assembly for revision shall only be appointed for three months. It shall only engage in the special revision for which it has been assembled; nevertheless, in cases of emergency, it may provide for legislative necessities.

CHAP. XII.-Transitory Arrangements.

ART. 112. The provisions of the codes, laws, and regulations, now in force, and which are not in contradiction with the present constitution, shall remain in force until otherwise provided by law.

ART. 113. All the authorities constituted by the present laws shall continue in the exercise of their present duties until the promulgation of the organic laws which relate to them.

ART. 114. The law of judiciary organization will determine the particular mode for the appointment and first composition of the new tribunals.

ART. 115. After the vote upon the constitution, the constituent national assembly shall proceed to draw up the organic laws, which shall be determined by a special law for that purpose.

ART. 116. The first election of a president of the republic shall take place in conformity with the special law, passed by the national assembly on the 28th of October, 1848.

APPENDIX XIII.

THE PRESENT CONSTITUTION OF FRANCE.

WHEN I wrote the article Constitution for the Encyclopædia Americana, which was before the French revolution of 1830, I classed constitutions under three general heads:-1. Those established by the sovereign power, real or so-called. These were subdivided into constitutions established by a sovereign people for their own government, as ours are; and into such as are granted, theoretically at least, by the plenary power of an absolute monarch; such as the then existing French charter was, a fundamental law called by the French octroyed. 2. Constitutions formed by contracts between nations and certain individuals whom they accept as rulers on distinct conditions. 3. Constitutions forming a compact between a number of states. The present constitution of

France is not included in either of these classes. Its genesis, as

the reader well knows, was that, first, an individual acquired absolute power by a conspiracy or coup d'état, then caused the people to vote whether they would grant him plenary power to prescribe a constitution; he received the power by above seven millions of votes, and issued the following document, copied from the constitution which Napoleon the First had prescribed at the beginning of this century. If, then, the reader insists upon calling this a constitution—we certainly do not call France at present a constitutional country-we may call it a constitution per saltum, for it was in former times one of the different ways of electing a pope, or the head of a great society, such as the Templars, to elect one individual with the right of appointing the chief, and this was called electing per saltum, by a leap. I also divided constitutions into cumulative constitutions, such as the constitution of England or that of ancient Rome, and into enacted (or written) constitu tions, such as ours are. The present constitution of France can again be classed neither under the one nor the other head. It may, perhaps, be called decreed, or by any name the reader prefers. It is difficult to find an appropriate name for a thing which is the result of a confused mixture of ideas, of absolutism, popular sovereignty, violence, of breaking of oaths and prescribing of others, of coup d'état, and ratification by those whose work was destroyed by the soldiery, and by the idea of the "incarnation" of popular absolute power in one person. Louis Napoleon has been called the incarnation of a great principle. I do not pretend to find a philosophical name for this product. Probably the whole constitution belongs to the "Napoleonic ideas," of which we read so much at this moment; or we may call it in future an imperatorial or Cæsarean constitution.

The following, then, is the present French constitution, as it appeared in the official paper, the Moniteur, of January 15, 1852, preceded by the Proclamation of Louis Napoleon.

LOUIS NAPOLEON,

PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC,

In the name of the French People.1

FRENCHMEN! When, in my proclamation of the 2d of December, I stated to you in all sincerity what was, according to my ideas,

1 The reader will find, on a subsequent page, that the whole of this constitution was retained under the empire with the exception of a few passages, relating to the hereditary part of the empire.

the vital condition of government in France, I had not the pretension, so common in our days, of substituting a personal theory for the experience of ages. On the contrary, I sought in the past what were the best examples to follow, what men had given them, and what benefit had resulted therefrom.

Having done so, I considered it only logical to prefer the precepts of genius to the specious doctrines of men of abstract ideas. I took as model the political institutions which already, at the beginning of the present century, in analogous circumstances, strengthened society when tottering, and raised France to a high degree of prosperity and grandeur.

I selected as model those institutions which, in place of disappearing at the first breath of popular agitations, were overturned only by all Europe being coalesced against us.

In a word, I said to myself, Since France has existed for the last fifty years only in virtue of the administration, military, judicial, religious, and financial organization of the consulate and the empire, why should we not adopt likewise the political institutions of that period? As they were created by the same mind, they ought to bear in themselves the same character of nationality and practical utility.

In fact, as I stated in my proclamation, our present society, it is essential to declare, is nothing else than France regenerated by the revolution of '89 and organized by the emperor. Nothing remains of the old régime but great reminiscences and great benefits. But all that was then organized was destroyed by the revolution, and all that has been organized since the revolution, and which still exists, was done by Napoleon.

We have no longer either provinces, or pays d'état, or parliaments, or intendants, or farmers general, or feudal rights, or privileged classes in exclusive possession of civil and military employments, or different religious jurisdiction.

In so many things incompatible with itself had the revolution effected a radical reform, but without founding anything definitive. The first consul alone re-established the unity, the various ranks, and the veritable principles of government. They are still in vigour.

Thus, the administration of France was intrusted to prefects, sub-prefects, and mayors, who substituted unity for the commissions of the directory; and, on the contrary, the decision of business given to councils from the commune to the department. Thus,

the magistracy was strengthened by the immovability of the judges, by the various ranks of the tribunals; justice was rendered more easy by the delimitation of attributions, from the justice of peace to the court of cassation. All that is still existing.

In the same way our admirable financial system, the bank of France, the establishment of budgets, the court of accounts, the organization of police, and our military regulations, date from the same period.

For fifty years it is the Code Napoleon which had regulated the interests of citizens amongst themselves; and it is still the Concordat which regulates the relations between the state and the church.

In fine, the greatest part of the measures which concern the progress of manufactures, commerce, letters, sciences, and the arts, from the regulations of the Théâtre Française to those of the Institute, from the institution of the Prud'hommes to the creation of the Legion of honour, were fixed by decrees of that time.

It may then be affirmed that the framework of our social edifice is the work of the emperor, and that it has resisted his fall and three revolutions.

Why, with the same origin, should not the political institutions have the same chances of success?

My conviction was long formed on the point, and it is on that account that I submit to your judgment the principal bases of a constitution, borrowed from that of the year VIII. When approved by you, they will become the foundation of our political constitution. Let us examine what the spirit of them is.

In our country, monarchical as it has been for eight hundred years, the central power has always gone on augmenting. The royalty destroyed the great vassals; the revolutions themselves swept away the obstacles which opposed the rapid and uniform exercise of authority. In this country of centralization, public opinion has unceasingly attributed to the head of the government benefits as well as evils. And so, to write at the head of a charter that that chief is irresponsible, is to be against the public feelingis to want to establish a fiction, which has three times vanished at the noise of revolutions.

The present constitution, on the contrary, declares that the chief whom you have elected is responsible before you; and that he has always the right to appeal to your judgment, in order that, in solemn circumstances, you may continue to him your confidence, or withdraw it.

Being responsible, his action ought to be free and unshackled. Thence the obligation of his having ministers who may be the honoured and puissant auxiliaries of his thought, but who no longer form a responsible council, composed of mutually responsible members, a daily obstacle to the particular impulse of the head of the state, the expression of a policy emanating from the chambers, and by that very circumstance exposed to frequent changes, which prevent all spirit of unity and all application of a regular system.

Nevertheless, the higher a man is placed the more independent he is, and the greater confidence the people have placed in him the more he has need of enlightened and conscientious councils. Thence the creation of a council of state, henceforward a veritable council of the government, first wheel in our organization, a collection of practical men, elaborating bills in special commissions, discussing them with closed doors, without oratorical ostentation in general assembly, and presenting them afterwards for acceptance to the legislative body.

Thus, the government is free in its movements and enlightened in what it does.

What is now to be the control exercised by the assemblies?

A chamber, which takes the title of legislative body, votes the laws and the taxes. It is elected by the universal suffrage, without scrutin de liste. The people, selecting each candidate sepa

rately, can more easily appreciate the merits of each.

The chamber is not to be any longer composed of more than about 260 members. That is a first guaranty of the calm of the deliberations, for only too often the inconsistency and ardour of passions have been seen to increase in assemblies in proportion to their number.

The report of the sittings, which is intended to instruct the nation of what is going on, is no longer, as formerly, delivered to the party spirit of each journal; an official publication, drawn up by the care of the president of the chamber, will be alone permitted.

The legislative body discusses freely each law, and adopts or rejects it. But it cannot introduce all of a sudden those amendments which often disarrange the whole economy of a system and the ensemble of the original project. Still more, it does not possess that parliamentary initiative which was the source of such grave abuses, and which allowed each deputy to substitute himself at every turn for the government, by presenting projects the least carefully studied and inquired into.