Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/127

 THE POLITICAL SITUATION IN FRANCE 1 1 1

copies. We gravely doubt that the Imperialist organ will long survive its director. It is certain that it will lose the greater part of its readers, even if it does not entirely disappear.

At all events, the Royalist and Imperialist parties are both dying out. Day by day their power decreases. They have no particular ideal, simply wanting to maintain the present social order. This they have in common with the great Catholic Liberal Conservative party, which gives itself the name " Liberal Repub- lican." This latter party is ever growing stronger, absorbing little by little both Royalists and Imperialists. It is recruited especially from the ranks of the nobility that nobility which did not, in spite of all, persist in its royalism and imperialism and also from the higher and middle strata of the bourgeoisie. Catholics, Protestants, and Jews alike make up its rank and file. They are not all believers, but they all agree in considering reli- gion a useful instrument in the hands of the government. Reli- gion is necessary for the people.

The political program of this party in formation is mainte- nance of the republic, but a conservative republic, different from a parliamentary monarchy only in that a president is substituted for the king. However, from a social standpoint its program is different from that of the Royalists. It desires to ameliorate the condition of the proletarians; it advocates protective laws for work and wages, laws of insurance, and provision for old-age pensions. Nevertheless, it wants to keep the working class of town and country under obedience to the rich, to the capitalist manufacturers and the landowners; it wants to keep the prole- tarians in a state of social inferiority to the wealthy classes. The proletarians must stand in the same relation to the latter as chil- dren to their father.

The names commonly given to the members of the Liberal Republican party vary according to the different factions. They are called by turns "Rallies," "Qesarians" "Christian Democrats," "Social Catholics," "Liberal Republicans," "Nationalists," " Anti-Semites," " Catholic Conservatives " (Conservateurs catho- Hques), and " Progressist Republicans," etc.

The "Rallies" are the Royalists or Bonapartists of former