With a clear comprehension of the situation, the ministers went to work. On April twenty-third was promulgated the Additional Act, whereby the franchise was extended, the state church abolished, liberty of worship guaranteed, and every wretched remnant of privilege or divine right expunged. The two chambers were retained, many imperial dignitaries being assigned to the House of Peers, the Bonaparte brothers, Lucien, Joseph, and Jerome, among the number. It was, as Chateaubriand sarcastically said, a revised and improved edition of Louis's constitution. The preamble, however, was new; it set forth that Napoleon, having been long engaged in constructing a great European federal system suited to the spirit of the time and favorable to the spirit of civilization, had now abandoned it, and would henceforth devote himself to a single aim, the perfect security of public liberty. This specious representation, half true and half false, awakened no enthusiasm in France; it was accepted, along with the Additional Act, by a plebiscite, but by only a million three hundred thousand votes--less than half the number cast for the Consulate and the Empire. This was largely due to a curious apathy, induced by a still more curious but firm conviction that at last France had secured peace with honor. Reference has been made to a military conspiracy fomented by Fouche in the North; before the hostile public feeling thus engendered in that quarter Louis fled to Ghent within five days after Napoleon reached Paris, and, though the royal princes were able to carry on civil war in the South a little longer, it was generally felt that the nation now had a ruler of its own choosing, and that if they attended strictly to their own affairs they would be left in peace. For considerable time there was little news from abroad, and so swift was the rush of internal affairs that no heed was given to what there was.