When he went, Tocqueville said, 'That is one of our provincial prefects.
He has been describing to us the state of public feeling in the South.
Contempt for the present Government, he tells us, is spreading there from
its headquarters, Paris.
'If the Corps Législatif is dissolved, he expects the Opposition to
obtain a majority in the new House.
'This,' continued Tocqueville, 'is a state of things with which Louis
Napoleon is not fit to cope. Opposition makes him furious, particularly
Parliamentary opposition. His first impulse will be to go a step further
in imitation of his uncle, and abolish the Corps Législatif, as Napoleon
did the Tribunat.
'But nearly half a century of Parliamentary life has made the French of
1853 as different from those of 1803 as the nephew is from his uncle.
'He will scarcely risk another _coup d'état_; and the only legal mode of
abolishing, or even modifying, the Corps Législatif is by a plébiscite
submitted by ballot to universal suffrage.
'Will he venture on this? And if he do venture, will he succeed? If he
fail, will he not sink into a constitutional sovereign, controlled by an
Assembly far more unmanageable than we deputies were, as the Ministers
are excluded from it?'
'Will he not rather,' I said, 'sink into an exile?'
'That is my hope,' said Tocqueville, 'but I do not expect it quite so
soon as Thiers does,'