Note 22 — M. JULES FERRY AND HIS FRIENDS.

There were mistakes all round in that 15th May business. The Conservatives should have allowed the Republicans a little more rope. If the Simon Cabinet had been overthrown by a vote of the Left, and if another Liberal Administration had been put up to meet with the same fate—then would have been the time to dissolve the Lower House. But the Royalists were too impatient. They called for a national condemnation of Republicanism before the nation had grown tired of Republican dissensions. The 16th May was the making of Gambetta as a leader, for up to that time he had only been a free lance—“un fou furieux,” as Thiers called him. He stepped into the place which ought to have been Simon’s.