d ministry,
which succeeded, he was minister of the interior, and subsequently, on
the 18th of March 1890, minister of public instruction in the cabinet of
M. de Freycinet, a post for which he had qualified himself by the
attention he had given to educational matters. In this capacity he was
responsible in 1890 for some important reforms in secondary education. He
retained his office in M. Loubet's cabinet in 1892, and was minister of
justice under M. Ribot at the end of that year, when the Panama scandals
were making the office one of peculiar difficulty. He energetically
pressed the Panama prosecution, so much so that he was accused of having
put wrongful pressure on the wife of one of the defendants in order to
procure evidence. To meet the charge he resigned in March 1893, but again
took office, and only retired with the rest of the Freycinet ministry. In
November 1895 he himself formed a cabinet of a pronouncedly radical type,
the main interest of which was attached to its fall, as the result of a
constitutional crisis arising from the persistent refusal of the senate
to vote supply. The Bourgeois ministry appeared to consider that popular
opinion would enable them to override what they claimed to be an
unconstitutional action on the part of the upper house; but the public
was indifferent and the senate triumphed. The blow was undoubtedly
damaging to M. Bourgeois's career as an _homme de gouvernement_. As
minister of public instruction in the Brisson cabinet of 1898 he
organized courses for adults in primary education. After this short
ministry he represented his country with dignity and effect at the Hague
peace congress, and in 1903 was nominated a member of the permanent court
of arbitration. He held somewhat aloof from the political struggles of
the Waldeck-Rousseau and Combes ministries, travelling considerably in
foreign countries. In 1902 and 1903 he was elected president of the
chamber. In 1905 he replaced the due d'Audiffret-Pasquier as senator for
the department of Marne, and in May 1906 became minister of foreign
affairs in the Sarrien cabinet. He was responsible for the direction of
French diplomacy in the conference at Algeciras.

BOURGEOIS, a French word, properly meaning a freeman of a _bourg_ or
borough in France; later the term came to have the wider significance of
the whole class lying between the _ouvriers_ or workmen and the
nobility, and is now used generally of the trading middle-class o