Note (Back) — Chapter XV

320. Liberalizing Changes in 1830-1831.—Upon the enforced abdication of Charles X. in 1830 a parliamentary commission prepared a revision of the Charter, which, being adopted, was imposed upon the new sovereign, Louis Philippe, and was continued in operation through the period of the Orleanist monarchy. The preamble of the original document, in which language had been employed which made it appear that the Charter was a grant from the crown, was stricken out. Suspension of the laws by the sovereign was expressly forbidden. Each chamber was given the right to initiate legislation, the responsibility of the ministers to the chambers was proclaimed, and the sessions of the Peers, hitherto secret, were made public. The integral renewal of the Deputies, established in 1824, was continued, but the term of membership was restored to five years. The minimum age of electors was reduced from thirty to twenty-five years, and of deputies from forty to thirty. Subsequently, April 19, 1831, a law was passed whereby the suffrage—so restricted at the close of the Napoleonic régime that in a population of 29,000,000 there had been, in 1814, not 100,000 voters—was appreciably broadened. The direct tax qualification of three hundred francs was reduced to one of two hundred, and, for certain professional classes, of one hundred. By this modification the number of voters was doubled, though the proportion of the enfranchised was still but one in one hundred fifty of the total population, and it would be a mistake to regard the government of the Orleanist period as in effect more democratic than that by which it was preceded. At the most, it was a government by and for the well-to-do middle class.[436]