the Senate are chosen by electors chosen by the people.1 The President is chosen by the members of the legislature in National Assembly,2 and all officers, judicial, administrative and military, are appointed by the President. The French system is, at last, entirely uniform and consistent in this respect.

4. The French government is parliamentary government. The constitution vests the election of the executive in the joint assembly of the two legislative bodies. The two legislative bodies, the one acting as a court and the other as prosecutor, may also depose the President from office upon a conviction of high treason. On the other hand, the President is not made politically responsible to the legislature. It is not necessary that he should be personally in political. accord with the majority in the legislature. The constitution creates, however, a politically responsible ministry, and requires that every act of the President shall be countersigned by a minister. The real executive power is thus placed in the hands of the ministry, not by the act of the exec, utive himself, but by constitutional provision. Moreover, the President has no veto power by which to defend his ministry, or even his own prerogatives, against the majority in the legis lature. He may ask for a reconsideration of a measure, but the repetition of the vote by the absolute majority is all that is necessary to overcome this opposition. This is certainly parliamentary government. The constitutional provisions in

1 Loi du 9 décembre, 1884, Art. 6.

2 Loi constitutionnelle relative à l'organisation des pouvoirs publics, 25 février, 1875, Art. 2.

3 Ibid. Art. 3, § 4.

4 Ibid. Art. 2.

5 Ibid. Art. 6, § 2; Loi constitutionnelle sur les rapports des pouvoirs publics, 16 juillet, 1875, Art. 12, § 1.

• Loi constitutionnelle relative à l'organisation des pouvoirs publics, 25 février, 1875, Art. 6, § 1; Ibid. Art. 3, § 6.

7 Loi constitutionnelle sur les rapports des pouvoirs publics, 16 juillet, 1875, Art. 7, § 2.

regard to this matter contain, however, one practical difficulty. They make the ministry responsible politically to the two chambers. I have already demonstrated that this may become a practical impossibility.1 Different political majorities in the two chambers will always bring it to that. This is just what has happened in the practice of the French system; and, by the inevitable course of history, the political responsibility to the two chambers, created by the constitution, has become in practice a political responsibility to the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the legislature. This result has not been attained without the most serious struggle between the three bodies concerned, vis; the President, the Senate, and the Chamber of Deputies. A brief resumé of its history may aid us to comprehend the existing status. The first President under the present constitution, the Marshal MacMahon, was elected by the Constituent Assembly which framed and adopted the constitution. He was elected before the constitution was put into force, to hold office for seven years, from May, 1873; and the constitution, subsequently formed, not only contains an express ratification of this act, but provided that during MacMahon's term no revision of the constitution should take place save through his initiation. The majority in the Constituent Assembly belonged to the monarchic parties, and MacMahon's ministry was under the premiership of the Duc de Broglie, a Legitimist. The Republicans, however, won steadily almost all the seats in the Constituent Assembly made vacant by death or resignation after the middle of the year 1873, and in 1876 they found themselves in majority. They immediately voted the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly and the call of the first legislature under the new constitution; i.e. they voted to place the new constitution in force. The majority returned to the first legislature was republican in the Chamber of Depu

1 p. 13 ff.

ties, but monarchic in the Senate. MacMahon, very much against his inclination, felt obliged to dismiss de Broglie and form a ministry of Republicans, first under Dufaure and then under Simon; i.e. the President acquiesced in the theory that the ministers must be in political agreement with the majority in the Chamber of Deputies, and must resign when they lose its support. In the existing condition of the membership of the two chambers, this was a great triumph for the Republicans. It at once raised the question, however, between the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, concerning their respective powers over the administration. The Senate denied most vigorously that the control of the administration was exclusively in the Chamber of Deputies, and asserted that it had equal powers in this respect with the Chamber of Deputies. Certainly, whatever political science may have to say about the impossibility of this double executive responsibility in practice, the constitutional law of France justified the claim of the Senate. The President took advantage of the situation, and in May, 1877, he reinstated de Broglie as Premier. The Chamber of Deputies immediately passed a formal vote of distrust. The President met this by adjourning the chambers for on month, as was certainly his right by the letter of the constitution. Upon their re-assembly, on the 16th of June, the President asked the consent of the Senate to dissolve the Deputies. This was given, and the date of the new election was set by the President for the 14th of October. The policy of the President and his monarchically disposed friends was to give themselves as much time as possible to fill the offices with Monarchists, and through these control the elections. To their great surprise and disappointment, the Republicans won in the uneven conflict, and held the majority in the new chamber. The President and de Broglie now sought to govern by the aid of the Senate, but the Orleanists in that body refused to support them, and de Broglie was forced to resign. The President then appointed a ministry

under the premiership of General Rochebouët, the members of which were connected with neither of the legislative chambers. The Deputies resolved at once to take no notice of its acts or its existence, and delayed the vote upon the budget. The President saw himself compelled either to submit or resort to the coup d'état. After much hesitation and not a little attempt at intrigue, he finally resolved to yield. On December 13, 1877, he called the Republican, Dufaure, to the head of the ministry and gave him unconditional power to rule with the majority in the Chamber of Deputies. This was the great turning-point in the development of the French constitution. Through these events the subordination of all other branches of the government to the Chamber of Deputies was pronounced. The realization of this relation has been swift and radical. At the beginning of the year 1879, the Senate was partially renewed, in the manner prescribed by the constitution, and the Republicans secured the majority in this body also. President MacMahon

now gave up all hope of producing a reaction, and on the 30th of January, 1879, he resigned, and the Republican, Grévy, was chosen as his successor. Grévy never disputed the supremacy of the Chamber of Deputies over the administration. He constantly took his ministry from the majority in that house, and dismissed it whenever that majority manifested distrust. At last the Chamber of Deputies asserted and exercised the power to force the President to resign by the general declaration that the Chamber of Deputies would support no minister appointed by him.

The practice has fully realized in the French system what the theory of parliamentary government requires. There is now no longer any question that the administration must be in political accord with the Chamber of Deputies, no matter what the political majority in the Senate may be.1

1 The recent resignation of M. Tirard and his colleagues on account of lack of support in the Senate accords, indeed, with the requirements of the constitu

It is even more difficult than in the case of the United States to designate concisely the form of this representative, unlimited, democratic, centralized, co-ordinated, elective, parliamentary government. The elements of representation, of general eligibility, of election and of departmental distribution of powers are, as we have seen, constituent parts of the republican form. On the other hand, the quality of unlimitedness is, according to American ideas, the negation of republicanism. American political science cannot regard any system of government as republican against whose powers the constitution does not construct a domain of individual immunity. If we should use the word republic at all in characterizing the French form, it would have to be qualified as follows, viz; the unlimited, centralized, parliamentary republic. If this does not mean, in political science, the despotism of the lower house of the legislature, then I confess that I know not what it does mean.

III. The Form of the German Imperial Government.

1. The German government is representative government. It is true that the state is organized out of the personnel of the legislature. It is also true that the state follows the same system of procedure as the legislature. The only distinction between the act of the state and the act of the legislature is in the difference of majority necessary to the validity of the respective acts.1 This is very confusing, as I have already explained; but it is sufficient to take the German government out of the category of immediate governments; i.e. of systems in which the state and government are identical.

Furthermore, the German government is a limited government. The constitution creates a sphere of individual immunity, and then enumerates the powers which the government

tion, but not with sound political science nor with the precedents of French practice.

1 Reichsverfassung, Art. 78.