were not entertained? They had pre-occupied the Permanent Committee, who had had the generosity to keep its procès-verbaux under seal. M. Baroche said, "Judge us by our acts." Was not the dismissal of General Changarnier a sufficiently significant act? It was an additional insult offered to the Assembly, after its vote of approbation, which it could not but resent. M. Rouher, Minister of Justice, repeated the declaration already made by his colleague of the Interior, and protested the sincere desire of the Cabinet was to maintain the constitution, and not to interfere with the right of the nation to confide its destinies to whomever it pleased. M. Dufaure had spoken of the attacks directed by a certain press against the Legislative power, and of seditious cries. Were the Opposition journals less sober in their attacks against the constitution and less audacious in proclaim ing their factious sympathies? The Cabinet had thought proper to suppress the double command placed in the hands of General Changarnier by the decree of the 13th of June, 1850, proposed by M. Dufaure himself. In doing so it had merely carried into effect a clause of that decree of M. Dufaure, which stipulated that so abnormal a situation should cease the moment public tranquillity was restored in the capital.

General Bedeau, who followed, condemned the conduct of the Executive in not prosecuting the officers guilty of the seditious cries uttered in the plains of Satory, and in dismissing General Neumayer, who had recently refused to obey an order contrary to military regulations. The proof of the guilt of those officers could be arrived at, if the seals were removed

from the procès-verbaux of the Permanent Committee.

M. Remusat declared himself dissatisfied with the explanations of the Cabinet, and insisted on the Assembly retiring into its bureaux, and appointing a Committee to draw up and submit to the Assembly an energetic resolution or proclamation to the people.

M. Baroche combated the motion, both as a member of the Assembly and a citizen. He entreated his colleagues to pause and weigh the gravity of the proposed resolution, which was without precedent in Parliamentary annals, and was a flagrant violation of the division of powers and of the rights of the Executive.

After the Minister had left the tribune, M. Dupin consulted the Assembly as to the "urgency" of the resolution moved by M. Remusat; which was adopted by a considerable majority.

The President was next preparing to put to the vote the immediate retirement to the bureaux, when a division was loudly demanded on all sides. A ballot took place, which gave the following result:

nuary, you approved the reply of the Commander-in-Chief of the army of Paris to the interpellations which had been addressed to him, and you accepted the homage which he paid to the right conferred on you by the Constitution to dispose of the troops necessary for your safety.

"The next day the Ministry was dissolved, and after eight days of laborious negotiations it marked its return to power by the dismissal of General Changarnier. It was under these circumstances that M. de Remusat, in the sitting of January 10, demanded explanations from the Ministry, at the end of which you adopted an order of the day motivé, declaring that the representatives should at once withdraw to their bureaux to nominate a Committee for the purpose of proposing such measures as the circumstances appeared to call for.

"Your Committee, named on the evening of the 10th instant, was retarded in its labours by the printing of the procès-verbaux of the Permanent Committee, and could only name its reporter last evening. After having heard several times the Ministers of War and the Interior, and deliberating d'urgence, your Committee not the less examined most maturely all the questions connected with the constitutional relations existing between the great powers of the State. But you must comprehend, Gentlemen, that the narrow terms prescribed to your reporter have not permitted him to present to you all the developments which are connected with this subject. However, as by their nature and the theatre on which the facts took place a mistake may be made as to their importance, we hasten to

say to you that, in our opinion, there is not any reason to carry back the responsibility further than the Ministry.

"It is true that the President of the Republic, in his message of October 31, 1849, claimed for himself the general responsibility of the acts of his Ministers; but the constitution, the nature of things, and the practice both before and after the 31st of October, 1849, have maintained, and will always maintain, a real distinction between the Ministerial power and that of the President of the Republic.

"It is impossible to shut one's eyes to the fact, that for a long time there has been on the part of the Executive power a tendency to place little confidence in our institutions, to consider as transitory and ephemeral the form of government under which we live, to disseminate amongst every rank of society doubts as to the future, to cry up the supposed benefits of an absolute government, and to aspire, within an undetermined time, after a sort of Imperial restoration.

"The tendency which we point out to you has not been opposed by the Government, and even has been encouraged by some of its acts. The seditious cries of Vive l'Empereur!' were uttered at reviews; and a general officer, who resisted the impulse so given, was dismissed.

"The press, enjoying the privilege of being sold in the streets, has been full of insult and calumny against the National Assembly, apparently for the object of disparaging it and undermining its moral power; and, in fine, a more important act, and one which appears to us connected with the

preceding ones, the dismissal of General Changarnier, has attracted your attention.

"Each of these acts has been maturely examined in the Committee. The first, namely, the cry of Vive l'Empereur,' not only was not punished, but even encouraged. The information collected by your Permanent Committee, and that in particular of the General-inChief of the army of Paris, does not leave any doubt as to the fact, nor on other facts of a nature to compromise military discipline.

"The Minister of the Interior has denied those facts, and to the acts which passed at Satory opposed the evidence of what he saw himself. The Minister might be right on some particular facts, but so absolute a denial, whatever may be the good faith of the person making it, appears to us to depart from the truth.

"The dismissal of General Neumayer is a fact still more grave, the circumstances of which you are acquainted with. That General, being asked by an officer under him whether he ought to give his men orders to cry out, replied that silence under arms appeared to him the attitude most in conformity with military discipline.' That was the only reason that caused him to be deprived of his command; and his dismissal took place in spite of the exertions to the contrary of his superior officer, the General-in-Chief of the army of Paris.

"It remains to us to speak of the act which led to the mission intrusted to us, the dismissal of the General-in-Chief of the army of Paris. Two circumstances mark its character: one, that this act is correlative with the facts already

mentioned; and the next, that it took place the day after the Legislative Assembly had given to General Changarnier the testimony of its approbation.

"Your Committee has thought that it is in those circumstances that must be sought the real sense of that act. The explanations given by the Ministers have not changed its opinion. They have certainly stated that, for some time before the 3rd of January, the former Ministry had resolved to suppress the double command of the army of Paris and of the National Guard of the Seine, and to modify the conditions of that command. But the approbation given to the General by the Assembly caused several of the Ministers to hesitate. Then there were partial resignations, and next a collective one, destined to leave to the President a greater facility for the formation of a new Ministry. Negotiations took place with several members of the former Cabinet, on the basis of the suppression of the general command of the army of Paris. The negotiation showed, besides, that without that suppression, said the Minister, there could not be obtained from one of the general officers, as was desired, the acceptance of the portfolio of the War Department.

These explanations would be plausible in ordinary circumstances. It is certain, in fact, that whether by its extent or by the extraordinary powers with which he is invested, or by the movement of troops and ammunition, the general command of the army of Paris had conditions altogether special, which the re-establishment of order could cause to be modified. But after

having maintained it in circumstances so favourable to the public peace as those in which we are now placed, it appeared to us evident that this abrupt dismissal, just after the vote of the sitting of January 3, had a political cause, which, in its relation to the tendencies alluded to above, might interest the dignity of the Assembly, and in that respect fall within the domain of your appreciations."

The Committee were divided in their ultimate opinion. Two members proposed the simple order of the day, seeing nothing in the conduct of the Ministry to justify or blame; three presented a resolution of distrust, not, however, on account of the dismissal of General Changarnier, whose position was irregular, and against which they had always protested. Six others declared that they placed no confidence in the Ministry, and another also expressed his distrust, but in different terms. Finally eight to seven agreed to submit to the Assembly the following resolution :

"The National Assembly, acknowledging the right of the Executive Power to dispose of military commands, blames the use it made of that right, and declares that the General-in-Chief of the army of Paris preserves the title to the confidence which the National Assembly testified to him in the sitting of the 3rd instant, and passes to the order of the day."

Several amendments were moved on the presentation of this report, and amongst others one by M. St. Beuve, which was as follows:"The Assembly declares that it has not confidence in the Ministry,

:

and passes to the order of the day.'

In the debate that ensued next day upon the report, M. Mouet strongly urged the Assembly to pass a vote of "no confidence" on Ministers, because they had imparted a bad direction to the affairs of the country, and because the last acts of the Cabinet fully justified it. Since October, 1849, Ministers had been the complaisans of a single power, and had done everything in their power to lessen the consideration of the other. He had no confidence in men who attempted to transform the national army into a personal army, and consequently into an instrument of ambition. M. Mouet then denounced the dismissal of General Changarnier as another and still graver attempt to humble the Assembly, and the Executive, from being a rival, he said, would soon be its superior. He then described the events which took place in the plain of Satory. The Minister of the Interior had denied them. Now he (M. Mouet) was present. It was he who had made the report which was embodied in one of the procès-verbaux of the Permanent Committee, and he affirmed that he had only stated the truth.

M. Baroche, Minister of the Interior, said that he should first reply to this last charge. He had been present at the fourth review, and was ready to admit that seditious cries had been uttered by a few men and companies. He had never denied that; but what he denied before the Committee was, that those cries had been encouraged, or that any disorders had occurred after the review. This fact resulted from the inquiries

he had ordered. The Minister then examined if the charge of having laboured to lessen the consideration of the Assembly was well founded; and yet it was before the majority such a charge was preferred! And what were the acts of the Ministry incriminated? It could not be the law on public instruction, the electoral law, and the law on the press, which had been ratified by the Assembly. All the acts of the Executive had been sanctioned by its votes and by public opinion. Should he not also have felt astonishment and indignation when, during the prorogation, three members of the Permanent Committee waited upon him to complain of his neglecting to adopt measures to prevent the realization of an imaginary plot denounced to that Committee? Should he not feel indignant at being suspected of participation in such an attempt, if it had been serious and real? M. Baroche then reminded the Assembly of its enthusiastic reception of the message of the President of the Republic, which had been regarded as a pledge of reconciliation calculated to avert for a long time all causes of division between the powers. He next examined the theory of responsibility developed by M. Lanjuinais in his report, and contended that its authors meant to strike higher than the Cabinet. The Minister then stated that the suppression of the double command given to General Changarnier, which one of the speakers had described as a constitutional guarantee, was resolved upon long before the vote of the 3rd of January. That vote had not hastened the measure; on the contrary, the breaking up of the Cabinet and the reconstruction of

another, had retarded it by some days. The double command had become a third power between the only two recognised by the constitution.

"He was an obstacle," cried M. Houyn Tranchère.

"An obstacle to what?" retorted M. Baroche.

"An obstacle to the cries of Vive l'Empereur," exclaimed M. Tranchère.

"He was not always an obstacle," replied M. Baroche, "and I only refer the Assembly to the cries uttered at the review held in May, 1849, by the President of the Republic and General Changarnier. Those cries were then regarded as constitutional, and are now declared to be prohibited by military regulations. Did General Changarnier publish his order of the day of the 2nd of November between the third and fourth reviews? No, the General proposed no measure of repression. Assembly was jealous of the free and full exercise of its constitutional rights. Why should not the Executive feel the same desire? The provisions of the decree of the 13th of June, 1849, were formal. The exorbitant authority placed in the hands of the General was to cease the moment tranquillity was restored in Paris. No! That act was not an attempt against the dignity of the Assembly.

The

As respected the idea of restoring the Imperial régime, the oath taken by the President of the Republic, and renewed in his message, victoriously refuted such a suspicion. The President would continue to accomplish his duty, and nothing but his duty. had pledged his honour, and would redeem his pledge. His affirmation and past conduct were the

He