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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
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