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Wednesday, January 29.—I walked with Tocqueville and Ampère round the massive walls of Sorrento. It must have been impregnable before the use of gunpowder.

In this friable sandstone the torrents from the hills wear deep channels, which are easily scarped. Channels of this kind, thirty or forty feet broad, and perhaps 200 feet deep, nearly surround Sorrento on three sides; on the fourth it rises from precipices which run out into deep water, and it has the further protection of high and solid walls.

We had just heard the news of the vote of the Assembly of January 18, that it had no confidence in the present French Ministry.'

'The last time,' said Tocqueville, 'that a French Chamber agreed on such a vote was in June 1830. An ominous recollection; but in 1830 the 221 had the country at their back.

'It is difficult to say how far the country sympathises with the Assembly. It has done itself great harm by releasing Mauguin from legal custody. The tribunals

controversy. The French have no fears of their children or relations being converted. I never recollect an instance of a French girl turning Protestant. All that they fear is their turning nuns. They are in general much more afraid of their own priests than of ours.

Ever yours,

N. W. SENIOR.

1 The President was beginning to show his determination to exercise despotic power. He had succeeded in removing Changarnier from his position as Commander-in-chief, and the Ministers appointed on the 9th were supposed to be tools in the hands of their master. Baroche was Minister of the Interior, Fould of Finance, and Rouher of Justice.-ED.

1851.]

The President and the Assembly.

189 are furious; all privileges, particularly those assumed by collective bodies, are unpopular. The retention in its service of such a man as Yon, is another fault. Its disorderly debates and brutal interruptions excite disapprobation, almost contempt. The President, on the other hand, makes no undignified appearance in public. His immense patronage throws all France at his feet. The framers of the Constitution meant to render him merely the subordinate officer of the Assembly. Within the limits of the Constitution the Assembly was to be Sovereign. But they have given the President means of power and influence with which they, the Assembly, find it difficult to cope. And I agree with Thiers, that if, in the struggle, the Assembly yields, we have the Empire under another name. It is possible that he may make a compromise with them on the dotation question, give up his Ministers, and receive his three millions-which of course would be dishonourable to him. It is more probable that his Ministers will refuse to continue.

'To be censured by the Assembly, and treated by the President as mere clerks, is paying a high price for office.'

'It is unfortunate,' I said, 'that Louis Napoleon has learned so little in England.'

'He learned in England,' said Tocqueville, 'a good deal. He learned, for instance, the value of private enterprise and skill. He is less inclined than most of his Ministers to interpose in all great works the action of the Government. But he has not learned even the prin

ciples of Parliamentary Government.

He is resolved

not merely to be his own Prime Minister, but to be almost sole Minister. He will not even submit to be controlled in his Cabinet. Hence arises the anomaly that the leading men in the Assembly vote against the Ministry, and yet refuse to take office. They vote against the Ministry, because they fancy that they see in them the accomplices of an usurpation; they refuse to take office because they would incur responsibility without having free agency.'

'It seems to me,' I said, 'that the Assembly ought to have made its stand against the aristocratic pretensions of the President in November 1849, when, in defiance of the spirit of Parliamentary Government, he dismissed a Ministry which was supported by a strong majority. By not resenting that aggression, you invited others.'

'That is true,' he answered; 'but the Assembly was new, and the President was new. We were very anxious not to begin so early with a quarrel, and we, the retiring Ministry, used our utmost efforts to obtain for our successors a fair trial. But perhaps, as you say, we were

wrong.'

'What is the next move,' I asked, 'if the Ministers remain ?'

'There are two moves,' he answered, by which the Assembly might endeavour to coerce the President. The direct taxes, which form the bulk of the revenue, are, by the Constitution, only annual. It might refuse them, or it might pass laws directly aimed at his power. It might change, for instance, the constitution of the

1851.]

Effect of a Dissolution.

191

army. It might exclude the army from Paris; in fact, exercising despotically the whole power of legislation, on all points that are not determined by the Constitution, it might seriously embarrass or even arrest his administration.'

'Would not either of these courses,' I said, 'induce the public to take part with the President? Each of them would, in fact, be fighting the battle at the expense of the country. You want, I think, here the expedient of a dissolution. With us, if the King returns Ministers whom the House of Commons disapproves, it stops, or rather threatens to stop, the supplies; not as a party move, but as a means of forcing an appeal to the people. It is dissolved, and the ultimate umpire, the Nation, decides. If it sends back, as it did in 1835, a House with the same opinion as its predecessors, the Ministers must go. If it sends one, as it did in 1784, with a Ministerial majority, of course they remain. You seem to have no means of consulting the Nation, but must wait till the Assembly has sat through its term.'

'A dissolution,' he said, 'with us would be a revolution. The President, especially a Bonaparte, could not be left even for a few weeks unchecked by a countervailing force. Some years hence perhaps, if we have then popular institutions, our Chief Magistrate may be allowed the power given to your Sovereign, but not in our present state of transition.'

'But,' I said, 'if you refuse to pass laws and the President remains firm, what is to be the result?'

'If,' he answered, 'his conduct were such as to justify

our accusing him of an intention to subvert the Constitution, we might seize the whole power of the State and impeach him. And these seditious cries, these promotions of those who uttered them, these dismissals of those who refused to join in them, this removal of the Commander on whose skill and fidelity the Assembly relied for its protection, are strong indications of plans of usurpation.'

'They might be urged,' said Ampère, 'as implying a tendency; but the President may certainly keep within the limits of the law, and yet make legal Government, except through his own Ministers, impossible.'

'Was he wise,' I asked, 'in indulging in an expenditure which forces him to apply to the Chamber for a further allowance?'

'Very unwise,' answered Tocqueville. 'He ought to have lived within his income, as the richest private man in France, without assuming princely magnificence. He would have been more respected and really more powerful. I have told him so a hundred times. I have implored him to lay aside his extravagant retinue, and to discontinue his ostentatious fêtes. But his instincts are towards expense, and his immediate adherents, who are as bad advisers as it is possible, stimulate an extravagance by which they profit. He is always thinking of his uncle. And the expense of the Imperial Court is, of course, the part of the Empire most easily copied.' 'In what way,' I said, 'does he get rid of so much money?'

'A great deal of it,' said Tocqueville, 'goes in gifts to

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