Discours pour la liberté
FIFTH CAHIER OF THE FIFTH SERIES
GEORGES CLEMENCEAU
Speeches for Liberty
Editor’s Note
One of the most interesting events of the recent parliamentary political operations is the constant and gradual, reasoned, ascent of Mr. Clemenceau. Mr. Clemenceau was elected Senator for the Var on Sunday, April 6, 1902. We publish below the official text of the speech he delivered in the Senate at the session of Tuesday, November 17 last, in defense of common liberties against the usurpations of the State.
Speech for Liberty
Senate, extraordinary session of 1903, verbatim record, ninth session, session of Tuesday, November 17. — Journal officiel of Wednesday, November 18, 1903.
Presidency of Mr. FALLIERES, President.
Continuation of the first deliberation: 1st, on the legislative proposal of Mr. Beraud and several of his colleagues, tending toward the abrogation of the first chapter of Title III of the law of March 15, 1850, on education; 2nd, on the bill on free secondary education.
Mr. the President. — Article 2, new text, proposed as an amendment by Mr. Louis Legrand:
MM. Louis Legrand, Thezard, rapporteur; Chaumie, Minister of Public Instruction and the Fine Arts. — Withdrawal of the amendment by its author. — Article 2 of the commission: MM. de Lamarzelle, Clemenceau. — Postponement of the continuation of the discussion to the next session.
Mr. the President. — Mr. Clemenceau has the floor.
Mr. Clemenceau. — Gentlemen, will this long and grave discussion finally lead to resolutions of clarity? I should like, for my part, to contribute my modest effort, all the more obstinately as the confusion of ideas, of parties, appears greater. A ballot for general liberty will coincide with the ballot of men who demand liberty only for themselves. (Very good! Very good! on the left. — Murmurs on the right)
I reject the omnipotence of the secular State because I see in it a tyranny; others reject it because it is not their tyranny. (Very good! on the left)
When we examine the question of the guarantees of liberty, I shall find myself in absolute disagreement with them, and I shall have the joy of finding myself again with my friends.
Mr. de Lamarzelle. — We often cast our votes together in our youth, Mr. Clemenceau.
Mr. Clemenceau. — You see that I do not hesitate to join them again when my conscience commands it. (Very good! on the right)
Admiral de Cuverville. — Liberty for all.
Mr. Clemenceau, addressing the left. — You wish, my dear friends, to take political power from the enemies of the Republic: that is something; it is not enough, because political power is ephemeral and passes; I want also to seize power over souls, and I can only do this through liberty, because the soul does not yield to constraint. (Very good! on the left)
If constraint could have prevailed, the Church would be mistress of the world. I profit from the lesson.
My concern here, the one that will guide me throughout my remarks, is singular: I want to preserve from all harm within the Republic the republican ideal of human liberation; I want to show that republican defense can go hand in hand only with the integral maintenance and development of republican rights.
Gentlemen, let us define our terms. In education, as in all other parts of the political construction, everything derives from two primordial principles: authority and liberty. The same words, but two absolutely different and absolutely contrary conceptions in monarchy and in the Republic.
In monarchy, authority comes from above; it is a delegation of divine power; liberty — I would be hard-pressed to define it; it does not exist; let us say that, from time to time, the sovereign may have fits of tolerance.
In the Republic, liberty is the common right of each person; and authority — and here I turn toward my friends — can only be the guarantee of each person’s liberty. (Very good! on the left)
Only, a circumstance arises that somewhat modifies each person’s position.
The republicans overthrew the monarchy in the name of liberty. Then, masters of authority, they found it somewhat difficult to relinquish a power that could not save the monarchy.
And, on the other hand, monarchists who had never granted liberty could do nothing but demand it in opposition. Hence an inversion of roles, and it is precisely this that leads me to explain to my colleagues how, presently, my ballot will be found combined, for a very brief instant, with those of the right.
Despite the great temptation not to relinquish, or to relinquish as little as possible, the authority that our party held, we have nonetheless granted liberties that this country had never before known. (Slight murmurs on the right)
Do not protest!
We gave freedom of the press such as no regime in France has known; we gave freedom of assembly such as no form of government in France could ever have survived under such a regime; and we are in the process of establishing, despite you (the speaker indicates the right), freedom of conscience, by liberating this country from the yoke of the Catholic Church. (Very good! Very good! on the left)
When we granted these freedoms, what happened? We combined our ballots with those of the right, and that in the name of liberty, which they would have refused us if the roles had been reversed. On every occasion, my ballot has answered the call of those of our colleagues who demand liberty.
Today, my ballot, even if I am followed by none of my friends, will again combine with those of the right, for the same great cause of republican liberty.
Not that I claim to do a favor to my adversaries, but I maintain that the Republic must grant the same rights to all, without distinction of ideas or parties. There is no grace, no favor, no privilege in the Republic: there is the right, and we must concede the same right to all! (Very good! on various benches)
Gentlemen, the fundamental error of this debate, in my view, is that the republicans are convinced that the Falloux law was a law of liberty, and they say to themselves: liberty has not been favorable to the republicans; it has been favorable to the enemies of the Republic.
My dear colleagues, the Falloux law was a law of political and social reaction, under the direction of the Church, with all the corporations dependent on the Church as its instruments.
It was a law whose original cause is easy to discover. You all know that the appearance of socialism abruptly threw the entire French liberal bourgeoisie, at a certain moment, into the arms of the Church in order to organize the social defense of its class interests.
If you would permit me to briefly read a few words that were spoken during the discussion, you would see at once what the character of this law was.
The reality is that the law of 1850 did not grant liberty to individuals, as republican doctrine does, but to corporations of Roman servitude that annihilate the individual, that suppress him for domination.
Shall I cite to you the words of Barthelemy-Saint-Hilaire saying: “It is not liberty that is demanded of us, it is not freedom of education, it is the liberty to be masters.”
And Montalembert: “I waged war on the University for twenty years.” He boasts of having “voted the law against primary school teachers,” he cites Mr. de Broglie saying: “It is the baccalaureate that produces revolutionaries.”
And Montalembert: “Who defends order? The parish priest” — this is the heart of the matter — “He represents the moral order.”
He adds: “One must choose between socialism and the catechism.” He blames fathers who declassify their children. He was denounced to Pius IX as betraying the cause of the total destruction of all non-clerical education. He excuses himself; he confined himself to what he claims out of “a spirit of conciliation.” He had said: “The Church will be queen or she will be nothing.”
If such was the spirit of the authors of the Falloux law, everything in this whole affair is explained.
Grades are suppressed — that is contrary to liberty. Ignorance is made the basis of education; the primary curriculum is reduced after eloquent anathemas against astronomy, guilty of disagreement with the Bible; the ordinance of Charles X is abrogated which, in 1828, forbade teaching to unauthorized congregations.
I need not tell you that the academic councils and the superior council are delivered to the priests and their clientele. Need I inform you that these councils, in the hands of the clergy, wage war on republican schoolteachers, that independent schools are closed, that Michelet’s lectures at the College de France are suppressed? These are truly facts it is unnecessary to recall; you know them. But they are very important for my argument, for I maintain that you are not merely facing a scholastic problem, but a political problem of which the scholastic problem is only one part to be resolved in the same spirit as the whole. (Agreement on the left)
How the struggle continued after the Republic was proclaimed, we all know.
In 1855, the clerical majority of the National Assembly continued the work of the Falloux law with its law on higher education; and when the Republic regained the advantage, Jules Ferry proposed to the Chambers the vote on Article 7, which was nothing other — how modest was the republicans’ ambition! — than the ordinance of Charles X of 1828, declaring that unauthorized congregations could not teach. Charles X, under the mask of Jules Ferry, was judged too liberal still by the honorable Mr. Ribot, who combated Article 7.
If I mention this name, it is so that in the confusion of present ideas it may be well understood that the doctrine of liberty I have come to defend, if it is not that of Mr. de Lamarzelle, is no more that of Mr. Ribot.
Gentlemen, I cannot accept this doctrine where the abstraction State becomes the insatiable Moloch in which, we have been expressly told, all virtue lies in being swallowed up forever. It is a leap of two thousand years backward.
We made the French Revolution. Our fathers believed it was to free themselves; not at all, it was to change masters.
Ah! It is the universal tendency of those who find it easier to destroy the idol than to suppress in themselves the spirit of superstition. (Very good! Very good! on a great number of benches)
When Brutus killed Caesar, a voice rises from the crowd: “We must make Brutus Caesar!”
Yes! We guillotined the king — long live the State-king! We dethroned the Pope — long live the State-pope! We are driving out God, as these gentlemen of the right say — long live the State-God!
Gentlemen, I am not of this monarchy, I am not of this pontificate. (Very good! Very good!)
The State — I know it: it has a long history, all of murder and blood. All the crimes that have been committed in the world, the massacres, the wars, the breaches of sworn faith, the stakes, the tortures, everything has been justified by the interest of the State, by reason of State. (Agreement on various benches)
The State has a long history; it is all of blood.
I shall not say, as a republican principle, that there have been good kings — that would give too much pleasure to these gentlemen of the right (Laughter) — but still I shall say that there have been kings who were good.
Mr. Victor Leydet. — The exception confirms the rule.
Mr. Clemenceau. — There have been religious popes; (New laughter) it may be that some have attempted tolerance. The State is by its nature implacable; it has no soul, it has no bowels; it is deaf to the cry of pity; one does not move the State, one cannot make it take pity.
Because I am the enemy of the king, the emperor, and the pope, I am the enemy of the omnipotent State, sovereign master of humanity.
In truth, do you believe that I left the monarchy, that I renounced that ancient providence that holds the keys to hell and paradise, the gospel of gentleness and charity that was proclaimed on the mountain, in order to worship the monster State, all dripping with human blood, who is responsible for all the abominations of which humanity has groaned and still groans?
No, I cannot.
Have you ever asked yourselves why and how the Christians, who were a force for liberty in the circus, came to translate the precept “Love one another” into tortures, massacres, and stakes?
The question is interesting, gentlemen, because it is full of lessons for you at this hour.
Well, I shall tell you. It is because they were victims of the same illusion as you: they wanted to be the State. (Very good! Very good!) Christianity was an admirable thing, one of the most beautiful impulses ever seen in the world, until the day when the Christians believed they had found in the State a force for their propaganda. On that day, Christianity foundered; it became nothing more than a corporation of domination by fire and sword; it was the worst tyranny the world has known, and today, although still murmuring the words that come to them from tradition, the Catholics aspire to nothing but reconquering political power in order to refuse the liberties they ask of us today — that is to say, in order to continue against you the oppression of the past. (Protests on the right. — Applause on the far left and on several benches on the left)
Gentlemen, there is, in an old song from my region, a peasant who returns from Paris and tells of his impressions. He could not see the city — the houses prevented him. (Laughter)
Well, the reverse phenomenon happened to my honorable colleague. (More laughter) The State prevented him from seeing the citizens; the forest prevented him from seeing the trees; and indeed, man was unknown to all of antiquity, which absorbed him into the city. It took the French Revolution to discover him and give him his rights. It is this very fact that obliges us today to know that in the State there is only one living, concrete reality with which you must deal: man, whom we want free and just. (Very good! Very good!)
The State that you invoke, I invoke with you, but as the supreme guarantee of human development through justice and rights.
I understand: you dream of the ideal State. So did Plato, Aristotle, Thomas More, and other dreamers. You dream of the ideal State! This State, in books, you make as beautiful as you please; but we are here weak, changeable men, grappling with reality.
Do you think I have never changed in my life? That would be the worst thing I could say about myself. (Very good! on the left)
And you seek a dogma! The Church has its dogma; it knows very well why it needs the monopoly of education. Mr. Lucien Brun told you just now. It has its own dogma; it is written; it came to it from heaven; it wants to propagate it among us, to impose it on reluctant men! But we — where is our dogma? What am I in a position to impose as absolute truth on anyone here? I am very strong if I can convince, but I am deplorably weak if I want to impose, since I do not have the thunderbolts of providence at my disposal.
Where is your dogma? You cannot answer me, because you do not have one, because you cannot have one!
The monopoly you propose to create exists in a State not very far from us. You can take the Orient Express to go to Vienna and, in twenty-two hours, you will have the pleasure of seeing it function.
This monopoly has a history that is not without interest.
In 1848, carried away by the great general reactionary movement, the Emperor of Austria concluded with the Pope a concordat that delivered to him the monopoly of primary education. What this monopoly was, I need not describe; you can guess.
In 1850, with the liberal period intensifying, Emperor Franz Joseph denounced the concordat and established the State monopoly. He did so on the basis on which you yourselves could do it. It was a matter of “giving youth a religious and moral education.” This is approximately the formula of our university spiritualism; and if you establish the monopoly today, this is the formula you yourselves will be obliged to accept.
The clericals fought this monopoly, as they fight it here today. They did not want the State monopoly; they wanted the Pope’s monopoly. They fought it with great energy. But at that moment it was State liberalism that prevailed, and the monopoly was voted. The liberal leader, Herbst, said: “We have accomplished little with the interconfessional laws. The progress consists in the fact that we accomplished this little without the assistance of Rome.”
So the monopoly of the three orders of education is established. The clericals fought it; they are in the minority. And what happens? The clericals become the majority and use the State monopoly against the liberals. They drive out liberal schoolteachers. They persecute the entire liberal University. And finally the leader of the clerical anti-Semites, Dr. Lueger, exclaims: “But we get along quite well with this law.” (Laughter)
The non-confessional school has once again become the confessional school, and it is the liberals who made the Church’s monopoly.
Gentlemen, I am for liberty. Ah! If the Republic were merely defeated, with what applause you would cover my words, my dear friends; but we are victors, we hold authority, and liberty has against it the cast of mind that Hellenic decadence has given us — which I would trace back, for my part, to the time of Aristotle (Smiles) — and pagan Rome, abominable in its violent authority, and Catholic Rome, which only inherited the ambition, the will to domination at any price, of pagan Rome.
At bottom, the French Revolution was first a great change of terminology before the hour of realities struck. What subsists are two systems of government in the order of thought: coercion, which diminishes man, and liberty, which enlarges him. (Very good! Very good!)
I believe that today, at the point we have reached, it is not enough to maintain the right we received from our forebears, from the French Revolution: we must develop it; and when I seek to organize the new regime, I find no other than the regime of freedom of education, which, as I said at the outset, has never existed in this country.
Our fathers made, over a hundred years ago, a revolution of rights in the world. To continue them, we can only maintain and develop the notion of rights they bequeathed to us; and how can we develop rights if not through the development of the man who is their substance? That is why the watchword of this modern civilization that the Revolution founded and that the Syllabus curses can only be, through all the uncertainties of so long a battle, to liberate, to enlarge, to increase man always. (Very good! Very good! and applause. — The speaker, returning to his seat, receives the congratulations of a great number of his colleagues.)
To Believe or to Know
by Georges Clemenceau
From Le Bloc, first year, number 30, Sunday, August 18, 1901
A recent event has raised before republican opinion the question of the religious education of children. The problem appears theoretically quite easy to resolve, each head of family claiming the right to raise his young offspring in the ideas he holds to be true, whether he received them, unexamined, from his ancestors, or whether an entirely personal effort of mind gave him particular convictions.
Much has been written about “the right of the child” and “the right of the father.” One cannot deny that a moment arrives when the two rights will be opposed by the force of circumstances. The hour inevitably comes of a crisis of paternal authority in every family. The child has grown; he feels more or less obscurely the need to think for himself, and the convergence of the two heredities from which he springs gives him a personal disposition to differentiate himself from parents whose invariable tendency is to leave their own imprint on him. After each pulling more or less successfully on their end of the chain, mutual affection most often leads both parties to compromise. Children must accommodate themselves as best they can to a father shaped by “ideas of the past”; fathers resign themselves to enduring children “without experience” who venture into the world at the whim of their fancies. One lives, one dies, each being wrong or right in turn, very proud when the occasion comes to say to the other: “Did I not predict what has happened?”
In the silence of eternity all will soon be calmed. But before reaching that point, the infant who has just been born finds in the authority of those who brought him into the world, without prior authorization, an extreme sweetness. On that day, having only physical needs and being unable to provide for himself, despotism is sweet from the hand that hastens to satisfy him. He solicits it energetically with all his faculties of expression and manifests on every occasion his perfect contentment with a subjection in which he realizes the present fullness of his being. No discussion yet about each person’s “right.” The apparently absolute quality of this word, under which nothing hides but the brutality of an imposed fact, holds many disappointments in store for us, applying to a creature always in the process of change.
The child grows, and from the first day all his energy of growth tends to individualize him further, to separate him more and more from his progenitors by gradually freeing him from the necessity of their help. His right to physical life seems sovereign to him. He uses it, he abuses it with the unconsciousness of a young beast. But here come the symptoms of a moral life. To live is to appropriate the necessary and even the superfluous. The child’s instinctive act is to appropriate all things without considering the consequences. At the first glimmers of understanding, the precept intervenes: “You must not do that.” It is the appearance of morality in the form of prohibition.