president of the Third Republic, Jules Grévy, announced, would be to recreate ‘a
veritable monarchical power’, endowed with the moral authority that would inevi-
tably flow from direct election by universal suffrage. The assembly would quickly
become the instrument of executive power.
The most considered response came from Alexis de Tocqueville. At the commit-
tee stage Tocqueville let it be known that ‘the excessive influence of the President
would be an immense danger’, but he nevertheless supported the view that
ministers should be responsible to the president and that the latter should possess
the initiative for legislation. Without this there would exist ‘anarchy’ and the
absence of power at the heart of the executive. He made the further suggestion
that France might adopt the two-level American electoral college model for choos-
ing the president (a recommendation that was rejected), but Tocqueville carried the
day with the argument that to secure election a candidate must receive a majority of
the votes cast. Where this was not the case, the right to choose the president would
fall to the parliamentary assembly.117
Tocqueville next entered the fray when he defended the report of the constitu-
tional committee before the Assembly. Here his argument was grounded in the
need for a separation of powers. To institute a system where the head of the
executive was nominated by the Assembly would be to make a return, ‘purely
and simply’, to the Convention of 1793. It would be as if the president did not
exist. The executive would be reduced to following the orders of the Assembly. ‘We
will not have the Terror’, Tocqueville argued, ‘but we will have bad government, a
loud, tyrannical government, a changing, violent, unreflecting, thoughtless govern-
ment, without a sense of tradition or wisdom, the sort of government you get when
a single chamber possesses not only the plenitude of legislative power but also the
plenitude of executive power.’ It would also be, Tocqueville added, ‘a deeply
corrupting and corrupted government’.118
Again, it was to be the eloquence of Lamartine that inspired the deputies to vote
627 against 180 in favour of the direct election of the president. If the opponents of
117 Craveri, Genesi di una constituzione, 146–53, 198–201. For Tocqueville’s own account,
see Tocqueville, Souvenirs (1999), 223–45.
118 Le Moniteur Universel (6 Oct. 1848), 2724–5.
Absolutism, Representation, Constitution
95
this proposal feared that it would split the sovereignty of the nation into two
irreconcilable parts, it is also clear that they felt deep misgivings about how the
electorate would choose to cast their votes. It was by no means guaranteed that the
candidates of the Republic would carry the majority. Tocqueville himself alluded to
this in his own speech, arguing nevertheless that the people would feel betrayed if
they were denied the right to elect the president themselves. In ‘the deep fibres of
her being, in her heart’, he argued, France was ‘profoundly republican’ and if the
people showed hesitation it was only because they sensed that the inauguration of
the Republic might mean more than a change of France’s ‘political constitution’.
Once they had been reassured, he concluded, fears about the outcome of the vote
would be allayed.
Lamartine took up this theme with his usual persuasiveness and lack of political
judgement. There was, he proclaimed, no need to fear a repeat performance of the
18 Brumaire because the latter had been the product of ‘long years of terror’
combined with the promise of future military victories. Rather, ‘the true danger’
for the Republic lay in the ‘disaffection’ of the people. How better to overcome this,
how better to secure the loyalty and affection of each citizen, how better to
encourage the expression of their republican sympathies, than to involve them
directly in choosing the person who would be the head of the executive? By doing
so, Lamartine contended, not only would a government be produced that was
‘more universal, more popular’ but it would also make it ‘more difficult, more
odious, more inexcusable’ to attack the Republic.119
Lamartine was quickly proven to be mistaken. Already, in June 1848, Louis
Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of the emperor, had been triumphantly elected to
the Assembly in four constituencies. Two days after Lamartine made his case, the
Assembly decided that all male French citizens over the age of 30 should be
eligible to stand for the office of president. Amendments to the effect that
members of the Bourbon, Orleanist, and Bonapartist dynasties should be ex-
cluded were rejected. Two weeks later, on 26 October, Louis Napoleon declared
himself to be a candidate, being swept to victory on 10 December with over
5.4 million votes. His nearest rival, Cavaignac, secured only 1.4 million. Lamartine
received a derisory 7,910.
It would be wrong to attribute this outcome solely to the form of the Constitu-
tion itself. The otherwise undistinguished figure of Louis Napoleon owed his
popularity to the myth created around the memory of the emperor during the
previous two decades120 and to the fact that, rightly or wrongly, he appeared as a
guarantor of order. Many also believed that he would be an easily manipulated
figurehead. Nevertheless, his election was precisely the outcome that the répub-
licains de la veille most wanted to avoid. The fear of the abuse of executive power––
shared even by those who had wished to see an enhanced executive––was such that
the provision for the direct election of the president was accompanied by the
stipulation of a four-year, non-renewable term of office. The same article of the
119 Le Moniteur Universel (7 Oct. 1848), 2737–9.
120 See Natalie Petiteau, Napoléon: De la mythologie à l’histoire (1999), 57–105.
96
Absolutism, Representation, Constitution
constitution also specified that a president could not be replaced by members of his
immediate family. From the outset it seemed doubtful that the new president
would accept these limitations. Moreover, Louis Napoleon’s election immediately
exposed the ambiguities of a constitution that accorded the legitimacy deriving
from universal suffrage to two potentially rival bodies. To which one the govern-
ment of the day was to be responsible was far from clear. Louis Napoleon quickly
exploited these ambiguities to the full.
Elections in May 1849 confirmed that the republicans were in a minority. In line
with this result Louis Napoleon first appointed a government headed by Odilon
Barrot and in which Tocqueville held the post of minister of foreign affairs. At the
end of October this government was dismissed by the president and replaced by
one more to his own liking, thereby foreclosing any lingering parliamentary reading
of the constitution. From this point onwards, opponents of the regime were subject
to systematic repression, forcing many of the leaders of republicanism into exile.
Press censorship was tightened. Political clubs were disbanded. Government offi-
cials and schoolteachers deemed to be untrustworthy
were dismissed. In May 1850
the principle of universal male suffrage was abandoned through the introduction of
a three-year residence requirement for all voters, thus removing approximately 3
million citizens from the electoral list. The following year it was formally proposed
before the Assembly that the constitution be revised in order to permit the re-
election of Louis Napoleon. When this proposal failed to secure the three-quarters
of the votes cast required to ratify revision, the resort to a coup d’état became
inevitable. This duly followed, with military precision, on 2 December 1851, the
anniversary of Napoleon’s crowning as emperor in 1804 and of his victory at the
battle of Austerlitz in 1805. A plebiscite was immediately arranged for 21–22
December, when the ‘French people’ were asked if they wished Louis Napoleon
Bonaparte to remain in power and to grant him the authority to propose a new
constitution. There were 7,436,216 votes for and only 646,737 against.
Less than a month later, on 14 January 1852, a new constitution was pro-
claimed.121 A prefatory proclamation by the president disclosed its logic. In his
opinion, Louis Napoleon let it be known, for the past fifty years the ‘administrative,
military, judicial, religious [and] financial’ organization of France had rested upon
the principles and practices of the Consulate and the Empire. It was his intention,
therefore, to bring France’s political institutions into line with those of ‘this epoch’
and thus to return to the model established by the Constitution of Year VIII
(1799). Accordingly, Louis Napoleon was to remain president for the next ten
years. The office of president was granted extensive powers. A popularly elected
assembly, significantly reduced in size, was to have the right to discuss and vote but
not initiate legislation. Ministers were not to be drawn from it and the president
could summon and dissolve it at will. A Senate, composed of not more than
150 members, for the most part appointed for life by the president,122 had the
121 See Godechot, Les Constitutions, 287–319. On the logic underpinning this ‘illiberal democracy’
see Rosanvallon, La Démocratie inachevée: Histoire de la souveraineté en France (2000), 181–221.
122 All cardinals, marshals, and admirals were members as of right.
Absolutism, Representation, Constitution
97
job of verifying the constitutionality of all laws. It met in secret. Finally, there was
to be a Conseil d’État, with members again chosen by the president, responsible for
the framing of all legislation.123
It came as no surprise when, less than a year later on 7 November 1852, the
Senate proposed to revise the constitution in order to reinstitute the title of
emperor. Approved by popular referendum two weeks later, on 2 December the
inauguration of the Second Empire was officially proclaimed, with Louis Napoleon
taking the title of Napoleon III.124
I V
Napoléon le Petit, as Victor Hugo contemptuously referred to him,125 proved to be
a far more durable and successful opponent than many had thought possible. If few
were the writers who rallied to the cause of the Second Empire (Prosper Merimée
and Sainte-Beuve were two notable exceptions), many found themselves either
forced into exile or reduced to silence. Opportunities to express or to display dissent
were extremely limited and when, in 1859, Napoleon III declared an amnesty there
were many who refused to return to such ignominy. Hugo, for example, remained
in exile on the Channel island of Guernsey until September 1870, returning only
after the emperor’s military defeat and capture at Sedan.
Nevertheless, the regime itself underwent considerable evolution over the next
eighteen years, progressively moving towards a recognizably less authoritarian and
more parliamentary form. The Senate became a legislative assembly, no longer
sitting in secret, whilst the lower chamber found its powers of initiative and scrutiny
greatly extended. In 1869 it was decreed that ministers could be drawn from either
body. The final stage in this process came with what effectively amounted to the
proclamation of a new, liberal constitution in May 1870. Approved with a massive
majority by popular referendum, the future of the empire seemed secure.
What happened next is too well-known to require detailed recounting. Napoleon
III recklessly engaged in yet another foreign adventure and found himself obliged to
abdicate as the French army suffered a series of humiliating reverses at the hands of its
Prussian adversaries. If a criminal act brought the Second Empire into existence, an
act of folly brought it to a close. The Second Empire, even less than the Directory, has
123 The Conseil d’État had its origins in the Conseil du Roi, the term first appearing in 1578. In its
modern form, it was established through Article 52 of the Constitution of Year VIII, Napoleon
Bonaparte intending it to be a synthesis of the traditions of the ancien régime and the innovations
introduced by the Revolution. It again came up for serious discussion with the advent of the Second
Republic, when its defenders tended to see the Conseil d’État as a way of giving substance to the
concept of the separation of powers. Significantly, its members were to be chosen by the Assembly.
Under the Constitution of the Second Empire it was the President who decided upon its membership.
124 When Napoleon Bonaparte abdicated in June 1815 he did so in favour of his son, the so-called
King of Rome and the child from his marriage in 1810 with the archduchess Marie-Louise, daughter
of the Emperor Francis I of Austria. Within the Bonapartist dynasty he was subsequently regarded
as Napoleon II.
125 Victor Hugo, Napoléon le Petit (London, 1852).
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Absolutism, Representation, Constitution
therefore had few admirers, republicans in particular refusing to see any merit in
either the usurper or his regime. Loose morals and corruption, both vividly described
in the journals of the Goncourt brothers, have been taken to be its hallmarks.126
Only relatively recently, beginning with two studies by Theodore Zeldin,127 did this
picture begin to change.
Specifically, Sudhir Hazareesingh has argued that the years before 1870 saw ‘the
emergence of a vibrant democratic political culture in France’.128 Mass voting
associated with the regular plebiscites called by the emperor was at the heart of this
process of transformation. On this view the years of the Second Empire were ones
marked by institutional experimentation and political development, with signifi-
cant levels of continuity existing into the early years of the Third Republic.
Hazareesingh has contended further that this period was also one when ‘the
mainstream republican movement made the momentous transition from the
classical problematic of Revolution to the concerns of democratic modernity’.129
If the broad picture is one characterized by a growing awareness of the short-
comings of excessive centralization and, therefore, of the need for the devolution of
power, the more limited contention is that, amongst republicans themselves, ‘the
centralist ideology of Jacobinism was challenged, subverted, and eventu
ally crea-
tively redefined by republican conceptions of the good life which stressed the
significance of territorial politics and local forms of civic engagement’.130 Ground-
ed in an unremitting hostility to the arbitrary and authoritarian abuse of power by
Napoleon III, republicans focused their attention upon the merits of municipal
democracy.
These developments provide the backdrop to the final section of this chapter. By
taking two examples––the writings of Louis Blanc and Jules Barni––it will be
shown how discussion of issues relating to sovereignty, the constitution, and
representation evolved in this period. To conclude, we will look briefly at the
constitutional debates surrounding the origins of the Third Republic.
As has already been shown, Louis Blanc was one of the principal theorists of
republican socialism. In 1848 it was he who did more than anyone else to campaign
for a recognition of the right to work. Like many others, he soon found himself in
exile. There he engaged in almost perpetual quarrels with his fellow republicans. In
particular, he quickly responded to the demands for direct democracy articulated by
men such as Victor Considérant and Ledru-Rollin. Time and time again he entered
this debate, recalling the figures of Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Robespierre,
reliving the events of the 1789 Revolution. At the heart of his argument was the
frequently repeated charge that calls for ‘government by the people themselves’
126 See Alain Plessis, De la fête impériale au mur des fédérés (1852–1871) (1973).
127 Theodore Zeldin, The Political System of Napoleon III (London, 1958) and Emile Ollivier and the
Liberal Empire of Napoleon III (Oxford, 1963).
128 Sudhir Hazareesingh, From Subject to Citizen: The Second Empire and the Emergence of Modern
French Democracy (Princeton, NJ, 1998).
129 Ibid. 317.
130 Sudhir Hazareesingh, Intellectual Founders of the Republic: Five Studies in Nineteenth-Century
French Political Thought (Oxford, 2001), 4.
Absolutism, Representation, Constitution
99
amounted to calls for no government at all. They would lead to federalism and
inevitably would produce a descent into chaos.
Blanc’s response rested upon two central claims. The first was that direct
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