rs
firmly upheld by Louis Philippe, with the assistance of the ablest and
wisest ministers the country had known for a century,--the policy of
which was pacific, and the leading political idea of which was an
alliance with Great Britain. The king fled before the storm of
revolutionary ideas,--as Metternich was obliged to do in Vienna, and
Ferdinand in Naples,--and a provisional government succeeded, of which
Lamartine was the central figure. A new legislative assembly was chosen
to support a republic, in which the most distinguished men of France, of
all opinions, were represented. Among the deputies was Louis Napoleon,
who had hastened from England to take part in the revolution. He sat on
the back benches of the Chamber neglected, silent, and despised by the
leading men in France, but not yet hated nor feared.

When a President of the Republic had to be chosen by the suffrages of
the people, Louis Napoleon unexpectedly received a great majority of the
votes. He had been quietly carrying on his "presidential campaign"
through his agents, who appealed to the popular love for the name
of Napoleon.

The old political leaders, amazed and confounded, submitted to the
national choice, yet stood aloof from a man without political
experience, who had always been an exile when he had not been a
prisoner. Most of them had supposed that Bonapartism was dead; but the
peasantry in the provinces still were enthralled by the majesty and
mighty prestige of that conqueror who had been too exalted for envy and
too powerful to be resisted. To the provincial votes chiefly Louis
Napoleon owed his election as President,--and the election was fair. He
came into power by the will of the nation if any man ever did,--by the
spontaneous enthusiasm of the people for the name he bore, not for his
own abilities and services; and as he proclaimed, on his accession, a
policy of peace (which the people believed) and loyalty to the
Constitution,--Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality, the watchwords of the
Revolution,--even more, as he seemed to represent the party of order, he
was regarded by such statesmen as Thiers and Montalembert as the least
dangerous of the candidates; and they gave their moral support to his
government, while they declined to take office under him.

The new President appointed the famous De Tocqueville as his first prime
minister, who after serving a few months resigned, because he would not
be the pliant tool of his master. Lou