Thus, by the election law of
May 31, the party of Order seemed to have doubly secured its empire,
in that it placed the election of both the National Assembly and the
President of the republic in the keeping of the stable portion of
society.
V
The strife immediately broke out again between the National Assembly
and Bonaparte, so soon as the revolutionary crisis was weathered, and
universal suffrage was abolished.
The Constitution had fixed the salary of Bonaparte at 600,000 francs.
Barely half a year after his installation, he succeeded in raising
this sum to its double: Odillon Barrot had wrung from the constitutive
assembly a yearly allowance of 600,000 francs for so-called
representation expenses. After June 13, Bonaparte hinted at similar
solicitations, to which, however, Barrot then turned a deaf ear. Now,
after May 31, he forthwith utilized the favorable moment, and caused
his ministers to move a civil list of three millions in the National
Assembly. A long adventurous, vagabond career had gifted him with the
best developed antennae for feeling out the weak moments when he could
venture upon squeezing money from his bourgeois.
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