M. E. Vacherot of the Institute opens the 15th November number of the Revwe des dawe Mendes with a carefully written and dispassionate article on the Constitutional and Parliamentary Republic—the republic, one might say, as it ought to be rather than the republic as it is, After the many storms that France has gallantly encountered, there is now nothing in her external relations that menaces either danger or difficulty, But for all that there is a seething agitation throughout the country itself, of which the vagueness detracts nothing from the reality. A' community whose members stand shoulder to shoulder during a pressing peril from without falls into its separate units or clusters as soon as that peril is removed. Class jealousies of all kinds recover their empire, Questions as to the respective shares to be borne in government, as to the competing rights of labour and capital, or as to the dominance of one view or another taken in regard to education, divide men into sections which hate one another as bitterly as though a fow brief years ago their animosities had not been buried. Such vigorous rivalries are certain to spring up in any democracy, but their violence is accentuated by the intemperate vivacity of the French character, and more especially of the Parisian character. As a counterpoise to the activities that may at any moment declare themselves the constitution provided for three ce-ordinate powers in the state. But with rapidity which has taken by surprise many of the framers of that constitution the senate has been reduced to insigi ficance, and even from the beginning has done little more than register the decisions of the chamber. M. Thiers was a eonstitutional king in all but name. He held
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.