right to elect three Deputies that 63,105 voters go to the there are only two lists, that poll. The result of the countof the partisans of Government ing of the votes might well and that of the Opposition, and be: Total 24,896 24,281 23,585 72,762 represented. The result would be different with the application of the R.P., and all that would have to be done after the counting of the votes and making the addition of each list would be to divide the total of each list by the number of Deputies to be elected, that is to say, in the present supposed case by 1, 2, and 3, thus:— OPPOSITION LIST. 72,762 divided by 1 = 72,762 72,762 divided by 2 = 36,381 72,762 divided by 3 24,254 of importance being = Tom 1st on Government list, ELECTED. Dick 2nd on Government list, ELECTED. Government partisan Harry, and in the case of a second vacancy occurring the seat would go to the member of the Opposition Paul, and so on. In the case of a larger electoral district and of a greater number of political parties, and consequently of lists, there is no additional complication. All that has to be done is to take the total of each list, divide it successively by the number of Deputies to be elected, and then arrange the quotients in the order of their importance with the indication of the list to which each belongs. At the close of the debate in the Chamber last autumn on the question of electoral reform close on 200 Deputies voted for the R.P., and since that moment the leaders of the movement, with M. Charles Benoist, Member of the Institut, Deputy for Paris, and president of the Parliamentary group for electoral reform, and of the extra - Parliamentary Committee of electoral reform, at their head, have continued to make propaganda throughout the whole of France in favour of that reform. The system of the R.P. has the good fortune to please men of all political parties, except those members of the Government majority who depend entirely on Government support for their re-election, and such narrow-minded politicians as M. Combes, ex-Prime Minister, M. Pelletan, exMinister of the Marine, &c. Moreover, the current of public opinion in the country in favour of the R.P. has become so strong that a good many Deputies who voted against it last autumn found expedient to inscribe it in their electoral programmes among the reforms to be effected by the new Chamber. The orators of all political parties who have been stumping the country have had no difficulty in demonstrating the unfairness of the present method of voting, and even of the "Scrutin de Liste" when applied without the R.P. However, M. Briand, Prime Minister, who in his address to his electors at Saint Chamond on 10th April was prudent enough to admit that the reform of the electoral law was indispensable, nevertheless pronounced against the R.P. He contended it was "essential " the Chamber should be made a permanent assembly, and that the reactionary candidates should be thus deprived of the opportunity of seeking to agitate the country every four years by demanding of their electors whether they intend to preserve the Republic or will accept the restoration of the Monarchy or the Empire. To avoid the inconvenience of the very existence of the Republican régime being called in question at General Elections, M. Briand proposed that, while widening the base of election, the Deputy's mandate should be considerably prolonged, and that, like the Senate, the Chamber should be made a permanent assembly renewed by thirds. Such a modification of the electoral law would evidently confer serious advantages on professional politicians, but it is doubtful whether the country would profit by it in the same measure. Far from desiring the proportional representation in the Chamber of the political minorities existing in the country, the Prime Minister seems to demand their exclusion, and the apathy till now shown by the Conserva tive electors is calculated to make him think they are a quantité négligeable. Indeed, even with the "Scrutin de Liste" which was in operation at the general elections of 1885, the minority of 462,000 electors in the Dordogne were unrepresented, while all the seven seats in the Chamber allotted to that department were occupied by the representatives of the majority, numbering only 490,000 elect ors. This was perhaps one of the most flagrantly unfair results of a departmental election, but statistics show that the nine Chambers which have been elected since the proclamation of the Republic in 1876 have all, with but one exception, been elected by less than half the number of electors inscribed on the rolls. In 1876 no fewer than 9,980,877 men had the right to vote, but only 4,458,584 went to the poll; in 1877, after the coup d'état of 16th May, the number of electors was 10,107,654, and even on that special occasion only 5,059,106, or not more than 10,000 above 50 per cent of the total number of electors, voted; in 1881 the electors on the rolls numbered 10,167,052, but no more than 4,567,052 went to the poll; in 1885 there were 10,042,964 electors, of whom 4,042,964 recorded their votes; in 1889 the number of electors was 10,326,086, of whom only 4,526,086 voted; in 1893 the electors numbered 10,443,511, and 4,513,511 went to the poll; in 1898 there were 10,539,000 electors on the rolls, but only 4,906,000 voted; in 1902 there were 10,977,000 electors, and only 5,195,000 went to the poll; and in 1906 the rolls contained 11,593,458 electors, and but 5,209,606 recorded their votes. apathy of the French electors would be almost inexplicable were it not for the fact that the minorities always felt themselves crushed before confronting the electoral battle. Foreseeing the defeat of their party, too many of those who possessed the right to vote did not think it worth while to go to the poll. The BALLIOL, AS I REMEMBER IT. I WRITE chiefly of the early seventies: and I write, not as one of those who have helped to make Balliol famous, but as a very insignificant member of her rank and file. Nor do I pretend to deal with the ambitions, the struggles, and the triumphs of these worthier sons of hers: my memories are altogether of a humbler sort, being just the flotsam and jetsam of our common undergraduate life. When I went up, Dr Scottjoint-parent of the stupendous Lexicon was our Master. Learned, kind, and anæmic, he was well liked, but not beloved with the enthusiasm which Jowett, his successor, evoked in some men, and T. H. Green in others. He had a curious drawling manner of speech, which heightened the effect of the quiet sarcasms in which he would sometimes indulge. There was a story that Lord Donoughmore, who had rooms in the Fisher Buildings, which adjoined the Master's house, and who, contrary to regulations, kept a dog in College, went on one occasion to complain to the Master of the noise made by the cats on the roof. After he had expatiated for some little time on this grievance, Dr Scott, so the tale goes, observed quietly, "Is that a cat, Lord Donoughmore, which I hear barking on your staircase every night?" Jowett was my first tutor, and I certainly neglected my opportunities with that remarkable man. The fault was mainly on my side, but his manner was at times rather alarming to a boy; and though I never received anything but kindness at his hands, he had a preternatural capability of making one feel uncomfortable. I accept the full burden of my own shortcomings, but I doubt whether any efforts on my part would ever have brought about any warm intimacy between us. Stories innumerable are told of him, and I will only add one here which I think has so far escaped print. Walter Sichel (of " Bolingbroke," "Lady Hamilton," and "Sheridan" fame) told me that once, when walking with Jowett, they came to a very wet patch of road. "I wish Mr Swinburne were here," chirped the Master (referring to the poet). "Why?" asked Sichel. "He would have damned this mud so," was the reply. The daily routine of College life has not altered essentially, I imagine, since my Balliol days; but such changes as have been made are all for the better. In my time we dined at six, chiefly on tepid "commonses of beef and mutton. The dinner - hour is now advanced to seven, and the dinner served, so far as my experience goes, is as good as can be desired. The old-fashioned wine has, I fancy, disappeared to a great extent from Balliol, as from Oxford generally. some, but some only, of the Whether the terrible "fish qualities by which those who toast," which used to accom- knew him remember and repany it, is also a thing of the gret him still. The old-fashpast I know not. One of the ioned Don, however, had not happiest features of Balliol life, altogether passed away. Woolland one which distinguished it combe was a faultless specimen sharply from the other col- of the class. He was a sort of leges, was the friendly and in- incarnation of the strange folk timate relations which sub- who live chiefly in the instrucsisted between the Dons-I tive pages of 'Peter Parley's speak chiefly of the younger Annual. Openly and without Dons-and the undergraduates. shame, for instance, he would Most of them were ready, and "crack" a joke. But except many of them were eager, to for atrocities of this kind he be friends as well as teachers was a harmless old gentleman, to the men under their care. who incidentally served as an Many of them, too, entered excellent subject for Inglis keenly into the lighter side of Richmond's clever mimicry. the College life, with its tri- Old, perhaps, as undergraduumphs or reverses, on the river, ates reckon age, but not in the running-path, or the cricket- the least old-fashioned, was field. Being a wet bob myself, Edwin Palmer, the famous it is chiefly from the river Professor of Latin. Another that I cull these memories. of our Dons was John Purves, I recollect, for instance, one steeped in scholarship, pale, awful day in the Torpids when reserved, unemotional, but a I was stroking the Balliol boat. painstaking and conscientious The tow-path was knee-deep in teacher. I fancy that he killed water; the wind was a bitter himself by over-work. It was hurricane, with a fitful ac- whispered that he would really companiment of lashing rain- prefer to be called Purües, for storms. Only three men ven- the sake of the classical ring tured out to run with the which it would give to his boat, and two of these were name. Caution, with him, was Dons-Nettleship and Forbes positively a fine art. Asked (both, alas! no more), the -the once by a pupil (and a brother third being Acland Hood (now Scot) as to his prospects in Sir Alexander Acland Hood), Honour Mods, Purves replied the present Unionist Whip. with piece-meal deliberation, Few men have left a "If "If you know your bookswarmer memory in the hearts and you put your back into of their generation than your composition-and you're Nettleship. His ever ready lucky, you have a fair chance sympathy, his unwearying of doing-very fairly well." patience even with the dull- The pupil in question was est of us, and the rare Gillespie, surely one of the modesty which graced his kindliest and best hearted brilliant abilities, these are men who ever walked the |