This was the outcome of an overwhelming plebiscite in his favour. There could be no doubt about the voice of France on this occasion. Paris may possibly have been genuinely Republican at that time. The Provinces, whose antagonism to Paris and the Parisians was very marked, then and later, were undoubtedly Buonapartist. From President to Emperor was no long step. Louis Napoleon, though a man of no great capacity, did at any rate believe in himself, in his democratic Imperialism and his destiny. The set of adventurers and swindlers around him believed only in full purses and ample opportunities for gratifying their taste for luxury and debauchery. Having obtained control of the army by the bribery of some and the imprisonment of others of the Republican generals, all was ready for the infamous butchery of peaceful citizens which cowed Paris and established the Empire at the same time. Once more the plebiscite was resorted to with equal success on the part of the conspirators. The hero of the coup d’état, with his familiar coterie of Morny, Flahault, Persigny, Canrobert and other rogues and murderers of less degree, became Napoleon III and master of Paris and of France in December, 1852.
The French threw their votes almost solid in favour of the Empire, and thus tacitly condoned the hideous crime committed when it was established. Whenever the Emperor’s right to his throne was challenged he could point triumphantly to that crushing vote of the democracy constituting him the duly elected Emperor of the French and hereditary representative—however doubtful his parentage—of that extraordinary Corsican genius who, when Chateaubriand and other detractors sneered at his origin, boldly declared, “Moi je suis ancêtre.”
From that day to this, democrats and Republicans have had a profound distrust of the vote of the mass of the people as recorded under a plébiscite, or a referendum, of the entire male population. This lack of confidence in the judgment of the majority, when appealed to on political issues, though natural under the circumstances, is obviously quite illogical on the part of men who declare their belief in popular government. It amounts to a permanent claim for the highly educated and well-to-do sections of an intellectual oligarchy, on the ground that they must know better what is good for the people than the people know for themselves. This might conceivably be true, if no pecuniary interests or arrogance of social superiority were involved. But as this state of things cannot be attained until production for profit, payment of wages and private property cease to exist, democrats and Republicans place themselves in a doubtful position when they denounce a reference to the entire population as necessarily harmful. All that can be safely admitted is that so long as the mass of men and women are economically dependent, socially unfree and very imperfectly educated, the possibility of their being able to secure good government by a plébiscite is very remote. But this applies as well to universal suffrage used to obtain parliamentary elections, and the argument against reposing any trust in the mass of the people may thus be pushed to the point of abrogating the vote altogether save for a small minority. And this would land us in the position of beginning with an autocracy or aristocracy and ending there.
At the time I am speaking of it is indisputable that a considerable majority of intelligent and educated Frenchmen were Republicans. What they meant by a Republic comprised many different shades of organised democracy. But Republic, as Republic, in opposition and contradistinction to Monarchy or Empire, was a name to conjure with among all the most distinguished Frenchmen of the time. How did it come about, then, that this minority, which should have been able to lead the people, was distrusted and voted down by the very same populace whose rights of self-government they themselves were championing on behalf of their countrymen? There was nothing in the form of a Republic, as was shown little more than twenty years afterwards, which was of necessity at variance with the interests or the sentiments of Frenchmen. Even the antagonism between Paris and the Provinces, already referred to, was not so marked as to account for the fact that twice in succession Louis Napoleon should have obtained an overwhelming personal vote in his favour as the man to be trusted, above all other Frenchmen, to control the destinies of France.
It is by no means certain that Paris herself was hostile, before the coup d’état, to the Napoleonic régime with its traditions not only of military glory but of capable civic administration. For the double plébiscite was more than a vote of acquiescence: it was a vote of enthusiasm: first for Louis Napoleon as President, and then for Louis Napoleon as Emperor. It is not pleasing to have to admit this; but the truth seems to be that, as Aristotle pointed out more than two thousand years ago, great masses of men are much more easily led by a personality than they are roused by a principle. That the plébiscite had been carefully worked up by assiduous propaganda; that many of the ignorant peasants believed they were voting for the Napoleon of their childhood in spite of the impossible; that there was a great deal of bribery and not a little stuffing of the ballot boxes by officials with a keen sense of favours to come; that the army was imbued with Napoleonic sympathies and helped to spread the spurious ideals of Imperialism—all this may be perfectly true. Yet, when all is said and every allowance is made, the fact remains that, even so, the success of the Napoleonic plébiscites is imperfectly explained. The main features of the vote were obvious: The French people were sick of hereditary monarchy: the Republican leaders were out of touch with the people: the ideals of the past overshadowed the hopes of the future: Napoleon was a name to conjure with: the Republicans had no name on their side to put against it: the “blessed word” Republic had no hold upon the peasantry of rural France. So plébiscite meant one-man rule. That is not to say, as so many argue nowadays, that the complete vote of the democracy on such an issue must of necessity be wrong; but it does affirm that a thoroughly educated, responsible democracy, accustomed to be appealed to directly on all matters of importance, is a necessity before we can have any certainty that the people will go right. Even if they go wrong, as in this case of Napoleon III, it is better in the long run that they should learn by their own errors than that the blunders of the dominant classes should be forced upon them. Great social and political problems can rarely be solved even by the greatest genius. And the genius himself, supposing him to exist, cannot rely upon providing his country with a successor. On the whole, consequently, it is less dangerous to human progress that we should risk such a reactionary vote as that which seated Napoleon III at the Tuileries than give no peaceful outlet whatever to popular opinion.
But the democrats and republicans, radicals and socialists of Paris, who saw all their most cherished ideals crushed by the voice of the people whom they were anxious to lead to higher things, and beheld a travesty of Napoleonic Imperialism suppressing all freedom of political thought and writing, were not disposed to philosophise about the excuses for a popular decision which led to such unpleasant results for them. They had welcomed the abdication of Louis Philippe and the installation of the Republic as the beginning of a new era not only for Paris but for all France, after the reactionary clericalism of Louis XVIII and Charles X, followed by the chilly middle-class rule of the Orleanist monarch. But now a pinchbeck Napoleonism, with much sterner repression, weighed upon all that was most progressive and brilliant in the capital city. It was a bitter disappointment, not to be softened by the reflection that France herself was still far from the economic and social stage where their aspirations could be realised.
Thus Napoleon III was master of France and, feeling that war was advisable in order to strengthen his position at home, gladly joined with Great Britain in a joint campaign against Russia. This was wholly unnecessary, as has since been clearly shown. But, by promoting a better feeling between France and England than had previously existed, some good came out of the evil brought about by the treacherous suppression of the Emperor Nicholas’s agreement with the English Cabinet. The foolish bolstering up of Ottoman incapacity and corruption at Constantinople when the Western Powers could easily have enforced a more reasonable rule was a miserable result of the whole war. But that the Crimean adventure helped to consolidate the position of the Emperor there is no doubt.
When also the affair of the Orsini bomb, thrown by one of his old Carbonari fellow-conspirators, impelled Louis Napoleon into the Italian campaign which won for Italy Lombardy and for France Savoy and Nice, the French people felt that their gain in glory and in territory had made them once more the first nation in Europe. Magenta and Solferino were names to conjure with. The Army had confidence in the Emperor and his generals. So the prospect for republicans and the Republic eight years after the coup d’état was less promising than it had been since the great revolution. Napoleon III was generally regarded as the principal figure in Europe. He was delivering those New Year proclamations which men awaited with bated breath as deciding the question of peace or war for the ensuing twelvemonth. His Empress dominated the world of fashion as her consort did the world of politics. Every effort was made to render the Court as brilliant as possible, and to attract to it some of the old nobility, who were, as a whole, little inclined to recognise by their presence the power of the man whom they both despised and hated. But the Second Empire was for a time a success in spite of the reactionists and the republicans alike.