As for this man, no provision that we could have made for him, if we
had given him three or four millions a year, would have induced him to
give up what he considered a throne which was his by descent. He swore to
the Constitution with an _idee fixe _to destroy it. He attempted to do so
on the 29th of January 1849, not two months after his election.
'I agree with you that the fault of the Constitution was that it allowed
the President to be chosen by universal suffrage; and that the fault of
the people was that they elected a pretender to the throne, whose
ambition, rashness, and faithlessness had been proved.
'No new Constitution can work if the Executive conspires against it. But
deliberating and acting in the midst of _emeutes_, with a Chamber and a
population divided into half a dozen hostile factions, the two Royalist
parties hating one another, the Bonapartists bent on destroying all
freedom, and the Socialists all individual property, what could we do? My
wish and Tocqueville's was to give the election to the Chamber. We found
that out of 650 members we could not hope that our proposition would be
supported by more than 200.
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