committee of eighteen, was duly debated, and on November 4 it was adopted by a vote of 739 to 30.

The constitution of 1848 declared the republic perpetual and the people sovereign. It asserted, furthermore, that the separation of powers is the first condition of a free government. It provided for a legislative assembly consisting of a single chamber of 750 members chosen integrally for three years, directly by secret ballot on the principle of departmental scrutin de liste, and by electors whose only necessary qualifications were the age of twenty-one and upwards and full possession of civil rights. Executive power was vested in a president of the republic, elected for a term of four years by direct and secret ballot, and by absolute majority of all votes cast in France and Algeria. Under stipulated conditions, e.g., if no candidate should receive an absolute majority and at the same time a total of at least two million votes, the president was to be chosen by the Assembly from the five candidates who had polled the largest votes; and a president could not be reëlected until he had been out of office at least four years. The powers given the president were large and included proposing laws, negotiating and ratifying treaties with the consent of the Assembly, appointing and dismissing ministers and other civil and military officers, and disposing of the armed forces. On the functions and relations of the ministers the constitution was curiously vague, and whether the instrument might legitimately be construed to make provision for a cabinet system of government was a much discussed question throughout the brief period of its duration.2

In December, 1848, Louis Napoleon, nephew of Napoleon I, was chosen president by a heavy majority, and ten days later he assumed office. In May, 1849, an Assembly was elected, of whose members two thirds were thoroughgoing monarchists; so that, as one writer has put it, both the president and the majority of the Assembly were, by reason of their very being, enemies of the constitution under which they had been elected.3 The new order, furthermore, failed completely to strike root throughout the nation at large, and the collapse of the republic became only a question of time. An electoral law of May 31,

1 Including representatives of Algeria and the colonies.

2 See Dupriez, Les ministres, II, 308–312. The text of the constitution of 1848 is in Duguit et Monnier, Les constitutions, 232-246, and Anderson, Constitutions, 522-537. See also Fisher, Republican Tradition in Europe, Chap. viii, and especially E. N. Curtis, The French Assembly of 1848 and American Constitutional Doctrine (New York, 1918).

Hazen, Europe since 1815, 201.

1850, requiring of the elector a fixed residence of three years instead of six months, upset the recently established suffrage arrangements and reduced the electorate by three millions, or practically one third; and on December 2, 1851, a carefully planned coup d'état took place, when the Assembly was dissolved, the franchise law of 1849 was restored, and the people, gathered in primary assemblies, were called upon to intrust to the president power to revise the national constitution.1 By a vote of 7,439,216 to 640,737, the electorate complied. Thereafter, although continuing officially through another year, the republic was in reality dead. On November 7, 1852, the veil was thrown off. A senatus-consulte decreed the reëstablishment of the Empire,2 and eleven days later the people, by a vote of 7,824,189 to 253,145, sanctioned what had been done. On December 2, the anniversary of Austerlitz, Napoleon III was proclaimed emperor of the French.

Meanwhile, in March, a constitution, nominally republican, but in reality strongly resembling that in force during the later years of Napoleon I, had been put into operation, and the substitution of an emperor for a president upon whom had been conferred a ten-year term was only a matter of detail. A senatus-consulte of December 25 made the necessary adjustments; and the constitution of 1852, with occasional modifications, remained the fundamental law of France until the collapse of the Second Empire in 1870. The emperor was endowed with very extended powers. His control of the administrative system was made practically absolute. He commanded the army and navy, decided upon war and peace, concluded treaties, and granted pardons. He alone had the power to initiate legislation and to promulgate the laws. To him alone all ministers were responsible; not a shred of cabinet government remained. There were two legislative chambers: a Corps Législatif of 251 members elected by direct manhood suffrage every six years, and a Senate composed of cardinals, admirals, and other ex-officio members, together with life appointees of the emperor. The powers of the Senate were exercised in close conjunction with the head of the state and were of some importance, but those of the popular chamber amounted to little; so that the liberal suffrage arrangements were of small practical effect.3

1 Anderson, Constitutions, 538-543."

2 Duguit et Monnier, Les constitutions, 290–292; Anderson, Constitutions, 560– 561. Duguit et Monnier, Les constitutions, 274-280; Anderson, Constitutions, 543-549.

For upwards of a score of years the illusion of popular government was cleverly, and more or less successfully, maintained. The country was prosperous and the government, if illiberal, was on the whole enlightened. Discontent, none the less, frequently manifested itself, and during the second half of the reign the Emperor more than once found it expedient to make some concession to public sentiment. In the later sixties he was compelled to relax the vigor of the laws dealing with the press and with political meetings, and in 1869-70 he was brought to the point of approving a series of measures which promised a liberalization of the entire governmental system. One of these measures was a senatus-consulte of September 8, 1869, opening the sittings of the Senate to the public, giving the Legislative Body the right to elect its own officials, and nominally reëstablishing the cabinet system. On account of the fact, however, that ministers were not permitted to be members of either the Legislative Body or the Senate, and that they were declared to be still responsible to the crown, the immediate effects of the last-mentioned feature of the reform were slight. A senatusconsulte of April 20, 1870 (approved by a plebiscite of May 8), made other and more important changes. In the first place, the Senate, which hitherto had been virtually an Imperial council, was erected into a legislative chamber coördinate with the Legislative Body, and both houses received the right to initiate legislation. În the second place, the provision that the ministers should be solely dependent upon the emperor was stricken from the constitution, thus clearing the way for a more effective realization of the principle of cabinet government. Finally, it was stipulated that the constitution should henceforth be amended only with the express approval of the people. These reforms, however, were belated. They were grudgingly conceded only after the popularity of the Emperor and of his system had been strained to the breaking point, and the almost immediate beginning of the war with Germany gave no time in which to test their efficacy.2

1 Duguit et Monnier, Les constitutions, 307-308; Anderson, Constitutions, 579-580.

2 The measure of April 20, 1870, is in Duguit et Monnier, Les constitutions, 308-314, and Anderson, Constitutions, 581-586. The period is admirably surveyed in H. Berton, L'évolution constitutionnel du second empire (Paris, 1900). Two contemporary books in which the faults of the Second Empire are analyzed and proposed remedies, including the establishment of a republic, are duly considered, are Prévost-Paradol, La France nouvelle (Paris, 1868), and Duc de Broglie, Vues sur le gouvernement de la France (Paris, 1870). The latter was written in 1861. Both authors were moderate monarchists. See Esmein, Éléments de droit constitutionnel (4th ed.), 530-531, and Hanotaux, Contemporary France, III, 318–322.

CHAPTER XXI

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC

Collapse of the Second Empire and Problem of a New Government. The Third Republic was set up under circumstances that gave promise of even less stability than was revealed by its predecessors of 1792 and 1848. Proclaimed in the dismal days following the French defeat at Sedan, it owed its existence, at the outset, to the fact that, with the capture of Napoleon III by the Prussians and the utter collapse of the Empire, there had arisen, as Thiers put it, “ a vacancy of power." The proclamation was issued from the Hotêl de Ville September 4, 1870, by a self-appointed group of deputies of the Left, (led by Gambetta and Favre), when the war with Prussia had been in progress seven weeks; and during the remaining five months of the contest sovereign authority was exercised by a Provisional Government of National Defense, with General Trochu at its head. Upon the capitulation of Paris, January 28, 1871 (followed by an armistice), elections were ordered for a national assembly, whose function would be to decide whether it was possible to continue the war or necessary to submit to peace, and in the latter case, what terms of peace should be accepted. There was no time for framing a new electoral system. Consequently, the electoral arrangements of the Second Republic, established by a law of March 15, 1849, were revived; and on February 8 an assembly of 758 members, representing both France and the colonies, was chosen by manhood suffrage.

When, on February 13, this National Assembly convened at Bordeaux, it found itself the sole repository of governmental authority. The emperor, the Senate, the Corps Législatif, the ministry all were gone; never, even in 1792 and 1848, had the field been more clear of débris left by an old régime. Even the Government of National Defense, which, acting by the tacit consent of the nation, had held things together, not without glory, during the "vacancy of power," dissolved immediately after it gave the country an elected assembly, as it had pledged itself to do. In view of these facts, the Assembly found itself

at once possessed of full powers as a government. It was the only legal representative of the national sovereignty, and there was no constitution to restrict its authority. No definite restraints had been imposed by the electorate, either on what the body might do or on the duration of its power. The result was that the Assembly forthwith became the government, and it remained such for approximately five years.

At all events, it held full control of the political machinery and itself acted as the national legislature. It might have kept the executive power, too, in its own hands, by exercising it through committees, as the Long Parliament in England, the Continental Congress in America, and the French Convention of 1792-95 had done in a similar situation. On this point, however, it chose a different course, partly out of deference to the doctrine of separation of powers, partly because events had in advance designated a titulary of the executive power in the person of the historian and parliamentarian Thiers. Consequently, on February 17, the Assembly conferred on Thiers the title of "chief of the executive power," and, having voted almost unanimously for peace, instructed him to enter upon negotiations. The executive function was delegated without fixed time; it was to be exercised by the chief with the aid of ministers whom he appointed; and it was revocable at the Assembly's will. For the time being, Thiers retained membership in the Assembly.1

More perplexing than the task of arranging for the immediate management of the country's affairs was the problem of a permanent governmental system. Most people assumed not only that the Assembly was entitled to exercise constituent power but that one of its main duties was to give France a constitution; although from the first there were those who held that, in the absence of an express mandate from the nation, such a proceeding would be a sheer assumption of authority. The Assembly, as a whole, had no doubts upon its rights in the matter, although it was disposed to postpone the work until the treaty of peace should have been signed. Discussion of the subject, however, could not long be repressed, and it soon became apparent that upon the fundamental question of what form the new government should take there were two main proposals. One was monarchy, of a more

1 The earlier work of the National Assembly is fully and authoritatively described in G. Hanotaux, Histoire de la France contemporaine (Paris, 1903-08), trans. by J. C. Tarver and E. Sparvel-Bayly under the title Contemporary France (New York, 1903-09), I, Chaps. i-vi.