TOPICS OF THE DAY.
SOVEREIGN ASSEMBLIES. THIS Sovereign Assembly in France is not at present doing well. It is the offspring of a time of emotion, and bears strong traces of the excitement in the midst of which it was born. At any moment it may come into direct conflict with the only Government in which it seems to place any confi- dence. It is the child of misfortune and humiliation ; and unfortunately France does not seem to have gained dignity, as dignity is sometimes gained, through misfortune and humilia- tion. The Right will hardly suffer the Left to speak ; and the Left can hardly speak without using expressions which are virtually insults to the Government and the Right. M. Thiers has had to strain his personal influence to change the determination of the Assembly to go to Fontainebleau, and to persuade it to go to Versailles,—as a sort of half-way house, no doubt, to Paris ; and the dread and hatred of Paris which M. Thiers had to use his utmost influence even par- tially to overcome, will, no doubt, soon burst out again on some more grave and fundamental question. The Paris deputies do their best to aggravate this dread and hatred by the violence of their language, and everything seems to indicate that that Sovereignty of the Assembly, on which M. Thiers so emphatically insists, will prove to be a sovereignty over everything in France but itself. Self-restraint has not, hitherto at least, marked in any degree the deliberations of the new Assembly. Sometimes the President rings his bell in vain till he nearly faints with the exertion to restore order, and there is every reason to fear that M. Thiers will prove that he has undertaken to control upwards of seven hundred of the most unruly members of which even St. James had had any experience, when he positively asserted that "the tongue tan no man tame." When one hears such an Assembly as this declared "Sovereign," it is impossible not to think of the mischief which may result from a headstrong Sovereign Assembly without any external check upon it, and impossible not to consider the sort of check which would be most desirable, which would interfere as little as possible with the 'Sovereignty of the Assembly, i.e., with the concentration of authority—which is always a distinct advantage—and yet save it from the worst consequences of its own impulsive errors.
Even the most radical of our own politicians seem to believe in the value of a second elective Chamber, to correct the errors and scotch the wheels, as it were, of the principal engine of Government, whenever it appears to be rushing down an incline at too fearful a rate. But we confess this seems to us a most redundant and inconvenient bit of machinery. Either, if elected by the same classes as the Lower and principal House, it would be a mere duplicate of it, and yet be likely to feel the utmost jealousy of it,—in which case we should have an intolerably cumbersome and wasteful machinery to no purpose ;—or if it were elected by a more select' constituency, we should experience almost all the difficulties which the colonies find in the frequent disagree- ments between the Colonial Assembly and the Colonial Council, and soon have a cry for a new reform bill of the Upper House which would make it a duplicate of the Lower. We are tolerably well persuaded that if ever our House of Lords is abolished, it will not be succeeded by a second Assembly elected by the people, for there is no room amongst us for such an Assembly as the Senate in the United States, our Counties being far too municipal and too little trained to distinct political action of their own, to be given an equal weight in any Assembly which should have co-ordinate powers with the House of Commons. Still less would such a plan answer for France. If the old provinces or the more modern departments were each to elect an equal number of deputies for a French Upper House, there would not only be both a delay and redundancy in the machinery of legislation, such as the French specially abhor, but there would be a real danger of dead-locks,—of all events the most vexations and exciting to a swift-minded Southern people, and the most likely to end in revolution. Anglo-Saxons are capable of enduring dead-locks quietly. But to a French Republic they would be political irritants of the most dangerous order. Under a Republic, where the people should feel that they really hold the power in their own hands, you cannot afford to impose the sort of conspicuous and ostentatious restraints which an imperial constitution, octroyed by the master of a hundred legions, may impose. No nation feels 'the logic of facts,' as the ex-Emperor used to call it, so keenly as the French. We English rather like practical anomalies, and see traces of a yoke which no longer galls us, with satisfaction. But the French would almost prefer the real yoke to enduring the traces of it when the excuse has disappeared. They bear restraint less im- patiently from an emperor who has struck a coup d'itea than they do from the creations of their own theoretic ingenuity.. Their reason is not insulted in the one case ; it is in the- other.
A better and less cumbersome check on hasty legislation' than any which could be obtained from a second popularly- elected Assembly, might perhaps be gained by a small Upper- House, elected annually by the Lower and virtually sovereign. House itself,—the choice not being of course restricted, to its own members, but not excluding them. Our House- of Commons would elect, we imagine, a very much. better revising assembly than the House of Lords actually proves itself to be, and the annual election would be guarantee against any such real divergence of feeling as now- frequently leads to a dead-lock on questions of principle not o1 the first order of importance. The revision of a bill by such a Council would be a reality ; and its rejection even,—whicht could not be prolonged beyond the year by the obstinacy of the Council,—in cases of great importance, where the nation evidently wished for an opportunity of reconsideration, would be pretty certain. But here, again, though it is far from, impossible that such an expedient might suit an Anglo-Saxon. nation, and would, we think, almost certainly snit it better - than a nominated second chamber, there is reason to think that it would not suit the French, who are very impatient, of self-imposed restraints of the mechanical order,—restraints. not accompanied by the use and even display of personal. influence. Now, first, the Speaker or President of a French. Assembly might certainly be invested with far higher power- than M. Grevy seems to possess. The Assembly would feel that- his dignity was bound up with its own, and would certainly find a satisfaction in investing him with the power oEf fine and imprisonment,—or better, perhaps, to save French. honour, imprisonment which would indirectly involve a heavy- fine (as happens, we believe, in case of the imprisonment of a. member by order of our own Speaker). But that only applies,.. of course, to the internal order of the French Assembly, and suggests no remedy for its impulsive errors. If the Assemblk is to be really and wholly sovereign without any externall limit to its power,—an admirable arrangement as regards the- speed and strength of its legislative power,—it should be- enacted that the president of the ministry, (whom we call the- prime minister), should have a temporary veto on its legisla- tion ; and further, if that veto be overruled after reconsidera- tion by the Assembly, should hold in his hands the power of-' dissolution and appealing to the country. It would be intoler- able that the prime minister of a republic should have less power- in this respect than the prime minister of a constitutional monarchy who always holds this check upon the caprices of Parliament. We would not suggest the translation of any of the- American restraints on the power of- Congress to France,. because we are persuaded that Presidents elected for a term of years, and the requirement of two-thirds votes for over-ruling a President's veto, are expedients of the kind which would ha- more likely to produce effervescence and revolution in Franca- than to allay excitement. But it would not be so if you gave- the chief of the administration the formal right of first,. deliberately and officially vetoing legislation,—with, of course,. a formal explanation of his reasons for doing so,—and then, in case the Assembly refused to admit his veto, of appealing to the country against its decision. Provisions like these are- in clear and obvious harmony with the spirit of a republic.. They do not put the fret of what we may call inanimate- mechanical restraints on the will of the popular Assembly,. but simply invest with a new dignity and authority the. chosen chief of the popular Assembly. And such provisions,. therefore, would carry real authority with them, and give a popular prime minister a vast restraining power over the- whims of a really popular, though somewhat capricious an& impulsive body. We feel sure that without investing the- chief of the Republic with some power of this kind, the Re- public in France cannot long survive. The trials to which it is now exposed will lead either to the adoption of some such Constitutional expedient, or to a monarchical restoration. The former course would, to our minds, be not only the better solution of the two, but also the solution most likely to issue. in a stable equilibrium, and would avoid that melancholy circles of Revolution and reaction into which France tends to drift..
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