[p. 114]
|114| mission were at once laid aside and forgotten by both parties, and it counts as one of the most essential constitutional principles in England and France that the elected members are as sovereign in their votings as their electors are in theirs. Both have in their deliberations and resolutions on public affairs not the character of officials and share with the king, what is sanctioned for him, that they bear no responsibility for the fulfilment of their duties.
In consequence of the feeling of the insignificance that obtains in the influence of the individual and of the sovereign arbitrary will attached to this right, experience teaches that the electoral assemblies are in general not numerously attended; the numbers which one sometimes finds given in the public papers of those entitled to vote and of those actually voting at the election show themselves, even in France, for the agitated times of the last years of the government of Charles X, as usually very divergent from one another; at the most recent election, held at the centre of political interest, in Paris, where there seems to have been no lack of zeal on the part of the parties to summon those entitled to vote to cast their votes, of about 1,850 persons entitled to vote it is stated that some 600 did not appear. It might be interesting in this respect to learn also from other circles, where the right of voting is conferred upon all citizens and concerns an interest much closer to them – for example from electoral assemblies for the election of the town councillors in the Prussian state -, the average ratio of those entitled to vote to those actually voting. – In earlier periods of the French Revolution the zeal and conduct of the Jacobins in the electoral assemblies made it distasteful, indeed dangerous, for the quiet and upright citizens to make use of the right of voting, and the faction alone held
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