It was
now plain that there was no longer any majority in the parliament. The
National Assembly had become impotent even to decide. Its atomic parts
were no longer held together by any cohesive power; it had expended its
last breath, it was dead.
Finally, the mass of the bourgeoisie outside of the parliament was once
more solemnly to confirm its rupture with the bourgeoisie inside of the
parliament a few days before the catastrophe. Thiers, as a parliamentary
hero conspicuously smitten by that incurable disease--Parliamentary
Idiocy--, had hatched out jointly with the Council of State, after the
death of the parliament, a new parliamentary intrigue in the shape of a
"Responsibility Law," that was intended to lock up the President within
the walls of the Constitution. The same as, on September 15, Bonaparte
bewitched the fishwives, like a second Massaniello, on the occasion of
laying the corner-stone for the Market of Paris,--though, it must be
admitted, one fishwife was equal to seventeen Burgraves in real power--;
the same as, after the introduction of the "Questors' Bill," he enthused
the lieutenants, who were being treated at the Elysee;--so, likewise,
did he now, on November 25, carry away with him the industrial
bourgeoisie, assembled at the Circus, to receive from his hands the
prize-medals that had been awarded at the London Industrial Exposition.
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