The demoralization of parliamentary life had reached a climax. The Republicans were divided into the Moderates, former followers of Gambetta, the Radicals with Floquet and Brisson, the Extreme Left with Clemenceau and Pelletan, the Socialists with Millerand, Basly, and Clovis Hugues. The Royalists and Bonapartists worked against the Government and the Boulangists took advantage of the chaos to push their cause. The Socialists, in particular, were a new group in the Chamber, destined in later years to hold the centre of the stage. In their manifesto of December, 1887, signed by seventeen Deputies, they advocated, in addition to innumerable specific reforms or practical innovations, schemes for the reorganization of society: state monopolies, nationalization of property, progressive taxation, and the like. The year 1888, characterized by intense political and social unrest, was critical. The trial and conviction of Grévy's son-in-law Wilson involved washing dirty linen in public. The steady growth of Boulangism testified to dissatisfaction, even though, as it proved, the enemies of the established order had united on a worthless adventurer as their leader. General Boulanger had been first "invented" as a leader by the extreme Radicals, and especially by Clemenceau, the _démolisseur_ or destroyer of ministries. Then, being gradually abandoned by them, he went over to the anti-Republicans and took heavy subsidies from the Monarchists, while continuing to advocate, at least openly, an anti-parliamentary, plebiscitary Republic. Early in 1888, in February, the candidacy of Boulanger to the Chamber was started in several departments. The electioneering activities of a general in regular service and sundry deeds of insubordination on his part finally caused the Government, as a disciplinary measure, to retire him. The result was that his partisans raised a cry of persecution, and his actual retirement gave him the liberty to engage in politics which his service on the active list had prevented. In April Boulanger was elected Deputy in the southern department of la Dordogne and the northern le Nord. His plan of campaign was to be candidate for Deputy in each department successively in which a vacancy occurred, thus indirectly and gradually obtaining a plebiscite of approval from the country. At the same time he raised the cry in favor of militarism, not for the sake of war, he said, but for defence. He attacked the impotence of Parliament and, as a remedy, called for the dissolution of the Chamber and the convocation of a Constituent Assembly to revise the constitution. His opponents raised the answering cry of dictatorship and Cæsarism. The election in the Nord was particularly alarming because of Boulanger's majority.