French statesman, born at St. Omer on the 7th of February 1842. After a brilliant career at the university of Paris, where he was laureat of the faculty of law, he rapidly made his mark at the bar. He was secretary of the conference of advocates and one of the founders of the Société de législation comparée. During 1875 and 1876 he was successively director of criminal affairs and secretary-general at the ministry of justice. In 1877 he made his entry into political life by the conspicuous part he played on the committee of legal resistance during the Broglie ministry, and in the following year he was returned to the chamber as a moderate republican member for Boulogne, in his native department of Pas-de-Calais. His impassioned yet reasoned eloquence gave him an influence which was increased by his articles in the Parlement in which he opposed violent measures against the unauthorized congregations. He devoted himself especially to financial questions, and in 1882 was reporter of the budget. He became one of the most prominent republican opponents of the Radical party, distinguishing himself by his attacks on the short-lived Gambetta ministry. He refused to vote the credits demanded by the Ferry cabinet for the Tongking expedition, and shared with M. Clemenceau in the overthrow of the ministry in 1885. At the general election of that year he was one of the victims of the Republican rout in the Pas-de-Calais, and did not re-enter the chamber till 1887. After 1889 he sat for St. Omer. His fear of the Boulangist movement converted him to the policy of “Republican Concentration,” and he entered office in 1890 as foreign minister in the Freycinet cabinet. He had an intimate acquaintance and sympathy with English institutions, and two of his published works—an address, Biographie de Lord Erskine (1866), and Étude sur l’acte du 5 avril 1873 pour l’établissement d’une cour suprême de justice en Angleterre (1874)—deal with English questions; he also gave a fresh and highly important direction to French policy by the understanding with Russia, which was declared to the world by the visit of the French fleet to Cronstadt in 1891, and which subsequently ripened into a formal treaty of alliance. He retained his post in the Loubet ministry (Feb.–Nov. 1892), and on its defeat became himself president of the council, retaining the direction of foreign affairs. The government resigned in March 1893 on the refusal of the chamber to accept the Senate’s amendments to the budget. On the election of Félix Faure as president of the Republic in January 1895, M. Ribot again became premier and minister of finance. On the 10th of June he was able to make the first official announcement of a definite alliance with Russia. On the 30th of October the government was defeated on the question of the Chemin de fer du Sud, and resigned office. The real reason of its fall was the mismanagement of the Madagascar expedition, the cost of which in men and money exceeded all expectations, and the alarming social conditions at home, as indicated by the strike at Carmaux. After the fall of the Méline ministry in 1898 M. Ribot tried in vain to form a cabinet of “conciliation.” He was elected, at the end of 1898, president of the important commission on education, in which he advocated the adoption of a modern system of education. The policy of the Waldeck-Rousseau ministry on the religious teaching congregations broke up the Republican party, and M. Ribot was among the seceders; but at the general election of 1902, though he himself secured re-election, his policy suffered a severe check. He actively opposed the policy of the Combes ministry and denounced the alliance with M. Jaurès, and on the 13th of January 1905 he was one of the leaders of the opposition which brought about the fall of the cabinet. Although he had been most violent in denouncing the anti-clerical policy of the Combes cabinet, he now announced his willingness to recognize a new régime to replace the Concordat, and gave the government his support in the establishment of the Associations cultuelles, while he secured some mitigation of the severities attending the separation. He was re-elected deputy for St. Omer in 1906. In the same year he became a member of the French Academy in succession to the duc d’Audiffret-Pasquier; he was already a member of the Academy of Moral and Political Science. In justification of his policy in opposition he published in 1905 two volumes of his Discours politiques.
On the 3rd of January 1909 M. Ribot was elected a member of the French Senate, and in February of the following year was offered, but refused, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in the Monis Cabinet. After the formation of M. Poincaré’s Government on January 14, 1912, he took the place of M. Léon Bourgeois as president of the committee appointed to deal with the Franco-German treaty, the necessity for the ratification of which he demonstrated. In 1913 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the presidency of the Republic, and on the fall of M. Barthou’s Government was invited by President Poincaré to form a Cabinet, but refused. In 1914 he became, with M. Jean Dupuy, leader of the Left Republican group which refused to accept the decisions of the Radical Socialist congress at Pau in October 1913. On June 9, 1914, he became prime minister and Minister of Justice, but his Government was bitterly assailed by the Radical Socialists as well as other groups, and only lasted one day.
With the outbreak of the World War M. Ribot’s great reputation as an expert in finance and foreign affairs brought him effectively into office. On August 27, 1914, he became Minister of Finance in M. Viviani’s Ministry of National Defence, an office which he retained when, on October 28, 1915, M. Briand succeeded M. Viviani as prime minister. On February 7, 1916, he visited London and held a conference with the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the Treasury. When Briand reconstituted his Cabinet, in December 1916, Ribot retained the portfolio of Finance. On the fall of the Briand Ministry (March 17, 1917) President Poincaré again called upon M. Ribot to form a Government, and this time he consented, himself taking the portfolio of Foreign Affairs in addition to the premiership (March 19). In the statement of his policy made to the Chamber on March 21st he declared this to be “to recover the provinces torn from us in the past, to obtain the reparations and guarantees due to France, and to prepare a durable peace based on respect for the rights and liberty of peoples.” On July 31st, in a reply to the German Chancellor Michaelis, he admitted that in 1917 an agreement had been made with the Tsar to erect the German territories on the left bank of the Rhine into an autonomous state, but denied that there had been any question of their annexation to France. His Government resigned office on September 7th; but he accepted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Painlevé Cabinet constituted six days later. He resigned office finally on October 16th, owing to the violent criticism of his refusal to fall into the “trap” of the German peace offers.
