next March, when the fears of May, 1852, would be most intense. Two circumstances forced him on more rapidly. One was the candidature of the Prince de Joinville. He thought him the only dangerous competitor. The other was an agitation set on foot by the Legitimists in the _Conseils Généraux_ for the repeal of the law of May 31st. That law was his moral weapon against the Assembly, and he feared that if he delayed, it might be repealed without him.”[48] The brutality displayed by the police who dispersed the Legislative Assembly, and by the soldiery who fired in the most wanton manner on the 3rd of December, without any justification whatever, on the houses, and on peaceful passers-by along the boulevards of Paris, was stigmatised by the public opinion of England as barbarous and outrageous. It set the educated classes in France without distinction of party against the Prince-President to such an extent, that it became a mark of social and intellectual distinction to refuse to recognise or serve under the new _régime_. In the provinces the Prince-President’s tactics of repression were equally successful, and some 10,000 persons were seized and transported to penal settlements, without being convicted by any form of legal trial. The papers of the distinguished statesmen and generals who were alleged to have been conspiring against the Prince-President were ransacked; but no trace of evidence was found against them, and they were accordingly never brought to trial at all. Having thus destroyed the Constitution by the sword, Prince Charles Louis Bonaparte appealed for a vote of indemnity to a nation which had no alternative but to choose between him and anarchy. The result of this appeal was a vote of 7,439,000 votes in his favour, and 640,737 against him--M. de Montalembert, to the grief and surprise of the educated classes, being among those who joined the majority.