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brought back; it is very grave, very grave." Such was the man and his programme: to pacify the violent, to encourage the hesitating, to round off angles and to turn corners; he went from one to the other, trying to hold the one without letting the other go.

Disappointment,

But men were coldly disposed. embarrassment, vexation at the vote of the 16th May were in the air, and several days were spent in vain efforts. At last, on Thursday the 21st, M. de Goulard succeeded in persuading, first the Duc Decazes, then the Duc d'Audiffret-Pasquier, both intimate confidants of the Comte de Paris. He consulted M. Dufaure; it might be asked, "Why not M. Thiers?"

The groups of the Right met and approved; this would be a "great Cabinet," with the third duke, Duc Pasquier, in the front of the stage.

In the afternoon of the 21st, an agreement had been arrived at; lists were published, including several members of the Left Centre: M. Cézanne, M. Waddington. . . . In the evening everything was at an end. Why this change? Had the Right been afraid of the path into which it was being led? Was it due to that Bonapartist hostility which so often shackled the career of the Duc Pasquier? Was some occult pressure being brought to bear upon the Marshal?

General de

The latter took an abrupt, soldier-like course. Cissey. On the 22nd May, he drew up an entirely new list: M. de Goulard was left out, M. d'Audiffret-Pasquier left out, the members of the Left Centre eliminated. At the head of the new Cabinet was a soldier, General de Cissey, with the War portfolio; M. de Fourtou was given the Interior, M. Magne, Finance; the Duc Decazes, Foreign Affairs. M. Tailhand was to undertake Justice; M. de Cumont, Public Instruction and Worship; Admiral Montaignac, Marine; M. Grivart, Agriculture, and M.

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Such u

Caillaux, Public Works. It was a business Cabinet, a "small" Cabinet.

M. de Fourtou being Minister of the Interior, an impression prevailed that the evolution was taking place It may have been towards the Left, towards the Blues. so, but it was a Bonapartist, not a Republican shade of blue.

Success

Bonapartist Now, at the very moment when the Ministry was being constituted, Bonapartism was triumphant. In the Nièvre, Baron Philippe de Bourgoing, formerly an Equerry of the Emperor, who, in his election address had called upon the "appeal to the people," was elected on the 4th May, by 37,568 votes, against 32,119 given to M. Gudin, a Republican, and 4,575 to M. Pazzis, a Legitimist. The Nièvre had recently elected M. Turigny, a Republican, by 39,872 votes, against 28,253. It was thought that this sudden "turn over revealed the intervention of the ex-mayors of the Empire, This unwhom the Duc de Broglie had reinstated.

expected step in the quadrille of balanced parties caused a deep sensation.

Here was the Bonapartist peril once again, the only nightmare which could disturb the slumber of the Rights. The twenty years of Imperial repression were too recent to be forgotten. The mass of the people was felt to be uncertain; the Marshal himself, the Cabinet, the Army, if seen from a certain angle, seemed doubtful. All that provisional system would offer no resistance to force; any system of institutions would be better: the Republic was a nameless something which compromised nothing.

But how vague and difficult all this was! No help was to be expected from the Cabinet; it only just Words breathed, and merely vegetated noiselessly. being useless or dangerous, it had published no declara

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HISTORY OF

CONTEMPORARY FRANCE

CHAPTER I

THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY AND UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE I. Relative position of political parties at the fall of the first Broglie Cabinet. -Failure of the Goulard combination.-Formation of the CisseyFourtou Cabinet, 12th May, 1874.-The Bonapartist Party.-Parliamentary Electorate, Municipal Electorate; first Reading of the Bill.Universal Suffrage.-Union of the Centres.

II. The Bonapartist danger.-The Lefts accept the Constituent Power.Second Reading of the Municipal Electorate Bill.-Constitutional proposals. First Republican Victory; urgency voted on the CasimirPérier proposal.-First Reading of the Municipal Organisation Bill. III. The Comte de Chambord's Manifesto, 2nd July, 1874.-The Lucien Brun Interpellation.-The Cissey Cabinet beaten.-Message from the Marshal, 9th July, 1874.

IV. Ministerial Constitutional Programme.-Bill of the Committee of Thirty. -The Casimir-Perier motion discussed and rejected.-Adjournment of the Constitutional Debate.-The state of siege maintained.-The Assembly adjourns from the 5th August to the 30th November, 1874.

THE

I

HREE years had passed since the National Assembly first met at Bordeaux. It had concluded peace with Germany; it had repressed a formidable insurrection. It had then assumed the constituent power; but it had failed to give a Constitution to the

country.

The Right Majority was rent between three monarchical parties. These divisions favoured the Republic, which existed in fact.

On the 24th May, 1873, the Right had overthrown M. Thiers, believing him to be the principal obstacle to the restoration of the Dynasty.

A year later, on the 16th May, 1874, the Duc de Broglie was set aside in his turn, and the National Assembly, powerless and disorganised, found itself face to face with the country.

M. Thiers' Government had been but a provisional dictatorship, specially entrusted with the liquidation of the results of the war.

Situation of

after the fall

Cabinet.

The Cabinet over which the Duc de Broglie the parties presided had received from the Right a tacit of the Broglie mandate to bring about a fusion between the two Royalist parties and a conditional restoration of the Bourbon dynasty. But the Comte de Chambord, by his letter dated 27th October, 1873, had ruined his own chances and destroyed the hopes of the party of Parliamentary Monarchy; the votes of his partisans had contributed to the downfall of the Cabinet which represented that system.

In fact, the majority in the Assembly was now without a system, or, to speak more accurately, there was now no majority in the Assembly. The Duc de Broglie had been beaten by a coalition which comprised the Extreme Right, the Bonapartists and some Republicans, that is: all the parties which, either in the name of Divine Right, or in the name of Popular Right, refused to admit that the Assembly had the power of constitution. The Assembly was therefore driven to have recourse to the country, and to that Universal Suffrage by which it had been elected.

This was clearly explained by M. Thiers, with his habitual lucidity and logical precision, in a speech uttered on the 24th May, 1874. "Let us hope that, after recent experiences, the Assembly will accept, like ourselves, the

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