of its colleges, its communities, and works of charity, gradually increased. I seek in vain elsewhere for a system or force able to guarantee to us the preservation and development of such benefits. I see only the gaping gulf of victorious Socialism. My choice is made-I am for authority against revolt, for preservation against destruction, for society against Socialism, for the possible liberty of good against the certain liberty of evil; and in the great struggle between the two forces which divide the world, I think that in acting so I am again on the present occasion, as always, for Catholicism against revolution."

Although by the terms of the decree calling upon the nation to vote on the question of the powers to be conferred on the President the people were restricted to a simple "yes" or "no," many availed themselves of the ballot to express in short and emphatic language their political creed. Thus in many of the boxes were found slips of paper inscribed with sentences like the following

"Oui! Vive l'Empereur! 'Oui! Mille et mille fois, Oui!" "Oui! A bas la République!" "Oui! Vive la République Democratique et Sociale!" "Oui! pour que Louis Bonaparte soit Empereur!" "Oui! Vive l'Armée!" "Oui! Mort à Cavaignac!" "Non! Mort au Dictateur!" "Non! Vive Henri V.!" "Non! Vive la République!" "Non! A bas l'Armée!" &c. All these tickets were, however, annulled, and the votes of the writers were consequently lost.

The result of the ballot was, that the President received 7,439,219 votes in his favour, and that 640,737 voted against him.

The evening of the 31st of December was appointed by Louis

Napoleon for the reception of the Consultative Commission, to communicate to him officially this report; and accordingly the members then repaired to the Palace of the Elysée, where M. Baroche, as Vice-President of the Commission, announced the number of votes in a complimentary speech, to which Louis Napoleon made the following reply:

"Gentlemen,-France has responded to the loyal appeal which I made to her. She has comprehended that I departed from legality only to return to right. Upwards of seven millions of votes have just absolved me, by justifying an act which had no other object than to save France, and perhaps Europe, from years of trouble and anarchy. I thank you for having effectually shown to what an extent that manifestation is national and spontaneous. If I congratulate myself on this immense adhesion it is not from pride, but because it gives me the force to speak and act as becomes the head of a great nation like ours.

"I understand all the grandeur of my new mission, and I do not deceive myself as to its difficulties. But with an upright heart, with the co-operation of all right-minded men, who, like you, will assist me with their intelligence and support me with their patriotism, with the tried devotedness of our valiant army, and with the protection which I shall to-morrow solemnly beseech Heaven to grant me, I hope to render myself worthy of the confidence which the people continue to place in me. I hope to secure the destinies of France by founding institutions which respond at the same time to the democratic instincts of the nation and to the universally expressed desire to have henceforth a strong

and respected Government; in fact, to give satisfaction to the exigencies of the moment, by creating a system which reconstitutes authority without wounding the feeling of equality, and, without closing any path of improvement, is to lay the foundations of the only edifice capable of supporting a wise and beneficent liberty."

A significant symptom of the new state of things in France was about this time exhibited in the orders issued by the prefects of departments for erasing from public buildings the words Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, and cutting down "trees of liberty." These orders ran in the following form :

"Whereas political inscriptions, and particularly the words 'liberty,' equality,' and 'fraternity,' which figure on most of the public buildings, present no character of utility, but are, on the contrary, for the people a perpetual excitement to revolt, by holding up to them the emblem and recollection of a triumphant insurrection; whereas the same may be said of the trees called of liberty,' which obstruct our public squares and walks, and now dried-up and decayed sticks, the Prefect decrees

are

"Article 1. Every political inscription, without exception, and in particular the words 'liberty,' equality,' fraternity,' shall be immediately removed from the fronts of public edifices and private dwellings. The trees of liberty shall be cut down or rooted up.

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Article 2. Trees which, having grown luxuriantly, are an ornament to the commune, are alone to be excepted."

Our narrative of this period would be incomplete if we did not mention that an immense number of political arrests took place, and

hundreds of persons, without having been convicted by any form of legal trial, were transported to Cayenne, Algeria, and elsewhere, under a sentence of perpetual exile from the soil of France.

Let us now calmly review the circumstances attending this extraordinary coup d'état, and see whether it can be justified on any principle that can be pleaded in its excuse.

When the dissolution of the Assembly was first proclaimed, and the arrests on the morning of the 2nd of December were made, it was publicly announced by the organs and creatures of the President that he was only acting in self-defence; that a conspiracy had been formed in the Assembly to deprive him of the short tenure of power which still remained to him, and that the leaders whom he seized were actually engaged in the plot. It was asserted that the moment for carrying the plan into execution had all but arrived; and that if the coup d'état had not anticipated the attempt, Louis Napoleon would have been himself a prisoner.

Now to this specious reasoning there is one complete and satisfactory answer. The plea put forward was wholly false in fact. The story of a plot and a conspiracy was a mere fabrication, put forward at the moment to gloss over an act of outrageous violence, and immediately abandoned when the President found himself strong enough in the support of the army to set regard for appearances at defiance. The proof of the utter falsity of the charge consists in the fact that not one of the alleged conspirators was ever brought to trial even before a court-martial, nor was a single particle of evidence adduced implicating them

in any such scheme. The papers of Generals Changarnier, Cavaignac, Leflô, and Bédeau, and of MM. Thiers, Roger du Nord, and the other deputies arrested, were seized without any of them having time or opportunity to destroy a single document, and yet not a solitary line was found to justify the accusation. We may, therefore, dismiss this ground of defence on behalf of Louis Napoleon as wholly untenable.

But, in the next place, it was asserted that the act was one of State necessity; that the Assembly had put itself in a position of factious hostility to the Executive, and that government had in consequence become almost an impossibility in France, owing to the conflict and opposition of the two rival powers. Here, again, the answer is that the assertion is untrue. The conduct of the Chamber was, we may frankly admit, in many instances undignified and unwise. Internal squabbles often disgraced the debates, and party violence was carried to an unseemly length. But wherever freedom of discussion prevails in a popular assembly, there we shall find the strife of party exist. It is so in our own Parliament. It is so in the United States of America; and it seems to be one of the conditions of a constitutional Government that such contests should continually arise. But towards the President the conduct of the Assembly had not been such as for one moment to justify him in destroying that body and extinguishing the liberties of France. The two instances in which during the preceding twelve months they had appeared to act most hostilely against him werefirst in January, when, on the motion of M. St. Beuve, they passed

a vote of want of confidence in the Baroche Ministry; and, secondly, in February, when they rejected the Dotation Bill. But if the head of the Executive is justified in overthrowing a Constitution because his Ministry suffer a defeat in Parliament, he is already virtually despotic. If constitutional resistance may be properly met by revolution, such resistance is a mockery, and the Assembly ought at once to proceed to register decrees as its only appropriate function. And with respect to the Dotation Bill it must be remembered, that the salary of the President had been fixed when the Constitution was adopted. It was not as if the Assembly had afterwards attempted to cut down and diminish the amount, which would no doubt have been an act of aggression on their part. They simply determined to adhere to the sum originally fixed as sufficient for the expenses of the Chief of the State, and refused to grant a large extra allowance for what were called frais de représentation, in order to enable the President to be more munificent in his largesses and entertainments. And they had good grounds for withholding such an additional supply. They knew that masses of troops at reviews had been regaled with champagne and sausages, in the presence and at the cost of the President, and that, inspired with drunken enthusiasm, the soldiers uttered cries of "Vive l'Empereur!" which significantly pointed at the revival of the Imperial régime in the person of Louis Napoleon. The Assembly, therefore, were not likely to loosen the purse-strings, that money might be employed in corrupting the loyalty of the army towards the Republic.

One other pretext has been ad

vanced in justification of the President. It is said that by his coup d'état he delivered France from the horrors of a Socialist revolution. The argument is, that extensive preparations were made by secret affiliated societies throughout the kingdom to proclaim the Red Republic during the contest that would have taken place for the presidency in 1852, and plunge the nation into a civil war for the avowed purpose of carrying into effect the doctrines of Communism and Socialism. But the answer to this is easy. The event has proved that the army of France is true to its military duties, and would have crushed at the bidding of the Executive any attempt at lawless violence. The duty of the President, if he really dreaded a Socialist conspiracy or outbreak, was to strengthen the military force at the suspected points, and to be prepared against attack by taking all the precautions which his knowledge of the designs of the enemies of order suggested and rendered necessary. So long as the army remained faithful, there could be no real danger. And the President well knew that the immense majority of the French nation would second the Executive in any conflict with Socialism. To convert obscure hints of possible attempts by others to destroy the Constitution as by law established, into a pretext for overthrowing the Constitution at once by a single blow, is to insult the understanding of mankind. It is idle to disguise the fact: Louis Napoleon knew that he could not be re-elected President if the organic laws of the Republic remained in force; he found that in the Assembly he could not obtain the requisite majority to repeal those laws; and

therefore, for the purposes of his own personal aggrandizement, he resolved to abrogate them, and the Constitution along with them, by the power of the sword. He had, on assuming the duties of his high office, solemnly sworn to maintain that Constitution, but his oath was as dust in the balance when it interfered with his ambition. Nor does it, in our view of the case, make any difference that the votes of the population of France, when afterwards appealed to, were largely in his favour. The people had then to choose between him and anarchy. What had been done could not be undone without infinite risk of a civil war. And, besides, we refuse to accept the verdict of mere numbers under a system of universal suffrage as a test of the real opinion of the intelligent and reflecting part of a nation. The minority against Louis Napoleon was large enough to include the great mass of those who, by education and character, were competent to pronounce wisely upon the question submitted to them.

However, France has by a vast majority accepted her new ruler and his new system, and no other country has the right to quarrel with the choice. We can only hope that our fears for the future may be falsified, and that neither by hostile aggression against other States, nor by oppressive despotism at home, Louis Napoleon may realize the anticipations of those who, like ourselves, put no faith in his professions, and think that he must march forward in the fatal path of arbitrary power until France rises to free herself from the yoke of bondage by another revolution, perhaps more terrible than any we have yet witnessed in that country of political volcanoes.