M. PELLETAN'S INDISCRETIONS.

Evening Post, Volume LXIV, Issue 119, 15 November 1902, Page 5 (Supplement)

M. PELLETAN'S INDISCRETIONS.

The French Premier M. Combes, made on Sunday last a rather remarkable speech on M. Pelletan's indiscretions. He declared that the enemies of the Government had made the most of a sentence in an impromptu speech uttered "in the infectious warmth of a banquet," and having "in the speaker's mind, only the value of a literary ornament, a figure of • xhetoric." They made the most, though they oug,ht to be aware that by the unbroken tradition of the Parliamentary system the Government was bound only by the declarations of its head. The individual Minister has jurisdiction only in. his own Department. We have discussed the Constitutional ideas! of M. Combes elsewhere, but may mention ihere that he qualified them in some degree by admitting that in foreign policy the Government would be bound by declarations of its Foreign Minister. It is supposed that the speech is intended to let M. Pelletan down easily, and a reactionary Deputy who had threatened an interpellation has withdrawn his menace ; but is is improbable that the Opposition will forego so good an opportunity. It is something for them to show that the Cabinet is 'so badly selected that the Premier has to explain away Jiis Minister of Marine. The incident would only have annoyed M. WaldeckRousseau, but it may shake M. Combes's jposition.