Such an event may cause much evil, create much social confusion,
and do grave injury to the nation, but the political society may
survive it; the sovereign remains in the plenitude of his rights,
as competent to restore government as be was originally to
institute it. When, in 1848, Louis Philippe was dethroned by the
Parisian mob, and fled the kingdom, there was in France no
legitimate government, for all commissions ran in the king's
name; but the organic or territorial people of France, the body
politic, remained, and in it remained the sovereign power to
organize and appoint a new government. When, on the 2d of
December, 1851, the president, by a coup d'etat, suppressed the
legislative assembly and the constitutional government, there was
no legitimate government standing, and the power assumed by the
president was unquestionably a usurpation; but the nation was
competent to condone his usurpation and legalize his power, and
by a plebiscitum actually did so. The wisdom or justice of the
coup d'etat is another question, about which men may differ; but
when the French nation, by its subsequent act, had condoned it,
and formally conferred dictatorial powers on the prince-president,
the principal had approved the act of his agent, and given him
discretionary powers, and nothing more was to be said. The
imperial constitution and the election of the president to be
emperor, that followed on December 2d, 1852, were strictly legal,
and, whatever men may think of Napoleon III.
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