that not all the food thus elaborated reaches human eaters after all; whilst next to none of it reaches the class for whom specially we here concern ourselves. Secondly, that so to argue is like telling a rich man to pay money in travelling fare, in order to go fifty miles round. instead of five miles across; which proceeding, though on various accounts it may be worth the rich man's while, does not help the poor man to reach his destination at all, but, on the contrary, condemns him to stay where he is.

The whole matter discussed in this paper is a practical and perhaps a very prosy one. Yet, for those who believe in health as one of the chiefest props both of virtue and of gladness, the putting of as stout a staff of health in the hand of the poor man as may be, seems no trifling object to aim at. Were the children of the English poor a healthier set of little mortals than those of others, we might let their food alone. But observation refutes the supposition. Sanitary arrangements in general are better in English cities than elsewhere, yet the poor of our alleys are sicklier than those of cities. where, with even less regard paid to the purification of air and water, richer breads are in common use.

Argument alone will not settle a practical point of this kind. There must be an array of facts derived from persevering and intelligent experiment, and it is maintained that as yet the bread experiment has not been, in England, sufficiently tried.

I have refrained from giving any of the detailed chemical analyses of wheat; and this on two accounts. The results of analysis are very variously given. Added to which, being myself no chemist, my selection of an authority would be without significance. One point seems, nevertheless, beyond question. The whole meal of the wheat contains 119 grains in the pound of the mineral matters valuable as nourishment, while a pound of white flour contains only 49 grains. The testimony of chemical analysis must, however, not be taken by itself, apart from the observed physiological results in the cases of populations respectively fed on bread of this kind, or of that.

If the personal testimony of a social unit' be of any value. whatever, I may say that I find wheat-meal bread both wholesome and palatable, and that since I have taken it I find it possible comfortably to dispense with meat more than once in the day. I began the use of the bread on the mere ground of giving a struggling reform fair personal trial; and I continue it on grounds of acquired preference.

The present organised attempt at bread-reformation must, like all other agitation movements, prove its fitness to meet an existing requirement, by survival until its task be completed. If rapid growth be any test of vigour and vitality, we may augur well for the future. of its cause; for, one year ago it had no existence except in the consciousness and conscience of Miss Yates and a few of her friends;

whereas now it is a busy and recognised body of activity, having secured the adherence of numerous leading millers and bakers, who are willing to forward its aim by grinding the meal and by selling the bread it recommends.

A writer in the Corn Trade Journal remarks that it was not by mere agitation, by conferences and article-writing, that white bread obtained its firm footing in the public favour, but that commercial enterprise mainly effected its adoption; and he suggests that to the same agency the reformers should look for the general introduction of the rival bread. This may be true enough; yet, since the office of the league is purely uncommercial, it devolves upon all who sympathise with its object to endeavour, by use of influence and example, to create that demand which shall direct trade interests into the desired channel.

L. S. BEVINGTON.

SCRUTIN DE LISTE AND SCRUTIN

D'ARRONDISSEMENT.

I.

THE tendency of a democratical community,' says Prévost-Paradol, in his book La France Nouvelle, 'is to grant, sooner or later, the right of suffrage to every citizen of which it is composed; but this inevitable extension of the right of suffrage may be brought about wisely and slowly, and follow the progress of lights, or, on the contrary, it may be sudden and urged forward in its course by the shock of revolutions.' The second case has been ours. Suppose an ideal republic, such as Plato's, after a long series of instruction and compulsory military service had made of every citizen a man conscious of his right and, what is far more difficult, conscious of his duties, it is quite certain that universal suffrage would have been the crowning of the democratic edifice. But it is well known that since the most remote period pure reason has never been the law that governs nations. We have begun by what ought logically to have been the end-by universal suffrage. Compulsory military service has only been established much later; and at this present time the last remains of the monarchical party are still struggling at the Senate to prevent primary instruction being compulsory for our children.

It is unnecessary to say that this observation is simply an historical criticism, and that if we note it here, it is in order better to fix in the minds of certain foreigners a fact of which they still sometimes do not appear to be cognisant. This most stubborn fact is the following one be the origin of universal suffrage as it may-in our opinion, the history of the second empire proves obviously that it was proclaimed prematurely-universal suffrage is to-day as indestructible as it formerly was inevitable, and this indestructibility is easily explained.

Prévost-Paradol, whom we are pleased to cite here, for he has several times had the honour of explaining our modern politics

See M. Gambetta's speeches, November 11, 1875, and May 16, 1881; Scrutin d'Arrondissement et Scrutin de Liste, a pamphlet (Paris, Librairie Nouvelle, 1881); Rétablissement du Scrutin de Liste, a pamphlet by the author (Paris, Charpentier, Mai 1880).

in English papers-Prévost-Paradol has said that a community may know the greatest extremes of anarchy and of servitude, throw down thrones and raise them up again to throw them down once more, may effect abrupt revolutions in costume and language, may affect by turns republican authority and the servile indolence of the lower empire; but that you would see a stream flow back towards its source sooner than a democratic community return to aristocracy. Indeed, if all men are not sensible to the dear charm of liberty, and if liberty is not an absolute requirement for a great number of beings, it is not so with equality. Its delights are comprehensible to the feeblest mind, and once enjoyed are impossible to be renounced.

Now, for a democratical community such as the Revolution has constituted in France, political equality consists solely and entirely in the exercise of the right of voting. It is because Louis Napoleon announced the complete re-establishment of universal suffrage, which had been mutilated by l'Assemblée Législative in May 1850, that he was able, on the 2nd of December, 1851, to proclaim the criminal dietatorship which at last cost us Alsace and Lorraine, and to proclaim it without provoking a general insurrection. An impartial historian will say likewise that the fear of seeing the Assemblée Nationale lay hands upon the right of vote was not foreign to the movement of the Commune.

The philosophical formula of universal suffrage is the same as the formula of our democracy. It is comprised in the following article of the famous Declaration of the Rights of Man: Each citizen has an equal right to contribute to the formation of the law and to the nomination of those who exercise it.' Is it possible to imagine a political principle more just and more noble?

But it does not suffice to inscribe on the frontispiece of the laws of a great nation the noblest and most just principle. The true and proper method of applying it must also be determined, for it is always upon the method of application of a principle that its practical utility depends, and to have good matter to start from is by no means all. Every one knows that with the same grape a delicious wine, a detestable wine, or an ordinary wine may be made, according to the process employed.

We are called upon to speak here of the methods of applying universal suffrage. Many people imagine, and not only in foreign countries but in France itself, and even within the precincts of the Chambre des Députés, that the question of scrutin de liste and scrutin d'arrondissement is a pure question of form, that the principle of universal suffrage is not really at stake, and that the contest was just about as important as a match between two horses, one of which bore M. Grévy's colours, the other those of M. Gambetta. Nothing can be more inexact than this appreciation. In reality, the laws which determine the manner of giving and collecting suffrage

are as essential for the future of a community as the laws themselves which recognise and establish voting; and this is what I shall now endeavour to prove.

II.

There exist, as is well known, two principal ways of consulting public opinion by means of universal suffrage: scrutin de liste and scrutin d'arrondissement. Let us commence by briefly giving their construction and their history.

1. Scrutin de Liste.-France having been divided into departments by the Assemblée Nationale of 1789, as many times as a department contains a given number of thousands of inhabitants (say, for instance, 70,000) so many deputies does it return. Thus in a department containing 420,000 inhabitants each voter writes on his voting-paper the names of six candidates, that is, the quotient of 420,000 by 70,000. The great majority of the republicans have always considered the scrutin de liste the most logical mode of universal suffrage. After the revolutions of the 24th of February, 1848, and of the 4th of September, 1870, the second and the third republics proclaimed the scrutin de liste as the truest expression of universal suffrage.

2. Scrutin d'Arrondissement or Scrutin Uninominal.-Each department being divided into administrative districts (arrondissements), each district names one deputy, and in consequence each elector can only write down one name on his voting-paper. When the population of a district is above one hundred thousand it returns another deputy per hundred thousand inhabitants or per fraction of a hundred thousand. For this purpose the districts are divided by law into circonscriptions. The scrutin uninominal was established by Louis Napoleon after his coup d'état of the 2nd of December. Abolished under the National Defence Government, it was re-established by the Assembly of Versailles, on the 24th of November, 1875. Its supporters are not precisely the sincere friends of democracy and liberty, that is evident.

Which of these two methods of voting preserves the morality of universal suffrage with the most jealous care, which draws from it the most politic, the most intelligent, and the freest national representation? for we are endeavouring to obtain these two desiderata.

First of all, one particular point must be brought into full light: the voting of laws by no means constitutes the whole of the mission which, according to the spirit of our constitution of the 24th of February, is incumbent on the assembly which issues from general suffrage; and indeed our institution does not differ therein from the institutions of other parliamentary countries. The assembly which