resentative
system is beginning to be generally appreciated, and particularly in
commercial towns. The deputies of this department are to be changed the
approaching autumn, and the minds of men are already anxiously bent upon
selecting such representatives as may best understand and promote their
local interests. Few acts of the Bourbon government have contributed
more powerfully to promote the popularity of the King, than the law
enacted in the course of last year, which abolished the double election,
and enabled the voters to give their suffrages directly for their
favorite candidate, thus putting a stop at once to a variety of unfair
influence, previously exerted upon such occasions. The same law has also
created a general interest upon the subject, never before known; the
strongest proof of which is, that, of the six or eight thousand electors
contained in this department, nearly the whole are expected now to vote,
whereas not a third ever did so before. The qualifications for an
elector and a deputy are uniform throughout the kingdom, and depending
upon few requisites; nothing more being required in the former case,
than the payment of three hundred francs per annum, in direct taxes, and
the having attained the age of thirty; while an addition of ten years to
the age, and the payment of one thousand francs, instead of three
hundred, renders every individual qualified to be of the number of the
elected. The system, however, is subject to a restriction, which
provides, that at least one half of the representatives of each
department shall be chosen from among those who reside in it.
In the beginning of the revolution, a much wider door was open: all that
was then necessary to entitle a man to vote, was, that he should be
twenty-one years of age, a Frenchman, and one who had lived for a year
in the country on his own revenue, or on the produce of his labor, and
was not in a state of servitude. It was then also decreed, that the
electors should have each three livres a day during their mission, and
should be allowed at the rate of one livre a league, for the distance
from their usual place of residence, to that in which the election of
members for their department is held. Such were the only conditions
requisite for eligibility, either as elector or deputy; except, indeed,
that the citizens in the primary assemblies, and the electors in the
electoral assembly, swore that they would maintain liberty and equality,
or di
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