deputies were to be found an astonishing, if not unrivalled, selection of literary and
intellectual talent. By the side of poet and historian Alphonse de Lamartine were to be
found Félicité de Lamennais, the socialists Louis Blanc, Pierre Leroux, and Philippe
Buchez, the historian Edgar Quinet, Alexis de Tocqueville, the writer Victor Hugo,
and the anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Lesser luminaries included Victor Con-
sidérant, Alexandre Ledru-Rollin, the liberal Catholics Henri-Dominique Lacordaire
and Charles de Montalembert, and economic pamphleteer Frédéric Bastiat.98 In the
first few months, it was Lamartine who effectively dominated the chamber.99
If the Constituent Assembly of the Second Republic found it no easy task to
agree upon the rights to be accorded to its citizens, questions relating to the
organization of executive and legislative power proved equally problematic. However,
97 Ibid. 107.
98 See Michel Winock, Les Voix de la liberté: Les Écrivains engagés au XIXe siècle (2001), 315–46.
99 For Lamartine’s political views see Renée David (ed.), Alphonse de Lamartine, la politique et
l’histoire (1993).
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they were subject to the most extensive and detailed discussion. The assembly set up a
constitutional committee, which began work in late May 1848. Its report was passed
on to the fifteen bureaux of the assembly, who in turn reported back to the committee
on 24 July. The committee then revised its proposals, placed them before the
Assembly, with discussion of each article taking place between 4 September and 27
October. Amended, the proposals were reviewed again by the committee, and
received final approval by the Assembly on 4 November 1848.100 ‘Never perhaps’,
wrote Maurice Deslandres in 1933, ‘has any constitution been so meticulously and so
lengthily drawn up; if it was not perfect it was certainly not for want of thought and
labour.’101
There were certain areas of relative agreement. In line with the traditions
established in the 1790s, the first article of the constitution affirmed that ‘sover-
eignty resides in the universality of French citizens’. Despite the doubts of some,
and references in debates (as in the past) to the cases of servants and the illiterate,
the suffrage was granted to all males over 21 years of age. Voting was to be both
secret and direct, with voters choosing from lists of candidates for each département.
Without the latter, as one deputy explained, France would only see the election of
candidates representing ‘the interest of the village, the canton, the arrondissement,
and not general interests’. The priest and the landowner, it was feared, would
dominate in each locality.102 Article 34 stipulated that deputies, elected for three
years, represented not their département but ‘France in her entirety’, whilst Article
35 specified that they could not be put under a specific mandate by their electors.
The emphasis therefore again fell upon ensuring the independence of representa-
tives from particular or sectional interests. This was not to be the last echo from the
past. Under Article 32, the Assembly, as the expression of the national will, was
deemed to sit ‘permanently’. When it chose to adjourn, a commission composed of
its members would have the right to recall the Assembly ‘in a case of emergency’.
More contentious was the debate surrounding the familiar question of whether
the Republic should operate with one or two parliamentary chambers. Two things
stand out here. The first is that it was at this point that the divisions between ‘les
républicains de la veille ou du lendemain’ became most evident. The former, those
who had been republicans before 1848, tended to support a one-chamber arrange-
ment, whilst the latter, those who had converted (often with deep misgivings) to the
Republic after the Revolution of 1848, usually inclined towards a two-chamber
model. Secondly, the debates of 1848 were in many respects a rerun of those of the
revolutionary decade after 1789.
This, for example, was how Alexis de Tocqueville defended the call for two
chambers.103 To believe, he argued, that a two-chamber system amounted to
the institutionalization of aristocratic power was a mistake and rested upon a
100 See François Luchaire, Naissance d’une constitution: 1848 (1998), 193–270.
101 Maurice Deslandres, Histoire constitutionnelle de la France de 1789 à 1870 (1933), ii. 345.
102 Piero Craveri, Genesi di una constituzione: Libertà et socialismo nel dibattio constituzionale del
1848 in Francia (Naples, 1985), 138.
103 Ibid. 129–31.
Absolutism, Representation, Constitution
91
misunderstanding of the proper functioning of parliamentary institutions. There
were at least three justifications that could be provided to support such a model.
Executive power needed to be strong but in order to prevent it from abusing its
power there was room for another body which could control certain of its actions
(the signing of treaties, etc.). Executive power was placed in ‘a perilous position’
when it found itself confronted by a single chamber. Conflict would be inevitable;
with the result that one or the other would quickly destroy its opponent. Next,
a single chamber would be consumed by what Tocqueville described as ‘legislative
intemperance’, the desire to legislate ‘without cease’. ‘The body that represents
all ideas, all interests,’ he argued, ‘drives everything forward, destroys everything:
it is irresistible.’ Finally, he made the point that if the existence of two chambers could
not prevent a revolution, it could at least militate against poor government causing
revolutions. There would exist ‘a diversity of views’ from which both would profit.104
In short, Tocqueville and his allies did everything possible to refute the
charge that the argument for two chambers was an argument in defence of
aristocratic power. It is this that explains why their frequent point of reference
was no longer the English monarchical constitution but rather the American
republican model.105 Tocqueville himself added a new preface to the 12th
edition of De la Démocratie en Amérique, in which he argued that the principles
of the American constitution were ‘indispensable for all Republics’.106 He
similarly told the electors of Cherbourg that ‘in America, the Republic is not
a dictatorship exercised in the name of liberty; it is liberty itself, the real and true
liberty of all the citizens’.107
From this perspective, the emphasis fell upon seeking to ensure that legislation
was subject to scrutiny by different groups of people who, although representing
the same ‘democratic’ interest, would ‘moderate’ the possibly impetuous and ill-
considered actions of a single chamber possessed of the inclination to believe that it
alone spoke in the name and with the authority of the ‘national will’. ‘Do not
doubt’, Duvergier de Hauranne told his parliamentary colleagues, ‘that in voting
for two chambers we will satisfy the need for order, the need for moderation, the
need for stability, which is what the entire country now demands: by voti
ng for two
chambers we will prove that we wish to bring the revolutionary crisis to an end and
to return to an era of legal government.’108
Discussion of the relevance of the American constitutional model was by no
means confined to the parliamentary chamber and its constitutional commission.
The text of the American constitution was reprinted in several new editions and it
104 See Lucien Jaume, ‘Tocqueville et le problème du pouvoir exécutif en 1848’, Revue Française de
Science Politique, 41 (1991), 739–55.
105 See René Rémond, Les-États-Unis devant l’opinion française 1815–1852 (1962), 831–58; Odile
Rudelle, ‘La France et l’expérience constitutionnelle américaine: Un modèle présent, perdu, retrouvé’,
in Marie-France Toinet (ed.), Et la Constitution créa l’Amérique (Nancy, 1988), 35–52; and Marc
Lahmer, La Constitution Américaine dans le débat français, 1795–1848 (2001), 291–381.
106 Alexis de Tocqueville, Œuvres complètes (1961), i/1, pp. xliii–xliv.
107 Ibid. (1990), iii/3. 44–5.
108 Le Moniteur Universel (26 Sept. 1848), 2596.
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was the subject of frequent commentary in the press.109 It was also debated in
numerous brochures and pamphlets.110 The most vigorous and articulate member
of the ‘American school’ was Édouard Laboulaye.111 In 1849 Laboulaye was
appointed to the chair of comparative law at the Collège de France. His inaugural
lecture was entitled De la Constitution Américaine et de l’Utilité de son étude (1850).
In 1849 he had published his Considérations sur la Constitution. The latter text
began with a full-blooded criticism of socialist wishful thinking and of abstract
declarations of rights. Laboulaye then presented a systematic critique of those
constitutional proposals––specifically, a unicameral chamber and a weak execu-
tive––that ignored the lessons to be learnt from America. It was not a question of
slavishly copying the American constitution but of recognizing the merits of a
system that had brought internal peace, prosperity, and liberty. In 1851 Laboulaye
returned to this theme in his La Révision de la constitution: Lettres à un ami.112
The proponents of the two-chamber American model readily acknowledged that
public opinion was against them. Despite the fact that, in their view, the correctness
of their position was proven by both reason and experience––principally, the
descent of one-chamber government into revolutionary dictatorship contrasted
with the long-established stability and success of the American constitution––
their fear was that the rhetoric of the past, littered as it was with references to the
indivisibility of sovereignty and the unity of the national will, would carry the day.
This proved to be the case. The report drawn up by the constitutional committee
and presented to the Assembly by Armand Marrast spoke in the following terms:
‘Sovereignty is one; the nation is one; the national will is one. Why therefore should
we want the delegation of sovereignty to be divisible, national representation to be
split into two, the law, which emanates from the general will, to give a double
expression to a single thought?’113 The same text justified this position by reference
to what it took to be an incontestable fact: ‘the homogeneity of the French people’.
Time and time again the opponents of the two-chamber model returned to this
theme. For example, Marcel Barthe, deputy for the Basses-Pyrénées, argued: ‘If we
consider the elements making up our country, we find a people that is completely
109 See e.g. Clarigny, ‘Des institutions républicains en France et aux Etats-Unis’, Le Constitutionnel
(10 and 24 June, and 5 July 1848) and J. A. Dréollé, ‘Lettres sur la Constitution américaine’,
L’Opinion publique (28 Nov., 10 and 19 Dec. 1848). The latter cited Tocqueville’s ‘excellent work’
but went on to contrast the political immaturity of the French with the maturity of the Americans.
Above all, see Michel Chevalier, ‘Étude sur la Constitution des États-Unis’, Le Journal des Débats,
Politiques et Littéraires (25 May, 6, 15, and 22 June, 4, 11, and 21 July 1848).
110 See e.g. Hyacinthe Colombel, Quelques réflexions concernant la Constitution qu’on élabore pour la
France (Nantes, 1848); J. Magne, Esquisse d’une Constitution: Ce que la France républicaine pourrait,
avec avantage, emprunter aux institutions des Etats-Unis (1848); and Abel Rendu, Les deux Républiques
(1850).
111 See Walter D. Gray, Interpreting American Democracy in France: The Career of Edouard
Laboulaye (Newark, NJ, 1994).
112 Both Considérations sur la Constitution and La Révision de la Constitution were repr. in Questions
constitutionnelles (1872).
113 ‘Rapport fait au nom de la commission de Constitution, après avoir entendu les représentants
délégués des bureaux, par le citoyen Armand Marrast, représentant du peuple. Séance du 30 août
1848’, in Luchaire, Naissance d’une constitution, 203.
Absolutism, Representation, Constitution
93
homogeneous . . . there exists only one great nation, speaking the same language,
living under the same laws, the same administration, the same rules; from one
extremity to the other there exists a nation indivisible in all of its parts.’ Moreover,
this homogeneity was written into the course of French history. ‘If we consider’,
Barthe continued, ‘our history we see that since the first centuries of the monarchy,
it has constantly moved towards unity, something that has been attained through
the greatest of efforts and the most generous of sacrifices . . . Our forefathers, with
their victories and their blood, made this unity.’ Here was to be found ‘the greatness
and the strength of France’. For good measure, Barthe then added that the French
‘love equality more than they love liberty’.114
Similar arguments were advanced by other deputies, the focus invariably falling
upon the idea that unity was the special ‘genius’ of France. Again these views found
an echo in wider public discussion. For example, Émile Dehais, in a text specifically
designed to refute the arguments presented by François Guizot in his De la
Démocratie en France, countered that ‘of all states, the United States is the one
upon which we should least model ourselves. This is why. France is the most
unitary country that exists and the republic of the United States is federal. To claim
to give to the one certain fundamental institutions of the other and to rely upon the
example of this other in order to demonstrate the necessity of these institutions is to
prove almost nothing.’115
It was Alphonse de Lamartine, the supreme orator of the 1848 Revolution, who
brought the parliamentary debate to a close. The pages of Le Moniteur Universel
record that when he stood up to speak he was received with ‘a deep silence’. What,
he began, was a constitution if not ‘the exterior form of a people’? It should not be
something arbitrary but should express the ‘reality of the nature of the nation’.
Following this logic, why did both England and the United States have two
chambers? With regard to the former, Lamartine ind
icated that he blushed to
reply because everyone knew the answer: England was ‘almost exclusively an
aristocracy’. In France, by contrast, the only aristocracy that existed was the
‘aristocracy of enlightenment, the aristocracy of intelligence’. There was no theoc-
racy, no military caste, and no privilege: all were judged on their personal merit.
What of America’s Senate? What reality did it represent? The need for federalism
rather than the spirit of democracy was the answer. It revealed the ‘imperfection’
and ‘the shortcomings of national unity’ in America and was the continuation of a
form of ‘anarchy’. The French nation, by contrast, displayed ‘a completely demo-
cratic unity’, a unity of rank, of origin, and of interest, given expression through
‘the sovereignty of all’. To contemplate the creation of a second parliamentary
chamber, therefore, was to run the risk of artificially introducing an element of
aristocracy and of division into France. Moreover it was to propose a weakening
of the sovereignty of the French nation.116
114 Le Moniteur Universel (27 Sept. 1848), 2606.
115 Émile Dehais, Du Gouvernement de la France, précedé d’une lettre à M.Guizot sur la Démocratie
(1851), 214.
116 Le Moniteur Universel (28 Sept. 1848), 2620–2.
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Absolutism, Representation, Constitution
The opportunity of reply fell to liberal monarchist Odilon Barrot, who again
called upon the deputies to remember the need for a mechanism that would
‘moderate’ the ‘all-powerful’ nature of ‘French democracy’. Not surprisingly, the
amendment to introduce two chambers was decisively defeated by 530 votes to
289. Moreover, the deputies believed that on the outcome of this debate depended
the future of the Republic. They were to be mistaken, and this was because almost
their next decision was to approve the direct election of the president. This was
their great constitutional innovation and this also was their great political error. The
argument against the direct election of the president was clear enough. Sovereignty
resided in the people and was expressed through the election of their parliamentary
representatives to a single chamber. Therefore the head of the executive should be
chosen by and be responsible to that assembly. To do otherwise, as the future
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