The Chambers are now assembled. The Chamber of Peers have, 
as usual, nothing to do, now that they have disposed of the case 
of Joseph Henry, the new-fashioned regicide. The Chamber of 
Deputies are busily engaged in verifying the returns of members, 
and they profit by this opportunity to show the spirit which 
animates them. Never, since the revolution of 1830, has 
there been displayed such bare-faced impudence and contempt 
of public opinion. Three-fifths, at least, of the Deputies are 
thorough friends of the ministry; or, in other words, either 
great capitalists, stock-jobbers and railway speculators of the 
Paris Exchange, bankers, large manufacturers, etc., or their 
obedient servants. The present legislature is, more than any 
preceding one, the fulfilment of the words of Laffitte, the day 
after the revolution of July: Henceforth we, the bankers, shall 
govern France. It is the most striking proof that the government 
of France is in the hands of the great monied aristocracy, 
the haute-bourgeoisie. The fate of France is decided, not in 
the Cabinet of the Tuileries,*’ not in the Palace of Peers, not even in 
the Palace of Deputies, but on the Exchange of Paris. The actual 
ministers are not Messrs. Guizot and Duchatel, but Messrs. 
Rothschild, Fould, and the rest of the large Paris bankers, whose 
tremendous fortunes make them the most eminent representatives 
of the rest of their class. They govern the ministry, and the ministry 
take care that in the elections none but men devoted to the present 
system, and to those who profit by this system, are carried. This time 
they have had a most signal success; government patronage and 
bribery of every description, united to the influence of the chief 
capitalists, upon a limited number of voters (less than 200,000), who 

all belong, more or less, to their own class, the terror spread among 
monied men by the timely attempt to shoot the king, and ultimately 
the certainty that Louis-Philippe will not survive the present 
Chambers (whose powers expire in 1851), all these things united 
were sufficient to quench all serious opposition in most of the 
elective assemblies. And now, this precious Chamber having met, 
they take proper care of themselves. The independent electors have 
sent'in hundreds of petitions and protests against the returns of 
ministerial members, stating and proving, or offering to prove, that 
almost in every case the elections have been carried by the grossest 
illegalities committed by government officers; proving bribery, 
corruption, intimidation, patronage of every description to have 
been employed. But the majority never take the slightest notice of 
these facts. Every opposition deputy who raises his voice to protest 
against such abomination is hooted down by hisses, noise, or cries of 
“Division, division”. Every illegality is covered by a sanctioning vote. 
The money lords rejoice in their strength, and guessing it will not 
last very long, they make the best of the present moment. 

You may easily imagine that out of this narrow circle of capitalists 
there exists a general opposition against the present government, 
and those whose interests it serves. The centre of this opposition is 
Paris, where the money lords have so little influence upon 
constituencies, that of the fourteen deputies of the department of 
the Seine only two are ministerialists and twelve belong to the 
opposition. The majority of the middle class, voters of Paris, belong 
to the party of Thiers and O. Barrot; they want to do away with the 
exclusive rule of Rothschild and Co., to recover an honourable and 
independent position for France in her external relations, and 
perhaps a little bit of electoral reform. The majority of non-voting 
tradesmen, shopkeepers, etc., are of a more radical cast, and demand 
an electoral reform, which would give them the vote; a number of 
them are also partisans of the National or Réforme, and join 
themselves to the democratic party, which embraces the great bulk of 
the working classes, and is itself divided into different sections, the 
most numerous of which, at least in Paris, is formed by the 
Communists. The present system is attacked by all these different 
sections, and, of course, by each in a different manner. But there has 
been started, a short time ago, a new mode of attack which deserves 
to be mentioned. A working man has written a pamphlet against the 
head of the system, not against Louis-Philippe, but against 
“Rothschild I. King of the Jews”.* The success of this pamphlet (it 

* [G. M. Dairnvaell,] Histoire édifiante et curieuse de Rothschild I-er, roi des juifs.—Ed. 

Government and Opposition in France 63 

has now gone through some twenty editions) shows how much this 
was an attack in the right direction. King Rothschild has been obliged 
to publish two defences against these attacks of a man whom nobody 
knows, and the whole of whose property consists in the suit of clothes 
he wears. The public have taken up the controversy with the greatest 
interest. Some thirty pamphlets have been published pro and con. 
The hatred against Rothschild and the money lords is enormous, 
and a German paper says, Rothschild might take this as a warning 
that he had better take up his headquarters somewhere else than 
upon the ever-burning volcano of Paris. 

Written about September 1, 1846 Reprinted from the newspaper 

No. 460, September 5, 1846 

with an editorial note: