to acquiesce in the Constitution might give me a throne, but I was not seduced by an elevation which would necessarily produce serious disturbances.

"It was equally easy for me to change the form of the government on the 13th of June, 1849; I would not do so.

"In fine, on the 2nd of December, if personal considerations had prevailed over the grave interests of the country, I might at first have demanded a pompous title of the people which they would not have refused me. I contented myself

with that which I had.

"Consequently, when I borrow examples from the Consulate and Empire, it is because I find them there particularly stamped with nationality and grandeur. Being determined now, as before, to do everything for France, and nothing for myself, I should accept no modification of the present state of things, unless I was forced to do so by evident necessity. Whence can it arise? Solely from the conduct of parties. If they resign themselves, nothing shall be changed; but if, by their underhand intrigues, they endeavoured to sap the bases of my Government; if, in their blindness, they contested the legitimacy of the popular election; if, finally, they endangered by their incessant attacks the future prospects of the country-then, and only then, it may may be reasonable to demand from the people, in the name of the repose of France, a new title, which will irrevocably fix upon my head the power with which they invested

me.

"But let us not pre-occupy ourselves with difficulties, which, no doubt, have no probability. Let us maintain the Republic. It me

naces nobody, and may re-assure everybody. Under its banner I wish to inaugurate anew an era of oblivion and conciliation; and I call, without distinction, on all those who wish to co-operate with me in forwarding the public good.

"Providence, which has hitherto so visibly blessed my exertions, will not leave its work unfinished. It will animate us with its inspirations, and give us the wisdom and power necessary to consolidate an order of things which will ensure the happiness of our country and the repose of Europe."

Marshal Jerome Bonaparte, the President of the Senate, opened its Session with the following speech, full, of course, of adulation and praise of Louis Napoleon.

Messieurs les Senators,-Universal suffrage has inaugurated a new era. Without universal suffrage nothing stable could be founded. The foundation of the power of the First Consul and of the Emperor was so solid, that, to shake it, it required the coalition of all the Sovereigns of Europe, powerfully aided by treason; and yet, in spite of that, the code, administrative and financial system, and judicial and religious institutions, have remained standing. National unity has been maintained in spite of the foreigner, and in spite of the dissolving action of old parties.

"In 1848 the nation, returning to the exercise of its sovereignty, proclaimed the Republic, but when it was necessary to organise it, the name of Napoleon presented itself to the idea of the immense majority. With their wonderful instinct, the people understood that this name was the powerful personification of all that they wished for,-order and liberty at home

independence and national grandeur abroad. They understood that, in proclaiming this name for the fourth time, they revenged themselves for the misfortunes and treasons of our last field of battle.

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The policy of the Prince who so worthily bears this name could not suit the narrow and impassioned views of all exclusive parties. The most monstrous coalitions were therefore formed against him; they wished to oppose the free manifestation of the national will. It was then that, strong in his patriotic intentions, with his eye fixed on his immortal model, the elect of 6,000,000 of votes resolutely devoted himself to enforce respect for the true and the only sovereign whom we all recognise the people. Such, gentlemen, is the reason of the appeal which he made to them on the 2nd of December.

"France responded for a second time in a manner still more imposing than the first. She felt that the nephew of the Emperor must have had a very lively apprehension for our future, in order to assume such a bold initiative. Thus the people not only absolved him, but invested him even with constituent power. Confidence has been unlimited, because the practical good sense and frankness of the appeal to the nation was fully appreciated.

"Louis Napoleon would not improvise a constitution; he wished that it should be the consequence of the state of our society, and not the result of ideal combinations. He thought that, being a perfectible work, it sufficed for it to contain a small number of principles, disengaged from our different institutions. You know, gentlemen, from what source the idea

of the organization of our public powers was drawn. That organization has made a great nation of. France. Was not dictatorship necessary in order to establish this new order of things, in face of so many hostile passions? That dictatorship ceases to-day. The laws resume all their empire, and the great bodies of the state commence their functions.

"You know, gentlemen, what the Senate is to be. We are not charged to make laws. As a power essentially conservative and moderating, we must watch over a small number of principles; we must compare them with the laws and decrees, and point out their disaccord or their harmony. Those principles we shall find in our habits, and in the wants of our state of civilization, although they may not be written in our laws. In having them always present, and in carefully watching them, we are sure of seconding the views of Prince Louis Napoleon.

"The Constitution requires still more from us. We must regulate by organic senatus consulta what is necessary for its progress. We may also propose to the President of the Republic the bases of laws of great national interest. You will, gentlemen, be equal to your mission. Strangers to any other sentiment than that of the public welfare, of the interest of the popu lar masses, and of devotedness to the country, the Chief of the State will find in you firm and energetic supporters in the days of danger, and enlightened and moderate counsellors in times of peace and prosperity, when the question is to cause oblivion of our discords, to close our social wounds, and to make one family of all Frenchmen.

"Inaccessible to the storms which may arise elsewhere, your deliberations will always be full of calmness and majesty. You must be true political jurymen. Such, in my eyes, are the high and grand attributions of this assembly, in which are grouped together all the illustrations of France.

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In assembling for the first time, allow him who has the honour to preside over you to say a word of himself. The brother of the Emperor, and one of the old soldiers of our great wars, believed that his career was finished; he was watching with a pious solicitude over glorious and revered ashes when the President of the Republic made an appeal to his patriotism and to his devotedness. After so many vicissitudes and so many years of exile, Providence destined the last surviving Senator of the Empire to be the first member of the Senate of the Republic. Proud of this mission, he accepts gladly the opportunity of thus finding himself the intermediate link which connects the past with the present."

At the opening of the Session of the Legislative Corps, M. Billault, the Vice-President, said :

"Messieurs, and dear Colleagues, -Our presence in this place marks a new era for us and for the country. Saved from most terrible eventualities by a hand whose calm energy is slow in thought and rapid in action, France looks upon her chief with a confidence which is unprecedented in history.

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By a vote whose astonishing (éclatant) numbers stand unparalleled, she has asked at his hands strong and protective institutions, which will restore her security and her greatness.

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Placed under the invocation of

the great principles of 1789, fortified by that governmental spirit which marked the Consulate, these institutions have received an evident consecration by the scrutin by which we are elected ours is the duty to infuse into them practical life. That is the com

mencement of our mission; and that mission, whatever may be said of it, is certainly not altogether without grandeur and authority.

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We shall not, indeed, see the Legislature surrounded by parties which incessantly hold the Ministry in check, compelling it to concentrate all its forces upon its own preservation and defence, and by so doing not unfrequently enervating the power of the State. Whenever, as Ministers or Deputies, we may employ these Parliamentary tactics, it is to business now that we shall be obliged to consecrate them-serious and practical business. This is our part in the Constitution. It consists in voting the taxes, the discussion of the budget and of the laws. It implies not merely the right of deliberating freely and publicly, of adopting or rejecting, but also that of amendment, no longer, undoubtedly, with the same facility of improvisation against which previous Assemblies vainly endeavoured to defend themselves, but with a degree of maturity which can only prove fatal to Utopian projects.

"It is in order to proceed with you on this patriotic path, that the Chief of the State has called me to the honour of presiding over you. Grant me, my dear colleagues, as much goodwill as I offer you devotion, and, being all united in the holy love of our country, let us give to the world no longer the spectacle of an assembly of impassioned men, continually agitated, but of a veritable Assembly of Legislation, calmly and gravely, as the law itself, enacting statutes upon the great interests which are submitted to us."

But notwithstanding all the smooth phrases about the attachment of the people to the new Constitution, the work of transportation from the soil of France silently went on, and immense numbers of persons were brought before the military commissions and summarily sentenced to imprisonment. The arbitrary nature of the punishments inflicted for real or supposed disaffection is shown by the following decree:

"Louis Napoleon, President of the French Republic, on the report of the Minister of General Police, seeing the circular of the 3rd of February last of the Ministers of Justice, Interior, and War-seeing the returns relative to the affairs on which the departmental commissions and the commission of revision for the first military division have definitively decided -considering that the decisions given by those commissions, in virtue of the abovementioned circular, require a general sanctiondecrees:

"Art. 1. The persons placed by the departmental commissions, or by the commission of revision of the first military division, in the category of those who are to be

cited before courts-martial or before correctional tribunals, shall be immediately sent before the competent tribunal.

"Art. 2. The persons comprised in the category of those who are to be transported to French Guiana or into Algeria, shall be placed at the disposal of the Minister of Marine, to be transported to French Guiana, and at the disposal of the Minister of War, to be transported to Algeria.

"Art. 3. The persons comprised in the category of those who are to be expelled or temporarily removed from the territory shall be placed at the disposal of the Minister of General Police, to be conveyed to the frontier.

"Art. 4. Persons comprised in the category of those who are to be compelled to reside in a particular place shall proceed to, and fix their residence in, the place which may be assigned to them by the Minister of General Police. The Minister shall also indicate to the persons placed under his surveillance the places in which they shall be interdicted from residing.

"Art. 5. Any person transported to Algeria who shall, without authorization, quit the place fixed for his residence, may, as an administrative measure, be transported to French Guiana.

"Art. 6. Any person expelled, or temporarily removed from the territory, who shall return to France without authorization, may, as an administrative measure, be transported to Algeria or French Guiana.

"Art. 7. Any person ordered to reside in a particular place who shall quit that place without authorization may, as an administrative measure, be removed from the territory.

"Art. 8. Any person placed under the surveillance of the Ministry of General Police who shall be found in one of the places in which he is forbidden to reside may be sent to a fixed residence, as an administrative measure.

"Art. 9. The Ministers of Justice, War, Marine, and General Police are charged, each in what concerns him, with the execution of the present decree.

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"Done at the Palace of the Tuileries, the 5th of March, 1852. LOUIS NAPOLEON. (Countersigned) "DE MAUPAS, Minister of General Police."

And the following extracts from a Report addressed to the President of the Republic, at the latter end of April, by one of the commissioners specially appointed to revise the judgments of the mixed commissions, will show the extent and severity of the measures taken to repress any exhibition of popular feeling adverse to the new Government:" The great services you have rendered to the country are everywhere appreciated. Amongst those services the one perhaps most valued is, the having relieved society from the dangerous elements which threatened to dissolve it. This last feeling is so strong that every report of an amnesty is received with hostility. The circular of the Minister of the Interior, and the restorations to liberty which were the consequences of it, had produced the worst effect. The entire party of anarchists had raised their head. Those of the accused who were still in the hands of justice had interrupted or retracted the confessions they had made to the authorities of the plans and organization of the secret societies. Those unfa

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vourable symptoms were beginning to be effaced when the announcement of the mission of clemency with which the commissaries extraordinary were charged caused them to revive to such an extent, that, in order to moderate them, I commanded that the detachments of convicts which had been stopped in view of my revision should resume their progress as soon as that revision was terminated. return with the profound conviction that in all the departments which I have passed through, the mixed commissions have been impressed with the successive instructions enjoining them not to strike any but really dangerous men. Their only fault in the departments of the Deux-Sèvres, the Gironde, the Haute-Garonne, and the Aude, has been that of an excess of indulgence. May they not have to repent of allowing perhaps the only opportunity of disorganizing anarchy from escaping! The convictions in those departments bear only on some individuals marked for a long time by public notoriety as inveterate disturbers of the public peace. In the Lot et Garonne, the Pyrenées Orientales, and the Herault, where the insurgents in commencing hostilities had made several arrests, the ramifications of the secret societies have been followed. The number of affiliated members known exceed 30,000 in each of the two former departments, and 60,000 in the last, organised by tens and hundreds, and ready to rise at the first signal . . . Furnished with information either by the gendarmerie, the municipal authorities, or the clergy, I endeavoured to extend my labours as far as possible. Every party assisted me willingly. We took into ac