of little merit, the reasons which decide the voters are too often more mediocre still. The candidates, indeed, make professions of their political faith. But most of these professions are mere cockades, and are no security for anything real. Local interests, what is called intérêts de clocher, decide the public voice in a small constituency. The construction of a branch railway line, opening a new high-road, the removal of a garrison, the erection of a market, the repairing of the mayoralty-house or of a church, the abating certain taxes unfavourable to the district, the augmentation of certain government grants-for such questions as these many of the elections favourable to the scrutin d'arrondissement have been carried during the last three years; and the number of elections as radically tainted with indigence of political reasons will increase in the most formidable proportion. That we must assure the representation of local interests has never been contested, and the departmental assemblies (general council, district (arrondissement) council and municipal councils) have been created for that purpose. That these interests must have their place in the Chamber of Deputies is also quite clear. But it is manifest that these questions should only occupy a second rank in the minds and thoughts of the voters. Too often under the uninominal method of voting they occupy the first rank, and the colour of the flag becomes the secondary consideration. This has been constantly observed, and it can be so accounted for: the side of local interests and personal ambitions in the midst of any group whatsoever diminishes in proportion as the numerical importance of the group increases. If you address yourself to the electors of a whole department, local passions will disappear, by the simple fact of the extent comprised, and candidates will appeal to the political opinions of the electors, and to those only. In the arrondissement the deputy places himself at the service of a few interests, a few individuals. In the department he serves an idea, a theory, a great political revindication.

But this is not all. If it is true that too great a number of suffrages are carried by the prospect of individual or local favours, it follows too often that the member thus elected by the uninominal mode of voting becomes a simple paid commissioner, a procurator supported by a small number of electors, the reverse of disinterested. To be returned he must above all make promises; and if he stops shorts at this moral bribery, and does not try a method still more detestable than that employed in the rotten boroughs of England before the reform of 1832, bribery by money and wine, we may consider ourselves lucky. Once returned these principles must be kept up in order for the candidate to be returned again; and here are shown the defects of the scrutin d'arrondissement in all their ugliness. The member is in correspondence with all those who have at all actively supported his candidature, and with many others

besides. There is not a single private individual who would hesitate to ask him to support his petition; and he tries to get a good name in every parish by a continual intervention in local affairs. He endeavours to get the whole administration into his own hands, and the sous-préfet ceases to be the representative of the central executive power and becomes the electoral agent of the member. The sous-préfet dares no longer cause the removal of a schoolmistress or a police-sergeant, propose the nomination of an assistant justice of peace, authorise the erection of a village fountain, pronounce an address at an agricultural meeting, without taking into consideration the secret desires of the member, or even without asking his advice. He it is who in the country throws the administrative machine into confusion. He it is who causes the disorganisation of ministerial committees in Paris. What becomes of the member when once invested with the legislative warrant? Look for him. He is an abonné in the antechamber of a minister's office. As each day he receives fifty letters reminding him of his unfulfilled promises, and containing new requests, he passes the day in taking measures to fulfil them by secretly petitioning all the authorities; and, by dint of rendering services and showing favours, he tries to preserve the good graces of his electors, those good graces which he has gained with so much difficulty, and which are menaced behind his back by a rival who intrigues on his side. He takes up the best part of the ministers' time and makes them disgusted with their work; he hinders the progress of serious business to sum up, he renders all administration impossible, and perverts the public conscience; for the State appears to the electors, not as the organ of right and justice, not as a guarantee of the security of the nation, but, vulgarly speaking, the dispenser of any favour through the medium of those elected by the arrondisse

ment.

Now, if my readers are already convinced that the scandalous abuses just pointed out are not at all caused by him who is elected, but are the fatal and immediate consequence of the mode of election, it will be unnecessary to show at length that the scrutin de liste will entirely do away with these abuses. A simple argument à contrario suffices to prove it. Intimidation and ruse may be employed, as under the empire and le gouvernement d'ordre moral, within a limited circle. But it is not easy to deceive and intimidate a whole department. By promises, or other means, one may succeed in corrupting three or four thousand electors; but when the number of electors rises to fifty or one hundred thousand, bribery becomes impossible. To be elected by a small arrondissement, it may suffice to be the one from whom the greatest amount of support, in private and local interest, is to be expected. But to be elected by a large department something more is required, as I have already stated, and then the Broglie's ministry, May 16.

elections take a purely political character. By the very defect of the system, the member for the arrondissement is constantly called into immediate intimacy with the electors, and must inevitably become their paid commissioner; this is the part he plays before the administrative power which he ultimately perverts. By the sole virtue of the scrutin de liste the member for the department has more liberty of action. He is obliged to show other services on his balance-sheet than those rendered to private individuals. In order to be re-elected, a member returned by the scrutin d'arrondissement must always be able to say to his electors: 'I have promised you so many places, so many functions, so many pensions, so many immunities, so many stars, so many favours, all of which I have obtained for you.' In order to be re-elected by a large political body, such as that of a department, the scrutin de liste member must only be able to say: 'You have ordered me to render the Republic strong, to enlarge the domain of public liberties, to develop instruction, to assure the maintenance of the rights of the State, to pursue with ever-renewed energy the work of reconstituting the military affairs of the nation. I have kept my promise, I have worked, I have acted, I have spoken, I have contributed towards the realisation of those conquests to which you aspire. I have done my best to further the interests of the nation."

I believe I may now with confidence ask my readers: Which side shows more interest in political questions? On which side is the greater morality? Which side contains the most serious elements of progress?

How much further might this comparison be carried! It might be shown that with the scrutin d'arrondissement the electoral contest is above all a personal one, and naturally foments the most violent hatreds, and leaves behind it, after each vote, such jealousies and wicked rancours that at last each sub-prefecture or each parish resembles a little Verona, with its Capulets and Montagues; whilst with the scrutin de liste the contest is one of principle, and directly after the battle all jealousies are allayed. It could also be shown how the scrutin d'arrondissement excludes from Parliament a whole category of citizens, because this system requires a local influence to have been previously obtained, and because the élite of the nation, who are not always very rich, dislike trying to make this conquest, which costs much money and time, and the exigencies of which are beneath their pride and self-respect. It could also be shown that in a parliament returned by scrutin d'arrondissement ministers are never sure of the concurrence of the majority but on condition of satisfying the private claims of deputies outside the House. It could also be shown that the result of this situation is a lack of independence on both sides, and that the majority, thus weakened, has the double inconvenience of not being able to support the power resolutely when all goes well, or to spur it on when it lags. It could

be shown that from day to day and by the force of circumstances the horizon of an arrondissement member is limited to the confines of his district, that he at last forgets France by dint of thinking of Carpentras or Pithiviers, that he knows no more of political matters than their relative value, that he can only appreciate legislative measures according to the exclusive interest of a few of his employers, and not for general consequences. I have heard numbers of arrondissement members accuse themselves of having voted against their conscience, in a question of the denunciation of certain commercial treaties, for instance, because, if they had voted otherwise, it would have disappointed their influential electors. . . But enough has been said. These premisses suffice to prove that the scrutin d'arrondissement is a terrible danger for the morality of the electoral body, and it leads fatally to the perversion of the administrative and parliamentary systems. To say all and leave nothing to the reader's imagination is an offence to his good sense.

III.

'But,' some will say, 'if it is really thus, how is it that the republicans of France were not absolutely unanimous in favour of the scrutin de liste in the months of May and June 1881, as they have been since 1848 ?'

To answer this question I shall be obliged to quit the serene domain of theory and to make some personal remarks. It will be, I hasten to say, with lively regret, but it is impossible to alter the truth.

A principal fact, which must be undeniably established, and which has been singularly forgotten the last six months, is that on the 13th of July last year, when M. Bardoux drew up his Bill on the reestablishment of the scrutin de liste, he acted with the perfect approbation of the President of the Republic. M. Grévy was even supposed by the public to have instigated M. Bardoux; and nothing seemed more likely, since M. Grévy voted for the scrutin de liste in 1848 and 1875. I, personally, can recall to mind that three weeks before the drawing up of the Bardoux Bill, the President of the Republic did me the great honour of praising a pamphlet I published on the scrutin de liste, and which he wished to induce me to complete by a work on compulsory voting, of which he declared himself a resolute partisan. As for M. Gambetta, he knew the text of M. Bardoux's Bill only one hour before the sitting where it was drawn up. M. Bardoux, whom I met that day as he was going to see the President of the House, asked me to accompany him as being the author of a pamphlet on the scrutin de liste; and I remember that he read his Bill to M. Gambetta only after having told him that VOL. X.-No. 55. BB

M. Grévy entirely approved it. M. Gambetta, for his part, thought the Bill an excellent one, and only advised the modification of a detail. This was made: it related to a clause by which every department called to return more than ten members was to be divided into electoral circuits. This clause was struck out, and in the course of the day M. Bardoux gave in his Bill, which was then sent to the commission d'initiative parlementaire. The majority of the Opposition was hostile to the Bill. As to the republican members, they were known to be divided; but this division is not to be wondered at. Having been returned by the scrutin d'arrondissement, they wished to keep that method to which they thought, though erroneously, they owed their great victory on the 14th of October. As for the members of the Senate, they said with one accord: "This affair only concerns the other House; we will vote the law as they send it to us.'

Less than a year afterwards the Senate threw out M. Bardoux's Bill, which had, according to republican tradition, passed the Lower House; and there is some merit in it having so passed, for certain members of the Left had been made to believe that they would not be re-elected by the scrutin de liste.

The majority of senators who rejected the scrutin de liste was composed of the monarchical minority (this is not to be wondered at, for it was asserted that the scrutin de liste would double our democratic forces), and about fifty republican senators, of which the half voted against the Bill because M. Grévy had ceased to be a partisan of it.

Why and how had M. Grévy, within the space of some months, become the adversary of a measure of which he had for forty years been a partisan? We must look for his reasons in the speech M. Waddington made before the Senate, and in M. Jules Ferry's speech at Épinal. As to the anecdotes maliciously spread about by some reactionary journalists, they are not worthy of attention. They are beneath the illustrious citizen called by Parliament to preside over the destiny of the Republic for a period of seven years. M. Grévy's true friends could never suppose him to be afraid of seeing M. Gambetta plébiscité (returned by a great number of departments) by the scrutin de liste: both President and Republic had been informed in the most positive manner that M. Gambetta would present himself as candidate for three or four departments at the utmost.

In reality what determined M. Grévy's conversion was the conviction that the scrutin de liste would bring a very strong majority of Republican Whigs (we should say in French membres de l'Union républicaine) to the Assembly, and that this majority, with M. Gambetta as leader, would be a reforming one. M. Grévy thought the moment come to create a Tory party in the Republic. By his personal influence he had decided nearly thirty Republican senators