olished the majority of the Assembly, supported by two million petitioners, by the greater number of the Councils of Arrondissement, and almost unanimously by the Councils-General, demands the revision of the fundamental compact. Have you less confidence than we in the expression of the popular will?' The question, therefore, may be thus stated to all who desire a pacific solution of the difficulties of the day:-the law of the 31st of May has its imperfections; but even were it perfect, should it not, nevertheless, be repealed if it is to prevent the revision of the Constitution, the manifest wish of the country?

"It is objected, I am aware, that on my part these proposals are inspired by personal interest. My conduct for the last three years ought to repel such an allegation. The welfare of the country, I repeat, will always be the sole moving spring of my conduct. I believe it my duty to propose every means of conciliation, and to use every effort to bring about a pacific, regular, and legal solution, whatever may be its issue.

"Thus, then, gentlemen, the proposal I make to you is neither a piece of party tactics, nor an egotistical calculation, nor a sudden resolution it is the result of serious meditation, and of a profound conviction. I do not pretend that this measure will banish all the difficulties of our situation. But to each day its appointed task. To re-establish universal suffrage to-day, is to deprive civil war of its ensign, and the Opposition of its last argument. It will be to furnish France with the possibility of giving itself institutions which may insure its repose. It will be to give back in future to the powers

of the State that moral force which can only exist so long as it reposes on a consecrated principle and an incontestable authority."

When M. Thorigny had finished reading the Message, he submitted a project of law for the abrogation of the law of the 31st of May, 1850, and for the re-establishment of the electoral law of the 15th of March, 1849, under which all citizens of age, who have resided six months in the commune, were declared electors. M. Thorigny demanded "urgency," that is, the immediate consideration of this project of law.

M. Berryer (amidst cries from the Left of "Let us vote without any discussion") made a few remarks on the proposition of urgency. Characterizing the Message as a serious document, and the situation as one inspiring emotion and uneasiness in the public mind, which it was the duty of the Assembly to allay, he called on the Assembly to suspend its vote on the urgency, until the political question and the political situation should be fully explained to the satisfaction of the country. moved the appointment of a Special Committee to hear the explanations of the Ministry on the situation of the country, and report upon that situation, so that the Assembly should pursue its course with impartiality and reflection.

He

M. Giraud, Minister of Public Instruction, opposed this demand, on the ground that the appointment of such a Committee would disturb rather than re-assure the country; especially as the Committee of Permanence had already, since the change of Ministry, determined that there existed no reason for alarm and no ground for convoking the National As

sembly. M. Thorigny added, that by demanding urgency, the Cabinet had no desire for instant consideration of the Bill-the discussion might go on to-morrow.

M. Larochejacquelein supported the urgency, and after its adoption by the Assembly, he would, he said, vote in favour of M. Berryer's proposition, for he also wished to be enlightened as to the situation of the country.

M. Berryer replied, that he always spoke with sincerity. It was impossible that the Assembly could grant urgeney without knowing whether the rumours in circulation were true or false.

M. Giraud replied that the Ministry was ready to give the explanation desired by M. Berryer on any day the Assembly thought proper to fix. The adoption of the urgency, however, did not prejudge the question.

The President then put the urgency to the vote. The Left, and a few members here and there on the Right, rose in its favour. The great majority on the Right and Centre voted against it, and the urgency was declared to have been rejected.

A Committee was afterwards appointed to draw up a report on the question of the repeal of the Electoral Law, and the report was read by M. Daru in the Assembly on the 7th of November. Its most important passages were the following:

"The abrogation of the law of May 31 is proposed to us by the Government in the name of the public peace, in order to take away from the factious a pretext of disorder, and in the name of the sincerity of universal suffrage, in order that, in the midst of the ruins which surround us, one

principle at least may remain upstanding.

"The law in question is, consequently, attacked, not in its secondary enactments, but in its essential and vital conditions. The question, as placed before us in the Message of the President of the Republic, and in the Bill brought forward by the Government, turns altogether on the maintenance or abandonment of the principle set forth in the law of May 31. We cannot, therefore, do otherwise than desert or defend that principle.

"Whatever regret we may experience to find ourselves on this important point in disaccord with the Executive Power, we owe it to the natural disquietudes all at once disseminated through the country, we owe it to ourselves, to declare our opinion as loudly as possible, and not to allow men's minds to remain for one moment in suspense on the resolutions which we have to propose to you to adopt.

"The law of May 31 remains in our eyes at present what it was two years back. It was then, and is still, both a political act, and the consecration of a just principle.

In demanding from the Constitution conservative measures against the possible abuses of universal but unlimited suffrage, in rendering the electoral right subordinate to the guarantee of a residence duly proved, we have really passed a moral law. Universal suffrage, left to its own disorder, such as it was practised in the first days of the Revolution, such even as it was incompletely organized in the first months of 1849, could, in exceptional circumstances, at those supreme moments when the common peril

unites together men of all opinions, perform its functions without compromising the social interests of the country. But under the form which it then possessed-confused, without regulation-it could not in ordinary times, we conceive, in any country of the world, constitute a strong republic or a free people. No doubt the Assembly has not the pretension to have resolved at the first attempt, in the best possible manner, the vast and difficult problem of electoral organization under the régime of the popular sovereignty. It may modify and revise its work, but it cannot reject the idea which actuated it in 1850.

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If the principle of the law of May 31 is no longer looked at, but only the political bearing which it had, it will not be disputed that this law has powerfully contributed to the re-establishment of order by restoring shaken confidence, by showing the two powers of the State united in the firm will of causing their common institutions to be respected, and by giving force to these powers, in face of passionate resistance, threatening defiance, and open appeals to revolt. In fact, until very recently, the spirit of disorder appeared to have gradually diminished, and the spirit of order increased and strengthened.

Nevertheless, if our reason and our consciences have been deceived, if the interest of public security requires that we should loudly admit the error into which we had fallen in 1850, we ought not to hesitate to do so. Assemblies do themselves honour by repairing their faults, when they have committed them; it would cost us nothing to confess it if we thought that the law of May 31

had fulfilled its mission and was no longer useful; but if, on the contrary, the principles on which that law is based, appear as just as they were in 1850, if the guarantee of domicile required as a condition of the right of voting appears now as necessary as it was then, it is necessary to re-establish the authority of that law, and to restore it to the plentitude of its moral power.

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What is the state of things under which France opens this important debate? The public powers approach their end, and their authority is consequently weakened, whilst the audacity of the anarchical party increases. Their proceedings have been pointed out to you by the Presidential Message, which showed them as disciplined and organized, and spread over the whole surface of the country ready to profit by our divisions and by our faults. The period at which they reckon on carrying their guilty proceedings into execution is a secret to no one.

"While the factious thus agitate, the mass of the nation remains peaceable, but uneasy. It demands the peaceful and legal solution of the difficulties in which the country is placed; and in its just apprehension of sanguinary conflicts, it shows itself beforehand not only severe, but ready to turn against them who would assume the responsibility of raising the signal of struggle, and thus call on France the string of calamities which civil discords invariably bring in their train. In such a situation, what ought to be done? Should society deprive itself of the legal weapons which she has in her hands, at the risk by so doing of discouraging her firmest defenders,

when parties are raised, when they avow their idea of aggression, when this is proved by manifest signs, and the imminence of the danger which may arise in the crisis of 1852 is clearly revealed?

Is this a moment to take from the cause of order, with the law of May 31, one of its most pre ́cious guarantees? Do not the very attacks of which that law has been the object show that it is one of those great measures which cannot be repealed without appearing to yield to menace, and consequently show a symptom of weakness? We have during the last two years witnessed a strange spectacle. The law of May 31 has been denounced to the country as a violation of the Constitution, as an attentat.

"Regarded in its political effects, the measure proposed to us by the Government appears to us to be directly opposed to the object it wishes to attain. Instead of diminishing the danger, it increases it; far from giving force to the Government, it takes it from it; and it is completely contrary to the political idea which has constantly directed us; to the interest of the public security, to the dignity of the State, to its consideration abroad, which is the very condition of its influence, and consequently is one of the most valuable guardians of society.

exceptional circumstances had created a dictatorial authority. We are asked to accept and to admit a principle which would make the national sovereignty reside in the confused masses, including every one without distinction, even the indigent and the incapable, instead of making it reside, as the Constitution wishes, in the generality of all those in whom the law admits the capacity of electing or of being elected. Between these two systems, which is the one that is the most recommended by the true and general spirit of our laws? Can the imprudent and incorrect theory be admitted that universal suffrage is not susceptible of any regulation, that it is the sovereignty of the people always in action, and that reparation should be made to it for any precaution or any legal guarantee with which it should be surrounded? To admit that theoretical exaggeration, would be to admit that the people were the only authority in the world which did not stand in need of reason to ratify its acts.

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Such cannot be the result of the experience acquired by sixty years of revolutions, after two centuries of intelligence. Whatever may have been the circumstances which suddenly enthroned universal suffrage in France, whatever may have been the voices which proclaimed it, it does not form a superior principle, inaccessible to all discussion, and not susceptible of error and of correction. admitting the principle of universal suffrage as the basis of the organization of all the powers of the State, the Constitution has not taken from the legislative power the right of deciding on the formalities to which the exercise of

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electoral rights should be subjected. The condition of property qualification has been abolished; the limit of the age of 21 years has been admitted; that is the only prescription of the Fundamental Act. The rest is to be regulated by the law, and especially the condition of domicile, from which the person to be elected was exempt, but which is implicitly maintained for the elector. In England, the Republicans of the seventeenth century, the most active and enterprising, those to whom the present amount of liberty in Great Britain would not have sufficed, the Harringtons and Sydneys, in giving everything to election, did not admit the exercise of the electoral rights unless with certain conditions of residence, such as permanent rent or privileges of corporations, and always required what they called the guarantee of attachment to the soil.

"We have changed or gone beyond all that. By the generous imprudence natural to the French character, without much reflection, and certainly without any preparation, all of a sudden all the barriers were thrown down, and all precautions buried in oblivion. Citizens scarcely having a residence, individuals wandering about without a home in any department, without being known or morally responsible in any place, and who could, under certain circumstances, be transported en masse on certain points

loud denial on the Left-at the will of factions, or to serve political manœuvres, were inscribed on the electoral lists ;-certainly, the dignity and verity of universal suffrage would but badly put up with such a state of things, since the more the first guarantees of property possessed, of taxes

paid, of material pledges given to the State, had been sacrificed, the more it was important to maintain at least the guarantee of the notoriety acquired in one place, of the hearth-stone established somewhere. The Assembly felt that, and it passed the law of May 31, not wishing assuredly to exclude any one, for exclusions for crimes and offences do not reckon-the degraded portion of mankind is not excluded, but withdraws itself. It refused to set aside any one on account of poverty; there are no proletarians in the eyes of the electoral law, for it assimilates entirely the proprietor and the nonproprietor, the manufacturer and the day labourer. It makes only one distinction, that of the man having a residence, and of him having mone-a distinction altogether of a moral character, which is neither marked by arbitrary distinction, nor by privilege; since he who is affected by it can always put an end to it when he pleases. That is what the law has effected, and what it had a right to effect; and it is at the same time what a wise policy recommended in this first gigantic experiment of universal suffrage.

"We will now sum up in a few words the conclusions to which the majority have come. The Government asks you, in principle, to repeal the law of May 31; and it is in principle that the majority of your Committee asks you to maintain it. We do not deny, however, that it may be useful or even necessary to modify some of its enactments; and if an appeal is made to the Assembly to introduce such ameliorations as experience may suggest, we have no doubt that such an appeal will be attended to; but in our opinion