" Then
that origin was the very worst that could possibly be selected, the votes
of the uneducated multitude; you must have foreseen that they would give
you a demagogue or a charlatan. The absence of a second Chamber, and the
absence of a power of dissolution, are minor faults, but still serious
ones. When the President and the Assembly differed, they were shut up
together to fight it out without an umpire.'
'That we gave the President too much power,' said Beaumont, 'the event
has proved. But I do not see how, in the existing state of feeling in
France, we could have given him less. The French have no self-reliance.
They depend for everything on their administrators. The first revolution
and the first empire destroyed all their local authorities and also their
aristocracy. Local authorities may be gradually re-created, and an
aristocracy may gradually arise, but till these things have been done the
Executive must be strong.
'If he had been re-eligible, our first President would virtually have
been President for life. Having decided that his office should be
temporary, we were forced to forbid his immediate re-election.
'With respect to his being left unprovided for, no man who had filled the
office decently would have been refused an ample provision on quitting
it.
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