of the prefect, in particular, are of such a nature that there can never be real local liberty until the office is abolished, or at all events completely altered; (5) the sub-prefects, in the arrondissements, perform no necessary work that could not be cared for otherwise, although they cost the country a large sum every year; (6) the present system, indeed, encourages an undue multiplication of functionaries, entailing unjustifiable burdens for the taxpayer; (7) the system gives the government too many agents through whom to influence the voters in parliamentary elections; and (8) the national parliament is overburdened with legislative and administrative business that ought to be taken care of locally, causing neglect of large national concerns, while yet entailing intolerable delays in the conduct of departmental and communal affairs.1

There are, of course, counter-arguments. One of them is that close supervision by the central government is necessary to protect the taxpayers against extravagance on the part of the local - especially the communal councils. Another is that the central government must depend largely upon the local authorities for the execution of national laws, and that, therefore, these authorities must be subject to central control. It is categorically denied, too, that any considerable class of functionaries belonging to the present system is unnecessary; of the sub-prefects it is specifically affirmed that, in the larger departments at all events, they are indispensable administrative agents and informational intermediaries.

Since 1894, when at the instigation of the Chamber of Deputies an extra-parliamentary commission of inquiry was created, the question has been almost continuously under discussion. Parliamentary and extra-parliamentary commissions have prepared voluminous reports upon it; the chambers have debated resolutions and plans relating to it; scores of books and pamphlets consider it from every angle; associations (notably a Fédération Régionaliste Française, founded in 1900, and a Ligue de Répresentation professionnelle et d'Action régionaliste, organized in 1913) have been established to promote action upon it; political parties and incoming ministries have repeatedly issued pronouncements upon it; in the parliamentary election of 1910 it took precedence over all issues except electoral reform; and while

1 Cf. the criticisms of the conditions of the functionaries (with particular reference to the persons employed exclusively by the national executive departments) pre sented above, pp. 404-406.

Of the 597 deputies elected, 346 had given administrative reform a place in their platform.

the subject naturally fell into abeyance during the war, it was immediately revived after the armistice, and it again absorbs the attention of large numbers of influential people.

Proposals for reform run on many lines and look to widely differing degrees of decentralization. Perhaps the most common demand is for the abolition of the sub-prefectural office, although obviously this alone would work no great change. Many couple with this a demand for the suppression of the prefectural office also, which would entail a general reorganization, because that office is at present the cornerstone of the structure.' There is demand, too, that the prefectural councils be either abolished or reorganized on more democratic lines; and definite proposals were made in 1887, 1896, and 1908, with which the names of Fallières, Barthou, and Clemenceau, respectively, are connected, to transfer the councils' powers as administrative courts to other and differently constituted tribunals.

The proposal that has received the largest amount of attention in recent years, and that probably comes nearest to the end that is sought, is one looking to the reorganization of the country in great self-governing provinces or " regions." This is no new idea. The philosopher Comte worked out a plan for seventeen such regions in 1854, and ten years later Le Play proposed a similar division of the country into thirteen political areas. As developed by some of the later reformers, the plan would mean to abolish the departments altogether; as developed by others, it would mean, rather, to retain the departments for certain administrative purposes, but to group them into larger units, to which most of the major powers of local government would be transferred. In either case, the "region" would be endowed with much more autonomy than any French local government area now enjoys, and it would have both an elective legislature with substantial powers and a strong local executive, probably also locally elected. It would be the purpose, too, to lay out the new areas with regard for historical associations and physical unity, in the expectation that they would have a self-consciousness and a vitality which the purely artificial departments lack. In some cases the provinces which were swept away in 1789 or areas very similar to them - would probably reappear. Two projects

2

This plan is advocated in H. Chardon, Le pouvoir administratif (new ed., Paris, 1912), Chap. iv.

2 Thus, divisions that are usually provided for in specific proposals on the subject include Brittany, Normandy, Limousin, Poitou, Provence, Languedoc, etc., although not necessarily under these historic names. See the "comof a report mission de l'administration générale départementale et communale" of the Chamber

of 1902 and 1907 which received much attention provided for twenty-five regional governments, each having its seat in a city which is the center of a territory with a distinct community of interest.

The regional plan is opposed in many quarters, sometimes on the ground that it would tend to revive the old provincial spirit which was an obstacle to national unity, sometimes on the ground that it would not remove the real sources of discontent, although most often on the ground that the administrative system as it stands is capable of being reformed in the desired directions without breaking up the jurisdictional areas to which the people have become accustomed. It is by no means assured that the regional plan will ever be adopted. The discussion of it reminds one in an interesting way, however, of the consideration of plans for legislative and administrative devolution in England, and both movements are indicative of a certain trend of thought, in these countries at all events, toward federalism. No proposition looking to federalism, in the proper meaning of that term, has, however, been put forward seriously in France; and while it is safe to predict that both legislation and administration will be further decentralized in coming years, it is even more certain that France will remain a unitary state, and that, as also in England, central control will always be maintained at a level unknown in states that are organized on the federal principle.2

of Deputies, submitted February 6, 1918, and printed in Rev. Gén. d'Admin., JulyAug., 1919, pp. 161-192.

1 See pp. 201-205.

2 The problem of administrative decentralization in France is lucidly discussed in Duguit, Law in the Modern State, Chap. iv. The best brief account of the movement for administrative reform is Garner, "Administrative Reform in France," in Amer. Polit. Sci. Rev., Feb., 1919. The literature of the subject is very extensive. A few of the best titles are M. Hauriou, La décentralisation (Paris, 1893); P. Deschanel, La décentralisation (Paris, 1895); ibid., l'organisation de la démocratie (Paris, 1910); C. Maurras et J. P. Boncour, Un nouveau débat sur la décentralisation (Paris, 1908); M. Lallemand, Réorganisation administrative (Paris, 1909); H. Chardon, Le pouvoir administratif (new ed., Paris, 1912); and J. Barthélemy, Le problème de la compétence dans la démocratie (Paris, 1918). The files of the Rev. Gén. d'Admin. should be consulted for documentary materials and for numerous articles, notably J. Hennessy, "La réorganisation administrative de la France," in the issues of MayJune and July-Aug., 1919. See also J. T. Young, "Administrative Centralization and Decentralization in France," in Ann. of Amer. Acad. of Polit. and Soc. Sci., Jan., 1898; C. Beauquier, "Un projet de réforme administrative; l'organisation régionale en France," in Rev. Pol. et Parl., Nov., 1909; Vidal de la Blache, "Régions françaises," in Rev. de Paris, Dec., 1910; and L. Boucheron, "La réforme administrative après la guerre - le régionalisme," in Rev. Polit. et Parl., Aug., 1918. The unsatisfactory condition of the functionaries is stressed in A. Lefas, L'État et les fonctionnaires (Paris, 1913).

CHAPTER XXVII

POLITICAL PARTIES

Origins: Republicans, Conservatives, and Radicals. At an early stage of the French Revolution a party arose whose cardinal aim was the displacement of monarchy by a republican form of government; and, speaking broadly, the alignment of French parties since 1871 has been a product of the bitter rivalry between monarchical and republican ideas which went on uninterruptedly from the eighteenth century until after the Third Republic was definitely on its feet. Neither republicans nor monarchists were ever able to build up a single, compact, and durable party on the analogy of the great parties of England. Yet, in the main, the issues that were fought out, both in and out of Parliament, either directly turned on the question of the form that the government should take or served to bring out antagonisms and arguments that had their origin in monarchical or republican ideals. The republicans triumphed conspicuously in 1792, again in 1848, when, in each case, a monarchical system was abruptly abolished; and although the republics set up on these occasions failed to strike root, republicanism as a creed never lacked influential and numerous adherents, whether under Bonapartist, Bourbon, or Orleanist régimes.

and

As has been pointed out, the National Assembly elected in 1871 was monarchist in the approximate proportion of five monarchists to two republicans a proportion which probably prevailed substantially throughout the country. But neither the monarchists nor the republicans were anything more than illorganized collections of mutually jealous groups. The monarchists, as we have seen, were sharply divided into Legitimist, Bourbon, and Bonapartist factions. The republicans, although more able to forget their differences and to act together at supreme moments, were quite as incapable of sustained cohesion. Like the monarchists, they were divided into three main groups. One was the Extreme Left, led by Gambetta. The second was the Left, led by Grévy, Freycinet, and Loubet. The third was the Center Left, which followed Thiers and Jules Simon. Even

in the face of an apparently overwhelming monarchist opposition, these groups often failed to work together. It was, for example, the defection of the Extreme Left that enabled the monarchists in 1873 to overthrow Thiers and to name as his successor the royalist Marshal MacMahon.

Under circumstances that have been described in an earlier chapter, the republican constitution of 1875 was eventually adopted. The elections of 1876 gave the monarchists a majority in the Senate, which they retained until 1882. But in the Chamber of Deputies the republicans from the first outnumbered their opponents in the proportion of more than two to one. In parliamentary usage, the monarchists were commonly referred to as the Right, although they were often called Reactionaries. It was understood that they were bent upon the overthrow of the republic, and doubtless at the outset most of them looked to such an eventuality. Gradually, however, the new régime intrenched itself in the loyalty, and even the affection, of the mass of the people, with the result that the revival of monarchy became less and less probable, and large numbers of men who had actively worked for the monarchist cause became only theoretic adherents of it, while others emulated the example early set by Thiers and openly espoused republicanism. Eventually

although no fixed date can be assigned the line of cleavage between monarchists and republicans as such ceased to have practical importance; and the harsh party name Reactionary gave way to the milder term Conservative.

Meanwhile important changes took place in the ranks of the republicans. If we may regard the Chamber majority after the elections of 1876 as forming a Republican party, it is at least necessary to observe that the republican deputies were divided into no fewer than seven groups, each clinging to its own ideas and its own leaders, and all unable to work together smoothly unless extreme pressure—such as arose from the contest with President MacMahon in 1877-was applied. So long as Gambetta lived, his followers kept up their nominal allegiance to the general Republican party. But after his death, in 1881, the group split off completely and became the Radical party; and in the elections of 1885 this party obtained enough seats (150) in the Chamber to make it impossible for the Republicans alone to retain control. Thenceforth there were, therefore, three principal party groups the Conservatives, the Republicans, and the Radicals. No one of them was ever able to command a majority in the Chamber single-handed, and, therefore, the