During 1852 one striking event in Foreign Affairs that occupied the attention of the Queen was the transformation of the French Republic into the Second Empire. In Paris, on the 1st of January, Charles Louis Napoleon was installed at Notre Dame as President of France, and he promulgated a new Constitution, preserving little of the form and none of the spirit of Liberty. The whole Executive was to be vested in the President, who was to be advised by a Council of State, a Senate of nobles nominated for life, and a powerless legislative body elected by universal suffrage for six years, whose transactions at the demand of five members could be kept secret. The next step taken by the Prince-President was to issue Decrees on the 23rd of January, compelling the Orleans Princes to sell their real and personal property in France within a year, and confiscating the property settled on the family by Louis Philippe previous to his accession in 1830. This raised a storm of indignation among all Frenchmen who were not accomplices of the Prince-President in the _coup d’état_, and it caused Montalembert to resign his seat on the Consultative Commission of the 2nd of December. De Morny and Fould also resigned, M. de Persigny replacing the former.[76] To the Queen, whose partiality for the Orleans family was well known, these Decrees were painfully offensive. The Prince-President’s strongest partisan in England, Lord Malmesbury, wrote a letter remonstrating with him, and the reply serves to illustrate the character of the men who consented to serve in the Senate. “He (the Prince-President),” says Lord Malmesbury in a letter to Lord Cowley, British Ambassador at Paris, “declared the confiscation necessary, as even some of his own Senators had been tampered with by Orleanist agents and money.”[77] On September 13th this patriotic Senate prayed for “the [Illustration: NOTRE DAME, PARIS (WEST FRONT).] re-establishment of the hereditary sovereign power in the Bonaparte family;” and on the 4th of November the Prince-President announced that he had in view the restoration of the Empire, and ordered the French people to be consulted on the matter. The French people, when consulted, were for the restoration--7,839,552 voting “Yes,” and 254,501 “No.” The vote was cast on the 21st of November, three days after Wellington was laid in the grave. As Cobden said, one might almost picture the third Napoleon rising from the yet open tomb of the vanquisher of the first.[78] On the 2nd of December Charles Louis Napoleon was declared Emperor of the French under the title of Napoleon III. The Constitution of January was confirmed with some slight modifications. A Royal title was given to Jérôme Bonaparte, Napoleon’s uncle. St. Arnaud, Magnan, and Castillane were created Marshals of France; and then there arose the first of the Imperial difficulties--that of obtaining recognition from the European Courts. [Illustration: COMTE DE MONTALEMBERT.]