ing time," contrived to stave off a genuine
defeat. In the municipal elections held throughout the country October
15, 1911, the Liberal-Socialist candidates were very generally
successful, but the parliamentary elections which took place June 2,
1912, had the unexpected result of entrenching the Catholic party more
securely in power than in upwards of a decade. The combined assault of
the Liberals and the Socialists upon "clericalism" fell flat, and
against the Government's contention that the extraordinary and
incontestable prosperity of the country merited a continuance of
Catholic rule no arguments were forthcoming which carried conviction
among the voters. The Catholic vote showed an increase of 130,610, the
Liberal and Socialist opposition an increase of 40,402, and the
Christian Democrats a decrease of 4,692. The new chamber consists of
101 Catholics, 45 Liberals, 38 Socialists, and 2 Christian Democrats,
giving the Government a clear majority of sixteen. The elections were
marked by grave public unrest, involving widespread strikes and
anti-clerical demonstrations, with some loss of life. More clearly
than before was exhibited in this campaign the essentially bourgeois
and doctrinaire character of the present Liberal party. The intimate
touch with the masses which in the days of its ascendancy, prior to
1884, the party enjoyed has been lost, and more and more the
proletariat is looking to the Socialists for propagation of the
measures required for social and industrial amelioration.

*602. The Demand for Further Reform.*--A project upon which the
Socialists and Liberals in the last election, as upon several former
occasions, have found it possible to unite is the abolition of the
plural vote. Almost immediately after the adoption of the amendment of
1893 the Socialists declared their purpose to wage war unremittingly
upon this feature of the new system. In its stead they demanded that
there be substituted the rule of _un homme, un vote_, "one man, one
vote," with the age limit reduced to twenty-one years. Following the
triumph of the Catholics in 1900, the agitation of the Socialists was
redoubled, and in it the Liberals very generally joined. Between the
two groups there arose seemingly irreconcilable differences of method,
the Liberals being unable to approve the obstructionism and other
violent means employed by their allies. In time, however, the
Socialist methods became more moderate, and the realization on