THE NINETY YEARS' AGONY OF FRANCE. 



201 



conservatism is the preponderance of the aristo- 

 cratic, or rather plutocratic, element in the House 

 of Commons. But at all events the House of 

 Lords furnishes no model to any country which 

 has not an hereditary and territorial aristocracy, 

 or a privileged order of some kind, having its 

 base, and presenting a fulcrum of resistance, out- 

 side the body of the nation. If both assemblies 

 emanate from the nation, whatever diversities 

 there may be in the mode of their election, and 

 even if the Senate be not directly elected, but 

 nominated by a government itself the offspring 

 of election, the attempt to make the national 

 sovereignty check and restrain itself by acting 

 through two organs instead of one, and confront- 

 ing its own impulses with its own cooler wisdom, 

 must ultimately fail. So long as the same party 

 has a majority in both assemblies, the double 

 machinery will work smoothly, but at the same 

 time it will be ineffective. But when the party 

 which is in a majority in the popular assembly 

 is in a minority in the Senate, as soon as an 

 important question arises there will be a collision 

 between the two Houses, and the result will be a 

 dead-lock, which will last till the nation compels 

 one of the two assemblies to give way, declaring 

 thereby in effect that the national sovereignty is 

 delegated to the other. Nor is there any real ad- 

 vantage in the delay which the dead-lock causes, 

 sufficient to compensate for the violence of the 

 struggle, and the dangerous excitation of turbu- 

 lent and revolutionary passions. Such is the ex- 

 perience of the British colonies in Australia, while 

 in Canada the Senate is a cipher, and its debates 

 are not even reported. . In Italy the same party 

 was at first in the majority in both Chambers ; 

 but the other day a change took place in the pop- 

 ular Chamber, and at once there were symptoms 

 of collision. In France, the Senate at each great 

 crisis of the constitution has proved impotent or 

 useless, as the historian of parliamentary govern- 

 ment in France admits ; but it is now showing a 

 tendency, as might have been expected, to become 

 the citadel of a party, or rather a group of par- 

 ties, bent on overturning the Republic in the in- 

 terest of some form of government more favora- 

 ble to aristocracy ; and in this way it threatens 

 to prove not a nullity, but a danger of the first 

 magnitude, and an instrument of attempts, such 

 as the attempt of De Broglie, which may plunge 

 the country again into civil war. If the example 

 of the American Senate is cited in favor of a 

 second Chamber, it must be remembered that the 

 American Senate represents the Federal principle 

 as opposed to the principle of population, and 



that its authority and usefulness, whatever they 

 may be, thus depend on its connection with a 

 Federation. 



Besides, of what special elements do you wish 

 your Senate to consist ? What is to be the spe- 

 cial character of its members compared with those 

 who sit in the Lower House ? Till this is dis- 

 tinctly settled, all devices for particular modes of 

 election or appointment are devices without an 

 object; they are machines for producing some- 

 thing which itself is not determined. Do you 

 wish your Senate to consist of old men, in ac- 

 cordance with the literal meaning of the name, 

 and with the habit of primitive nations ? It will 

 represent the infirmities of old age. Do you wish 

 it to consist of the rich ? It will be the organ of 

 a class interest, odious and the object of sus- 

 picion to all the rest of the nation. Or do you 

 wish it to consist of the best and most trust- 

 worthy of your public men ? If you succeed in 

 putting these men into the Senate, you will de- 

 prive the popular Chamber of its guides and of 

 those most able to control its impulses and pas- 

 sions, and in a manner ostracize your legislative 

 wisdom. Something like this happened to Crom- 

 well when he thought to temper the fractiousness 

 of the House of Commons by restoring the Upper 

 House : to supply materials for his Upper House 

 he had to take his best men from the Lower ; the 

 lead in the Commons was broken up ; the two 

 Houses fell foul of each other; and the Parlia- 

 ment was dissolved in a storm. 



Instead of attempting to divide the sovereign- 

 ty, which is really indivisible, and to make the 

 nation perform the chimerical operation of pro- 

 ducing by election a check upon itself, attention 

 should, we venture to think, be directed, more 

 carefully and systematically than it has ever yet 

 been, to the constitution of the representative 

 assembly, to the mode and rate of its renewal, to 

 the securities for its deliberate action and for the 

 exclusion from it of mere passion and impulse, 

 to such questions as that between direct election 

 and election through local councils or other in- 

 termediate bodies, to the qualifications for the 

 franchise in the way of property, age, education, 

 or performance of national duties. It is singular, 

 for instance, that, amid all the discussions about 

 vetoes, absolute or suspensive, to be reposed in 

 kings or presidents, no one has thought of requir- 

 ing an absolute majority of the whole House for 

 the passage of an opposed measure, or of giving 

 to a minority, if it amounts to a certain propor- 

 tion of the House, a limited power of delay. 



But, of all the things borrowed by France and 



