On October 10, Bonaparte announced to his Ministers his decision to restore universal suffrage; on the 16th day they handed in their resignations; on the 26th Paris learned of the formation of the Thorigny Ministry. The Prefect of Police, Carlier, was simultaneously replaced by Maupas; and the chief of the First Military Division Magnan, concentrated the most reliable regiments in the capital.
On November 4, the National Assembly re-opened its sessions. There was nothing left for it to do but to repeat, in short recapitulation, the course it had traversed, and to prove that it had been buried only after it had expired.
The first post that it had forfeited in the struggle with the Executive was the Ministry. It had solemnly to admit this loss by accepting as genuine the Thorigny Ministry, which was but a pretence. The permanent Committee had received Mr. Giraud with laughter when he introduced himself in the name of the new Ministers.
So weak a Ministry for so strong a measure as the restoration of universal suffrage! The question, however, then was to do nothing in, everything against the parliament.
On the very day of its re-opening, the National Assembly received the message from Bonaparte demanding the restoration of universal suffrage and the repeal of the law of May 31, 1850. On the same day, his Ministers introduced a decree to that effect. The Assembly promptly rejected the motion of urgency made by the Ministers, but repealed the law itself, on November 13, by a vote of 355 against 348. Thus it once more tore to pieces its own mandate, once more certified to the fact that it had transformed itself from a freely chosen representative body of the nation into the usurpatory parliament of a class; it once more admitted that it had itself severed the muscles that connected the parliamentary head with the body of the nation.