ABSTRACT
From its beginnings the Third Republic was beset by accusations of corrupt practices and ineptitude, charges that emanated from both the right and the left. The arch-conservative Robert de Jouvenel quipped famously before the Great War that ‘there is less difference between two deputies, when one is revolutionary and the other is not, then between two revolutionaries, when one is a deputy and the other is not’. Simultaneously on the centre-left, Anatole France dedicated a section of his Île des Pingouins to the corruption endemic in the Chamber of Deputies and the capitalist system which it served. Anti-parliamentarism was in vogue by the turn of the century, appearing seemingly everywhere. Cartoons, popular novels, and cabarets often mocked the opportunism, buffoonery, and incompetence of parliamentarians.2
