They ought to outwit
fate by means of constitutional artifice, through Section 111 of the
Constitution, according to which every motion to revise the Constitution
had to be discussed three successive times between each of which a full
month was to elapse and required at least a three-fourths majority, with
the additional proviso that not less than 500 members of the National
Assembly voted. They thereby only made the impotent attempt, still to
exercise as a parliamentary minority, to which in their mind's eye they
prophetically saw themselves reduced, a power, that, at this very time,
when they still disposed over the parliamentary majority and over all
the machinery of government, was daily slipping from their weak hands.
Finally, the Constitution entrusts itself for safe keeping, in a
melodramatic paragraph, "to the watchfulness and patriotism of the whole
French people, and of each individual Frenchman," after having
just before, in another paragraph entrusted the "watchful" and the
"patriotic" themselves to the tender, inquisitorial attention of the
High Court, instituted by itself.
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