Versailles, and (2) a series of four adopted August 14, 1884, as follows: (a) reducing from three to two months the maximum interval between a dissolution of the Chamber of Deputies by the president of the republic and the election of the new chamber, and requiring that the latter shall meet within ten days after the election, (b) forbidding the republican form of government to be made the subject of a proposal for revision, and making members of families that have reigned in France ineligible to the presidency, (c) withdrawing its constitutional character from that part (Arts. 1-7) of the law of February 24, 1875, dealing with the election of senators, and (d) rescinding a paragraph of the law of July 16, 1875, which required that on the first Sunday after the opening of a parliamentary session divine aid in behalf of the chambers should be invoked in all churches and temples.2 1 A statute of July 22, 1879, transferred the seat of government to Paris. Duguit et Monnier, Les constitutions, 336-337. 2 Texts in Duguit et Monnier, Les constitutions, 336, 338, and Anderson, Constitutions, 639-640. For discussion see Esmein, Éléments de droit constitutionnel (4th ed.), 901-918, and Duguit, Manuel de droit constitutionnel (2d ed.), 452–463. The amendment of constitutions in general is considered in Willoughby, Government of Modern States, Chap. vii, and more fully, on historical lines, in C. Borgeaud, Établissement et révision des constitutions en Amérique et en Europe (Paris, 1892), trans. by C. D. Hazen under the title Adoption and Amendment of Constitutions in Europe and America (New York, 1895). CHAPTER XXII THE PRESIDENT AND THE MINISTERS Form of the Executive. The most fundamental function of government is the execution of law, and no governmental system is worthy of the name that does not make ample provision for the exercise of executive power by some constituted authority. In France, as in the United States, this function has been bestowed upon an elected president. The French presidency, as has been explained, had its origin in the unsettled period following the Prussian war, when it was widely believed that monarchy, under one dynasty or another, would eventually be reëstablished. The title was created in 1871. But the office as it exists to-day hardly antedates the election of Marshal MacMahon in 1873; and it still bears evidence of the purpose of the majority of its creators to keep the French people accustomed to visible personal supremacy, and so to make easier the future transition to a monarchical system. It follows from what has been said that the framers of the constitution of 1875 did not squarely and disinterestedly face the question of what form of executive to establish. When the National Assembly came together at Bordeaux, Thiers' experience and capacity towered so far above the qualifications of any other member that his election as "chief of the executive power was almost automatic; the body was so nearly unanimous upon it that a division was not called for. This act was sufficient to create a presumption in favor of a single executive, elected by an assembly representing the people at large; and this presumption, coupled with the ulterior designs of the monarchists, was adequate to carry the executive along unchanged in its fundamentals until it passed into the constitution of 1875. There was little weighing of either French precedent or of foreign experience. The constitution of the First Republic, and that of Switzerland, might have suggested a collegial, or plural, form of executive; that of the Second Republic might have influenced a decision in favor of direct popular election. But by the time when the Assembly was prepared to confess to itself that it was framing a republican constitution which might become permanent, the executive, in the form first hastily set up, had become sufficiently intrenched to be accepted as a fixed feature of the new system. The country lost nothing thereby; its experience with the Directory of 1795-99 was not encouraging; and, notwithstanding the very fair success of the Swiss plan, political scientists regard it as generally desirable that executive powers be legally or nominally vested in a single person.1 The President: Election. There are three principal ways in which the chief executive of a republic can be chosen by direct popular vote, by the legislature, and by an electoral college specially constituted for the purpose. Mexico and other LatinAmerican states afford illustration of the first method, Switzerland of the second, the United States of the third. Under the First Republic, France tried a modified form of the second plan,2 and under the Second Republic she tried direct popular election. Her experience with the latter was wholly unsatisfactory; Louis Napoleon readily used it, first to secure his election as president, and later to obtain an indorsement of the coup d'état by which he made himself emperor. Accordingly, under the Third Republic the nation returned to the plan of election by the legislature, the decision being aided, of course, by the fact that when the constitutional laws were finally framed the National Assembly had already elected two presidents. The constitutional law of February 25, 1875, provides that the president shall be chosen, for a term of seven years, "by an absolute majority of votes of the Senate and Chamber of Deputies united in National Assembly"; and the law of July 16, 1875, supplies the necessary procedural details. 3 One month, at least, before the expiration of his term the president is required to convoke the members of the two chambers in a unicameral National Assembly (which sits at Versailles, as for amending the constitution) to choose his successor. In default of such a summons, the meeting takes place on call of the president of the Senate two weeks before the expiration; and in the event of the death or resignation of the president, the Assembly is required to convene immediately without summons.* There is no vice-president, nor any law of succession, so that 1 Esmein, Éléments de droit constitutionnel (4th ed.), 536–539. 2 See p. 367. 3 Art. 2. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I, 286. The president presents his resignation in letters addressed to the presidents of the parliamentary chambers. On the resignation of President Grévy in 1887 see Bodley, France, I, 293–296. whenever the presidential office falls vacant there must be an election; and, at whatever time and under whatever circumstance begun, the term of the newly elected president is the full seven years. As upon the occasion of the assassination of M. SadiCarnot in 1894, a vacancy may arise unexpectedly, entailing a hurried election. Even under normal conditions, however, a presidential election in France involves no period of campaigning such as we are familiar with in the United States. The candidates, or at all events their friends, are likely to try to line up the parliamentary members in their behalf; they may even make speeches and in other ways appeal to popular sentiment. But the situation is very different from that which would exist if the choice lay with the people directly. So far as the formalities go, an election is likely to be carried through all stages within the space of forty-eight hours. As described by a recent president, M. Poincaré, the procedure is as follows: "When the Assembly is convoked for a presidential election the members vote without discussion.1 The urn is then placed in the tribune (the platform from which speakers would address the body if debate took place), and as an usher with a silver chain calls their names in a sonorous voice the members of the Assembly pass in a file in order to deposit their ballotpapers. The procession of voters lasts a long time; there are nearly nine hundred votes to be cast.2 When the vote is completed the scrutators, drawn by lot from among the members of the Assembly, count the votes in an adjoining hall.. If no candidate has obtained an absolute majority of votes, the president3 announces a second ballot, and so on, if needful, until there is some result. The candidate elected is proclaimed by the president of the Assembly. There are applause, and cries of Vive la République! and the Assembly dissolves. The new president, accompanied by the ministers, reënters Paris and installs himself in the Palais de l'Élysée." The inauguration takes place, of course, on the day on which the former president's term expires. The incoming executive is escorted to the Élysée by the prime minister and a regiment of cuirassiers, the retiring president makes 1 This is because the National Assembly is sitting as an electoral college, and the business of an electoral college is to vote, not to debate. 2 The number is now (in 1920) 926. The president of the Senate occupies the chair. 4 Poincaré, How France is Governed, 168-169. Much information on presidential elections is presented in Bodley, France, I, 271-332, and the subject is discussed systematically in Esmein, Éléments de droit constitutionnel (4th ed.), 544-558. See also A. Tridon, "France's Way of Choosing a President," in Amer. Rev. of Revs., Dec., 1912. a formal speech and his successor a reply, and afterwards the two go together to the Hôtel de Ville, where they are received by representatives of the municipality and of the department of the Seine. The people line the streets and cheer; but the formal ceremony is attended only by the ministers and by committees (including the presidents) of the two chambers. The President: Term, Qualifications, and Immunities. — The president's term is seven years. Under the Second Republic the term was four years, and the projet submitted to the National Assembly by Dufaure in 1873 provided for a term of five years. But the longer period was finally adopted, mainly because, as has been explained, the majority conceived of the septennate as a bridge leading across the republican morass which separated the fallen Empire from a future Bourbon or Orleanist monarchy. It is of interest to recall that a seven-year term for the president was provided for in the first draft of the constitution of the United States, and that the period was reduced to four years only after election by Congress was abandoned in favor of choice by electors specially chosen for the purpose.1 In the United States, presidential elections take place at fixed intervals, and if the office falls vacant during the quadrennial period the vice-president succeeds, or in lieu of the vice-president, heads of departments in order fixed by law. In France, on the contrary, every president is directly elected to the office, and is entitled to a full term from the date of his accession. The constitution of the Second Republic, provided, indeed, for a vicepresident, who was appointed by the National Assembly from three candidates presented by the president. But the vicepresident was merely to act for the president in case of the latter's disability, and to discharge the duties of the office temporarily when it fell vacant by death or resignation. He could not definitely succeed to the position unless he was elected thereto by the Assembly; and under the Third Republic there is no provision for a vice-president at all. In the American system the vice-presidency is a practical necessity, although the great disadvantage is entailed that it may be the means of bringing into the chief executive's chair a man who has not really been chosen with a view to his qualifications for it. Under the French system the office is not needed. In case of the president's resignation or death, the council of ministers acts as head of the state until 2 1 M. Farrand [ed.], The Records of the Federal Convention (New Haven, 1911), III, 216-217. 2 Art. 70. Anderson, Constitutions, 531-532. |