Where there is no torch, there is no binding act.
These are axioms: outside of these axioms, all is _ipso facto_ null.
Now, let us see: did M.Bonaparte, in his ballot of the 20th of December, obey these axioms?
Did he fulfil the conditions of free press, free meetings, free tribune, free advertising, free inquiry.

The answer is an immense shout of laughter, even from the Elysee.
Thus you are yourself compelled to admit that it was thus that "universal suffrage" was exercised.
What! I know nothing of what is going on: men have been killed, slaughtered, murdered, massacred, and I am ignorant of it! Men have been arbitrarily imprisoned, tortured, banished, exiled, transported, and I scarcely glimpse the fact! My mayor and my cure tell me: "These people, who are taken away, bound with cords, are escaped convicts!" I am a peasant, cultivating a patch of land in a corner of one of the provinces: you suppress the newspaper, you stifle information, you prevent the truth from reaching me, and then you make me vote! in the uttermost darkness of night! gropingly! What! you rush out upon me from the obscurity, sabre in hand, and you say to me: "Vote!" and you call that a ballot.
"Certainly! a 'free and spontaneous' ballot," say the organs of the _coup d'etat_.
Every sort of machinery was set to work at this vote.

One village mayor, a species of wild Escobar, growing in the fields, said to his peasants: "If you vote 'aye,' 'tis for the Republic; if you vote 'no,' 'tis against the Republic." The peasants voted "aye." And let us illuminate another aspect of this turpitude that people call "the plebiscite of the 20th of December." How was the question put?
Was any choice possible?
Did he--and it was the least that a _coup d'etat_ man should have done in so strange a ballot as that wherein he put everything at stake--did he open to each party the door at which its principles could enter?
were the Legitimists allowed to turn towards their exiled prince, and towards the ancient honour of the _fleurs-de-lys_?
were the Orleanists allowed to turn towards that proscribed family, honoured by the valued services of two soldiers, M M.de Joinville and d'Aumale, and made illustrious by that exalted soul, Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans?
Did he offer to the people--who are not a party, but the people, that is to say, the sovereign--did he offer to the people that true republic before which all monarchy vanishes, as night before day; that republic which is the manifest and irresistible future of the civilized world; the republic without dictatorship; the republic of concord, of learning, and of liberty; the republic of universal suffrage, of universal peace, and of universal well-being; the republic, initiator of peoples, and liberator of nationalities; that republic which after all and whatever any one may do, "will," as the author of this book has said elsewhere,[1] "possess France to-morrow, and Europe the day after." Did he offer that?
No.
This is how M.Bonaparte put the matter: there were in this ballot two candidates; first candidate, M.Bonaparte; second candidate--the abyss.
France had the choice.

Admire the adroitness of the man, and, not a little, his humility.

M.Bonaparte took for his opponent in this contest, whom?
M.de Chambord?
No! M.de Joinville?
No! The Republic?
Still less.