The Times, which at first praised the imperialist coup d’éclat? 
moderately and then lauded it in hyperboles, makes a sudden 
switch today from panegyrics to criticism.” The way in which this 
manoeuvre is executed is typical of the Leviathan of the English 
press: 

“We will leave to others the task of congratulating Caesar on his admission that 
he is a finite and fallible being, and that, indisputably reigning by the power of the 
sword, he does not pretend to rule by virtue of Divine right. We had rather inquire 
what have been the financial results of ten years of Imperial sway, which are better 
worth thinking of than the phrases in which those results have been made 
known.... The Executive did what it pleased; the Ministers were responsible to the 
Emperor alone; the state of the finances was entirely concealed from the public 
and the Chambers. The annual form of voting a budget, instead of a check, was a 
mask; instead of a protection, a delusion. What, then, have the French people 
achieved by placing their liberties and their possessions at the disposal of a single 
man?... M. Fould himself admits that between 1851 and 1858 extraordinary credits 
have been opened to the amount of 2,800,000,000 francs, and that the deficit for 
the present year amounts to no less than 1,000,000,000 francs. 

“We do not know how these sums were raised, but assuredly it has not been by 
taxation. We are told that four millions paid by the Bank of France for the renewal 
of its privileges have been spent, that five millions and a half of the Army Dotation 
Fund have been borrowed, and that securities of different kinds have been thrown 
into circulation. As to the present state of affairs, our Correspondent in Paris assures 
us that there is not money in the Treasury to pay the half-yearly dividends due next month. 
Such is the disastrous, the disgraceful state of French Finance, after ten years of 
brilliant and successful Imperialism, and it is only now, at a moment when it is 
unable to discharge its current obligations, that the French Government has taken 
the nation in some degree into its confidence and shown it a little of the reality that 

November 18, 1861, leading article.— Ed. 

has lain hidden behind the glamorous phantasmagoria of the financial prosperity 
of which it has been so often assured. Nay, at this very moment the Revue des Deux 
Mondes is being prosecuted for making statements with regard to the financial 
position of France, the only fault of which is that they are far too rosy.” 

The Times goes on to enquire into the causes of this collapse. 
During the imperialist decade France’s exports have more 
than doubled. Agriculture has developed along with industry, and 
the railway system with both. The credit system, only incipient 
before 1848, has shot up in all directions. All these developments 
did not arise from any decree of the Emperor’s, but from the 
revolutionary changes in the world market since the discovery of 
gold in California and Australia. Then what has caused the 
catastrophe? 

The Times mentions the extraordinary expenditures on the 
army and navy, the natural fruit of Louis Bonaparte’s efforts to 
play Napoleon in Europe. It mentions the wars, and finally the 
gigantic outlays on public works in order to occupy the entre- 
preneurs and the proletariat and keep them in good humour. 

“But,” it continues, “all this is insufficient to account for this frightful deficit, 
the largest of which the history of mankind furnishes us with an example.... To the 
aggressive military and naval armaments, public works, and occasional wars, has 
been added a shameless and universal system of pillage. A shower of gold has 
descended upon the Empire and its supporters. The enormous fortunes suddenly 
and unaccountably acquired have been the cause of scandal and wonder till scandal 
grew dumb and wonder weak from the frequency, indeed the universality, of the 
phenomenon. Modern France has taught us better to understand those passages in 
Juvenal’s satires which treat suddenly acquired wealth as a crime against the 
people.2 The splendid mansions, the brilliant equipages, the enormous wastefulness 
of men who till the coup d’état notoriously starved, have been in every one’s mouth. 
The Court has been conducted on a scale of almost incredible wastefulness. New 
palaces have arisen as by the wand of an enchanter, and the splendours of the 
ancien régime> have been surpassed. Extravagance has had no limits but public 
money and public credit; the one is gone and the other shattered. This is what ten 
years of Imperialism have done for France.” 

The most important question for Europe is without doubt 
whether the imperialist finance system can be converted into a 
constitutional finance system, as the correspondence between 
Louis Bonaparte and Fould contemplates.‘ What is involved here 
is not the momentary intentions of persons. It is the economic 
conditions for the life of the restored empire. The financial fraud 

system could only be converted into a prosaic finance system by 
eliminating corruption as a general means of government; by 
reducing the army and navy to a peace footing, and therefore by 
abandoning the Napoleonic character of the present regime; finally, 
by complete renunciation of the plan followed hitherto of binding 
a part of the middle class and of the city proletariat to the existing 
government by means of great government construction projects 
and other public works. Would not meeting all these conditions 
mean: Et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas?* Is it actually 
believed that the modest system of Louis Philippe can be brought 
into being again under Napoleonic auspices? As little as that the 
July monarchy could be established under the drapeau blanc.'” 
We therefore called the coup d’éclat of November 14 a comedy” 
from the outset, and did not doubt for a moment that this comedy 
had only two aims in view: remedying the immediate difficulty 
and—getting through the winter. Once these two goals had been 
achieved, the war bugles would blow in the spring and the attempt 
would be undertaken to make the war pay its own way this time. It 
should not be forgotten that up to now—and this was a necessary 
consequence of a merely simulated Napoleonism— Decembrist 
France has paid for all its glory out of the French state treasury. 
After a brief period of wavering, the English press has arrived 
at the same conclusions with respect to the seriousness of the 
November 14 promises and the possibility of their being carried 
out. 
Thus, The Times of to-day says in the’ leader cited above: 
“The Emperor gives up the power of originating extraordinary credits. This is 

exactly one of those pieces of self-denying virtue which usually precede, but seldom 
survive, a new French loan.” 

And its Stock Exchange article says: 

‘Whether the financial sanctity suddenly adopted at the crisis of the Treasury 
sickness will outlast the fit for a long time after the Exchequer has been 
replenished and a new loan secured, is now the question.... Public opinion, it is 
asserted, will force the Emperor, whether he will or not, to carry out Fould’s 
programme. Would it not be more correct to say that every one is prepared to 
accept this self-delusion, while army and navy contractors and speculators firmly 
rely on it that in the spring, after the present danger has been weathered, the 
Moniteur will find sufficient reasons, in ‘the changed circumstances of Europe’, or 
the necessity of rectifying something that somewhere threatens French honour, the 
Catholic faith, or the civilisation and liberty of the human race, for a recurrence to 
the old financial system, which can never be permanently abandoned in any 

country under military dictatorship, and unpossessed of constitutional rights that 
are universal and inviolable?” 2 

The Economist expresses itself similarly. It concludes its analysis 
with the following words: 

“Despite the decree, political risk must still be the first thought of a man who 

So far, Louis Bonaparte has only exposed Europe to dangers 
because he himself has been continually exposed to danger in 
France. Is it believed that his danger to Europe will decrease to 
the same extent as the danger to himself in France increases? Only 
if the internal danger is given time to explode.