His father, René Waldeck-Rousseau, a barrister at the Nantes bar and a leader of the local republican party, figured in the revolution of 1848 as one of the deputies elected to the Constituent Assembly for Loire Inférieure.

He organized the National Defence at St Nazaire, and himself marched out with his contingent, though they saw no active service owing to lack of ammunition, their private store having been commandeered by the state.

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.

He further voted for the abrogation of the law of 1814 forbidding work on Sundays and fast days, for one year of compulsory military service for seminarists and for the re-establishment of divorce.

[1] In 1894 he returned to political life as senator for the department of the Loire, and next year stood for the presidency of the republic against Félix Faure and Henri Brisson, being supported by the Conservatives, who were soon to be his bitter enemies.

He himself returned to his former post at the ministry of the interior, and set to work to quell the discontent with which the country was seething, to put an end to the various agitations which under specious pretences were directed against republican institutions (far-right leagues, Boulangist crisis, etc.

[1] With the condemnation in January 1900 of Paul Deroulède and his nationalist followers by the High Court the worst of the danger was past, and Waldeck-Rousseau kept order in Paris without having recourse to irritating displays of force.

With the object of aiding the industry of wine-producing, and of discouraging the consumption of spirits and other deleterious liquors, the government passed a bill suppressing the octroi duties on the three "hygienic" drinks—wine, cider and beer.

Royalist sympathies given to the pupils in the religious seminaries was a principal cause of the passing of this bill,[citation needed] and the government took strong measures to secure the presence of officers of undoubted fidelity to the republic in the higher positions on the staff.

[6] As the general election of 1902 approached, all sections of the Opposition united their efforts under the Bloc des gauches, and the name of Waldeck-Rousseau served as a battle-cry for one side, and on the other as a target for abuse.

"[1] He emerged from his retirement to protest in the Senate against the construction put on his Associations Bill by Émile Combes, who refused en masse the applications of the teaching and preaching congregations for official recognition.