If the imperatorial sovereignty is founded upon an actual process of election, whether this consist in a mere form or not, it bears down all opposition, nay all dissent, however lawful it may be, by a reference to the source of its power. It says: "I am the people, and whoever dissents from me is an enemy to the people. Vox Populi vox Dei. My divine right is the voice of God, which spake in the voice of the people. The government is the true representative of the people."

The eight millions of votes, more or less, which elevated the present French emperor, first to the decennial presidency and then to the imperial throne, are a ready answer to all objections. If private property is confiscated by a decree; if persons are de

the brain, and no mentally employed man that is not obliged to accompany his labor by some, frequently by a great deal of physical exertion. To draw an exact line between the two, for political purposes, is impossible. All attempts at doing so are mischievous. The hands and the brain rule the world. All labor is manual and cerebral, but the proportion in which the elements combine is infinite. So soon as no cerebral labor is necessary, we substitute the animal or the machine. In reading some socialist works, one would almost suppose that men had returned to some worship of the animal element, raising pure physical exertion above all other human endeavors. Humanity does not present itself more respectably than in the industrious and intelligent artisan, but every artisan justly strives to reach that position in which he works more by the intellect than by physical exertion. He strives to be an employer, The type of a self-dependent and striving American artisan is a really noble type. The author hopes he will count many an American operative among his readers; and if he be not deceived in this hope, he takes this opportunity to declare that he believes he too has a very fair title to be called a hard-working man, without claiming any peculiar civil privileges on that account.

The

ported without trial; if the jury trial is shorn of its guarantees, the answer is always the same. emperor is the unlimited central force of the French democracy; thus the theory goes. He is the incarnation of the popular power, and if any of the political bodies into which the imperatorial power may have subdivided itself, like a Hindoo god, should happen to indicate an opinion of its own, it is readily given to understand that the government is in fact the people. Such bodies cannot, of course, be called institutions; for they are devoid of independence and every element of self-government. The present president of the French legislative corps found it necessary, on the opening of a late session, to assure his colleagues, in an official address, that their body was by no means without some importance in the political system, as many seemed to suppose.

The source of imperatorial power, however, is hardly ever what it is pretended to be, because, if the people have any power left, it is not likely that they will absolutely denude themselves of it, surely not in any modern and advanced nation. The question in these cases is not even whether they love liberty, but simply whether they love power-and every one loves power. On the one hand, we have to observe that no case exists in history in which the question, whether imperatorial power shall be conferred upon an individual, is put to the people, except after a successful conspiracy against the existing powers or institutions, or a coup-d'état, if the term be preferred, on the part of the imperatorial candidate; and, on the other hand, a state of things in which so great a

question is actually left to the people is wholly unimaginable. There may be a so-called interregnum during the conclave, when the cardinals elect a pope, but a country cannot be imagined in a state of perfect interregnum while the question is deciding whether a hereditary emperor shall be made. It is useless to pretend even such a thing, most especially so where the question is to be decided not by representatives, but by universal suffrage, and that, too, in a country where the executive is spread over every inch of the territory, and characterized by the most consistent centralism. The two last elections of Louis Napoleon prove the fact. Ministers, prefects, bishops, were openly and officially influencing the elections; not to speak of the fact that large elections on persons in power, which allow to vote only yes or no, have no meaning, as the history of France abundantly proves. But how elections at present are managed in France, even when the question is not so comprehensive, may be seen from a circular addressed by the minister, Mr. de Morny, to the prefects, previous to the elections for the first legislative corps. It is an official paper, strikingly characteristic, and I shall give a place to a translation of it in the appendix. We ought to bear in mind that one of the

3 See the Paper on Elections, in the appendix.

4 Mr. de Morny is the frère adultérin of Louis Bonaparte, on the mother's side, queen Hortensia. He aided his half brother very actively in the overthrow of the republic, and the establishment of the empire. Mr. de Morny lost the ministry at the time when L. Bonaparte despoiled the Orleans family of their lawful property, and, it was believed, because the minister could not in his conscience sanction an act at once so unlawful and ungrateful.

heaviest charges against Mr. de Polignac, when tried. for treason, was, that he had allowed Charles the Tenth to influence the elections.

The question, when such a vote is put to the people under circumstances which have been indicated, is at once: And what if the vote turn out No? Will the candidate, already at the head of the army, the executive, and of every branch; whose initials are paraded everywhere, and whose portrait is in the courts of justice, some of which actually have already styled themselves imperial, and who himself has been addressed Sire; who has an enormous civil list-make a polite bow, give the keys to some one else, and walk his way? And to whom was he to give the government? The question was not, as Mr. de Laroche-Jaquelin had proposed, Shall A or B rule us? Essentially this question would not have been better; but there would have been apparently some sense in it. The question simply was: Shall B rule us?-Yes or No. It is surprising that some persons can actually believe reflecting people may thus be duped.

The Cæsar always exists before the imperatorial government is acknowledged and openly established. Whether the prætorians or legions actually proclaim the Cæsar or not, it is always the army that makes him. A succeeding ballot is nothing more than a sort of trimmings of more polished or more timid times, or it may be a tribute to that civilization which does not allow armies to occupy the place they hold in barbarous or relapsing times, at least not openly so.

First to assume the power and then to direct the people to vote, whether they are satisfied with the act or not, leads psychologically to the same process often pursued by Henry the Eighth, and according to which it became a common saying: First clap a man into prison for treason, and you will soon have abundance of testimony. It was the same with the witch trials.

The process of election becomes peculiarly unmeaning, because the power already assumed allows no discussion. There is no free press.

5

Although no reliance can be placed on wide-spread elections, whose sole object is to ratify the assumption of imperatorial sovereignty, and when therefore it already dictatorially controls all affairs, it is not asserted that the dictator may not at times be supported by large masses, and possibly assume the imperatorial sovereignty with the approbation of a majority. I have repeatedly acknowledged it; but it is unquestionably true that generally in times of commotion, and especially in uninstitutional countries, minorities sway, for it is minorities that actually contend. Yet, even where this is not the case, the

5 When the question of the new imperial crown was before the people of France, count Chambord, the Bourbon prince who claims the crown of France on the principle of legitimacy, wrote a letter to his adherents, exhorting them not to vote. The leading government papers stated at the time that government would have permitted the publication of this letter had it not attacked the principle of the people's sovereignty. The people were acknowledged sovereign, yet the government decides what the sovereign may read!