serves their ambitions or interests, but a bad thing when it is exercised at their expense. But Napoleon, in order to restore the prestige of the Empire before the newly-awakened hostility of public opinion, tried to gain from the Left the support which he had lost from the Right. After the return from Italy the general amnesty of the 16th of August 1859 had marked the evolution of the absolutist empire towards the liberal, and later parliamentary empire, which was to last for ten years.
Napoleon began by removing the gag which was keeping the country in silence. On the 24th of November 1860, “by a coup d’état matured during his solitary meditations,” like a conspirator in his love of hiding his mysterious thoughts even from his ministers, he granted to the The Liberal Empire. Chambers the right to vote an address annually in answer to the speech from the throne, and to the press the right of reporting parliamentary debates. He counted on the latter concession to hold in check the growing Catholic opposition, which was becoming more and more alarmed by the policy of laissez-faire practised by the emperor in Italy. But the government majority already showed some signs of independence. The right of voting on the budget by sections, granted by the emperor in 1861, was a new weapon given to his adversaries. Everything conspired in their favour: the anxiety of those candid friends who were calling attention to the defective budget; the commercial crisis, aggravated by the American Civil War; and above all, the restless spirit of the emperor, who had annoyed his opponents in 1860 by insisting on an alliance with Great Britain in order forcibly to open the Chinese ports for trade, in 1863 by his ill-fated attempt to put down a republic and set up a Latin empire in Mexico in favour of the archduke Maximilian of Austria, and from 1861 to 1863 by embarking on colonizing experiments in Cochin China and Annam.
The same inconsistencies occurred in the emperor’s European politics. The support which he had given to the Italian cause had aroused the eager hopes of other nations. The proclamation of the kingdom of Italy on the 18th of February 1861 after the rapid annexation of Tuscany The policy of nationalism. and the kingdom of Naples had proved the danger of half-measures. But when a concession, however narrow, had been made to the liberty of one nation, it could hardly be refused to the no less legitimate aspirations of the rest. In 1863 these “new rights” again clamoured loudly for recognition, in Poland, in Schleswig and Holstein, in Italy, now indeed united, but with neither frontiers nor capital, and in the Danubian principalities. In order to extricate himself from the Polish impasse, the emperor again had recourse to his expedient—always fruitless because always inopportune—of a congress. He was again unsuccessful: England refused even to admit the principle of a congress, while Austria, Prussia and Russia gave their adhesion only on conditions which rendered it futile, i.e. they reserved the vital questions of Venetia and Poland.
Thus Napoleon had yet again to disappoint the hopes of Italy, let Poland be crushed, and Germany triumph over Denmark in the Schleswig-Holstein question. These inconsistencies resulted in a combination of the opposition parties, Catholic, Liberal and Republican, in the Union libérale. The elections of May-June 1863 gained the Opposition forty seats and a leader, Thiers, who at once urgently gave voice to its demand for “the necessary liberties.”
It would have been difficult for the emperor to mistake the importance of this manifestation of French opinion, and in view of his international failures, impossible to repress it. The sacrifice of Persigny, minister of the interior, who was responsible for the elections, the substitution The régime of concessions. for the ministers without portfolio of a sort of presidency of the council filled by Rouher, the “Vice-Emperor,” and the nomination of V. Duruy, an anti-clerical, as minister of public instruction, in reply to those attacks of the Church which were to culminate in the Syllabus of 1864, all indicated a distinct rapprochement between the emperor and the Left. But though the opposition represented by Thiers was rather constitutional than dynastic, there was another and irreconcilable opposition, that of the amnestied or voluntarily exiled republicans, of whom Victor Hugo was the eloquent mouthpiece. Thus those who had formerly constituted the governing classes were again showing signs of their ambition to govern. There appeared to be some risk that this movement among the bourgeoisie might spread to the people. As Antaeus recruited his strength by touching the earth Napoleon believed that he would consolidate his menaced power by again turning to the labouring masses, by whom that power had been established.
This industrial policy he embarked upon as much from motives
of interest as from sympathy, out of opposition to the bourgeoisie,
which was ambitious of governing or desirous of his
overthrow. His course was all the easier, since he had
only to exploit the prejudices of the working classes.
Industrial policy
of the Empire.
They had never forgotten the loi Chapelle of 1791, which
by forbidding all combinations among the workmen had placed
them at the mercy of their employers, nor had they forgotten how
the limited suffrage had conferred upon capital a political
monopoly which had put it out of reach of the law, nor how each
time they had left their position of rigid isolation in order to save
the Charter or universal suffrage, the triumphant bourgeoisie had
repaid them at the last with neglect. The silence of public
opinion under the Empire and the prosperous state of business
had completed the separation of the labour party from the
political parties. The visit of an elected and paid labour delegation
to the Universal Exhibition of 1862 in London gave the
emperor an opportunity for re-establishing relations with that
party, and these relations were to his mind all the more profitable,
since the labour party, by refusing to associate their social and
industrial claims with the political ambitions of the bourgeoisie,
maintained a neutral attitude between the parties, and could, if
necessary, divide them, while by its keen criticism of society it
aroused the conservative instincts of the bourgeoisie and consequently
checked their enthusiasm for liberty. A law of the
23rd of May 1863 gave the workmen the right, as in England,
to save money by creating co-operative societies. Another law,
of the 25th of May 1864, gave them the right to enforce better
conditions of labour by organizing strikes. Still further, the
emperor permitted the workmen to imitate their employers by
establishing unions for the permanent protection of their interests.
And finally, when the ouvriers, with the characteristic French
tendency to insist on the universal application of a theory, wished
to substitute for the narrow utilitarianism of the English trade-unions
the ideas common to the wage-earning classes of the
whole world, he put no obstacles in the way of their leader
M. Tolain’s plan for founding an International Association of
Workers (Société Internationale des Travailleurs). At the same
time he encouraged the provision made by employers for thrift
and relief and for improving the condition of the working-classes.
Thus assured of support, the emperor, through the mouthpiece of M. Rouher, who was a supporter of the absolutist régime, was able to refuse all fresh claims on the part of the Liberals. He was aided by the cessation of the industrial crisis as the American civil war came to an Sadowa (1866). end, by the apparent closing of the Roman question by the convention of the 15th of September, which guaranteed to the papal states the protection of Italy, and finally by the treaty of the 30th of October 1864, which temporarily put an end to the crisis of the Schleswig-Holstein question. But after 1865 the momentary agreement which had united Austria and Prussia for the purpose of administering the conquered duchies gave place to a silent antipathy which foreboded a rupture. Yet, though the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 was not unexpected, its rapid termination and fateful outcome came as a severe and sudden shock to France. Napoleon had hoped to gain fresh prestige for his throne and new influence for France by an intervention at the proper moment between combatants equally matched and mutually exhausted. His calculations were upset and his hopes dashed by the battle of Sadowa (Königgrätz) on the 4th of July. The treaty of Prague put an end to the secular rivalry of Habsburg and Hohenzollern for the hegemony of Germany, which had been France’s
