'No new Constitution can work if the Executive conspires against it. But deliberating and acting in the midst of émeutes, 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. You think that we ought to have proposed two Chambers. The great use of two Chambers is to strengthen the Executive by enabling it to play one against the other; but we felt that our Executive was dangerously strong, and we believed, I think truly, that a single Chamber would resist him better than two could do. The provision which required more than a bare majority for the revision of the Constitution was one of those which we borrowed from America. It had worked well there. In the general instability we wished to have one anchor, one mooring ring fixed. We did not choose that the whole framework of our Government should be capable of being suddenly destroyed by a majority of one, in a moment of excitement and perhaps by a parliamentary surprise.
'With respect to your complaint that, there being no power of dissolution, there was no means of taking the opinion of the people, the answer is, that to give the President power of dissolution would have been to invite him to a coup d'état. With no Chamber to watch him, he would have been omnipotent.
'I agree with you that the Constitution was a detestable one. But even now, looking back to the times, and to the conditions under which we made it, I do not think that it was in our power to make a good one.'
'Tocqueville,' I said, 'told me that Cormenin was your Solon, that he brought a bit of constitution to you every morning, and that it was usually adopted.'[1]
'Tocqueville's memory,' answered Beaumont, 'deceived him. Cormenin was our president. It is true that he brought a bit of constitution every morning. But it scarcely ever was adopted or capable of being adopted. It was in general bad in itself, or certain to be rejected by the Assembly. He wished to make the President a puppet. But he exercised over us a mischievous influence. He tried to revenge himself for our refusal of all his proposals by rendering our deliberations fruitless. And as the power of a president over a deliberative body is great, he often succeeded.
'Many of our members were unaccustomed to public business and lost their tempers or their courage when opposed. The Abbé Lamennais proposed a double election of the president. But of thirty members, only four, among whom were Tocqueville and I, supported him. He left the committee and never returned to it. Tocqueville and I were anxious to introduce double election everywhere. It is the best palliative of universal suffrage.'
'The double election,' I said, 'of the American President is nugatory. Every elector is chosen under a pledge to nominate a specified candidate.'
'That is true,' said Beaumont, 'as to the President, but not as to the other functionaries thus elected. The senators chosen by double election are far superior to the representatives chosen by direct voting.
'We proposed, too, to begin by establishing municipal institutions. We were utterly defeated. The love of centralisation is almost inherent in French politicians. They see the evil of local government—its stupidity, its corruption, its jobbing. They see the convenience of centralisation—the ease with which a centralised administration works. Feelings which are really democratic have reached those who fancy themselves aristocrats. We had scarcely a supporter.
'We should perhaps have a few now, when experience has shown that centralisation is still more useful to an usurper than it is to a regular Government.'