Source Material
The Constitution of the Second Republic - Some Points
The long constitution of the Second Republic, completed in the autumn of 1848, promised a variety of benefits to French citizens. It offered education, freedom of association and petition, and relief and public works. It specifically did not mention any right to work, and it listed a number of obligations that the citizens owed to the state, including love, loyalty, morality, work, taxes and service to the death. The constitution’s approach thus suggested a fear of anarchy and of undue individualism, and was far less interested in individual rights than the constitutions being produced in Central Europe at the same time. The constitution was nevertheless liberal in its basic orientation; it made real efforts to remedy the weaknesses of the previous parliamentary structure, which had set off the revolution in the first place.
The constitution also created a democracy. Universal manhood suffrage would elect the single-chamber parliament every three years. The key constitutional debate concerned the structure of the executive branch. The assembly ultimately decided on a strong president, elected every four years by universal suffrage. The president was to have wide executive authority, with the ministers responsible to him.
Above all the assembly opted for a powerful presidency because the June Days convinced them that only concentrated authority, of the sort Cavaignac had exercised, could prevent social disorder.
The assembly did build in a variety of safeguards against abuse, for in no sense did they desire a dictatorship. The president could not succeed himself , nor could any members of his family; he could not command the army in person or make war or peace without parliamentary approval. He had no final veto over legislation and could neither dissolve the assembly nor suspend the constitution. A genuine balance between executive and legislature was intended; that it was not achieved was due to the character of the first president and the nature of his support. Yet in the absense of a firm tradition of separation of powers in France, the office that had been created almost begged for conversion into personal rule. All the constitution did was to prevent such conversion save by illegal means.
- Stearns, pg. 213-214
