to the effect that, instead of three
years, a domicile of one year should suffice. The amendment was lost by
a single vote--but this vote, it soon transpired, was a mistake. Owing
to the divisions within its own hostile factions, the party of Order had
long since forfeited its independent parliamentary majority. It was
now plain that there was no longer any majority in the parliament. The
National Assembly had become impotent even to decide. Its atomic parts
were no longer held together by any cohesive power; it had expended its
last breath, it was dead.

Finally, the mass of the bourgeoisie outside of the parliament was once
more solemnly to confirm its rupture with the bourgeoisie inside of the
parliament a few days before the catastrophe. Thiers, as a parliamentary
hero conspicuously smitten by that incurable disease--Parliamentary
Idiocy--, had hatched out jointly with the Council of State, after the
death of the parliament, a new parliamentary intrigue in the shape of a
"Responsibility Law," that was intended to lock up the President within
the walls of the Constitution. The same as, on September 15, Bonaparte
bewitched the fishwives, like a second Massaniello, on the occasion of
laying the corner-stone for the Market of Paris,--though, it must be
admitted, one fishwife was equal to seventeen Burgraves in real power--;
the same as, after the introduction of the "Questors' Bill," he enthused
the lieutenants, who were being treated at the Elysee;--so, likewise,
did he now, on November 25, carry away with him the industrial
bourgeoisie, assembled at the Circus, to receive from his hands the
prize-medals that had been awarded at the London Industrial Exposition.
I here reproduce the typical part of his speech, from the "Journal des
Debats":

"With such unhoped for successes, I am justified to repeat how great
the French republic would be if she were only allowed to pursue her
real interests, and reform her institutions, instead of being constantly
disturbed in this by demagogues, on one side, and, on the other, by
monarchic hallucinations. (Loud, stormy and continued applause from
all parts of the amphitheater). The monarchic hallucinations hamper all
progress and all serious departments of industry. Instead of progress,
we have struggle only. Men, formerly the most zealous supporters of
royal authority and prerogative, become the partisans of a convention
that has no purpose other than to weaken an authority that is