e du
Droit Public_, April-June, 1911; J. Barthelemy, Les
sous-secretaires d'etat, ibid.; P. Ma,
L'organisation du Ministere des Colonies, in
_Questions Diplomatiques et Coloniales_, Sept. 1,
1910.]

*338. The Parliamentary System: Multiplicity of Parties.*--On paper
France has to-day a parliamentary system of government substantially
like that which prevails in Great Britain. The President's (p. 313)
authority is but nominal. The real executive consists of the ministers.
These ministers are responsible, collectively in general matters and
individually in particular ones, to the chambers, in reality to the
Chamber of Deputies. When defeated on any important proposition, they
resign as a body. Parliamentary government in France means, however,
in practice, something very different from what it means across the
Channel. The principal reason why this is so is to be found in the
totally different status of political parties in the two countries. In
Great Britain, while in later years small political groups have sprung
up to complicate the situation, the political life of the nation is
still confined very largely to the two great rival parties, which
oppose to each other a fairly united front, and between which there is
not likely to be anything like fusion or affiliation. In France, on
the contrary, there is a multiplicity of parties and no one of them is
likely ever to be in a position to dominate the Government alone. The
election of 1910 sent to the Chamber of Deputies representatives of no
fewer than nine distinct political groups. No ministry can be made up
with any hope of its being able to command a working majority in the
Chamber unless it represents in its membership a coalition of several
parties. A Government so constituted, however, is almost inevitably
vacillating and short-lived. It is unable to please all of the groups
and interests upon which it relies; it dares displease none; it ends
not infrequently by displeasing all.

*339. Frequency of Ministerial Changes.*--It is from this condition of
things that there arises the remarkable frequency with which
ministerial crises and ministerial changes take place in France. The
ministry of M. Poincare, established in January, 1912, was the
forty-fifth in the history of French parliamentarism since 1875--a
period of but thirty-seven years. Between 1875 and 1900 but