antagonism
of the royalist factions. All the while the bourgeoisie was clamoring
louder and louder for a "strong Government," and was finding it less
and less pardonable to leave France "without an administration," in
proportion as a general commercial crisis seemed to be under way and
making recruits for Socialism in the cities, as did the ruinously low
price of grain in the rural districts. Trade became daily duller;
the unemployed hands increased perceptibly; in Paris, at least 10,000
workingmen were without bread; in Rouen, Muehlhausen, Lyons, Roubaix,
Tourcoign, St. Etienue, Elbeuf, etc., numerous factories stood idle.
Under these circumstances Bonaparte could venture to restore, on April
11, the Ministry of January 18; Messieurs Rouher, Fould, Baroche, etc.,
reinforced by Mr. Leon Faucher, whom the constitutive assembly
had, during its last days, unanimously, with the exception of five
Ministerial votes, branded with a vote of censure for circulating false
telegraphic dispatches. Accordingly, the National Assembly had won a
victory on January 18 over the Ministry, it had, for the period of three
months, been battling with Bonaparte, and all this merely to the end
that, on April 11, Fould and Baroche should be able to take up the
Puritan Faucher as third in their ministerial league.

In November, 1849, Bonaparte had satisfied himself with an
Unparliamentary, in January, 1851, with an Extra-Parliamentary, on April
11, he felt strong enough to form an Anti-Parliamentary Ministry, that
harmoniously combined within itself the votes of lack of confidence of
both assemblies-the constitutive and the legislative, the republican and
the royalist. This ministerial progression was a thermometer by which
the parliament could measure the ebbing temperature of its own life.
This had sunk so low by the end of April that, at a personal interview,
Persigny could invite Changarnier to go over to the camp of the
President. Bonaparte, he assured Changarnier, considered the influence
of the National Assembly to be wholly annihilated, and already the
proclamation was ready, that was to be published after the steadily
contemplated, but again accidentally postponed "coup d'etat."
Changarnier communicated this announcement of its death to the leaders
of the party of Order; but who was there to believe a bed-bug bite
could kill? The parliament, however beaten, however dissolved, however
death-tainted it was, could not persuade itself to see