The party of Order was a combination of heterogeneous
social substances. The question of revision raised a political
temperature, in which the product was reduced to its original
components.
The interest of the Bonapartists in the revision was simple: they
were above all concerned in the abolition of Article 45, which forbade
Bonaparte's reelection and the prolongation of his term. Not less
simple seemed to be the position of the republicans; they rejected all
revision, seeing in that only a general conspiracy against the republic;
as they disposed over more than one-fourth of the votes in the National
Assembly, and, according to the Constitution, a three-fourths majority
was requisite to revise and to call a revisory convention, they needed
only to count their own votes to be certain of victory. Indeed, they
were certain of it.
Over and against these clear-cut positions, the party of Order found
itself tangled in inextricable contradictions. If it voted against the
revision, it endangered the "status quo," by leaving to Bonaparte only
one expedient--that of violence and handing France over, on May 2, 1852,
at the very time of election, a prey to revolutionary anarchy, with
a President whose authority was at an end; with a parliament that
the party had long ceased to own, and with a people that it meant to
re-conquer.
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