Hors d'Oeuvre

ON HONOUR IN POLITICAL MATTERS

It is very difficult to understand anything about politics in its relations with morality.

Thus it is dishonourable for a candidate to spend his own money in order to be elected senator or deputy. Mr. Maurice de Rothschild, having showered with benefits an electoral constituency that he had thus made his own, was branded and disqualified by his peers. So much so that he had to do it again and treat himself to another round, at new expense (after all, that is perhaps the purpose of the invalidation; the voters are so satisfied that they repeat the number)...

If it is dishonourable to spend one's own money in politics, it can be honourable to spend that of others. Still, a distinction must be made. There is money that comes from a pure source and money that comes from an impure source. The devil is that the purest money can become impure in less than five years, at least in the eyes of those who have not touched it.

Casuistry becomes extremely delicate and complicated when we examine, no longer the origin of the tips distributed by the elected representatives of the people, but the origin of the tips they receive. The virtuous deputies, whose names did not appear on any checkbook, show an extreme susceptibility with regard to the honour of Parliament. Their indignation is noisy and damaging to the honour of parliamentarians. We saw it during the affair of the Capuchin Chabot; then concerning Mr Wilson and especially on the occasion of Panama, which caused so many victims among the elected representatives and especially among the voters.

The Palais-Bourbon should, for the attire and discretion, model itself on the Hôtel de Ville. This is a discreet and decent house... Have you ever heard of a Paris city councilor receiving a tip, a bribe, an electoral subsidy, a token of gratitude from a concessionary company or a public works company?... No, is it not? This is good camaraderie; this is excellent political fraternity.

Besides, one must be of the school of Vespasian. Money is never impure; and, if it is not pure, it is purified in the crucible of charity, by the fact that it is devoted to the costs of worship.

The leaders of political groups, the zealots of opinions, the pilots charged with giving rudder turns to the right or left certainly do not claim to be more rigorous, more orthodox, more pure than the founders of Churches and the zealots of religions. Now, in the churches...

Yes, I know that the lawyer of the Bishop of Le Mans will again accuse me of uttering an abominable slander; but I advise him, this time, to inquire beforehand... Let him enter a church, a temple or a synagogue one day and he will see if I am lying.

I affirm that in the churches, and also in the temples and probably in the synagogues, there are trunks hanging from the pillars and purses held out at arm's length...

These trunks and purses receive any offering from anyone, without prior inquiry: the widow's penny, the tax collector's mite, the coin that the sinner has taken from her stocking, the bank note that the thief has extracted from the wallet swollen with the fruit of his plunder. Before Vespasian, the Son of Man had declared that money has no smell. And you want it to have a color, or worse, a political nuance?

G. DE LA FOUCHARDIÈRE.