Party of Order (1848–1851)
질서당 (1848–1851)
The conservative coalition of the French Second Republic in which Legitimist and Orléanist monarchists and some conservative republicans rallied under "Order, Property, Religion". Centred on the Rue de Poitiers Committee and led by Thiers, Barrot, Montalembert and Falloux, it won about 64 percent of the seats in the 1849 election and restricted universal suffrage by the electoral law of 31 May 1850.
In depth
In the Constituent Assembly elected in April 1848 the future Party of Order held about 250 of the 900 seats, second to the moderate republicans. Unable to agree on a royalist candidate for the presidential election of December, it backed Louis Napoleon as a man it thought easy to manage; Thiers is said to have called him "a cretin whom we will lead". In the election of 13–14 May 1849 it won about 59 percent of the vote and some 450 of the 713 seats filled. As the Assembly majority it passed the Falloux law of 15 March 1850 restoring church influence over education, the electoral law of 31 May and in July the return of caution money for newspapers. But Legitimists and Orléanists stayed divided, the conflict with the president deepened, and in July 1851 the constitutional revision allowing his re-election fell short of the required majority. The coup of 2 December, in which its leaders were arrested, in effect dissolved it. In The Eighteenth Brumaire Marx analysed it as a coalition of the two factions of the bourgeoisie.