the number of students who enjoy the advantage, the incalculable advantage, we esteem it, of an academic education, bears any just proportion to the magnitude of the endowments and the number of recent graduates which the two universities contain.

We believe at this moment there are nearly as many graduates as under-graduates on the books of the different colleges. We believe not more than one-tenth of the fellows are actually engaged either in tuition or lecturing. In short, there are the means, both personal and material, for educating three times the number of students at present in residence; there are the means of greatly diminishing the expense; and there are the means of augmenting indefinitely the advantages of the university system.

This can be effected only by rendering the inefficient colleges effective, and by extending those that are already efficient. What service, for instance, does "King's College," "Downing "College," in Cambridge, or " All Souls' College," and "New "College," in Oxford, render to the cause of academical education, and why should not their constitution be so reformed as to make their magnificent revenues as serviceable as those of "Trinity," ," "St. John's," "Oriel," " Christ Church,” and "Brazen Nose Colleges ?"

We believe that New College, with its seventy fellows, and with revenues not less than thirty thousand a year, does contrive to afford education to about a dozen gentlemen commoners. But King's College, with equal resources, does not admit any members, except fellows elect from Eton. But that these societies may display their impartiality and disinterestedness, they withhold from their own members what they refuse to others, and they claim exemption from the ordinary discipline and studies! and even from examination for their degrees. We do not know whether to express more astonishment at the societies that claim, or the universities that grant, such an immunity— a privilege to be disorderly and idle in a place of education!

Very analogous to this is the admission of noblemen to degrees. after but two years of residence, without examination, and the temptation held out to them to "despise authorities "by conceding to them an ostentatious precedence, not only over their fellowstudents, but over their tutors. This privilege, we need not

observe, operates most unfavourably both upon the minds and characters of the noblemen themselves, and upon the estimate and sentiments which are entertained of them by their contemporaries. In a place of education, there ought to be no distinctions or honours, but those which are earned by literary and moral desert. To impress young men, in the process of education, that they are entitled, by hereditary and indefeasible right, to public deference and respect, is to poison knowledge at its fountain-head, and to render the Universities, instead of scenes of moral and intellectual discipline, instruments of degeneracy and debasement.

It may be thought ungracious, to address ourselves, in conclusion, to the fears of the higher powers of the Universities. But there is no impropriety in appealing to their prudence and liberality. We are persuaded, that two sessions will not pass over, before a fresh and much more vigorous attack will be made upon the present policy of the Universities. We would, therefore, in all good feeling, press it upon their friends to take advantage of the interval to prove their disposition to make improvements, by removing at once some of those obstructions which now narrow their application, and to introduce such alterations, as will be an earnest of their intention gradually to adapt the pursuits of the Universities to the exigencies of society.

We should lament to see any rash and ignorant meddling with these venerable institutions; but we are so entirely convinced, that the services they at present render, considerable as they are, to the country and the world, are so small in proportion to that of which they are capable, that we shall never cease to expose their defects, till a large, liberal, and fundamental reform, both of their studies and discipline, has been accomplished from within or from without.

496

ARTICLE IV.

Examen du Système Electoral Anglais comparé au Système Electoral Français. Par M. JOLLIVET, Membre de la Chambre des Députés. Paris: 1835.

The Monarchy of the Middle Classes; or, France.

Second Series. By H. L. BULWER, Esq. M. P. London: 1836. Compte rendu au Roi sur les Elections municipales de 1834, par le Ministre de l'Intérieur.

THIERS, Jan. 1836.)

(Published by M.

Analyse des Votes des Conseils Généraux de Departement.

1833 et 1834.

Rapport de M. de Rambuteau sur l'Administration Municipale de Paris en 1835.

Compte rendu au Roi par le Ministre du Commerce (M. d'Argout) sur l'execution des Lois relatives aux Gardes Nationales. 1832.

FEW questions have been more debated in France since 1830, than the electoral franchise. But these noisy and animated discussions, which seemed to touch the most weighty interests of the nation, have not excited a corresponding echo in the country. As is usually the case when the people are indifferent, the controversy has been appropriated by parties, which have measured its importance by their own passions, without considering the state of public information and of public feeling. Some, viewing the question on the part of aristocracy, have affected to restrict the exercise of the electoral franchise to a single class of society; whilst others, representing the pitiless logic of democracy, have asserted the claims of the entire mass of citizens to the right of suffrage. Both these solutions were equally exclusive, and equally devoid of facts for their basis.

It is useless to inquire, with the Republicans, if the right of voting belongs to every citizen, whose name is registered to the public contributions; or if, as the Doctrinaires argue, this right is only a function, vested in the few for the benefit of the many. As long as the discussion is restricted to the abstractions of theory, it must remain without results. The laws of a people can only be understood and judged by com

paring them with its social condition. Of what importance then can it be to know, that all the citizens are naturally members of the governing power, if we are ignorant of the degree of moral and intellectual capacity united to the franchise, which they respectively enjoy?

The elective system of France has not yet been appreciated, either as a whole, or in relation to the moral and intellectual condition of that country. Not that the elements of this comparison have been wanting; for the materials abound, and only require to be employed with discernment. The administration publishes every year the official documents, which demonstrate the results of the system established by law; and the study of the situation of public opinion is a task, which perhaps demands less intelligence than candour.

M. Jollivet and Mr. Bulwer have, apparently, no pretensions to supply these deficiencies in political science. It is difficult to imagine any book less original and more vacant than these two compilations. Mr. Bulwer, at least, was treading upon new ground; but more accustomed, as it would seem, to consider the facetious than the serious points of his subject, it may be presumed that his object was not the instruction of his readers. But M. Jollivet, a member of the Chamber of Deputies, and who has contributed, in that capacity, to modify the system of French legislation, was bound to produce a work of more solid importance. M. Jollivet has brought an action against the Courrier Français, for the purpose of compelling that journal to declare that the judgment passed in his book, upon the electoral system of Great Britain is sound and correct. But even if the irascible Deputy were to address us with an argument of the same nature, we should venture to remark, that the portion of his work, which concerns the electoral system in France, is of very little value. In default of that information, which writers, treating the subject ex professo, owed to the public, but which they have neglected to furnish, we shall be allowed to derive the data of our remarks from official publications, and to complete them by our own observations. Before the revolution of July the crown exercised nearly a sovereign authority over the country. It created the peers, whose hereditary titles were afterwards transmitted to their families; it designated, through the medium of the

ministers or the prefects, the members of the Departmental Conseils Généraux, and of the Conseils Municipaux. The Chamber of Deputies was the only elected power in the state; and even there, the combination of the Double Vote, and the privilege of appointing the presidents of the electoral colleges, which was reserved to the crown, necessarily annulled the choice of the nation under ordinary circumstances. Thus the budget of the nation was subjected to an illusive control; and the people had no effective control over the budgets of local expenditure.

The consequence of the movement in July 1830 was the conquest by the elective power of all these positions which had been usurped, or were still contested. The Chamber of Deputies assumed the initiative, which had been refused to it by the Charter of 1814. That assembly, which had not the right of choosing its own president or of proposing amendments to the laws, was invested, by circumstances, with a constitutive authority, by virtue of which it created a charter, a king, and a dynasty. The whole nation rose, organised its own battalions, and appointed its own chiefs, to keep watch and ward for the maintenance of the new order of things. The legislature contracted an engagement to accomplish in time, what it was unable to do at once. Election became the common political law of the country. The executive ceased to exist as a peculiar force which is only responsible to the Divinity; it assumed the rank which belongs to it; and it now stands subordinate to public opinion, that power of modern societies, which it represents by delegation.

The elective system which was instituted in France by the revolution of July, is not the rigorous application of the principle in its widest extent, nor does it satisfy all the interests of the country. But such as it exists, established in all the different gradations of the political scale-in the National Guard, in the councils of the communes and the departments, and lastly, in the electoral body properly so called, it presents one of the most extensive systems of institutions, which a free people has ever possessed.

In the first place, the National Guard is an armed democracy, endued with all its strength, and with habits of discipline which invest that strength with all their authority. By the