Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau - Under The Third Republic

Under The Third Republic

In 1873, following the establishment of the Third Republic in 1871, he moved to the bar of Rennes, and six years later was returned to the Chamber of Deputies. In his electoral program he had stated that he was prepared to respect all liberties except those of conspiracy against the institutions of the country and of educating the young in hatred of the modern social order. In the Chamber he supported the policy of Léon Gambetta.

The Waldeck-Rousseau family was strictly Catholic in spite of its republican principles; nevertheless Waldeck-Rousseau supported the Jules Ferry laws on public, laic and mandatory education, enacted in 1881–1882. In 1881 he became minister of the interior in Gambetta's grand ministry. He further voted for the abrogation of the law of 1814 forbidding work on Sundays and fast days, for compulsory service of one year for seminarists and for the re-establishment of divorce. He made his reputation in the Chamber by a report which he drew up in 1880 on behalf of the committee appointed to inquire into the French judicial system.