. Then it was no longer the aristocratic peril, but the demagogic scare, which haunted the aged spirit of my benevolent patron. With the lapse of time the axis of the centre of gravity had shifted from right to left. The era of the reformers had come, but France had still to wait for her reformation. It was not that the will was lacking so much as the power that was failing. The successive revolutions the country had undergone seemed to have deprived it of the energy requisite to pursue the work of steady, orderly amelioration of its institutions. Schemes were proposed which would not bear investigation, or that erred from want of practical acquaintance with administrative and commercial life. By degrees the suspicion stole over the mind of the people that its leaders and spokesmen were incapable of introducing the reforms of which