The French Committee of Thirty on the Constitutional Laws is
said to have resolved to abolish voting by list for each department, and to substitute voting by arrondissement. The object of this change, which will, it is said, be carried out imme- diately, is to enable the Ministry to play the old trick with boundaries, a Radical majority being spoiled by the inclusion within the district of a tract full of Conservative peasants. it is an Imperialist idea, like every idea M. de Broglie has sanctioned yet, and used to work very successfully, be- cause till the war came the peasantry were everywhere Im- perialist. It will not work so well now that they are Republican, and M. de Broglie may find that instead of the sugar sweetening the pie, the pie will sour the sugar. Tricks like that will not make Lyons Orleanist or Clerical either, though fair-dealing and non-repression might have made her, at least, acquiescent. The practice of voting by list was a bad one, became it destroyed all variety of opinion, but that is not the reason why it is abolished.
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