ROUHER, EUGÈNE. - French politician, b. 30 Nov. 1814 at Riom (Puy-de-Dôme), d. 3 Feb. 1884 at Paris. He began his career in 1836 as a lawyer and first stood as a parliamentary candidate ten years later, but was not elected. After the February 1848 revolution he became a member of the Constituent Assembly.
At the elections of 23 Apr. he campaigned on a programme which, while not concealing a desire to preserve traditional forms of French society, nevertheless aimed at certain reforms favourable to the petty bourgeoisie and the working classes. R. proposed, among other things, a radical transformation of the existing tax system, with particular regard to the abolition of indirect taxes and the introduction of a progressive direct tax; he also declared himself in favour of labour legislation and state intervention in the event of public agricultural disasters. This electoral programme won him the support of all those who feared
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the leap in the dark represented by a democratic republic. His activity in the Assembly revealed him increasingly as a man of order, and during the debate on the new Constitution he broke away from the majority and advocated a bicameral system against a single legislative assembly. Elected deputy on 13 May 1849, he became a supporter of Bonaparte, then still President of the Republic, and on 30 Oct. of the same year entered the government as Minister of Justice. He remained minister, with interruptions, until Jan. 1852. He was then Vice-President of the Council of State, Minister of Agriculture, Commerce and Public Works from 1855 to 1863, and Minister of State from 1863 to 1869. President of the Senate from 18 July 1869 to 4 Sept. 1870, after the defeat at Sedan he went to London with the Empress Eugénie. On his return to France, R. was elected deputy to the National Assembly in Feb. 1872 and, after the death of Napoleon III, took effective, if unofficial, control of the Bonapartist party. In 1881 he retired from public life.
R. was one of Napoleon III’s most loyal collaborators. As Minister of State he defended the Emperor’s domestic and foreign policy against parliamentary criticism from 1863 onwards. Particularly well known is the speech he delivered on 5 Dec. 1867 to the Legislative Body after Mentana (q.v.). On that occasion, replying to certain interpellations, he justified the French intervention against Garibaldi on the grounds that it had been carried out with the aim of enforcing the September Convention. He declared that, faced with Rattazzi’s inability to guarantee the security of the Papal States against the machinations of the revolutionary party, France had felt obliged to send an expeditionary force which would remain in Rome «until the safety of the Pope should render the presence of French troops necessary... We declare that Italy shall not take possession of Rome. Never will France tolerate such an outrage to her honour, to Catholicism. She will demand from Italy the strict and energetic execution of the September Convention; otherwise she will take steps to enforce it herself». These words made a deep impression and aroused the utmost indignation among Italian liberals, and R.’s firm stand on that occasion contributed not a little to the failure of negotiations for a triple Austro-Franco-Italian alliance in 1870.