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210.: FRENCH NEWS [80] EXAMINER, 21 JULY, 1833, P. 457 - The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIII - Newspaper Writings August 1831 - October 1834 Part II

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210.: FRENCH NEWS [80] EXAMINER, 21 JULY, 1833, P. 457 - John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIII - Newspaper Writings August 1831 - October 1834 Part II [1831]

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The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIII - Newspaper Writings August 1831 - October 1834 Part II, ed. Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson, Introduction by Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986).

Part of: Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, in 33 vols.

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210.

FRENCH NEWS [80]

EXAMINER, 21 JULY, 1833, P. 457

This item, headed “London, July 21, 1833,” is described in Mill’s bibliography as “The summary of French news in the Examiner of 21st July 1833” (MacMinn, p. 33). In the Somerville College set of the Examiner, the article is listed as “Article on France” and enclosed in square brackets.

the french chambers have concluded the second of their two continuous Sessions. The labours of the former of the two we passed in review some time since, and found subject for marvel that two Assemblies could have remained together for so many months and accomplished nothing.¹ The second has not been so totally unproductive. The salutary alteration in the standing orders of the Chamber of Deputies, whereby they were enabled to take up the unfinished business of one Session in the next, at the stage in which it was left,² has enabled the two Houses to pass three of the important laws which were pending before them.

The first in importance of these is the long expected and long suspended Education Bill.³ This is at length carried, and every parish in France will now have an elementary school, every town of 6000 inhabitants a school of a somewhat higher order. In its passage through the Chamber of Peers this Bill has undergone part of the usual deteriorating process. The local Committees who are to look after the management of the schools, are to consist of three members, of whom the curé is, ex-officio, to be one.

A Bill has passed for facilitating the arrangements with the owners of land required for public works.⁴ The great number of small landed proprietors in France, their exorbitant claims for compensation, and the superstitious regard paid by the French law and the tribunals to all proprietary rights, have hitherto opposed barriers almost insuperable to the formation of canals, railways, and other works of public usefulness. These obstructions will now be considerably diminished, and all authorities agree in representing the Bill which has just passed as a measure of substantial improvement.

The last of the three laws to which we allude is one which gives to the people, or rather to an extremely limited class of the people, the election of the departmental councils or administrative bodies for voting and appropriating the taxes imposed for the local purposes of the department.⁵ This law has undergone large mutilations to adapt it to the Oligarchical spirit of the Chamber of Peers. The Deputies, though themselves the representatives of a body of electors not amounting to 200,000, had, in spite of the Ministry, admitted a class not short of 400,000 to a voice in the election of these local bodies. But the Peers, always ready to abet the executive in any opposition to the extension of popular privileges, restricted the suffrage to a narrower body, consisting of the 180,000, or thereabouts, who have votes in the election of the Legislature, together with those who, by the exercise of a liberal profession, are qualified to serve on juries.

Little, therefore, beyond the principle of popular election, has on this occasion been gained; but even that is much.

The Deputies hurried through their second Budget with the most indecent precipitation.⁶ In order to get through their business and leave Paris, they consented to give up retrenchments which they had insisted upon in the budgets of the two preceding years.⁷ The salaries of various public officers, which were reduced two years ago, have been raised to their former standard, at a time when the expenses of every year considerably exceed the revenues!

[1 ]See No. 204.

[2 ]See ibid., n12.

[3 ]Bull. 105, No. 236 (28 June, 1833); for earlier bills, see Nos. 68 and 126.

[4 ]Bull. 107, No. 241 (7 July, 1833); see No. 204, n3.

[5 ]Bull. 104, No. 235 (22 June, 1833); see No. 204, n4.

[6 ]The last section of the Budget for 1834 (Bull. 106, Nos. 239 and 240 [28 June, 1833]) was adopted on 18 June (Moniteur, 1833, p. 1723).

[7 ]For 1832, Bull. 76, Nos. 168 and 169 (21 Apr., 1832), see No. 135; for 1833, Bull. 93, No. 213 (23 Apr., 1833), and Bull. 94, No. 214 (24 Apr., 1833), see No. 204.