Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 125.djvu/77

 for a Senate selected by universal suffrage, and then contented themselves with a Senate elected by a very limited constituency. The Left either sat silent, or indulged in superior smiles, or playfully told the speakers that they were not in the least embarrassed by the inconsistencies thus pleasantly pointed out to them. M. Raoul Duval even introduced an amendment identical in substance with the very amendment which the Left had carried ten days before; but the Left had learned their lesson in the interval, and they voted as one man against their own proposal. The Duke of Rochefoucauld Bisaccia tried to draw them in another way. He declared that the Assembly was exceeding its powers, and that it had not been elected for the purpose of nominating life-senators. There was a time when such a speech from a Legitimist would have called vollies of applause from the Left, but the idea of limiting the powers of the Assembly had no longer any charm for them. They voted steadily against an amendment making all the Senators elective, and thus entrusted to the Assembly, which they have so often denounced as a usurper without even the excuse of capacity to govern, the business of choosing men who are to help to rule France for the terms of their natural lives.

This closed the sitting of Monday. By Tuesday, M. Raoul Duval and M. Brunet had prepared a fresh string of tempting amendments. The Senate Bill assigned to the Department of the Seine and the Department of the Nord the same number of Senators. Surely the Left would not refuse to give their darling Paris an exceptional distinction? So, perhaps, M. Brunet tried to persuade himself; but his proposal that the Seine should return six Senators instead of five was rejected without a word. Then came the most promising moment of all. If there is one point more than another upon which the Radicals might be supposed to be united, it is in detestation of the mayors appointed by the government. They are associated with the reactionary era of the Duke of Broglie, and they are still regarded as enemies who may prove dangerous at future elections. M. Raoul Duval proposed to cast a formal slight upon them. The electoral college which is to return the Senate is composed, among other elements, of delegates elected by the municipal councils, and M. Duval asked that mayors and deputy mayors appointed by the government should be declared ineligible for this purpose. He might as well have asked the Left to proclaim Henry V. They had agreed to swallow the whole Bill, and they were honourably resolved to strain at camels no more than at gnats. M. Brunet, undismayed by his former defeat, again tried to introduce the principle of proportioning representation to population; but this too was rejected. M. Raoul Duval next took up the cause of the poor but virtuous elector. The voting for the Senate is to take place in the chief town of the department. How is a Radical elector who has no money to go half across a department for the purpose of giving his vote? His poverty will force him to stay at home, and to leave the composition of one of the branches of the legislature to be settled by wealthy Conservatives to whom a journey presents no difficulties. The obvious remedy is to pay the elector's travelling expenses, and thus, in one respect at all events, put poor and rich on a level. M, Raoul Duval must have had a momentary hope that this argument would not be wasted, but it was wasted all the same. Even M. Duval must have despaired by this time; but he was still ready to oppose the clause of the Bill which provides that Senators shall be unpaid. But the Left, after surrendering so much else, were not to be prevented from surrendering this also, and the most Conservative clause perhaps in the Bill was passed like all the rest. By Tuesday evening there was only one chance left for the Right. The Bill provided that the seventy-five Senators chosen by the Assembly should be elected by an absolute majority of votes, without any restriction as to the persons to be chosen. M. Delpit proposed that they should be taken from a list of one hundred and fifty persons to be furnished by Marshal MacMahon, and this amendment, unlike all the others, was referred back to the Committee of Thirty. If this had implied a willingness on the part of the Right Centre to adopt it, the Left might have considered the compact at an end, and have retaliated on the Conservatives by throwing out the Bill on the third reading. But the reference to the committee proved a false alarm. The clause came back as it went. A division was then taken on the Bill as a whole, and it was carried by four hundred and forty-eight votes to two hundred and forty-one. Thus by Wednesday afternoon France had secured a Senate. In another 