Franche-Comté

“ He had, however, constituted his daughter Margaret sovereign-governess of Franche-Comté for life, and under the administration of this princess (who died in 1530) , as under the rule of Charles V., the country enjoyed comparative independence, paying a “don gratuit” of 200,000 livres every three years, and being actually governed by the parliament of Dôle, and by governors chosen from the nobility of the country. It was Franche-Comté which furnished Philip II. of Spain with one of his best counsellors, Cardinal Perrenot de Granvella. ”

“ Go back to your Departments if any one of you dare to print your address I shall publish it in the Moniteur with notes of my own. Go; France stands in more need of me than I do of France. I bear the eleven- twelfths of you in my heart—I shall nominate the Deputies to the two series which are vacant, and I shall reduce the Legislative Body to the discharge of its proper duties. The inhabitants of Alsace and Franche Comte have more spirit than you ”

“ Such provinces were called pays d'état and included Brittany, Languedoc, Provence, Roussillon, Dauphiné, Burgundy, Franche Comté, Alsace, Lorraine, Artois, Flanders, Corsica, etc. The local assemblies in these pays d'état were by no means representative of all the inhabitants. The remaining provinces, in which no vestiges of provincial self-government survived, were called pays d'élection: they included Ile de France, Orléanais, Champagne and Brie, Maine, Anjou, Poitou, Guyenne and Gascony, Limousin, Auvergne, Lyonnais, Bourbonnais, Touraine, Normandy, Picardy, etc. ”

“ Everyone knows everyone, and the dinner is a meeting of old friends.
All this will soon be changed with the new line of railway to lead from Besançon by way of St. Hippolyte and Morteau into Switzerland, and future travellers will be able to see this beautiful country with very little fatigue. As yet Franche Comté is an unknown region, and the sight of an English tourist is of rare occurrence. When we leave Pont de Roïde, we once more enter the region of Protestantism, every village possessing a Protestant as well as a Catholic Church. ”

“ He took it by right of succession, and not as a fief which had lapsed, the original grant of King Robert having contained no reversionary provision. Franche Comté, or the county of Burgundy, together with Artois, remained to the young widow, Margaret of Flanders, while the counties of Boulogne and Auvergne passed to John of Boulogne, Count de Montfort. A great opportunity for strengthening the crown of France, by annexing to it the powerful Burgundian dukedom, was now offered to King John ”

“ He was appointed in 1648 official representative of the Franche-Comté in Paris, but in 1653 he was banished by Mazarin. He was subsequently allowed to return, but in 1668 he retired to Besançon, where he died on the 31st of January 1686. ”

“ He was subsequently elected to the council of five hundred, but was suspected of royalist leanings, and had to spend some time in retirement before the establishment of the consulate., Becoming senator in 1805, and count of the empire in 1808, he organized the national guard in Franche Comté in 1811, and the defence of the north-eastern frontier in 1813. ”

“ There are about 40,000 communes in France, and each commune has its mayor and its municipal councillors elected by universal suffrage for the{170} management of local affairs. Every peasant may become a municipal councillor and, if duly elected by the municipal council, a mayor. The municipal council meets periodically for the discussion of local affairs; so that its members accustom themselves to public speaking and the interchange of ideas. France has now about 10,000,000 electors, of whom two-thirds are peasants, but, as before explained, peasants in the possession of landed property. ”

“ To Americans, who have mayors and city councils in every city, municipal taxation, municipal elections, and municipal laws, a commune appears the best mode of city government. But if we can imagine one of our large cities possessing the same power over the United States that Paris wields over France, we shall take a different view of the matter. Paris governed by a commune, that commune being elected by a mob and aspiring to give laws to France, might well indeed have alarmed all Frenchmen. ”

“ A very notable contrast to the self-government which has produced such admirable results is to be seen in France, and as contrasts are often instructive, let me mention one or two features of the French government. There is nothing like the irregularity and spontaneity there that we have observed in our survey of the United States. Everything is symmetrical. France is divided into eighty-nine departments, most of them larger than the state of Delaware, some of them nearly as large as Connecticut, and the administration of one department is exactly like that of all the others. ”

“ That during their connexion with Great Britain, they had been accustomed to have all their concerns transacted within a narrow circle, their colonial district; they had been accustomed to have their seats of government near them, to which they might have access, without much inconvenience, when their business should require it—That, at this time, we find, if a county is rather large, the people complain of the inconvenience, and clamor for a division of their county, or for a removal of the place where their courts are held, so as to render it more central and convenient. ”

“ Provence.♦ Southwards on the Rhone lay a number of small states, among which the most important in history are the archbishopric, the county, and the free city of Lyons, the county or Dauphiny of Vienne and the city of Vienne, the county or principality of Orange, the city of Avignon, the county of Venaissin, the free city of Arles, the capital of the kingdom, the free city of Massalia or Marseilles, the county of Nizza or Nice, and the great county or marquisate of Provence. In this last power lay the first element of danger, especially to the republican independence of the free cities. ”

“ As the prefect in the department, so the sub-prefect in the arrondissement, though with a more limited power, is the representative of the central authority. He is assisted, and in some degree controlled, in his work by the district council (conseil d’arrondissement) , to which each canton sends a member, chosen by universal suffrage. As the arrondissement has neither property nor budget, the principal business of the council is to allot to each commune its share of the direct taxes imposed on the arrondissement by the general council. ”

“ This disparity of numbers did not intimidate the governor of New France—a title comprehending both Canada and Louisiana; nor deter him from proceeding in the execution of his favourite plan. The French possessed advantages which, he persuaded himself, would counterbalance the superior numbers of the English. Their whole power was united under one governor, who could give it such a direction as his judgment should dictate. The genius of the people and of the government was military; and the inhabitants could readily be called into the field, when their service should be required. ”

“ Is it true, that the house of commons have elevated themselves upon the ruin of the many? Is it true, that the representatives of boroughs have been more faithful, or wise, or honest, or patriotic, than those of cities and of counties? Let us come to our own country. The districts in New-Hampshire, in which the senators are chosen immediately by the people, are nearly as large, as will be necessary for her representatives in congress. Those in Massachusetts come from districts having a larger population; and those in New-York from districts still larger. ”

“ Then the organ swells, and the chant rolls out, and till the next Fur Fair Montreal is again a mission.
When New France becomes a Crown Colony, the government consists solely and only of the Sovereign Council, to whom the King transmits his will. This council consists of the Governor, his administrative officer called the "Intendant," the bishop, and several of the inhabitants of New France nominated by the other members of the council. Of elections there are absolutely none. Popular meetings are forbidden. New France is a despotism, with the Sovereign Council representing the King. ”

“ The people of Prince Frederick's Parish, whom I have the honor to represent, are a brave, honest, and industrious people. In the late bloody contest, they bore a conspicuous part, when they fought, bled, and conquered, in defence of their civil rights and privileges, which they expected to transmit untainted to their posterity. ”

“ Consequently, while he was drafting it he also undertook the enormous task of the administrative, judicial, and financial reorganisation of France. The various powers were centralised in Paris. Each department was directed by a prefect, assisted by a consul-general; the arrondissement by a sub- prefect, assisted by a council; the commune by a mayor, assisted by a municipal council. All were appointed by the ministers, and not by election, as under the Republic. ”

“ There Shall be Sent by the Government of France a Commissary to Louisiana to the end that he do every act necessary as well to receive from the Officers of his Catholic Majesty the Said country and its dependances in the name of the French Republic if it has not been already done as to transmit it in the name of the French Republic to the Commissary or agent of the United States. ”

“ Specific provision for county representation in at least one house of the state legislature has been increasingly adopted since the end of the 19th century. [130] More than twenty States now guarantee each county at least one seat in one of their houses regardless of population, and in nine others county or town units are given equal representation in one legislative branch, whatever the number of each unit's inhabitants. Of course, numerically considered, "These provisions invariably result in over-representation of the least populated areas." ”

“ In all apportionments of the Senate, the population of the City of New Orleans shall be deducted from the population of the whole State, and the remainder of the population divided by the number twenty-eight, and the result produced by this division shall be the senatorial ratio entitling a Senatorial District to a Senator. ”

“ India is divided into states or districts, and each district is ruled by a governor, called a commissioner, who lives in the largest city of his district. The law provides that if a European finds himself penniless and unable to buy food, he may apply to any commissioner, who must give him a third-class ticket to the capital of the next district, and enough money, called batter, to buy food on the way.
We had not been in Trichinopoly long when Marten, who had tossed his last anna to a beggar, decided to pay a visit to the district commissioner. ”

“ Under the Territorial government the legislative officers were not at first elective. The “parishes” date from 1807; they were based on an earlier Spanish division for religious purposes—whence the names of saints in parish nomenclature. The constitution of 1812 allowed the General Assembly to name the governor from the two candidates receiving the highest number of votes; gave the governor large powers of appointment, even of local functionaries; and required a property qualification for various offices, and even for voters. ”

“ The State shall be divided by the Legislature into four districts, containing as nearly as may be an equal number of voters, and one commissioner shall be elected in each district by the legal voters thereof for the term of four years; but, of the first elected, two, to be designated by lot, shall remain in office for two years only.
ART. 131. The General Assembly, at its first session after the adoption of this Constitution, shall provide for the election and compensation of the commissioners and the organization of the board. ”

“ Where the township government is strong, as in New England, it takes the place of county government. Where people live in cities, they look to the city government to serve them rather than to the county government. In rural districts the people have come more and more to look to the state and national governments for such service as they expect government to give. ”

“ By the law of Louisiana, as in states where the common law prevails, the regulation and control of markets for the sale of provisions, including the places and the distances from each other at which they may be kept, are maters of municipal police, and may be intrusted by the legislature to a city council, to be exercised as in its discretion the public health and convenience may require. ”

“ After 1814 and 1815, after the fall of the Empire and the Restoration, the institution subsists and remains as it was before in form and in spirit: it is always the government which appoints and directs all the representatives of local society, in the department, in the commune, and in the intermediate circumscriptions, the prefect, sub-prefects, mayors and assistants, the councilors of the department, of the arrondissement and of the commune. Whatever the ruling power may be it is repugnant to any change ”

“ In apportioning the Senators among the different counties, the fraction that may be lost by any county or counties, in the apportionment of members to the House of Representatives shall be made up to such county or counties in the Senate as near as may be practicable. When a district is composed of two or more counties, they shall be adjoining, and no county shall be divided in forming a district . ”