confine their
choice to some man living in the district for which he wished to
stand. The Left disapproved the _scrutin d'arrondissement_, which
gave too much scope, it said, for local interests to have weight over
political issues. In our own country local interests are provided for
by State legislatures, and in elections for Congress the _scrutin
d'arrondissement_ is adopted.

On the last day of December, 1875, the National Assembly was dissolved.
Confused, uninteresting, factious as it had been on points of politics,
it had at least taught Frenchmen something of parliamentary tactics
and the practical system of compromise. The American government
is said to be based on compromise. In France, "all or nothing"
had been the cry of French parties from the beginning.

The leader of the Left was now Gambetta, who managed matters with
discretion and in a spirit of compromise. From this policy his
immediate followers have been called "opportunists," because they
stood by, watching the course of events, ready to promote their
own plans at every opportunity.

The new Assembly proved much too republican to please the marshal.
In every way his situation perplexed and worried him. He was not
a man of eminent ability, and had never been trained to politics.
He had been used to govern as a soldier. His head may have been a
little turned by the flatteries so freely showered on him before
his election, and he had come to entertain a belief that he was
indispensable to France. He saw himself the protector of order
against revolutionary passions, and conceived himself to be adored
as the sole hope of the people. "Believing this, he could hardly
have been expected to conform to the simple formulas which govern
the councils of constitutional kings." Moreover, behind the marshal
was his friend the Duc de Broglie, "now counselling compromise
and now resistance, but always meditating a sudden blow in favor
of monarchy."

By the close of 1876 it became so evident that the government of
France could not be carried on upon strictly conservative principles
that even the Duc de Broglie advised the marshal to form a Cabinet
from the Left, under the prime ministership of M. Jules Simon.
This gentleman had been one of the five Jules's in the Committee
of Defence in 1870. He was an upright man, very liberal in his
opinions, and philosophic in his tendencies, which made him especially
unacceptable to Marshal MacMahon.

Simon formed a ministr