Hors-d'Oeuvre
Return to common law

Mr. Montigny, deputy of Sarthe, and Mr. Palmade, deputy of Charente-Inférieure, propose to their colleagues to renounce an excessive privilege, born of an abuse of parliamentary immunity.
Everything is free for deputies: travel, postage stamps, drinks at the refreshment bar, insults, defamation, assault and battery. The other day, a deputy, with a punch whose vigor and precision His Holiness Pius XI would have appreciated, went and broke a tooth in the jaw of another deputy; it cost him absolutely nothing... Now Biribi, whom General Nollet has just dismissed, was full of poor devils who had had a much more excusable movement of vivacity.
MM. Montigny and Palmade have therefore tabled a "proposed resolution" which aims to severely repress all tumultuous scenes or acts of violence committed during a session. The severity of Messrs. Palmade and Montigny remains, however, contained within the limits of the School Penal Code: the troublemakers will be censured (on the authority of the head supervisor) or thrown out of the classroom for a specified period of time.
It is a pity that these gentlemen did not think about restraint. The bad students, who only set foot in the Lycée-Bourbon on days when there is fun, do not care much about a disciplinary sanction that regularly exempts them from going to the club. On the contrary, the men punished should be forced to attend the annoying sessions where no one comes and to decline for hours the different chapters of the budget.
But the only effective system of repression would consist of the application of common law, that is to say fines proportionate to the seriousness of the offence.
For example, the sentences would be posted in the Salle des Pas-Perdus, on the model of the boards that the Compagnie du Métropolitain displays in its corridors to bring back to good travelers who are heedless of the regulations. One could read this:

SUMMARY OF SOME CONDEMNATIONS FOR OFFENCES COMMITTED IN THE SESSION ROOM

Mr. L... Called one of his little friends a "Jesuit! Jesuit ... 500 fr. fine
Mr. P... Alluded, with a gesture that embraced a row, to a band of "abominable scoundrels ... 2,000 fr. fine
Mr. X... Declared that the previous speaker had told a lie...50 fr.
Mr. Z... Insinuated that the previous speaker had told an "untruth"...25 fr.
Mr. S.-J... In the position of the standing shooter, took aim at an honorable deputy and, without a rifle, shot him by persuasion...100 fr. and confiscation of the weapon.
Mr. R... With a punch, broke a tooth belonging to one of his colleagues... during (according to the latest rate of the Trade Union of Dentists.)

The proceeds of the fines would be sent to Mr. Millerand, to feed the relief fund for the victims of May 11,
And you would see that the deputies, in the hemicycle, would become as wise as images of piety.
They would have the leisure to argue and scold each other outside the meeting room.
But there is no danger of this happening.

Unlike other schoolboys, deputies only become turbulent and ill-mannered when people look at them.

G. DE LA FOUCHARDIÈRE.