body of any intelligence expected to see a Chamber in which the Right and the the Extreme Left would be considerably strengthened, and in which the moderate Republicans, even if they retained a majority, would have great difficulty in carry ing on the government; but no one, either on the one side or the other, imagined that the Right would number two hundred and three members, the Radical and Extreme Left one hundred and eighty, and the Moderate Left only two hundred and one. This division into Moderate and Radical Republicans does not of course rest on any very accurate classification: a deputy whom we count to-day among the Radicals may astonish everybody by his mod eration, while a deputy who passes for a Moderate may vote habitually with the Radicals; but speaking generally, it may safely be said that a Moderate govern mental majority will be almost impossible, on account of the presence in the Chamber of so large a number of representatives of the most advanced ideas.

fluenced by the great currents of popular feeling, while it eludes the individual action of the professed politician. There is some truth in these considerations; and I am convinced that under the old method we should, by virtue of the ground already gained and by the force of habit, have had a much larger number of the late majority re-elected; but this is no reason for regretting the abolition of the method. The scrutin de liste is certainly extremely impressionable; it is especially liable to be acted upon by the great waves of political opinion; but for that very reason it affords us the most valuable indications, if only we have the sense to profit by them. Had the country been satisfied with the policy pursued by the Chamber, and with the state of things which it brought about, it would have voted with enthusiasm for the old majority. It was not satisfied, and it showed its dissatisfaction perhaps in a somewhat exaggerated manner; but the dissatisfaction was real. To lay the blame of the defeat on the scrutin de liste is to lay the blame of the fever on the thermometer which registers its intensity.

I regard as external and secondary causes the substitution of the scrutin de liste for the scrutin d'arrondissement, the fall of the Ferry ministry, and the conduct of the Brisson ministry from the time it came into office down to the day of the elections.

A good many people have supposed that the introduction of the scrutin de liste was the chief or the only cause of the success of the opposition under which term I include the Right and the Extreme Left. The Republican party was accustomed to the scrutin d arrondissement; it was or ganized with a view to that method of voting; every deputy had concentrated all his efforts on his own arrondissement. The Republican lists, made up as they were of deputies of the different arrondissements, had to compete with lists constructed expressly with a view to the scrutin de liste - that is to say, composed not of local but of departmental notabilities. It may be added that the scrutin de liste is apt to be much more violently in

The fall of the Ferry Cabinet also con. tributed to the disorganization of the Republican party. M. Ferry's majority, instead of holding together, as it might have done if it had appeared before the constituencies as the ministerial party, fell quite to pieces, and had not even the

ize a common course of action. A very few of the Opportunist candidates had the courage of their opinions, and refused to renounce their old leader; the greater part of them took an apologetic attitude, and stood before the country in the guise of penitents who promise to do better in future, and at the same time try to shift the blame of their mistakes on to somebody else's shoulders. Many of them went so far as to modify their views, and attached themselves to the Radicals of the Brisson-Floquet group in order to improve their chances. In Paris the plan has been successful in the case of some two or three of them; but in the provinces their abject demeanor has done them nothing but harm. The Opportu nists had in the first instance projected a collective manifesto, and appointed a committee to draw it up; but they failed to come to any agreement, since some were for making advances to the Radicals and others to the Left Centre. The end of it was that M. Tolain, on his own sole responsibility, drew up a manifesto and

of those who promise financial security and the protection of the agricultural interest; but in addition to this, there are other causes less general in their character, which nevertheless are serious enough, since there seems little likelihood of any remedy being found for them. To a certain extent the Tonquin expedition must be classed among the sources of popular discontent; but this is not nearly so much the case as might perhaps be imagined. Of course a good deal was said about it, especially at the outset; it made a good weapon against the Opportunists, and attempts were made to work upon the feelings of the public by depicting the sufferings of our soldiers, our fleet, our garrisons in the delta; but for all that, the Tonquin question had very little effect on the elections. It may have given the Radicals some ten or fifteen seats, but there is an end of it. The number of communes which suffered severely by the expedition was very small; the idea of giving up a conquest, however distant, can never be a popular one; and Tonquin is so out of the way that no one realizes the sacrifices it costs or the sufferings it entails.

The policy of the late Chamber with regard to religion, education, and the army had very much greater weight with the electors. By a reasonable mixture of firmness and gentleness the republic might easily have secured the neutrality of the higher clergy and something very like the sympathy of the lower. It preferred an indecisive policy, at once weak and unfriendly a policy of petty annoyance, which irritated without terrifying, and which the Clericals represented as persecution. The clergy, thus alienated, threw themselves in a body into an open agitation on behalf of the Conservative candidates, while men of moderate opinions, who by no means belonged to the ranks of the Clericals, but who valued religious liberty, were driven in large numbers in the same direction. The persistent threat held out by certain Republicans to destroy the Church, either by a hypocritical fulfilment of the Concordat or by the forcible separation of Church and State, has been skilfully used by their adversaries amongst the peasantry, who dread nothing so much as having to pay their cure themselves. The government was so well aware of this fact that in some of the departments the catechism was ordered to be recited in the schools during the last week before the elections, though

only two months earlier the teachers had been strictly forbidden to use it. This childish stratagem had, as might have been expected, no great success.

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It may at first sight seem surprising that the laws for primary instruction should have injured the credit of the Republican party. The work it has done for the schools has been its best title to honor. But admirable as the work may have been on the whole, it has had many defects. The large sums spent in building have burdened many of the communes with debt, and the increase of local rates has not been made up for by the advantage of free education, for, as a peasant put it, “I used to pay for my own son; now for everybody." In some places, even, the parents feel insulted by a gratuity which reduces them to the level of paupers. The State, by providing free education for everybody, and not only for those who claim it, has seriously diminished its revenues, and has deprived the teachers of the very necessary addition to their salaries afforded by the capitation fee. Compulsory education has given rise to other grievances. Compulsion was a good thing in itself; but instead of being applied in a simple and practical way, by giving the school boards the right to summon and punish parents who of set purpose were providing no education for their children, it was surrounded by a multitude of petty and vexatious details; the parents were required to make a dec laration every year, with the risk of having their names published if they forgot; while children who did not attend the public schools were obliged to undergo a pretty severe annual examination, thus affording the tyrants of the village a fine opportunity of annoyance. It is not easy to realize the variety of quarrels and difficulties of all sorts which have sprung out of this system of compulsory education.

The military recruitment law, which imposes an equal term of three years' service on every one alike, has not yet come into operation, as it has not passed the Senate; but the mere passing of the bill by the Lower Chamber has been enough to rouse the indignation of the peasantry. The deputies imagined that these people would be delighted to see the son of the bourgeois obliged to serve as long as themselves, whereas in reality they care nothing at all about it; while they are furious at finding that they are all to be compelled to serve the full three years, in place of the present system, by

which half the contingent drawn by lot serves only ten months, and the other half forty months. As a matter of fact, this law, so far from reducing our military ex penditure, will greatly increase it. The only thing it is good for is to satisfy the cravings of that levelling instinct which is supposed to exist in the heart of the common people.

Now this levelling instinct is only to be found amongst a section of the town population, and not among the country folk at all. The peasant is no leveller; he takes it as a matter of course that the great landowner has his privileges, and he certainly is not disposed to surrender any of his own advantages for the pleasure of seeing his betters subjected to the same inconvenience. The Republican majority in the last Chamber thought to insure its re-election by carrying meas ures intended to flatter democratic prejudices and the desire of equality. Its measures flattered nobody except the working classes in the towns, who were sure to vote for the Republicans in any case, and even for the advanced Republi. cans; and they simply disgusted and drove into the ranks of the reactionaries those country electors whose support was more precarious and more necessary to the Republic. The Moderates, who should have aimed at securing for the republic the conservative masses of the country, who alone can form the solid basis of the State, thought of nothing but conciliating the Radicals, who were certain never to vote for them.

It may be observed that I have not mentioned amongst the causes of the reactionary success the wish to have done with the republic and to revert to monarchy. The truth is, that the elections of last October were not monarchical elections at all. This was proved by the ballots of the 18th, which showed a revulsion in favor of the Republicans, arising simply from the fear lest the reactionary movement should prove strong enough to endanger the Republic. Setting aside a certain number of party leaders and politicians, it may be said that there is no monarchical opinion in France at all. On the other hand, it may be said with equal truth that there is no Republican opinion either in this sense, that the mass of the people wishes for nothing but to be fairly governed, to carry on its own affairs, and not to have a revolution. Yet I think, nevertheless, that there are more people sincerely attached to the Republican principle than there are people attached to

the monarchical principle; and besides this, it is much easier for the republic to put up with this indifference as to the form of government than it could possibly be for the monarchy; and again, as the republic is actually in possession, it car. ries with it the good wishes of all those who dread nothing so much as a revolu tion. The Conservatives are perfectly aware of this; they have nowhere declared themselves in favor of destroying the republic and restoring either the kingdom or the empire; they have made no demand for a revision of the Constitution in the monarchical interest; they have contented themselves with demanding sound finance, the protection of agriculture, religious liberty, and the relinquishment of the colonial policy. As the result of this prudent and reasonable course, they have been able to put forward in every department a Conservative list calculated to receive the combined support of Royalists, Imperialists, and the whole body of Conservatives indifferent to the form of government. The Republicans, meanwhile, were splitting into two or even three distinct parties, each abusing and slandering the other, to the great advantage of the Conservatives. The election may be said to have been just a repetition of that night of the 31st of March when M. Ferry fell. The Moderate Left has fallen a victim to the combined attack of the Right and the Extreme Left, and to the weakness of its own members.

Having thus reviewed the causes, material, economic, and moral, which have contributed to decide the late elections, we may now ask ourselves what conjecture may be hazarded as to the political future in store for us in 1886. The immediate future is easy enough to foresee. Unless M. Grévy should be incapacitated by illness from retaining his post, he will be re-elected in December. The Brisson ministry may also remain in office, or be superseded by another, which will be pretty much as heterogeneous. The real question is not the immediate future of the next two months, during which no body will do anything, in order that New Year's day may go off quietly, and out of respect for what somebody calls the Truce of Comfits. The question that concerns us is, what is to happen after the first of February?

The Chamber of Deputies may be analyzed as follows: two hundred and three Conservatives, of whom about fifty are avowed Bonapartists, about a hundred are Royalists more or less devoted, and about