The Assembly, therefore, since it is hindered by violence from accomplishing its mission, decrees: —

Louis Napoleon Bonaparte is deprived of his functions as president of the republic, and the citizens are called on to refuse him obedience.

The executive power passes in its plenitude to the Assembly.

The judges of the High Court of Justice are called on to meet immediately, upon pain of dismissal, to proceed to judgment against the president and his accomplices.

It is enjoined upon all functionaries that they obey the requisition made in the name of the Assembly, under penalty of forfeiture, and the punishment prescribed for high treason.

Made in public sitting this 2d December, 1851.

(Signed)

BENOIST D'Azy, President.

VITET, Vice President.

CHAPOT and MOULIN, Secretaries.

They also sent out an address to the French people, calling upon them to arise and hurl the usurper from his position. But to the eloquent appeal there was no response. The people had little more love for the National Assembly than for the president himself, and heard the burning words of the Chamber without the least enthusiasm. They feared one hundred thousand bayonets, that were glistening within the walls of Paris. The whole address may be judged by the following

"Will you be debased? Will you be enslaved? Will you become henceforth an object of eternal contempt and ridicule to the oppressed peoples who awaited their deliverance at your hands?

954

- Loc's Brouparte bas jost crowded into a few hours more crimes than it would have been thought possible to include in the Be of E

- Like a thief be has seized upon the liberties of his country by a nocturnal surprise-a vulgar artifice, which certain pecgie Lave been rash enough to call

- He has andationsly tried with the sanctity of the domestic bearh

- By the help of his swaggering soldiery and police, he has slenced every voice in Paris except his own.

"At one blow he has suppressed all the journals, and has cast forth into the streets of Paris, without bread. those of your brethren whom the press supported.

"He has outraged, stricken down, and trampled under foot the national representation, not only in the persons of your enemies, but also in that of Greppo, the energetic and loyal representative of the workmen of Lyons, and in that of Nadaud, the mason, who has so often and so nobly defended your interests in the tribune.

"Do you want to have a master? And do you wish that that master should be Louis Bonaparte? You have seen the air with which he traversed the streets of Paris, hedged in by soldiers, covered by cannon, and causing himself to be borne in triumph by his staff, adding to the crime of high treason the insolence of a conqueror, and treating France as a conquered country—he whose military annals can boast of nothing except the opprobrium of the Roman expedition.

"He boasts of restoring to you universal suffrage, but on condition that it be worked for his private advantage, and not for yours, since he is going for ten

years to be your master. No scrutiny of the list,' he says. Do you quite understand what that means? It means that the elections are to be made by registers lodged in the offices of the mayor. The great swindling maneuver which has been practiced upon France, once in her history, is to be renewed. Will you permit, precisely when it is pretended to restore your right, that it shall be filched from you?

"Moreover, to exercise the right of the suffrage, you must be free. Let him begin, then, by restoring free speech to the journals; let the doors be flung wide open to popular meetings; let every man speak his mind, and learn that of others. Why those bayonets? Why those cannon? To restore universal suffrage with the state of siege, is to add mockery to falsehood. A people proclaimed sovereign, it is the mantle of slavery thrown over your shoulders, even as the barbarian chief, in the time of the Lower Empire, threw the purple over the Roman emperors in placing them among his camp followers. Do you wish to be enslaved? Do you wish to be debased? Such is the cry wrung from us by an indignation impossible to be restrained. We who, in our exile, can at least speak, do speak. But we owe more than speech to the republic -our blood belongs to it. We know it, and shall not forget it."

In the mean while, Victor Hugo fled to Brussels. Louis Blanc found a refuge in London, from which he writes letters denouncing Napoleon, and showing what the plan is on which he may be expected to act. The charge which he brings against the usurper is this:

"To divide Europe into three great empires a Russian empire, extending to Constantinople; an Austrian empire, with the definitive annexation of Italy; a