Parliament of France

“ In France, the parliament soon became a mere engine in the hands of a few high-born and ambitious men, who had nothing in common with its interests, which were those of the people. In England, the House of Commons was a powerful body, sufficing to itself, and whose members had common cause in the privileges for which they contended. ”

“ The Chamber is far from having its full share in public affairs; the ministers are less for France than they are for the crown, and parliament has determined that the administration shall have, as in England, a strength and power of its own, and not a mere borrowed power. ”

“ The Crown had therefore only to balance one against the other, and leave them to entangle themselves in mutual rivalries in order to gain the victory. In the long history of the English Parliament it is very rare to find serious questions raised between the two houses. Nobles and Commons have as a rule acted together for weal or for woe in attacking or supporting the policy of the Crown. The unity of Parliament has been its most significant feature. In France it has been quite otherwise. ”

“ The experiment of a strictly Parliamentary Republic—of a Republic where the Parliament appoints the executive—is being tried in France at an extreme disadvantage, because in France a Parliament is unusually likely to be bad, and unusually likely also to be free enough to show its badness. Secondly, the present polity of France is not a copy of the whole effective part of the British Constitution, but only a part of it. By our Constitution nominally the Queen, but really the Prime Minister, has the power of dissolving the Assembly. ”

“ Men who can speak, if there be aught to speak: nay here are men also who can think, and even act. Candour will say of this ill-fated First French Parliament, that it wanted not its modicum of talent, its modicum of honesty; that it, neither in the one respect nor in the other, sank below the average of Parliaments, but rose above the average. Let average Parliaments, whom the world does not guillotine, and cast forth to long infamy, be thankful not to themselves but to their stars!
France, as we say, has once more done what it could: fervid men have come together from wide separation ”

“ The Parliament of Paris, though it had its use as some small check on the mere despotism of the Crown, can hardly come under the head of free institutions. France, as France, under the old state of things, cannot be said to have kept any free institutions at all ”

“ Parliament is composed of the National Assembly and the Senate. The Deputies of the National Assembly are elected by direct, universal suffrage. The Senate is elected by indirect suffrage. It represents the territorial entities of the Republic. French citizens resident abroad are represented in the Senate. Article 25. An organic law determines the length of life of each assembly, the number of its members, the payment made to them, the rules concerning qualification for and disqualification from election and the incompatibility of certain functions with membership of Parliament. ”

“ The great question which confronted England in the seventeenth century was whether the king should be permitted to rule the people, as God's representative, or should submit to the constant control of the nation's representatives, i.e., Parliament. In France the Estates General met for the last time in 1614, and thereafter the French king made laws and executed them without asking the advice of any one except his immediate counselors. ”

“ Throughout the history of France we find the Parliament of Paris bolder and more enterprising than all the rest: and it did not belie its character in the very teeth of Richelieu. When, after Dupes’ Day was over, Louis XIII. declared all the companions of his brother’s escape guilty of high treason, the Parliament of Dijon, to which the decree was presented by the king himself, enregistered it without making any difficulty. ”

“ You will find it in every part of Europe. In some countries, like France, the rapid increase of the Royal power after the Middle Ages reduced the influence of the "parliament" to nothing. In the year 1302 representatives of the cities had been admitted to the meeting of the French Parliament, but five centuries had to pass before this "Parliament" was strong enough to assert the rights of the middle class, the so-called Third Estate, and break the power of the king. ”

“ As we before said, our modern Parliament is traced up in an unbroken line to the early Great Council, and to the still earlier Witenagemót. The latter institution, widely different as it is from the earlier, has not been substituted for the earlier, but has grown out of it. It would be ludicrous to look for any such continuity between the Diet of ambassadors which meets at Frankfurt and the Assemblies which met to obey Henry the Third and to depose Henry the Fourth. And how stands the case in France? France has tried constitutional government in all its shapes ”

“ THE STATES OF FRANCE were general assemblies of the three states or orders of the kingdom; the Clergy, the Nobility, and the ‘Tiers Etat’, that is, the people. They used to be called together by the King, upon the most important affairs of state, like our Lords and Commons in parliament, and our Clergy in convocation. Our parliament is our states, and the French parliaments are only their courts of justice. ”

“ The new session of parliament was opened by commission, on the 19th of December. The speech dwelt on the calamities of war; the progress of the arms of France; the failure of pacific negociations through the ambition of the French ruler; and the necessity of union, firmness, and courageous endurance in the nation, to meet the peculiar exigencies of the crisis. In the debates on the address, Lord Hawkes-bury in the lords, and Mr. Canning in the commons, took a very active part, censuring the actions of the cabinet ever since it had been in office. ”

“ In England, popular government has taken the form, with a powerless hereditary sovereign commanding universal loyalty, of a ministry responsible to a Parliament, which is directly responsible to the people. In France, the executive is controlled by a legislative body chosen by universal suffrage, the majority of which is held together by party discipline. ”

“ The body in France that most nearly corresponded to the English Parliament was the ‘States-General’, composed of representatives of the three ‘Estates’ or classes, of clergy, nobles, and citizens. The peasants of France, who composed the greater part of her population, were not represented at all. ”

“ Interest in the actions of the great, or in the actions of the people whose positions gave them relative greatness, excluded interest in the general welfare. The rivalries and the personal efforts of the higher classes were the public events of France. Parliament was working along its own lines, hoping to gain control of the State, to hold a monopoly of reforms, and to break away from the nobility. ”

“ It is forgotten how small a proportion the laws actually devised by parliament are of the law actually prevailing in the land. No European country has undergone so many changes in the form of government as France. It is surprising how little effect these political revolutions have had on the body of French law. The change from empire to republic is not marked by greater legislative effects than the change from a Conservative to a Liberal ministry in England would be. ”

“ You have consulted but two members of the whole Parliament, and them only upon their promise to disclose your intentions to no man living. How then can your Highness think it possible that your sentiments, locked up so closely in the breasts of two members, can have any influence upon the whole body of the Parliament? I dare answer for it, monseigneur, that if you will but declare yourself openly the protector of the public and of the sovereign companies, you might govern them—at least, for a considerable time—with an absolute and almost sovereign authority. ”

“ He may discern the true limits of his own power, and abandon an attempt which he believes to be impious because he sees that it is impossible. And then the untiring protest which England and France have made against this wrong, and their continued assertion of this right will have their full efficacy in encouraging this benevolent wisdom, in proving to that sovereign, that in best consulting the interests of his own empire, he will be confirming the ties of amity and peace with the most powerful nations of the world. ”

“ By custom the President selects the Premier from the majority and the latter selects his colleagues in the Cabinet, trying to make them representatives [Pg 66] of the wishes of the Parliament. The French Republic is therefore managed by a parliamentary government.
The first elections under the new constitution resulted very much as might be expected: the Senate became in personnel the true successor of the Assembly, the Chamber of Deputies contained most of the new men. The Senate was conservative and monarchical, the Chamber was republican. ”

“ As a matter of fact, the Senate has fallen into the background, and the habit of considering the vote of the Chamber rather than that of the Senate as important in a change of Ministry has made it the true source of government in France. The two houses met at Versailles until 1879; since then Paris has been the capital, except for the election of a President. After separate decision by each house to do so, or the request of the President, they could meet in joint assembly as a Constitutional Convention to revise the constitution. ”

“ Our parliamentary gentlemen began as humbly as those of England, and though, as I have said, their assembly was but a simple court of justice, limited in its jurisdiction like the other courts of the realm, to judge disputes between private people, yet by dint of hammering upon the word parliament they believed themselves not less important than their English brethren, who form the legislative assembly, and represent all the nation. ”

“ We ever had traditional principles to fall back upon, a traditional basis to build upon. It would be hard to reckon up the number of Assemblies, Conventions, Chambers of Deputies, and Legislative Bodies, which have risen and fallen in France, while the House of Lords and the House of Commons have lived on, with their powers, their duties, their relations to the Crown, to the Nation, and to one another, ever silently changing, but with their continuous being remaining throughout unbroken. ”

“ When the constitution of England was brought back to its original principles, and harmony was restored between the Crown and the parliament, the cabinet became no longer a term of reproach, but a position therein was regarded as the highest honour in the country, and was associated with the efficient administration of public affairs, since it meant a body of men responsible to parliament for every act of government. ”

“ The power of parliament is so great and extensive, that it makes, amends, reduces, revives, and abrogates laws, statutes, 111and ordinances, concerning matters ecclesiastical, civil, and military. None can begin, continue, or dissolve this council, but by the King’s authority. ”

“ If, however, we speak of parliamentary strategy in its larger sense, as covering familiarity with parliamentary forms and usages, the powers of seizing a parliamentary situation and knowing how to deal with it, the art of guiding a debate and choosing the right moment for reserve and for openness, for a dignified retreat, for a watchful defense, for a sudden rattling charge upon the enemy, no one had a fuller mastery of it. His recollection of precedents was unrivaled, for it began in 1833 with the first reformed Parliament, and it seemed as fresh for those remote days as for last month. ”

“ If, after this complete revolution, we cast a glance over the institutions of the country, we find them all changed; we perceive that the government has taken another form, that new elements have been introduced into it, that the Parliament,—composed in one of its divisions of the lords spiritual and temporal, in the other of deputies from the counties and boroughs,—has taken the place of the great council of barons. ”

“ Wherever the Sovereign, the Peers spiritual and temporal, and the Representatives freely chosen by the constituent bodies of the realm were met together, there was the essence of a Parliament. Such a Parliament was now in being; and what could be more absurd than to dissolve it at a conjuncture when every hour was precious, when numerous important subjects required immediate legislation, and when dangers, only to be averted by the combined efforts of King, Lords, and Commons, menaced the State? A Jacobite indeed might consistently refuse to recognise the Convention as a Parliament. ”

“ It began to fancy itself armed with powers of the highest kind. It began to imagine that it possessed all the authority of the English Parliament, forgetting that that assembly is charged with the legislative administration of the country, that it has the right to make laws and repeat laws, and that the monarch can do but little, comparatively speaking, without the support and sanction of this representative chamber; whereas, our own Parliament is but a tribunal of justice, with no control or influence over the royal authority or state affairs. ”

“ With the gradual growth of parliamentary power the importance of electing members to the House of Commons began to be recognized, and, during the Wars of the Roses, fewer and fewer applications were made by boroughs and cities anxious to be relieved of this duty.
Until Henry VI.'s time, when the modern system of Bills and Statutes began to come into being, legislation was by Petition. The control of Parliament was still very largely in the hands of the Crown, and successive sovereigns took care that their influence over the Commons should be maintained. ”