第46章

The party of Order regarded the election law at the same time as a victory over Bonaparte.Had not the government abdicated when it handed over the editing of and responsibility for its own proposal to the Commission of Seventeen? And did not the chief strength of Bonaparte as against the Assembly lie in the fact that he was the chosen of six millions? Bonaparte, on his part, treated the election law as a concession to the Assembly, with which he claimed to have purchased harmony between the legislative and executive powers.As reward, the vulgar adventurer demanded an increase of three millions in his civil list.Dared the National Assembly enter into a conflict with the executive at a moment when it had excommunicated the great majority of Frenchmen? It was roused to anger; it appeared to want to go to extremes; its commission rejected the motion; the Bonapartist press threatened, and referred to the disinherited people, deprived of its franchise; numerous noisy attempts at an arrangement took place, and the Assembly finally gave way in fact, but at the same time revenged itself in principle.Instead of increasing the civil list in principle by three millions per annum, it granted Bonaparte an accommodation Of 2,160,000francs.Not satisfied with this, it made even this concession only after it had been supported by Changarnier, the general of the party of Order and the protector thrust upon Bonaparte.Therefore it really granted the two millions not to Bonaparte, but to Changarnier.

This sop, thrown to him de mauvaise Grace [with bad grace], was accepted by Bonaparte quite in the spirit of the donor.The Bonapartist press blustered anew against the National Assembly.When in the debate on the press law the amendment was made on the signing of names -- which, in turn, was directed especially against the less important papers -- the representatives of the private interests of Bonaparte, the principal Bonapartist paper, the Pouvoir, published an open and vehement attack on the National Assembly.The ministers had to disavow the paper before the Assembly; the girant [manager] of the Pouvoir was summoned before the bar of the National Assembly and sentenced to pay the highest fine, 5,000 francs.

Next day the Pouvoir published a still more insolent article against the Assembly, and as the revenge of the government, the public prosecutor promptly prosecuted a number of Legitimist journals for violating the constitution.

Finally there came the question of proroguing the Assembly.Bonaparte desired this in order to be able to operate unhindered by the Assembly.

The party of Order desired it partly for the purpose of carrying on its factional intrigues, partly for the pursuit of the private interests of the individual deputies.Both needed it in order to consolidate and push further the victories of reaction in the provinces.The Assembly therefore adjourned from August 11 until November 11.Since, however, Bonaparte in no way concealed that his only concern was to get rid of the irksome surveillance of the National Assembly, the Assembly imprinted on the vote of confidence itself the stamp of lack of confidence in the President.All Bonapartists were kept off the permanent commission of twenty-eight members who stayed on during the recess as guardians of the virtue of the republic.In their stead, even some republicans of the Siecle and the National were elected to it, in order to prove to the President the attachment of the majority to the constitutional republic.

Shortly before, and especially immediately after the recess, the two big factions of the party of Order, the Orléanists and the Legitimists, appeared to want to be reconciled, and this by a fusion of the two royal houses under whose flags they were fighting.The papers were full of reconciliation proposals that were said to have been discussed at the sickbed of Louis Philippe at St.Leonards, when the death of Louis Philippe suddenly simplified the situation.Louis Philippe was the usurper, Henry V the dispossessed;the Count of Paris, on the other hand, owing to the childlessness of Henry V, was his lawful heir to the throne.Every pretext for objecting to a fusion of the two dynastic interests was now removed.But precisely now the two factions of the bourgeoisie first discovered that it was not zeal for a definite royal house that divided them, but that it was rather their divided class interests that kept the two dynasties apart.The Legitimists, who had made a pilgrimage to the residence of Henry V at Wiesbaden just as their competitors had to St.Leonards, received there the news of Louis Philippe's death.Forthwith they formed a ministry in partibus infidelium [16] , which consisted mostly of members of that commission of guardians of the virtue of the republic and which on the occasion of a squabble in the bosom of the party came out with the most outspoken proclamation of right by the grace of God.The Orléanists rejoiced over the compromising scandal that this manifesto called forth in the press, and did not conceal for a moment their open enmity to the Legitimists.

During the adjournment of the National Assembly, the Councils of the departments met.The majority of them declared for a more or less qualified revision of the constitution; that is, they declared for a not definitely specified monarchist restoration, for a "solution," and confessed at the same time that they were too incompetent and too cowardly to find this solution.The Bonapartist faction at once construed this desire for revision in the sense of a prolongation of Bonaparte's presidency.