Gambetta has, if we may trust the New York Herald,
sketched out the type of the French Constitution which he would most approve. As we have described and criticised it fully else- where, we need not here go into its details, but we may say that it is a plan much nearer to the American type of Constitution than to the English Parliamentary type, and that M. Gambetta is very much opposed to any system involving Ministerial responsibility. Such responsibility, he says, would lead to personal intrigues and strife of the most deplorable character. Its forty years' existence in France shows that it is not suited to our habits or our tempera- ment." But where is the forty years' experience of it ? Under Louis Philippe there was real Ministerial responsibility, but nothing like popular suffrage ; and under the Emperor there was popular suffrage, and no Ministerial responsibility. When has the combination been fairly tried? "No nation," her went on, "but especially none so uneasy and sensitive as Fralice, can exist in peace under the strain produced by a condition of affairs in which we may have a new President and a new policy in twenty-four hours." But how if the choice is between a new President and a new policy peacefully selected by the people mi twenty-four hours, and an attempt at revolution, successful or not, which is always possible, and in France, except under an elastic form of government, frequently probable in any twenty- four hours ? M. Gambetta's sedative for a mercurial and vol- canic Assembly is like Jim Bludsoe's expeefrent for pushing his: crazy craft faster than it would by rights go down the Mississippi, —namely, to let "a nigger squat on the safety-valve," only that M. Gambetta puts a council of eighty on his safety-valve, instead of the nigger. The remedy for volcano is not to compel Nature. to have recourse to earthquake.
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