It were hard to say that the French method of electing a president is any better or any worse than that of the United States. The President of the French Republic is elected by the majority of the votes of both Chambers. This plan does not seem to remove him further from the people than does the system of electing a president by electors, as in the United States. As human ingenuity has not yet succeeded in creating the ideal republic, wherein, according to Ouida, there would be no president, some system of election must be followed. The question is not a burning one. There is notable, however, a growing tendency in France in favor of electing the president directly by the votes of the people. The seven-years’ period for which the French president is elected is considered by many to be an excellent provision; but it loses half its excellence by reason of the fact that the president has the power to initiate laws, this and other things concurring to make his resignation a possibility, and not a remote one.
That the office of vice-president does not exist in France seems to be of no great consequence. In the history of the American Republic there have been five vice-presidents who have been called upon to step into the Presidential chair by the deaths of presidents. According to the French Constitution, in case of a Presidential vacancy, whether from death or any other cause, the two Chambers proceed immediately to the election of a president. In the interval the ministers are invested with executive power.
What I have written regarding the growing tendency to think it would be better to elect the president directly by the votes of the people, applies with a little more force to the election of senators. In France the municipalities elect the senators, as do State legislatures in this country. It is held by some who have discussed the question that it is much more in conformity with the genius of republican institutions that the people express their will directly by ballot rather than through the votes of municipal councils, as in France, or of legislatures, as in the United States. I cannot see that the difference of terms, that of French senators being nine years, and of American six, is of practical consequence. While both republics are at one as to the necessity of a second chamber, providing thus a check to hasty and unconsidered legislation, many thinkers in both countries agree that some change is necessary to make it possible for others than millionaires to be elected senators.
If I were a Frenchman and had the power, I should get every newspaper throughout the land, and every public man and influential citizen, to enter upon a crusade for the purpose of impressing upon the minds of the whole people the following extract from the Constitution of the United States:
Congress shall make no laws respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
In France, there are constantly continuous and unseemly clashes between church and state. No matter what complications may exist as results of the past, surely it would be better for all concerned to leave the churches to be sustained by the voluntary contributions of the people. In the United States churches seem to live and thrive under this system of noninterference by the state in religious matters, and voluntary support. The more than eighty thousand clergymen are provided for. In the French Republic one reads everywhere, on the walls of churches and of schools, the words “Liberté, fraternité, égalité,” while there seems to be a serious disagreement between Clericals, on the one side, and Radicals, on the other, as to the meaning of these words. To effectually put an end to this strife, the adoption of the clause I have quoted would be sufficient.
In writing thus freely of the French Republic I am free, I trust, from the spirit of the carping critic delighting in comparisons to the advantage of his own country. I appreciate the splendid literature, the brilliant art, the advanced civilization of the France of to-day. I recognize with gratitude the debt which the United States owes the gallant Gallic people for sympathy and material aid in her struggle for independence. It is now only necessary to be in France on the Fourth of July to realize the reality and depth of the friendship which exists between the sister republics. But I do think that until France shall copy more closely the Constitution of the United States, the stability of the third republic cannot be regarded as assured.