The Right does not seem to understand its business very
well. It wants to get the Municipalities into its own hands, and so diminish the power of universal suffrage, but does not quite see how. So it has proposed a Bill under which, in the large towns, the municipal councillors will vote the Budget, but the mayor will be appointed by the Government. In the Communes, however, councillors and mayors will both be elected, but when the municipal budget comes to be voted, the councillors will be joined and swamped by the citiiens paying the heaviest taxes. That is a very poor device, defeated even in England by the highway boards, for in France the rich and therefore unpopular citizens will not like to be pointed out name by name as the men who without mandat still oppose all popular schemes. They will be afraid of their position in the next revolution, and not being bound to attend, will stay away.
