3-034-694 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Waiting-room of the National Assembly at Versailles, 1871. 'The experienced observer of public business...will find no difficulty in understanding the motives of each group. The extreme difficulty of pleasing everybody, or even attending to everybody, amid the hurry of work in a running fight against time, is severely felt by the harassed member of a political body, especially in times of uneasiness and excitement...It is not merely the legitimate exercise of his voting and speaking privilege, upon the questions likely to come under debate, that he is obliged to account for to any of his constituents, or their friends, who choose to call upon him. He is supposed by them to be the possessor of a certain powerful influence, which will compel the Ministers of the day, whether he be their supporter or their opponent, to dispense their patronage and other favours according to his request. Nine-tenths of the personal applications made to him from the neighbourhood which constitutes his electoral bottom, and upon which he takes his seat, concern something he is to get done, or to prevent being done, in some department of the Administration, over which he cannot have the slightest direct control'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.