d not act willingly. It was willing, and chaffered only for a
very short respite. What else was the 29th of January, 1849, than the
"coup d'etat" of December 2, 1851, only executed by the royalists with
Napoleon's aid against the republican National Assembly? These gentlemen
did not notice, or did not want to notice, that Napoleon utilized the
29th of January, 1849, to cause a part of the troops to file before him
in front of the Tuileries, and that he seized with avidity this very
first open exercise of the military against the parliamentary power
in order to hint at Caligula. The allied royalists saw only their own
Changarnier.

Another reason that particularly moved the party of Order forcibly to
shorten the term of the constitutional assembly were the organic laws,
the laws that were to supplement the Constitution, as, for instance,
the laws on education, on religion, etc. The allied royalists had every
interest in framing these laws themselves, and not allowing them to be
framed by the already suspicious republicans. Among these organic laws,
there was, however, one on the responsibility of the President of the
republic. In 1851 the Legislature was just engaged in framing such a law
when Bonaparte forestalled that political stroke by his own of December
2. What all would not the coalized royalists have given in their winter
parliamentary campaign of 1851, had they but found this "Responsibility
law" ready made, and framed at that, by the suspicious, the vicious
republican Assembly!

After, on January 29, 1849, the constitutive assembly had itself broken
its last weapon, the Barrot ministry and the "Friends of Order" harassed
it to death, left nothing undone to humiliate it, and wrung from its
weakness, despairing of itself, laws that cost it the last vestige
of respect with the public. Bonaparte, occupied with his own fixed
Napoleonic idea, was audacious enough openly to exploit this degradation
of the parliamentary power: When the National Assembly, on May 8, 1849,
passed a vote of censure upon the Ministry on account of the occupation
of Civita-Vecchia by Oudinot, and ordered that the Roman expedition
be brought back to its alleged purpose, Bonaparte published that same
evening in the "Moniteur" a letter to Oudinot, in which he congratulated
him on his heroic feats, and already, in contrast with the quill-pushing
parliamentarians, posed as the generous protector of the Army. The
royalists smiled at this. They to