Page:Coubertin - France since 1814, 1900.djvu/32

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16
FRANCE SINCE 1814

which pleased neither the Emperor, on whom it was imposed, nor the nation, which felt with what an ill-grace he had lent himself to it. Submitted to a plébiscite, the Acte Additionnel gained an infinitesimal number of votes, while the number of those who refused to vote was colossal. Public opinion obliged the Emperor to convoke the electors without delay ; in all France there were hardly found 7,000 voters for the election of the new Chamber, in some departments from fifteen to twenty citizens only gave in their votes. The electoral organisation of 1802 had been revived; that is to say, deputies in each department were nominated by from two to three hundred electors chosen from among the six hundred citizens who paid the most taxes ; added to these were the dignitaries of the Legion of Honour and two hundred electors designated by the Government. In spite of these precautions and the number of refusals, the Chamber counted only eighty Bonapartists and thirty or forty Jacobin to five hundred Constitutionalists of various shades of Liberalism.

Such was the internal policy. External policy there was none. All the representatives of the Powers had left Paris, those of