y was punished by its superiors
for the elections of May and April, 1850, as it was punished for
the election of May 29, 1849. This time, however, it said to itself
determinately: "The revolution shall not cheat us a third time."

The law of May 31, 1850, was the "coup d'etat" of the bourgeoisie.
All its previous conquests over the revolution had only a temporary
character: they became uncertain the moment the National Assembly
stepped off the stage; they depended upon the accident of general
elections, and the history of the elections since 1848 proved
irrefutably that, in the same measure as the actual reign of the
bourgeoisie gathered strength, its moral reign over the masses wore off.
Universal suffrage pronounced itself on May 10 pointedly against the
reign of the bourgeoisie; the bourgeoisie answered with the banishment
of universal suffrage. The law of May 31 was, accordingly, one of the
necessities of the class struggle. On the other hand, the constitution
required a minimum of two million votes for the valid ejection of the
President of the republic. If none of the Presidential candidates polled
this minimum, then the National Assembly was to elect the President out
of the three candidates polling the highest votes. At the time that the
constitutive body made this law, ten million voters were registered
on the election rolls. In its opinion, accordingly, one-fifth of the
qualified voters sufficed to make a choice for President valid. The law
of May 31 struck at least three million voters off the rolls, reduced
the number of qualified voters to seven millions, and yet, not
withstanding, it kept the lawful minimum at two millions for the
election of a President. Accordingly, it raised the lawful minimum from
a fifth to almost a third of the qualified voters, i.e., it did all
it could to smuggle the Presidential election out of the hands of the
people into those of the National Assembly. Thus, by the election law of
May 31, the party of Order seemed to have doubly secured its empire,
in that it placed the election of both the National Assembly and the
President of the republic in the keeping of the stable portion of
society.

V

The strife immediately broke out again between the National Assembly
and Bonaparte, so soon as the revolutionary crisis was weathered, and
universal suffrage was abolished.

The Constitution had fixed the salary of Bonaparte at 600,000 francs.
Barely half a year after his inst