"It is a fact that universal suffrage, formerly feared by the Government as a species of monster, no longer frightens it to-day. Instructed by the examples of Napoleon III and Bismarck, statesmen finally came to understand that universal suffrage was essentially an approbative and ratificatory suffrage, while all the limited or property suffrages were disputative, unstable, and anarchical. In France two monarchies, the Restoration and the July Monarchy, made the experiment of the limited suffrage, and died of it; so that a wit was inspired to remark, not without justification, that if Charles X had granted the right of the vote to every Frenchman he would still have been on the throne."
Charles X

January 1, 1970

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Original Language: English