The Revolution.—The French Revolution was initiated by the action of the royal Government itself in calling a meeting of the States General for the purpose of voting money. The meeting of the States General was not however, like the English parlia ment, an institution with the force of tradition behind it. The meeting called in 1789 under the old name of the States General was in reality a new assembly, summoned by a procedure created expressly for it.
Thus the question of the electoral system, which was the last to be settled in England, was in France the one which arose ear liest. The system adopted was uniform for the whole country, and thus more logical than that of England. Voting was by secret ballot and by absolute majority. As the Government had extended the right to vote to all tax-payers, including the very numerous peasant class, the election of the deputies of the Third Estate was carried out by indirect suffrage. A system of indirect suffrage of two degrees, with a secret ballot and absolute majority, was applied to all elections of legislative bodies throughout the Revolution period.
The assembly, converted into a "National Assembly," declared that it would not separate until it had given France a Constitu tion ; the royal power was thus limited by an elected body repre senting the nation as a whole. After the fall of Louis XVI. it became necessary to vest all powers in a single body, which was given the name of the Convention, a term borrowed from the United States. When the Convention desired to restore a regular political order conforming to the doctrine of the separation of powers, all that it could do was to replace the king by an executive Directory.
The third question, that of the qualifications and functions of ministers, had been settled under the pressure of practical neces sities in 1789, when it had had to be decided whether ministers might also be members of the Assembly. The Constituent Assembly had been apprehensive of the influence which ministers might exercise over the legislative body; it feared the ambition of one of its members, Mirabeau. Ministers, as members of the executive, were therefore forbidden to be at the same time mem bers of the Legislative Assembly; and this made it impossible to establish a system of responsible government in France.
Under the imperial regime there had been two chambers; Louis XVIII. maintained them under different names. The senate became a hereditary chamber of peers; the Legislative Assembly became the chamber of deputies, and the king had power to dissolve it, as in England. The chamber adopted a num ber of the practices of the British parliament, such as the King's speech, the voting of the Address, and the procedure for voting on ways and means.
The method of selecting ministers was not regulated by the Charter of 1814, just as there were no formal rules on the sub ject in England. Ministers were responsible, but only in the case of action contrary to the constitution, when they were liable to a procedure copied from the English system of impeachment.
Thus France did not yet enjoy responsible government in the sense in which the term is understood in English-speaking coun tries at the present day. Louis XVIII. however generally followed the practice of forming the ministry in agreement with the ma jority of the chamber, and when Charles X., in 1829, appointed ministers who were definitely unpopular, the majority made an official protest, the "address of the 221," in which it enunciated the theory of responsible government.
The dispute led to an insurrection in Paris, and the Revolution of 183o was the result. The new king, Louis Philippe, formally recognized the sovereign rights of the nation, and accordingly did not contest the principle of the responsibility of ministers to the Chamber. France thus adopted the principle of the political responsibility of ministers, according to which a minister is obliged to resign as soon as he is in disagreement with the elected Chamber.