inaptitude for it. In the last but one of these essays I have tried
to describe one of the mental conditions of Parliamentary
Government, which I call "rationality," by which I do not mean
reasoning power, but rather the power of hearing the reasons of
others, of comparing them quietly with one's own reasons, and then
being guided by the result. But a French Assembly is not easy to
reason with. Every assembly is divided into parties and into
sections of parties, and in France each party, almost every section
of a party, begins not to clamour but to scream, and to scream as
only Frenchmen can, as soon as it hears anything which it
particularly dislikes. With an Assembly in this temper, real
discussion is impossible, and Parliamentary government is impossible
too, because the Parliament can neither choose men nor measures. The
French assemblies under the Restored Monarchy seem to have been
quieter, probably because being elected from a limited constituency
they did not contain so many sections of opinion; they had fewer
irritants and fewer species of irritability. But the assemblies of
the '48 Republic were disorderly in the extreme. I saw the last
myself, and can certify that steady discussion upon a critical point
was not possible in it. There was not an audience willing to hear.
The Assembly now sitting at Versailles is undoubtedly also, at
times, most tumultuous, and a Parliamentary government in which it
governs must be under a peculiar difficulty, because as a sovereign
it is unstable, capricious, and unruly.

The difficulty is the greater because there is no check, or little,
from the French nation upon the Assembly. The French, as a nation,
do not care for or appreciate Parliamentary government. I have
endeavoured to explain how difficult it is for inexperienced mankind
to take to such a government; how much more natural, that is, how