Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/357

 BETWEEN THE CZAK AND THE SULTAX. 315 was really offered. The choice given to the elec- chap. . XIV tors did not even purport to be anything but 1_ a choice between Louis Bonaparte and nothing. According to the wording of the Plebiscite, a vote given for any candidate other than Louis Bona- parte would have been null. An elector was only permitted to vote 'Yes,' or vote 'No;' and it seems plain that the prospect of anarchy involved in the negative vote would alone have operated as a sufficing menace. Therefore, even if the collec- tion of the suffrages had been carried on with perfect fairness, the mere stress of the question proposed would have made it impossible that there should be a free election : the same central power which, nearly four years before, had com- pelled the terrified nation to pretend that it loved a republic, would have now forced the same help- less people to kneel, and say they chose for their one only lawgiver the man recommended to them by Monsieur de Morny. Having the army and the whole executive power in their hands, and having preordained the question to be put to the people, the brethren of the Elys^e, it would seem, might have safely allowed the proceeding to go to its sure conclu- sion without further coercing the vote ; and if they had done thus, they would have given a colour to the assertion that the result of the Ple- biscite was a national ratification of their act. But, remembering what they had done, and hav- ing blood on their hands, they did not venture upon a free election. What they did was this :