In the administration of Lord John Russell, Lord Palmerston was Foreign
Secretary, and during its latter years foreign affairs occupied more of
the attention of the country than matters of domestic policy.
The revolution of 1848, which overthrew the Orleans dynasty, had
produced in France a state of affairs but little removed from anarchy,
which was scarcely mitigated by the election of Prince Louis Napoleon to
the Presidency of the new republic for four years, so constant was the
opposition which the Republican party in the Assembly offered to every
part of his policy. They even carried their opposition so far as to form
a deliberate plan for the impeachment of his minister and himself, and
for his arrest and imprisonment at Vincennes. But he was well-informed
of all these dangers, and on the morning of the 2d of December, 1851
(the day, as was commonly believed, having been selected by him as being
the anniversary of his uncle's great victory of Austerlitz), he
anticipated them by the arrest of all the leading malcontents in their
beds; which he followed up by an appeal to the people to adopt a new
constitution which he set before them, the chief article of which was
the appointment of a President for ten years.
No one could avoid seeing that what was aimed at was the
re-establishment of the Empire in his own person.
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