The Governments of Europe

by Frederic Austin Ogg

Of the bureaus into which, at the beginning of each month, the members of each chamber are divided, there are, as has been said, eleven in the Deputies; in the Senate there are nine. When a bill is introduced it is referred first of all to these bureaus, each of which designates one or more commissioners, who, acting together as a committee, are expected to make a careful examination of the measure. The report of this committee is printed and distributed, whereupon general discussion begins in the chamber. Every measure must pass two readings in each chamber, with an interval of five days, unless otherwise ordered by a majority vote. A member wishing to take part in the debate indicates his desire by inscribing his name on lists kept by the secretaries. On the motion of any member, the closure may be applied and a vote ordered. The division may be taken by a show of hands, by rising, or by a ballot in which a white voting paper denotes an affirmative, and a blue one a negative, vote. Voting by proxy, long permitted, has been recently abolished. No decision is valid unless an absolute majority of the members (151 in the Senate and 299 in the Deputies) has participated in the vote. In the upper branch proceedings are apt to be slow and dignified; in the lower they are more animated, and not infrequently tempestuous. The duty of keeping order at the sittings falls to the president. In aggravated cases he is empowered, with the consent of a majority of the chamber, to administer a reprimand carrying with it temporary exclusion from the sessions.[488]

355. Powers and Functions: the National Assembly.—Speaking broadly, the functions of the French chambers are three-fold—constituent, elective, and legislative. The first two are required to be exercised by the two houses conjointly. By the constitutional law of February 25, 1875, there is provided the only means whereby the constitution of the Republic may be amended. "The chambers," it is stipulated, "shall have the right by separate resolutions, taken in each by an absolute majority of votes, either upon their own initiative or upon the request of the President of the Republic, to declare a revision of the constitutional laws necessary. After each of the two chambers shall have come to this decision, they shall meet together in National Assembly to proceed with the revision. The acts affecting revision of the constitutional laws, in whole or in part, shall be passed by an absolute majority of the members composing the National Assembly."[489] The power of constitutional amendment is therefore vested absolutely in the parliamentary chambers, under the requirement simply that it be exercised in joint session. The only limitation that has been imposed on parliamentary omnipotence in this direction is a clause adopted in an amendment of August 13, 1884, to the effect that "the republican form of government shall not be made the subject of a proposed revision."[490] As in the British system, constituent and legislative powers are lodged in the same body of men; and not merely the powers of constitution-making, but the exclusive right to pronounce upon the constitutionality or unconstitutionally of legislation. The principal difference is that, whereas the British Parliament exercises the sum total of its powers in an unvarying manner, the French, when acting in its constituent capacity, follows a specially designed procedure.

One other function the two chambers sitting conjointly possess, i.e., that of electing the President of the Republic. Under normal conditions, the chambers are called together in National Assembly to choose a President one month or more before the expiration of the seven-year presidential term. In the event of vacancy by death, by resignation, or by reason of any other unanticipated circumstance, the meeting of the Assembly takes place forthwith, without summons.[491] Election is by ballot, and by absolute majority of the members. All meetings of the National Assembly are held, not in Paris, but in the old royal palace at Versailles, which indeed was the sole seat of the present republican government until 1879. No elective session may exceed in length the five months allotted to an ordinary legislative session.

356. Legislation and Special Powers.—The two chambers possess concurrent powers in all that pertains to the initiation, the enactment, and the amending of laws, save that money bills must be introduced in and passed by the Chamber of Deputies before being considered in the upper branch. Except for this limitation, measures may be presented in either house, by the ministers in the name of the President, or by private members. The vast fabric of Napoleonic law which has survived to the present day in France has narrowed perceptibly the range of legislative activity under the Republic. During the first generation after 1871 few great statutes were enacted, save those of a constitutional character. In our own day, however, the phenomenal expansion of social and industrial legislation, which has been a striking feature of the public life of most European nations, has imparted a new vigor and productiveness to French parliamentary activity.

Each of the chambers possesses certain functions peculiar to itself. Aside from the initiation of money bills, the principal such function of the Deputies is the bringing of charges of impeachment against the President or ministers. The Senate possesses the exclusive power to try cases of impeachment. It is given the right to assent or to withhold its assent when the President proposes to dissolve the Chamber of Deputies before the expiration of its term. And by decree of the President, issued in the Council of Ministers, it may be constituted a court of justice to try any person accused of attempts upon the safety of the state.[492]

II. Political Parties since 1871

357. Republicans and Conservatives.—In its larger aspects the alignment of political parties in France to-day dates from the middle of the nineteenth century. In the National Assembly of 1848—the first representative body elected in France by direct universal suffrage—the line was sharply drawn between the republicans of the Left, who wished to maintain the Republic and with it a liberal measure of democracy, and the reactionaries of the Right, who began by insisting upon a restoration of clerical privilege and bourgeois rule and ended, in the days of the Legislative Assembly, by clamoring for a restoration of monarchy itself. After the coup d'état of 1851 both groups were silenced, though even in the politically stagnant era of the early Empire they did not lose altogether their identity. With the revival, however, after 1860, of a vigorous political life the two worked together, and with success, to accomplish the overthrow of the personal government of Napoleon III. Upon the collapse of the Empire in 1870 the original cleavage reappeared. The National Assembly elected in 1871 was divided broadly into Republicans and Conservatives (which name gradually replaced that of Reactionaries), and during the five years covered by the life of this extremely important body these two great groups struggled continuously over the supreme question of the day, i.e., the style of government which should be adopted permanently for France. Each of the groups comprised a variety of elements. To the Republicans belonged the Radical Extreme Left of Gambetta, the Left of Grévy, Freycînct, and Loubet, and the Centre Left of Thiers and Jules Simon. To the Conservatives belonged the Legitimate Extreme Right, an Orleanist Centre Right, and, eventually, the Imperialists. Following the definite establishment, in 1875, of the republican constitution, the lines by which these various elements had been marked off grew less distinct, and Republicans and Conservatives acquired in each case a more homogeneous character.

358. Rise of the Radicals.—After the first election under the new constitution—that of 1876—the Senate remained in the control of the Conservatives, but the Chamber of Deputies was found to contain a Republican majority of more than two to one. From that day until the present the Republican ascendancy in the lower house has been maintained uninterruptedly; and since 1882 there has been likewise always a Republican majority in the Senate. It is to be observed, of course, that Republican control in both chambers has meant regularly not the absolute dominance of a single compact party group, but the preponderance of a coalition of two or more groups broadly to be described as "republican." During the early eighties there sprang up a flourishing group which, reviving the original programme of Gambetta, assumed the name Radical, and in the elections of 1885 this group acquired such a quota of seats in the Chamber (150) as to render it impossible for the Republicans alone to retain control. Thereafter there were three principal party groups—the Conservatives and the two republican groups, the Republicans proper and the Radicals. No one of the three being sufficiently strong to obtain a majority which would enable it to rule alone, the politics of a long succession of years turned upon the adoption of one or the other of two lines of tactics—the coalition of the two republican divisions to the end that they might rule as against a Conservative minority (the so-called policy of "republican concentration"), and the allying of one of these groups with the Right against the other Republican group (spoken of commonly as a "pacification"). The first "concentration" ministry was that of Brisson, formed in March, 1885; the first "pacification" ministry was that of Rouvier, formed in 1887. In the middle of the nineties some attempts were made to create and maintain homogeneous ministries. The Bourgeois ministry of 1895-1896 was composed entirely of Radicals and the Méline ministry of 1896-1898 of Moderate Republicans. But at the elections of 1898 the Republican position in the Chamber broke down and it was necessary to return, with the Dupuy ministry, to the policy of concentration.

Meanwhile, in the early nineties, from the Conservative and Republican extremes respectively had been detached two new party groups. From the ranks of the Conservatives had sprung a body of Catholics who, under papal injunction, had declared their purpose to rally to the support of the Republicans; whence they acquired the designation of the "Ralliés." And from the Radical party had broken off a body of socialists of such consequence that in the elections of 1893 it succeeded in carrying fifty seats.

359. The Bloc.—A new era in the history of French political parties was marked by the elections of May, 1898. Some 250 seats, and with them the effectual control of the Chamber, were acquired by the Radicals, the Socialists, and an intermediary group of Radical-Socialists. The Moderate Republicans, to whom had been given recently the name of Progressives, were reduced to 200; while the Right retained but 100. The Socialists alone polled nearly twenty per cent of the total popular vote. The remarkable agitation by which the Dreyfus affair was attended had the effect of consolidating further the parties of the Left, and the bloc which resulted not only has subsisted steadily from that day to the present but has controlled very largely the policies of the government. The first conspicuous leader and spokesman of the coalition was Waldeck-Rousseau, premier from 1899 to 1902, and its first great achievement was the separation of church and state, accomplished through the means of the Law of Associations of July 1, 1901, the abrogation of the Concordat, December 9, 1905, and the law of January 2, 1907, restricting further the privileges of the Roman Catholic Church in France. A socialist now appeared for the first time in the cabinet. At the elections of April, 1902, the policies of the Government were vindicated by the return of 321 avowed "ministerialists" and of but 268 representatives of the opposition.