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If the management of the finances in England was withdrawn from the chancellor of the exchequer and intrusted to committees of Parliament it would take but a few years to tell a similar story.

The recent history of tariff legislation is also singularly illustrative of the same principle. We must assume, for the purpose of this argument, that a protective tariff means the favoring of powerful private and class interests at the expense of the general public. Both France and the United States, where the finances are in the hands of committees or commissions of the legislature, are almost hopelessly entangled in the meshes of a complicated protective tariff which is constantly changing, and generally for the worse. Great Britain, where the finances are managed by a single executive official, the chancellor of the exchequer, and where no changes can be made without his direct initiative, declared for free trade nearly half a century ago, and through all vicissitudes, and although constantly threatened by hostile foreign tariffs, has never wavered for a moment. Whatever may be thought of the policy of free trade she has at least given to her merchants the stability and permanence of system which are almost of more importance than either high or low duties.

The conclusion which we venture to draw from this examination of a century of French history is that the nation has made an immense, and, upon the whole, a steady gain in political sense and self-control.

Never have positive laws been respected in France as during the last twenty years. Never has written law been for the legitimate impatience of conflicting parties a more solid check-rein. Who would have believed a few years ago that a constitution could live, that a government could endure, with full opportunity given to writers to say everything they please both against laws and against men ?1

1 Eugène Pierre, op. cit., Preface.

The problem which has not been solved, and which, allowing for the difference of circumstances, is almost as threatening as it was a hundred years ago, is the organization of government in the relations of the two branches, the means of preventing a fatal preponderance of executive power without falling into an equally disastrous preponderance of the legislature. And that which should make this history of intense practical interest to Americans, that which justifies the long quotations here given from French political writers, is the wonderful parallelism in the operation of principles, even though with differences of development, in France and the United States.

Since the above was written, a book upon Modern France by an Englishman has appeared and attracted much attention. The writer of it has spent some years in the study of that country, in all its parts and its different classes. How far the work is apposite for the present purpose will appear from one sentence in the preface:

The capital subject of these volumes is Political France after a century of Revolution.

The book may be said to bear the same relation to France which Mr. Bryce's "American Commonwealth " does to the United States, a class of literature the value of which cannot be overestimated. The keynote of Mr. Bodley's conclusions may be summed up thus: that France is not fitted for parliamentary institutions, which have proved a complete failure; that Frenchmen like a centralized and orderly government such as was established in its most perfect form by the first Napoleon, and that under it they have been very well governed, in fact much better than they are now; that they must inevitably return to it, and it is probably much better that they should. This does not in the least interfere with appreciation of their

1 "France," by John Edward Courtenay Bodley, 1898.

individual character. For sobriety, intelligence, family relations, thrift, patriotism, elevated ideas, Mr. Bodley places the French at least on a level with any other people.

In these volumes we shall not see much of the more excellent elements in the community, nor of the great mass of the people, whose silent, sober energy makes up for the errors of its conspicuous classes. . . .1

Speaking of a workman with whom he was brought in contact:

The experience of this sage is that of the great bulk of the inhabitants of France; they toil at their callings so long as work is to be done; they take their holidays happily yet thriftily; and their sole participation in the politics of the nation is that their energy supplies the remedy for the damage done to France by political incendiaries of various denominations. . . .2

In studying the political institutions of France, it must always be remembered that, however unsatisfactory a spectacle the conduct of public affairs may present, the land contains several millions of worthy people of various classes engaged in the tillage of the soil, in crafts of skill and in commerce, as well as in intellectual pursuits, who are working, most of them unconsciously, for the benefit of the community; and, moreover, such lives abound not merely in the silence of the fields and vineyards, or amid the placid murmur of country towns, for Paris, the nursery of revolution, the playground of frivolity, the theatre of political adventure, is also a brilliant centre and one of the great workshops of the world. . . .o

There are no creatures of the human species so orderly and methodical as the French. In the private life of the people, their thrift, their care in keeping accounts, their skill in organizing simple pleasures in the intervals of toil, the neat attire of the women, the formality and good service of the meals even in humble homes, all testify to a provident and systematic temperament inconsistent with action from impulse.

But they take no interest in public life.

It would be too much to say that the three millions of electors on the register who fail to record their votes at the elections include all 1 Introduction to Vol. I., p. 56. 8 Ibid.

2 Ibid., p. 58.

4 Book I., Chap. IV., p. 243.

that is best and worthiest in the nation, but the proposition would not be extravagant. Those who abstain are not only men eminent in letters and art, of ill example, perhaps, in their disdain for politics; no rare philosophers like M. Taine, who, attaining manhood at the epoch when universal suffrage was granted and uncertain how to bestow his vote, spent the rest of his life without reaching a definite conclusion (Preface to the "Ancien Régime"). In a democracy such fastidious units, however eminent, count for little. Their abstention becomes important when it is joined to that of humble workers in every sphere of life, in every region of the land. Explore the French department; live among the people, and observe the most industrious villager, or the most cultivated tradesman in the country town; question him about the local deputy or the elections, and his reply will be, "Je ne m'occupe pas de politique." A peasant may use a more vigorous verb.1

This is supposed to prove that they are not fitted for representative institutions. It seems to us only to prove that their representative institutions, as operated, are not fitted for them. The same phenomenon is increasingly apparent in the United States, at least in local elections; for the presidential election, for reasons hereinafter given, still draws out a very full vote, as we believe that similar elections would do in France.

Again, public life attracts only an inferior class of men.

To one acquainted with the different phases of French society the contrast is painfully striking between the level of intelligence of political circles and that of the financial and industrial world. At Lyons, at Bordeaux, and other commercial centres, the men who develop the wealth and maintain the prestige of those cities by their high character, their public spirit, and their manifest ability, seem to be designated to direct the affairs of the country; but if by rare hazard one of them is elected to Parliament he remains a private member.2

We shall see later that exactly the same state of things exists in the United States, and that the reasons for it in both cases are to be found not in the character of either people but in the conditions of public life.

1 Vol. II., Book III., Chap. II., p. 81.

2 Ibid., Chap. V., p. 286.

It is the constant tendency of the French legislature to arrogate the functions of a convention and to override the principle of the separation of powers- -a sure sign of the unsuitableness of parliamentary institutions to the French national character.1

It is no more a sign of that than the equal tendency, constantly displayed, of Congress and the State legislatures in the same direction is as to the character of the people of the United States.

It was observed that when M. Freycinet took his seat in the Academy, the practised debater of the Senate and the Chamber was less skilled in speech than the learned Academician who received him, M. Gréard, a professor of the University who had devoted his talents to the organization of public instruction. It was a striking instance of the fact that the best ability of France shuns politics. The legislature had been scoured to find a statesman fit to take a seat in the company founded by a minister of France, and when the best specimen of his class was produced he was, by a modest professor, outmatched in eloquence, — the essential arm of a politician's equipment. What rich material France contains for ministries and legislative assemblies of the highest order! Around the tables of the Institute alone the gifts of oratory, wit, political science, and knowledge of humanity abound. But the French are not a parliamentary people, and while they are waiting for a régime to suit them they are uncommonly wise in not encouraging their worthiest sons to waste their powers in an ill-contrived parliament. . . .2

Previous French experiments in representative institutions were always too short-lived, being abbreviated by revolution, and were founded on too artificial a basis to afford material for judgment.

In fact, they have never to this day had any fair trial at all.

But under the Third Republic they have been tried, during a period of perfect peace and domestic tranquillity, on a democratic foundation under the most durable régime of the century, which has never had a serious rival: and out of these favoring circumstances the parliamentary system has emerged irretrievably discredited. The temperament of the French people is not the sole cause of its failure.

1 Book II., Chap. II., p. 309.

2 Vol. II., Book IV., Chap. VI., p. 439.
8 Vol. I., Introduction, p. 32.

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