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The two remaining Constitutions, that of the Directory and that of the Consulate, need not detain us long.

C. The first of these, the Constitution of the year III (1795), was frankly-though, it may be, not intentionally-reactionary. The property qualification (with certain shadowy relaxations) and election at two degrees (admission to the second of which fell only to the well-to-do) was summarily restored. A second Chamber, the Council of Ancients, was for the first time introduced, with power to reject any law proposed by the other Chamber, the Council of Five Hundred, though without the right of initiating any legislation itself; both Chambers rested on the same elective franchise. The supreme executive power was vested in five persons, the Directory, appointed by the Council of Ancients from a list prepared by the Five Hundred. Its powers, in some directions, were strangely limited. This, however, did not prevent it from terrorising the two Councils-it is true, by means avowedly revolutionary at the revolution of Fructidor (Sept. 1797) and forcing them to cancel the elections of more than half the total number of Departments. This revolution was forced through by Augereau, lieutenant of Bonaparte, then just at the victorious end of his campaign in Italy; and behind the lieutenant it is not hard to discern the figure of the General. It is manifest that in all this there can be no question of the influence of Rousseau.

D. Constitution of the year VIII (1799). If the Directory system was plainly reactionary, that of the Consulate-it would be more true to say, that of the First Consul-was a calculated fraud. The right of nominating members of the Legislative Body was in name restored to the whole body of citizens ; but the only part they actually took in the election was to prepare long lists of 'eligibles,' successively reduced in number (to of the whole body as furnished by universal suffrage) until the final appointment was made, from this paltry fraction, by the Senate. Thus at one stroke the suffrage was slily transferred from the people to the Senate a body appointed-and salaried-by the First Consul, and sharing with him and the Conseil d'État the whole effective power of the State. Nor was this all. Deprived, in the manner related, of all representative authority, the Legislative Body was also reduced to an assemblage of mutes. Its sole function was to vote on laws proposed to it by the Conseil d'État and debated before it successively by deputies of the Conseil and by those of a so-called popular body, the Tribunate. It is in the latter body that the sole trace, and that a spurious one, of Rousseau's influence may be detected. The Tribunate, as might have been foreseen, speedily made itself odious to the First Consul by the criticisms which it was in duty bound to offer: it was first purged, then summarily abolished (1807). The real power was, and was from the first intended to be, in the hands of Napoleon, as First Consul, as Consul

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for life, and eventually as Emperor (1804). And, if he invoked occasional Plébiscites, to give his power a semblance of popular sanction, this was as much a fraud as the rest of his hybrid constitution. No man would have seen through it more clearly than Rousseau; and no man would have condemned it more roundly.

It is only fair to say that all the main features of this Constitution, with one exception, are to be found in the original draft prepared by Sieyes. That one exception, however, is all-important. In the draft of Sieyes, the Executive was left as much a phantom as all the rest. The whole thing was a piece of artificial mechanism, with no life, no movement, in any part of it. What Napoleon did was to leave the Legislative as weak as ever, but to thrust in an allpowerful Executive on the top of it: in other words, to turn a paper scheme of checks and counter-checks into an unlimited despotism.

TABLE DES LIVRES ET DES

CHAPITRES

Où l'on recherche comment l'homme passe de l'état de nature à l'état civil,
et quelles sont les conditions essentielles du pacte

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Où il est traité des lois politiques : c'est-à-dire de la forme du

Gouvernement

I. DU GOUVERNEMENT EN GÉNÉRAL

II. DU PRINCIPE QUI CONSTITUE LES DIVERSES FORMES

DE GOUVERNEMENT

III. DIVISION DES GOUVERNEMENTS

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53 56

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XII. COMMENT SE MAINTIENT L'AUTORITÉ SOUVERAINE

IX. DES SIGNES D'UN BON GOUVERNEMENT

X. DE L'ABUS DU GOUVERNEMENT ET DE SA PENTE

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79

XIII. SUITE

81

XIV. SUITE

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XV. DES DÉPUTÉS OU REPRÉSENTANTS

XVI. QUE L'INSTITUTION DU GOUVERNEMENT N'EST POINT

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LIVRE IV

Où continuant de traiter des lois politiques on expose les moyens d'affermir la constitution de l'État

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