Chapter Xvi (p. 308)

THE PRESIDENT, THE MINISTRY, AND PARLIAMENT

I. THE PRESIDENT

Under the French system of government functions of a purely executive nature are vested in the President of the Republic and the Ministry, assisted by a numerous and highly centralized body of administrative officials. The presidency had its origin in the unsettled period following the Prussian war when it was commonly believed that monarchy, in one form or another, would eventually be re-established. The title "President of the Republic" was created in 1871; but the office as it exists to-day hardly antedates the election of Marshal MacMahon in 1873. The character and functions of the presidency were determined in no small measure by the circumstance that by those who created the dignity it was intended merely to keep the French people accustomed to visible personal supremacy, and so to make easier the future transition to a monarchical system. Counting Thiers, the Republic has had thus far nine presidents: Adolphe Thiers, 1871-1873; Marshal MacMahon, 1873-1879; Jules Grevy, 1879-1887; F. Sadi-Carnot, 1887-1894; Casimir-Perier, June, 1894, to January, 1895; Felix Faure, 1895-1899; Emile Loubet, 1899-1906; Armand Fallieres, 1906-1913; and Raymond Poincare elected early in 1913.

*332. Election and Qualifications.*--The President is chosen for seven years by an electoral college consisting of the members of the Senate and of the Chamber of Deputies, meeting at Versailles in National Assembly. The choice is by absolute majority of the combined body. The constitutional law of July 16, 1875, stipulates that one month, at least, before the expiration of his term the President shall call together the National Assembly for the election of a successor. In default of such summons, the meeting takes place automatically on the fifteenth day before the expiration; and in the event of the death or resignation of the President the Chambers are required to assemble immediately without summons. There is no vice-president, nor (p. 309) any law of succession, so that whenever the presidential office falls vacant there must be a new election; and, at whatever time and under whatever circumstance begun, the term of the newly elected President is regularly seven years. As upon the occasion of the assassination of Sadi-Carnot in 1894, a vacancy may arise wholly unexpectedly. Under even the most normal conditions, however, the election of a President in France is attended by no period of campaigning comparable with that which attends a similar event in the United States. The Assembly habitually selects a man who has long been a member, and has perhaps served as president, of one or the other of the chambers, who has had experience in committee work and, as a rule, in one or more ministerial offices, and who, above all things, is not too aggressive or domineering. An election is likely to be carried through all stages within the space of forty-eight hours. The qualifications requisite for election are extremely broad. Until 1884 any male citizen, regardless of age, affiliation, or circumstance, was eligible. In the year mentioned members of families that have reigned in France were debarred, and this remains the only formal disqualification. A President is eligible indefinitely for re-election.

*333. Privileges.*--The President is paid the sum of 1,200,000 francs a year, half as salary, half to cover travelling expenses and the outlays incumbent upon him as the official representative of the nation. He resides in the Palais de l'Elysee, where he maintains in a measure the state and ceremony that ordinarily are associated only with monarchy. His dignity is safeguarded by special and effective penalties for insult and libel. Like the President of the United States, during his term of office he is exempt from the processes of the ordinary courts; but, like his American counterpart, he may be tried by the Senate, on articles of impeachment presented by the lower legislative chamber. The President of the United States may be impeached for "treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors"; the French President may be impeached for treason only. On the other hand, whereas the penalty that may be imposed upon the American President by the judgment of the Senate is confined to removal from office and disqualification to hold office, the French constitution fixes no limit to the penalty which may be visited upon a President convicted of treason. So far as the law is concerned, he might be condemned to death.

*334. Powers: Participation in Law-making.*--The President possesses powers which are numerous and, on paper at least, formidable. A (p. 310) first group pertains to the making of law. "The President of the Republic," says the constitutional law of February 25, 1875, "shall have the initiative of laws, concurrently with the members of the two chambers. He shall promulgate the laws when they have been voted by the two chambers; and he shall look after and secure their execution." The concurrent power of initiating legislation, exercised through the Ministry, is something that is not possessed by the American President, who can do no more than suggest and recommend measures he deems desirable. The President of France, on the other hand, possesses only a suspensive veto. He may remand a measure of which he disapproves for fresh consideration by Parliament; but if it is re-enacted, by even a simple majority, it is incumbent upon him to promulgate it as law. If, however, the veto power is virtually non-existent, the President possesses an important prerogative in the right of issuing ordinances with the force of supplementary legislation. These may be not merely executive orders in matters of detail, such as are issued by the President of the United States, but sweeping injunctions deemed essential to the enforcement of the laws in general. The only limitation is that such ordinances must not contravene the constitution or any enactment of the chambers. The power is one which, rather curiously, rests upon no express constitutional provision, but simply upon custom. The right which the President possesses, with the consent of the Senate, to dissolve the Chamber of Deputies before the expiration of its term, thereby precipitating a general election, may also be made the means of exercising considerable influence upon legislative processes and achievements.

*335. Powers: Executive and Judicial.*--As the head of the national administration, the President appoints to all civil and military offices connected with the central government. His appointments do not require ratification by the Senate, or by any other body. He may even create, by decree, new offices. And his power of removal from office, save in certain cases, is absolutely without restriction. Appointments and removals, however, are in practice made through the Ministry, and the President has no patronage at his immediate disposal other than that of the posts in his own household. In respect to foreign affairs the President's powers are more substantial. Like the American President, he represents his country in the sending and receiving of ambassadors, ministers, envoys, and consuls, and in the negotiation and conclusion of treaties. Treaties affecting peace, commerce, territorial possessions, finances, or the status of Frenchmen in foreign countries, require the ratification of the chambers; others call for no such action, and even a foreign alliance may be (p. 311) concluded by the Executive working independently. On the military side, the President is commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the nation, military and naval. He may not declare war without the consent of the chambers; but through the conduct of foreign affairs he may at any time, very much as may the President of the United States, create a situation by which war will be rendered inevitable. Finally, the President is vested with the powers of pardon and reprieve, although amnesty may be granted only by law.

II. THE MINISTRY

*336. Importance in the Government.*--"There is," says an English writer of the last generation, "no living functionary who occupies a more pitiable position than a French President. The old kings of France reigned and governed. The Constitutional King, according to M. Thiers, reigns, but does not govern. The President of the United States governs, but he does not reign. It has been reserved for the President of the French Republic neither to reign nor yet to govern." The weakness of the French President's position arises specifically from two clauses of the constitutional law of February 25, 1875. One of them stipulates that "every act of the President of the Republic shall be countersigned by a minister." The other provides that "the ministers shall be collectively responsible to the chambers for the general policy of the government, and individually for their personal acts." Under the operation of these principles the Ministry becomes the real executive. Like the sovereign of Great Britain, the President can do no wrong, because the acts that are officially his are in reality performed by the ministers, who alone (save in the case of treason) are responsible for them. Chosen by the members of Parliament, the President belongs normally to the party group which is at the time in the ascendant, and by it he is kept in tutelage. The leaders of this group are the ministers, and, in a very large measure, the President simply approves passively the policies of this body of men and signs and promulgates the measures which it carries through the chambers.

*337. Organization and Functions.*--Ministerial portfolios are created by executive decree. Their number has been somewhat variable. In (p. 312) 1875 there were nine. In 1879 there was created a tenth. Between 1881 and 1887 there were eleven. To-day there are twelve, as follows: (1) Interior; (2) Finance; (3) War; (4) Justice and Public Worship; (5) Marine; (6) Colonies; (7) Public Instruction; (8) Foreign Affairs; (9) Commerce; (10) Agriculture; (11) Public Works and Posts, Telegraphs, and Telephones; and (12) Labor. Portfolios may be not only created but rearranged by simple executive decree, though of course the necessary financial provisions are conditioned upon the approval of the chambers. The premier may occupy any one of the ministerial posts, or even two of them at one time. He is named by the President, and he, acting with the President, designates his colleagues and allots to them their respective portfolios. Usually, though not necessarily, the ministers are members of the Senate or of the Chamber of Deputies, principally the latter. Whether members or not, they have a right to attend all sessions of both chambers and to take an especially privileged part in debate. Ministers receive annual salaries of 60,000 francs and reside, as a rule, in the official mansions maintained for the heads of the departments they control.

Collectively the ministers possess two sets of functions which are essentially distinct. The one they fulfill as a "council"; the other as a "cabinet." In the capacity of a council they exercise a general supervision of the administration of the laws, to the end that there may be efficiency and unity in the affairs of state. In the event of the President's death, incapacitation, or resignation, the Council is authorized to act as head of the state until the National Assembly shall have chosen a successor. As a cabinet the ministers formulate the fundamental policies of the Government and represent it in the chambers. The Council is administrative and is expressly recognized by law; the Cabinet is political and is not so recognized. In the meetings of the Council the President of the Republic not only sits, but presides; in those of the Cabinet he rarely even appears. Aside from the President, however, the two bodies, in personnel, are identical.

*338. The Parliamentary System: Multiplicity of Parties.*--On paper France has to-day a parliamentary system of government substantially like that which prevails in Great Britain. The President's (p. 313) authority is but nominal. The real executive consists of the ministers. These ministers are responsible, collectively in general matters and individually in particular ones, to the chambers, in reality to the Chamber of Deputies. When defeated on any important proposition, they resign as a body. Parliamentary government in France means, however, in practice, something very different from what it means across the Channel. The principal reason why this is so is to be found in the totally different status of political parties in the two countries. In Great Britain, while in later years small political groups have sprung up to complicate the situation, the political life of the nation is still confined very largely to the two great rival parties, which oppose to each other a fairly united front, and between which there is not likely to be anything like fusion or affiliation. In France, on the contrary, there is a multiplicity of parties and no one of them is likely ever to be in a position to dominate the Government alone. The election of 1910 sent to the Chamber of Deputies representatives of no fewer than nine distinct political groups. No ministry can be made up with any hope of its being able to command a working majority in the Chamber unless it represents in its membership a coalition of several parties. A Government so constituted, however, is almost inevitably vacillating and short-lived. It is unable to please all of the groups and interests upon which it relies; it dares displease none; it ends not infrequently by displeasing all.

*339. Frequency of Ministerial Changes.*--It is from this condition of things that there arises the remarkable frequency with which ministerial crises and ministerial changes take place in France. The ministry of M. Poincare, established in January, 1912, was the forty-fifth in the history of French parliamentarism since 1875--a period of but thirty-seven years. Between 1875 and 1900 but four years elapsed without at least one change of ministry. Since 1900 changes have been somewhat less frequent. The Waldeck-Rousseau ministry of 1899-1902--the longest-lived since 1875--endured virtually three years; the Combes ministry of 1902-1905 lasted more than two years and a half; and the Clemenceau ministry of 1906-1909 fell but little short of two years and nine months. None the less, a total of nine ministries within the space of thirteen years means an average of but one year and a half to the ministry. It is but fair to say that the ordinary "crisis" is not likely to involve a complete ministerial change. Defeated in the Chamber, or unable to make progress, the ministry as a body resigns; but, as a rule, many of the members are immediately reappointed, with perhaps a change of portfolios. A certain continuity arises also from the fact that the subordinate (p. 314) officials in the various departments enjoy a reasonable fixity of tenure. Nevertheless the most obvious feature of parliamentary government as it exists to-day in France, and in other continental countries, is its instability. Only where, as in England, there are two great parties, each possessing solidarity and sufficient strength, if returned to power, to support a homogeneous and sympathetic ministry, can the more desirable results of the parliamentary system be realized in full. There is as yet no evidence that such parties are in France in process of development.

*340. Interpellation.*--The precariousness of the position occupied by French ministries is enhanced by the parliamentary device of interpellation. As in Great Britain, every member of the two chambers possesses the right at any time to put to an executive head a direct question concerning any affair of state which, without impropriety, may be made the subject of open discussion. A minister may not, however, be questioned without his consent, and the incident ordinarily passes without debate. In France, however, any member may direct at a minister an interpellation, designed not to obtain information, but to put the Government on the defensive and to precipitate a debate which may end in the overthrow of the ministry on some mere technicality or other matter in itself of but slight importance. The interpellation is a challenge. It is made the special order for a day fixed by the chamber, and it almost invariably results in a vote of confidence, or want of confidence, in the ministers. As employed in France, the interpellation lends itself too readily to the ends of sheer factiousness to be adjudged a valuable feature of parliamentary procedure.

III. PARLIAMENT: SENATE AND CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES (p. 315)

*341. The Bicameral System.*--With the dissolution of the States General in 1789, France definitely abandoned a parliamentary system based upon the mediaeval principle of orders or estates. Throughout upwards of a hundred years, however, the scheme of parliamentary organization which was to take the place of that which had been cast aside continued uncertain. During the Revolution ultra-democratic reformers very generally favored the maintenance of a national assembly of but a single house, and it was not until the promulgation of the constitution of 1795 that a frame of government including provision for a legislature of two houses was brought into operation. The bicameral system of 1795-1799 was succeeded by the anomalous legislative regime of Napoleon, but under the Constitutional Charter of 1814 the two-house principle was revived and continuously applied through a period of thirty-four years. The legislative organ of the Second Republic was a unicameral assembly, but an incident of the transition to the Second Empire was the revival of a Senate, and throughout the reign of Napoleon III. the legislative chambers were nominally two in number, although it was not until 1870 that the Senate as a legislative body was made co-ordinate with the Corps legislatif. On the whole, it can be affirmed that at the period when the constitution of the Third Republic was given form, the political experience of the nation had demonstrated the bicameral system to be the most natural, the safest, and the most effective. The opening stipulation of the Constitutional Law on the Organization of the Public Powers, adopted February 25, 1875, was that the law-making power of France should be exercised by a national parliament consisting of (1) a Chamber of Deputies and (2) a Senate. The one, it was determined, should rest upon a broadly democratic basis. The other was planned, as is customary with second chambers, to stand somewhat further removed from the immediate control of the voters of the country. But the two were intended to exist fundamentally to enact into law the will of the people, in whom the sovereignty of the French nation is clearly lodged. And even the most casual survey of the French governmental system as it operates to-day will impress the fact that the structure and organization of the parliamentary body have lent themselves to the usages of a democratic state in a measure even exceeding that intended by the founders of the existing order.

*342. The Senate as Originally Established.*--Having determined that the parliament should consist of two branches, the National Assembly, in 1875, faced the difficult problem of constituting an upper chamber (p. 316) that should not be a mere replica of the lower, and yet should not inject into a democratic constitutional system an incongruous element of aristocracy. The device hit upon was a chamber, seats in which should be wholly elective, yet not at the immediate disposal of the people. By the constitutional law of February 24, 1875, it was provided that the Senate should consist of three hundred members, of whom two hundred twenty-five should be elected by the departments and colonies and seventy-five by the National Assembly itself. The departments of the Seine and of the Nord were authorized to elect five senators each, the others four, three, or two, as specified in the law. The senators of the departments and of the colonies were to be elected by an absolute majority and by scrutin de liste, by a college meeting at the capital of the department or colony, composed of the deputies and general councillors and of delegates elected, one by each municipal council, from among the voters of the communes. Senators chosen by the Assembly were to be elected by scrutin de liste and by an absolute majority of votes. No one should be chosen who had not attained the age of forty years, and who was not in enjoyment of full civil and political rights. The seventy-five elected by the Assembly were to retain their seats for life, vacancies that should arise being filled by the Senate itself. All other members were to be elected for nine years, being renewed by thirds every three years.

*343. The Senate: Composition and Election To-day.*--The system thus devised continues, in the main, in effect at the present day. The principal variations from it are those introduced in a constitutional law of December 9, 1884, whereby it was provided (1) that the co-optative method of election should be abolished, and that, while present life members should retain their seats as long as they should live, all vacancies thereafter arising from the decease of such members should be filled within the departments in the regular manner, and (2) that the electoral college of the department should be broadened to include not merely one delegate from each municipal council, but from one to twenty-four (thirty in the case of Paris), according to the number of members in the council. By the same law members of families that have reigned in France were declared ineligible; and by act of July 20, 1895, no one may become a member of either branch of Parliament unless he has complied with the law regarding military service.

Few of the life members survive to-day. When they shall have disappeared, the French Senate will comprise a compact body of three hundred men apportioned among the departments in approximate (p. 317) accordance with population and chosen in all cases by bodies of electors all of whom have themselves been elected directly by the people. The present apportionment gives to the department of the Seine ten members; to that of the Nord, eight; to others, five four, three, and two apiece, down to the territory of Belfort and the three departments of Algeria, and the colonies of Martinique, Guadeloupe, Reunion, and the French West Indies, which return one each. From having long been viewed by republicans with suspicion, the Senate has come to be regarded by Frenchmen generally as perhaps the most perfect work of the Republic. In these days its membership is recruited very largely from the Deputies, so that it includes not only many men of distinction in letters and science but an unusual proportion of experienced debaters and parliamentarians. A leading American authority has said that it is "composed of as impressive a body of men as can be found in any legislative chamber the world over." The sittings of the Senate, since 1879, have been held in the Palais du Luxembourg, a splendid structure on the left bank of the Seine dating from the early seventeenth century.

*344. The Chamber of Deputies: Composition.*--The 597 members of the lower legislative branch are chosen directly by the people, under conditions regulated by a series of electoral measures, principally the organic law of November 30, 1875. The franchise is extended to all male inhabitants who have attained the age of twenty-one, and who are not convicts, bankrupts, under guardianship, or in active military or naval service. Of educational or property qualifications there are none. The only requirements are that the voter shall have his name inscribed on the electoral lists and shall be able to prove a residence of six months in the commune in which he proposes to cast his ballot. The conditions of the franchise are prescribed by the state; but the keeping and the annual revision of the electoral lists devolves upon the commune, and the lists are identical for communal, district, departmental, and national elections. The French registration system is notably effective and, as compared with the British, inexpensive.

*345. Electoral Unit and Parliamentary Candidacies.*--The electoral area in France is the arrondissement, an administrative subdivision of (p. 318) the department. Each arrondissement returns one deputy, unless its population exceeds 100,000, in which case it is divided into single-member constituencies, one for each 100,000 or remaining fraction thereof. A fresh apportionment is made after each quinquennial census, when to each of the eighty-six departments is allotted a quota of representatives proportioned to population. The present method of election, under which the individual elector votes within his arrondissement or district for one deputy only, is known as the scrutin d'arrondissement. Established in 1876, the scrutin d'arrondissement was employed until 1885, when, at the behest of Gambetta, a change was made to a system under which deputies for an entire department were voted for on a general ticket, as, for example, presidential electors are voted for in an American state. This system--the so-called scrutin de liste--was maintained in operation only until 1889, when the scrutin d'arrondissement was re-established.

The full membership of the Chamber is elected simultaneously, for a four-year term, save in the event that the Chamber shall be sooner dissolved. No nomination, or similar formality, is required of the candidate. To be eligible, however, he must be a qualified voter and as much as twenty-five years of age. By law of November 30, 1875, state officials are forbidden to become candidates in districts where their position might enable them to influence elections, and by act of June 16, 1885, members of families who have ever reigned in France are debarred. All that is required of a person who, possessing the requisite legal qualifications, wishes to be a candidate is that five days before the election he shall deposit with the prefect of the department within which the polling is to take place a declaration, witnessed by a mayor, of the name of the constituency in which he proposes to seek election. Even this trifling formality was introduced only by the Multiple Candidature Act of 1889, by which it is stipulated that no person shall be a candidate in more than one district. The French electorate is proverbially indifferent concerning the exercise of the suffrage, but the methods of campaigning which have become familiar in other countries are employed systematically, and no small measure of popular interest is occasionally aroused.

*346. The Conduct of Parliamentary Elections.*--The electoral (p. 319) process is simple and inexpensive. Voting is by secret ballot, and the balloting lasts one day only. As a rule, the polling takes place in the mairie, or municipal building, of the commune, under the immediate supervision of an electoral bureau consisting of a president (usually the mayor), four assessors, and a secretary. The state does not provide ballot-papers, but one or more of the candidates may be depended upon to supply the deficiency. The count is public and the result is announced without delay. If it is found that no candidate within the district has polled an absolute majority of the votes cast, and at the same time a fourth of the number which the registered voters of the district are legally capable of casting, a second balloting (the so-called ballottage) is ordered for one week from the ensuing Sunday. No one of the candidates voted for drops out of the contest, unless by voluntary withdrawal; new candidates, at even so late a day, may enter the race; and whoever, at the second balloting, secures a simple plurality is declared elected. By observers generally it is considered that the principle of the second ballot, in the form in which it is applied in France, possesses no very decisive value. Through a variety of agencies the central government is accustomed to exert substantial influence in parliamentary elections; but all of the more important political groups have profited at one time or another by the practice, and there is to-day a very general acquiescence in it, save on the part of unsuccessful candidates whose prospects have been injured by it.

IV. THE PROBLEM OF ELECTORAL REFORM

*347. Scrutin de liste and scrutin d'arrondissement.*--Within recent years there has arisen, especially among the Republicans and Socialists, an insistent demand for a thoroughgoing reform of the electoral process. Those who criticise the present system are far from agreed as to precisely what would be more desirable, but, in general, there are two preponderating programmes. One of these calls simply for abandonment of the scrutin d'arrondissement and a return to the scrutin de liste. The other involves both a return to the scrutin de liste and the adoption of a scheme of proportional representation. The arrondissement, many maintain, is too small to be made to serve satisfactorily as an electoral unit. Within a sphere so restricted the larger interests of the nation are in danger of being lost to view and political life is prone to be reduced to a wearisome round of compromise, demagogy, and trivialities. If, it is contended, all deputies (p. 320) from a department were to be elected on a single ticket, the elector would value his privilege more highly, the candidate would be in a position to make a more dignified campaign, and issues which are national in their scope would less frequently be obscured by questions and interests of a petty and purely local character. Professor Duguit, of the University of Bordeaux, who is one of the abler exponents of this proposed reform, contends (1) that the scheme of scrutin de liste harmonizes better than does that of scrutin d'arrondissement with the fundamental theory of representation in France, which is that the deputies who go to Paris do so as representatives of the nation as a whole, not of a single locality; (2) that the scrutin d'arrondissement facilitates corruption through the temptation which it affords candidates to make to voters promises of favors, appointments, and decorations, and (3) that the prevailing system augments materially the more or less questionable influence which the Government is able to bring to bear in the election of deputies. It does not appear that in the period 1885-1889 when the scrutin de liste was in operation the very desirable ends now expected to be attained by a restoration of it were realized; indeed the system lent itself more readily to the menacing operations of the ambitious Boulanger than the scrutin d'arrondissement could possibly have done. It is but fair, however, to observe that the trial of the system was very brief and that it fell in a period of unusual political unsettlement.

*348. Proportional Representation.*--In the judgment of many reformers a simple enlarging of the electoral unit, however desirable in itself, would be by no means adequate to place the national parliament upon a thoroughly satisfactory basis. There is in France a growing demand for the adoption of some scheme whereby minorities within the several departments shall become entitled to a proportionate voice in the Chamber at Paris. And hence a second programme of reform is that which calls not merely for the scrutin de liste, but also for proportional representation. Within the past two decades the spread of the proportional representation idea in Europe has been rapid. Beginning in 1891, the device has been adopted by one after another of the Swiss cantons, until now it is in use in some measure in upwards of half of them. Since 1899 Belgium has employed it in the election of all members of both chambers of her parliament. In 1906 it was adopted by Finland and by the German state of Wuerttemberg. In 1908 Denmark, in which country the system has been employed in the election of members of the upper chamber since 1867, extended its use to elections in (p. 321) the municipalities. In 1907 an act of the Swedish parliament (confirmed after a general election in 1909) applied it to elections for both legislative chambers, all parliamentary committees, and provincial and town councils. In France there was organized in 1909, under the leadership of M. Charles Benoist, a Proportional Representation League by which there has been carried on in recent years a very vigorous and promising propaganda. The principal arguments employed by the advocates of the proposed reform are (1) that the effect of its adoption would be greatly to increase the aggregate vote cast in parliamentary elections, since electors belonging to minority parties would be assured of actual representation; (2) that it would no longer be possible, as is now regularly the case, for the number of voters unrepresented by deputies of their own political faith to be in excess of the number of electors so represented; and (3) that a parliament in which the various parties are represented in proportion to their voting strength can be depended upon to know and to execute the will of the nation with more precision than can a legislative body elected after the principle of the majority system.

*349. The Government and Reform.*--During upwards of a decade the successive ministries of France have been committed to the cause of electoral reform. In March, 1907, a special committee of the Chamber of Deputies (the Commission du Suffrage Universel), appointed to consider the various bills which had been submitted upon the subject, reported a scheme of proportional representation whereby it was believed certain disadvantages inherent in the "list system" of Belgium might be obviated. Elections were to be by scrutin de liste and the elector was to be allowed to cast as many votes as there were places to be filled and to concentrate as many of these votes as he might choose upon a single candidate. In November, 1909, the Chamber of Deputies passed a resolution favoring the establishment (p. 322) of both scrutin de liste and proportional representation, but no law upon the subject was enacted, and at the elections of April-May, 1910, the preponderating issue was unquestionably that of electoral reform. According to a tabulation undertaken by the Ministry of the Interior, of the 597 deputies chosen at this time 94 had not declared themselves on electoral reform; 35 were in favor of no change from the existing system; 32 were in favor of a slightly modified scrutin d'arrondissement; 64 were partisans of the scrutin de liste pure and simple; 272 were on record in favor of the scrutin de liste combined with proportional representation; and 88 were known to be in favor of electoral reform, though not committed to any particular programme. The majority favoring change of some kind was thus notably large.

*350. The Briand Programme.*--June 30, 1910, the Briand ministry brought forward a plan which was intended as an alternative to the proposals of the Universal Suffrage Committee. The essential features of it were: (1) a return to scrutin de liste, with the department as the electoral area, save that a department entitled to more than fifteen deputies should, for electoral purposes, be divided, and one entitled to fewer than four should be united with another; (2) an allotment of one deputy to every 70,000 inhabitants, or major fraction thereof; (3) the division of the total number of electors on the register within a department by the number of deputies to which the department should be entitled, the quotient to supply the means by which to determine the number of deputies returned to the Chamber from each competing ticket; (4) the determination of this number by a division of the foregoing quotient into the average number of votes obtained by the candidates on each competing ticket, thus introducing the element of proportional representation; (5) the making up of tickets in each department from candidates nominated by one hundred electors; (6) the restriction of each elector to a vote for but a single ticket; and (7) an extension of the life of the Chamber from four to six years, one-third of the members to be chosen biennially. In the ministerial declaration accompanying the announcement of this scheme Premier Briand declared that the effect of the scrutin d'arrondissement had been to narrow the political horizon of the deputies; that the electoral area must be broadened so that the interests of the nation may be made to predominate over those of the district; and that, while in a democracy the majority must rule, the Government was favorable to proportional representation in so far as the adoption of that principle can prevent the suppression of really important minorities.

*351. The Electoral Reform Bill of 1912.*--In February, 1911, while the Briand Electoral Reform Bill was pending, there occurred a change (p. 323) of ministries. The Monis government which succeeded maintained, during its brief tenure (March-June, 1911), the sympathetic attitude which had been exhibited by its predecessor, and at the beginning of the period the Commission du Suffrage Universel laid before the Chamber the draft of a new bill whereby the details of the proportional plan were brought back into closer accord with those of the Belgian system. During the period of the Caillaux ministry (June, 1911, to January, 1912) there was continued discussion, but meager progress. The Poincare ministry, established at the beginning of 1912, declared that the nation had expressed forcefully its desire for far-reaching reform and promised that, in pursuance of the work already accomplished by the parliamentary commission, it would take steps to carry a measure of reform which should "secure a more exact representation for political parties and lend those who are elected the freedom that is required for the subordination of local interests in all cases to the national interest." During the earlier months of 1912 consideration of the subject was pressed in the Chamber and July 10 the whole of the Government's Electoral Reform Bill was adopted by a vote of 339 to 217. At the date of writing (October, 1912) the measure is pending in the Senate. The bill as passed in the Chamber comprises essentially the Briand proposals of 1910. Through the revival of scrutin de liste, with a large department or a group of small ones as the electoral area, and with the device of representation of minorities added, (p. 324) the measure, in the event of its probable final enactment, will largely transform the conditions under which the parliamentary elections of to-day are conducted.