nment proclaimed the Republic; before the Hotel de
Ville, Lamartine, in a burst of eloquence, repelled the proposition of
the mob to adopt the red flag and secured the adoption of the tricolor,
and the provinces, following the lead of the capital, seemed to accept
the Republic.

But a stable administration of the city and the nation seemed more
unattainable than ever. The new government had to suppress popular
uprisings in the streets of Paris in March, in May, and in June; the new
Assemblee Nationale, elected by universal suffrage,--nine millions of
electors, instead of 220,000, as under the late monarchy,--made haste to
organize a new government consisting of a single president, to be
elected, and a single legislative body. The new president, elected by an
overwhelming majority, was Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, a nephew of the
Emperor. He was given power to nominate all the innumerable employes of
the government, to negotiate treaties, and to organize the army, but he
could not take command of the latter nor dissolve the Assemblee, and he
was not eligible for re-election. The two chief powers of the government
were not long in coming into collision; the legislative body, divided
into numerous factions, lacked decision and initiative, and it lost in
popular favor by the law of the 31st of May, 1850, which struck three
millions of electors from the lists by restricting the suffrage to those
only who could prove a continuous residence of three years in the
canton. The President, seizing his opportunity, demanded the repeal of
this law (November 4, 1851), and on the 2d of December following, by a
series of summary nocturnal arrests, succeeded in putting all the chiefs
of the various parties in the Assemblee, and all his most formidable
opponents, under lock and key. "I have broken out of the way of
legality," said he, "to re-enter that of the right;" and the nation, by
7,437,216 votes against 640,737, accepted the new constitution which he
proposed for it, the renewal of his power for ten years, the abolition
of the law of the 31st of May, and the dissolution of the Assemblee
Nationale. The Empire followed naturally, a year later, and was
ratified by the nation by an even more overwhelming majority.

So much obloquy has been attached to the person and the reign of this
sovereign, he has been made the object of such unlimited denunciation,
deserved and undeserved, at home and abroad, that it will doubtless come
as a surprise