Contempt for the present Government, he tells us, is spreading there from
its headquarters, Paris.
'If the Corps Legislatif is dissolved, he expects the Opposition to
obtain a majority in the new House.
'This,' continued Tocqueville, 'is a state of things with which Louis
Napoleon is not fit to cope. Opposition makes him furious, particularly
Parliamentary opposition. His first impulse will be to go a step further
in imitation of his uncle, and abolish the Corps Legislatif, as Napoleon
did the Tribunat.
'But nearly half a century of Parliamentary life has made the French of
1853 as different from those of 1803 as the nephew is from his uncle.
'He will scarcely risk another _coup d'etat_; and the only legal mode of
abolishing, or even modifying, the Corps Legislatif is by a plebiscite
submitted by ballot to universal suffrage.
'Will he venture on this? And if he do venture, will he succeed? If he
fail, will he not sink into a constitutional sovereign, controlled by an
Assembly far more unmanageable than we deputies were, as the Ministers
are excluded from it?'
'Will he not rather,' I said, 'sink into an exile?'
'That is my hope,' said Tocqueville, 'but I do not expect it quite so
soon as Thiers does,'
CORRESPONDENCE.
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