There is a good deal of uneasiness in the French political world. The great thing for the moment is that the Ministers should get a good majority in the Chamber at the end of the debate on the new Constitution which is now going on. They are afraid that some of their usual supporters will abstain from voting. The 'Appeal to the People' is so thoroughly Napoleonic an idea, and so completely in accordance with the peculiar character and modes of thinking of Napoleon III., that it would be very hard to make him give it up. One cannot wonder at people's being distrustful of the use he may make of it. The submitting the present changes in the Constitution to a plébiscite is certainly legally necessary and admitted to be so by all parties. What people are afraid of is that the Emperor will insist upon calling for it in a Proclamation so worded as to make the acceptance by the people a vote in favour of his person, as against the Chambers and Ministers.
You will see from Claremont's report that the Government has agreed to reduce the military contingent by another 10,000 men, making it 80,000 instead of 90,000 as the present Government proposed, and instead of 100,000, as it was fixed by the late Government.
It was not surprising that the French Ministers, as well as many other people, should feel suspicious about the plébiscite, and that frequent councils should have taken place at the Tuileries with the object of inducing the Emperor to consent that in future no plébiscite should be submitted to the people unless it had first been voted by the two Chambers. For one thing, it was feared that few people would care enough about it to take much trouble to vote, and it really did not seem very probable that a peasant would take a long walk to express his opinion on the question of whether the Senate should have the power of originating certain laws. Therefore the Ministerial crisis which arose, and the Emperor's determination not to yield about the Appeal to the People, were attributed to a Machiavellian plot on his part, and it was believed that the return to personal government was to be brought about by getting rid of the independent Ministers, Ollivier included. The belief was possibly unfounded, but the Emperor's previous history had not inspired his people with implicit confidence in him, and they were always convinced that he had an incurable taste for conspiracy.
Lord Clarendon to Lord Lyons.
Foreign Office, April 13, 1870.
It is impossible not to feel very uneasy about the present state of things in France and the sort of locus standi that the enemies of the Empire have obtained for suspecting the Emperor, who will be a long time in recovering, if he ever does, the public confidence he now seems to have lost. Revolutions are not made with half measures, any more than with the proverbial rose water, and among the ships that the Emperor was supposed to have burnt behind him when he landed on the Constitutional shore, the plébiscite ought surely to have been included. No doubt he would have divested himself of a favourite weapon, but he should have foreseen the very serious objections to it that would arise in the mind of the most moderate friend of Constitutional Government, and he would have done far better for himself to have given it up and taken his chance, for with or without plébiscite, that is what he is now reduced to, and his chances will be improved by endeavouring with sincerity to guide the stream rather than oppose himself to it.
As the result of the crisis, both Daru and Buffet left the Ministry, thus weakening the Cabinet and diminishing materially the chance of a quiet and satisfactory establishment of Parliamentary Government. Thiers was generally supposed to have been the principal mischief-maker. Lord Russell was at this time in Paris, and in conversation with Ollivier the latter expressed himself most confidently about the plébiscite, and thought that if six million people voted it might be looked upon as a decided success. Another opinion on the plébiscite was volunteered by Mr. Gladstone. 'If the Emperor is really stickling for the right to refer when he pleases to the people for an Aye or No upon a proposition which he is to frame, that, in my opinion, reduces Constitutional Government to an absolute mockery, just as it would reduce to a shadow the power of a Legislative Assembly.'
Lord Lyons to Lord Clarendon.
Paris, April 21, 1870.