When
Louis Napoleon made his appeal to a vote of the French people, he
made an appeal to a people existing as a sovereign people, and a
sovereign people without a legal government. In his case the
plebiscitum was proper and sufficient, even if it be conceded
that it was through his own fault that France at the moment was
found without a legal government. When a thing is done, though
wrongly done, you cannot act as if it were not done, but must
accept it as a fact and act accordingly.
The plebiscitum, which is simply an appeal to the people outside
of government, is not valid when the government has not lapsed,
either by its usurpations or by its dissolution, nor is it valid
either in the case of a province, or of a population that has no
organic existence as an independent sovereign state. The
plebiscitum in France was valid, but in the Grand Duchy of
Tuscany, the Duchies of Modena, Parma, and Lucca, and in the
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies it was not valid, for their legal
governments had not lapsed; nor was it valid in the Aemilian
provinces of the Papal States, because they were not a nation or
a sovereign people, but only a portion of such nation or people.
In the case of the states and provinces--except Lombardy, ceded
to France by Austria, and sold to the Sardinian king--annexed to
Piedmont to form the new kingdom of Italy, the plebiscitum was
invalid, because implying the right of the people to rebel
against the legal authority, and to break the unity and
individuality of the state of which they form an integral part.
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