e by concessions and compromises, by taking advantage of occasions
and making one's general policy conform with opportunity.

If Gambetta, as leader of the majority group in the Republican party,
which had evicted Mac-Mahon, had become Prime Minister, it is conceded
that the precedent would have been set by the new administration for
parliamentary government with a true party leadership, as in Great
Britain. Instead, Grevy entrusted the task of forming a Ministry to an
upright but colorless leader named Waddington, at the head of a
composite Cabinet, more moderate in policy than Gambetta, who became
presiding officer of the Chamber of Deputies. The consequence was that,
after lasting less than a year, it gave way to another Cabinet led by
the great political trimmer Freycinet,[9] until in due time it was in
turn succeeded by the Ministry of Jules Ferry in September, 1880.

It must not be inferred that nothing was accomplished by the Waddington
and Freycinet Ministries. Indeed, Jules Ferry, the chief Republican next
to Gambetta, was himself a member of these two Cabinets before leading
his own.

The lining-up of Republican groups, as opposed to the Monarchists, under
the new administration was: the Left Centre, composed as in the past of
ultra-conservative Republicans, constantly diminishing numerically; the
Republican Left, which followed Jules Ferry; the Republican Union of
Gambetta; and, finally, the radical Extreme Left, which had taken for
itself many of the advanced measures advocated by Gambetta when he had
been a radical. One of its leaders was Georges Clemenceau. Between the
two large groups of Ferry and Gambetta there was little difference in
ideals, but Gambetta was now the Opportunist and Ferry made his own
Gambetta's old battle-cry against clericalism.

[Illustration: JULES FERRY]

The Chamber elected after the Seize-Mai was by reaction markedly
anti-Clerical, and the Waddington Cabinet, to begin with, contained
three Protestants and a freethinker. Obviously steps would soon be taken
to defeat the "enemy." In this movement Jules Ferry was from the
beginning a leader, by direct action as well as by the educational
reforms which he carried out as Minister of Public Instruction. Jules
Ferry became, more than Gambetta, the great bugbear of the Clericals
and the author of the "lois scelerates."

During the Waddington Ministry Jules Ferry began his efforts for the
reorganization of superior instruction, and