either if the executive authority nearest to him does
not like it. The experiment of a strictly Parliamentary Republic--of a
Republic where the Parliament appoints the executive--is being tried in
France at an extreme disadvantage, because in France a Parliament is
unusually likely to be bad, and unusually likely also to be free enough
to show its badness. Secondly, the present polity of France is not a
copy of the whole effective part of the British Constitution, but only
a part of it. By our Constitution nominally the Queen, but really the
Prime Minister, has the power of dissolving the Assembly. But M. Thiers
has no such power; and therefore, under ordinary circumstances, I
believe, the policy would soon become unmanageable. The result would
be, as I have tried to explain, that the Assembly would be always
changing its Ministry, that having no reason to fear the penalty which
that change so often brings in England, they would be ready to make it
once a month. Caprice is the characteristic vice of miscellaneous
assemblies, and without some check their selection would be unceasingly
mutable. This peculiar danger of the present Constitution of France has
however been prevented by its peculiar circumstances. The Assembly have
not been inclined to remove M. Thiers, because in their lamentable
present position they could not replace M. Thiers. He has a monopoly of
the necessary reputation. It is the Empire--the Empire which he always
opposed--that has done him this kindness. For twenty years no great
political reputation could arise in France. The Emperor governed and no
one member could show a capacity for government. M. Rouher, though of
vast real ability, was in the popular idea only the Emperor's agent;
and even had it been otherwise, M. Rouher, the one great man of
Imperialism, could not have been selected as a head of the Government,
at a moment of the greatest reaction against the Empire. Of the chiefs
before the twenty years' silence, of the eminent men known to be able
to handle Parliaments and to govern Parliaments, M. Thiers was the only
one still physically able to begin again to do so. The miracle is, that
at seventy-four even he should still be able. As no other great chief
of the Parliament regime existed, M. Thiers is not only the best
choice, but the only choice. If he were taken away, it would be most
difficult to make any other choice, and that difficulty keeps him where
he is. At every crisis the Assembl