regarding colonial
slavery roused the whole colonial interest of France against the
republic. That which forbid substitutes for the army and navy created
wide-spread dissatisfaction. The former of these provisions of the
constitution was so just and humane, that it deserved to be carried out
at any cost; the other was impolitic, as it deprived large numbers who
would not serve in the army or navy of the opportunity of avoiding
that service, if they fell under the ballot, by nominating a substitute
willing to serve if remunerated.

The question of the adoption of the constitution was finally put on
the 4th of November, and carried, thirty voices being dissident. In the
evening of the same day, one hundred and one cannon shots announced to
Paris and its environs that the work of preparing the constitution had
been completed. The public made no manifestation of feeling. Only the
old republican party valued so free a constitution. The _ouvriers_ cared
not for it, nor for anything short of socialism. The Absolutists hated
liberty in every form. The Buonapartists regarded it as an instrument
that might be made available for reconstituting the empire. The
Orleanists received it with more malignant hostility than any other
class. They professed the theory of a constitutional monarchy; but
the free and just and noble constitution of the republic contrasted so
advantageously with the corrupt practices and _doctrinaire_ theories of
Louis Philippe and his favourites, that the Orleans party betrayed the
most malevolent feelings to the republican leaders, such as Cavaignac
and Lamartine, and the uttermost repugnance to the republic itself.
Louis Philippe, in England, entertained his friends with garrulous
accounts of his own wisdom in all the measures he had adopted,
predicting that France, enamoured of the glory of his reign, would
repent and return to him again! His queen, equally incapable of
appreciating France, dwelt only upon the injury inflicted upon religion
by the conduct of the French people in dethroning their king, and
making an indiscriminate establishment of all churches a feature of the
constitution. Her silence, gravity, and the religious view she took
of the event were strangely in contrast to the vanity, levity, and
self-gratulation with which the king talked of his temporarily humbled
fortunes.

The proclamation of the constitution failed in quieting enemies,
restoring public confidence in the state of affairs,