CHAPTER II. THE CONSTITUTION OF 1852. THE Prince President lost no time in making his power felt. While taking every precaution for the maintenance of order, he at once put in execution measures of public utility on which he had been long bent. While he issued a severe decree1 against repris de justice (or ticket-ofleave men) and other inveterate promoters of disorder, transporting the worst to the penal colonies of Cayenne and Algeria, and banishing others under police supervision to their native communes or to distant departmentsleaving none in Paris to re-kindle the still smouldering elements of insurrection-he hastened to show the people that he entered upon power in a conciliatory spirit and with a strong desire to promote the public good before all things. The public peace once assured, he withdrew from the prefects the extraordinary powers with which they had been invested. On December 10 he gave a concession for the line of railway from Lyons to Avignon, which had been lying for three years in the bureaux of the Assembly; and at the same time he decreed the immediate laying down of the railway round Paris, ordered the vigorous renewal of the public works in the capital, which had been interrupted, and caused the necessary credit to be opened at the Ministry of Public Works for the immediate demolition of the unsightly buildings that 1 December 9, 1851. 2 Circular of the Minister of the Interior, Dec. 8, 1851. VOL. III. CHAP. II. BOOK IX. stood between the Tuileries and the Louvre, hereby beginning that great work-the completion of the Louvre and its junction with the Tuileries-which will be always associated with his name. On December 15 the Prince addressed to the prefects, through the Ministry of M. de Morny, a circular on cessation from labour on all public works on Sundays and recognised fête days. The rest of Sundays,' he remarked, is one of the essential bases of public morality, which makes the strength and the happiness of a country. If we look upon it only in a physical light, rest is necessary to the health and the intellectual development of the working classes. The man who works without ceasing, and gives up no day to his religious duties and his intellectual improvement, becomes a mere materialist, and the sentiment of human dignity degenerates with his physical faculties. Moreover, the working men who are kept at their task on Sundays too often take a holiday in the week-a bad habit, which, while it outrages venerable traditions, leads gradually to dissipation and the ruin of families. The Government does not pretend, in questions of this nature, to contest the will of citizens. Each individual is free to obey the inspirations of his conscience; but the State, the constituted authorities, the communes, can give the example of respect for principles. It is in this sense, and within these limits, that I consider it necessary to address special instructions to you. Consequently, I beg you to give orders that for the future, so far as the authorities are concerned, all public works shall cease on Sundays and fête days; and that you will see that in all departmental or communal contracts there shall be a stringent clause prohibiting work on these days. You will also use your influence with the municipal authorities to provoke such regula tions as shall prevent noisy meetings in wine-shops and street noises during the hours of Divine service.' On January 1, on his installation at the Tuileries, the Prince President decreed the restoration of the eagle to the French flag and to the cross of the Legion of Honour. On the 5th the Prefect of the Seine gave a great entertainment at the Hôtel de Ville to celebrate the vote which had given the Presidency of the Republic to the Prince for ten years, and on the 7th the Prince offered a banquet to the delegates who had been sent from every department of France to the Te Deum in Notre Dame. But during the interval that elapsed between the dissolution of the Assembly and the first meeting of the Corps Législatif under the new Constitution the Prince had little time to spend on mere fêtes and ceremonies. It is by the fruit of these four months, during which he was sole and absolute governor of France, that he may be best judged as a patriot and a political thinker. In his Napoleonic Ideas,' published in 1833, Prince Louis Napoleon laid down these bases of a political system: All political power emanates from the people. Suffrage should be universal. The people confide the power of the deliberative enactment of the laws to the Legislature. The Executive should be chosen by the people, by direct and universal suffrage. If the Executive is made hereditary in the person of an emperor, the new emperor should be confirmed by the vote of the people, by universal suffrage, before he enters upon his office. If rejected by the people, the Legislature should propose new candidates, until a choice is made by the people by direct and universal suffrage. There should be no caste. Titles of nobility may exist, but without political rank or power. There should be perfect equality before the law. CHAP. II. 340 BOOK IX. Education should be universal and compulsory. Agriculture and industry, the bases of all prosperity and sound finance, should be fostered. Commerce, both domestic and foreign, should be encouraged. Wars should be discouraged, and not entered into except to repress dangerous aggregations of military power, to prevent oppression, or to resist injuries. France should seek alliances with those Powers having the same purposes as her own. The barbarous, unsocial, repressive commercial notions of the Middle Ages should be discarded. Liberty cannot be established until social disorder is completely suppressed. This is the work of time. Mere words do not consolidate governments. Constitutions must be the result of time and use. Revolutions will never cease until the habit of order and respect for law have become the custom of years.' The Prince laboured also to show that the Napoleonic idea was not essentially one of war. He regarded the wars of his uncle as heroic struggles made to secure to humanity the liberties bequeathed to the world by the French Revolution; and his dream was always of an empire of peace, the glories of which should be derived from the development of the arts and industry and the happiness of humanity. The idea which he presently expressed at Bordeaux had been in the mind of the student of Arenenberg and the prisoner of Ham. Let us now set forth an outline of the political and other institutions which he established as soon as he was invested with absolute power, and the uses to which he put the four months of dictatorship that intervened between December 2, 1851, and the first meeting of the governing bodies which, as the elected ruler of France, he called into existence. In a preamble to the Constitution of 1852, dated January 14, the Prince addressed to the French people an explanation of the principles that had guided him in II. the preparation of it. He avowed that he had adopted CHAP. as a model the political institutions which at the beginning of the century, and under analogous circumstances, had consolidated a disorganised society, and given prosperity and greatness to France. The Constitution of the nephew was broad-based' upon that of his uncle. 'I have,' he said, taken as models the institutions which, instead of disappearing at the first breath of popular agitation, were overthrown only when Europe had coalesced against us. In a word, I said to myself, since France has lived for fifty years under the administrative system of the Consulate of the Empire in military, judicial, religious, and financial matters, why should we not adopt also the political institutions of that epoch? Created by the same mind, they should carry within themselves the same national and practically useful character.' The Prince went on to remark that existing society was that of France regenerated by the Revolution of '89 and organised by the Emperor. Only the memories of the great deeds of the old régime remained. Its fabric had been swept entirely away by the Revolution; and the organisation which had been set up in its stead was the work of Napoleon. Provinces, provincial departments, intendants, fermiers généraux, feudal rights, a privileged class in the exclusive possession of the civil and military administration, had disappeared. The Revolution destroyed them all; but the Revolution created nothing lasting in their stead. The First Consul re-established unity, a hierarchy, and sound principles of government; and his work was still in vigorous existence. Prefects, sub-prefects, and mayors; local councils of the communes and of the departments, the hierarchy of the courts of justice, and irremovable judges, from the juge de paix to the Court of Cassation-this, his work, |