ficulty with the French legislative bodies is that royalistic
precedents and rules run side by side with republican principles, and
the result is a mongrel institution divided, too often, against
itself. When matters shall be so arranged that the French President
will have to fill out his full term of office, and French ministers
will not be permitted to originate legislation, and cabinets shall be
selected to serve as long as the Presidential term, then the French
Republic will enjoy the same ministerial stability as that of the
United States.

It were hard to say that the French method of electing a president is
any better or any worse than that of the United States. The President
of the French Republic is elected by the majority of the votes of both
Chambers. This plan does not seem to remove him further from the
people than does the system of electing a president by electors, as in
the United States. As human ingenuity has not yet succeeded in
creating the ideal republic, wherein, according to Ouida, there would
be no president, some system of election must be followed. The
question is not a burning one. There is notable, however, a growing
tendency in France in favor of electing the president directly by the
votes of the people. The seven-years' period for which the French
president is elected is considered by many to be an excellent
provision; but it loses half its excellence by reason of the fact that
the president has the power to initiate laws, this and other things
concurring to make his resignation a possibility, and not a remote
one.

That the office of vice-president does not exist in France seems to be
of no great consequence. In the history of the American Republic there
have been five vice-presidents who have been called upon to step into
the Presidential chair by the deaths of presidents. According to the
French Constitution, in case of a Presidential vacancy, whether from
death or any other cause, the two Chambers proceed immediately to the
election of a president. In the interval the ministers are invested
with executive power.

What I have written regarding the growing tendency to think it would
be better to elect the president directly by the votes of the people,
applies with a little more force to the election of senators. In
France the municipalities elect the senators, as do State legislatures
in this country. It is held by some who have discussed the question
that it is much more in conformi