The rise of opposition[edit]
A critical Catholic opposition arose, embodied in Louis Veuillot's paper l'Univers, and was not even silenced by the Syria expedition of 1860 in favor of Maronite Catholics, who were being persecuted by the Druze. On the other hand, the commercial treaty with the United Kingdom which had been signed in January 1860 and which ratified the free trade policy of Richard Cobden and Michel Chevalier, placed French industry before the sudden shock of competition foreign. Thus, Catholics and Protectionists discovered that moral absolutism could be good when it served their ambitions or interests, but bad when it worked against them.
But Napoleon III, in order to restore the prestige of the Empire before the new hostility of public opinion appeared, tried to win on the left what he had lost on the right. After the return from Italy, the general amnesty of August 16, 1859 marked the evolution of imperial absolutism towards the liberal then parliamentary empire which was to last ten years.
Napoleon began by removing the gag that kept the country silent. On November 24, 1860, by a "coup d'etat" thought during his solitary meditations, like a conspirator wishing to conceal his mysterious thoughts even from his ministers, he gave the Chambers the right to vote an annual apostrophe in reply to the Speech from the Throne , and to the press, the right to report parliamentary debates. He counted on this measure to hold in check the rising Catholic opposition, which was increasingly alarmed by the policy of laissez-faire practiced by the Emperor in Italy.
The government majority immediately showed signs of independence. The right to vote on the budget by section, granted by the Emperor in 1861, was a new weapon given to his adversaries. Everything was converging in their favour:the anxiety of these candid friends who pointed out the shortcomings of the budget, the commercial crisis aggravated by the American Civil War and, above all, the stubborn spirit of the Emperor who annoyed his opponents by insisting on entering into an alliance with the United Kingdom in order to force the opening of Chinese ports to trade.
This succession of misunderstood measures resulted in an alliance of the opposition parties, Catholics, Liberals and Republicans, in a liberal union. The elections of May-June 1863 gave the opposition forty seats and a leader, Adolphe Thiers, who gave voice to the demand for the necessary freedoms.
It would have been difficult for the Emperor to underestimate the importance of this manifestation of French opinion, and its international failures made a policy of repression difficult, if indeed he had wished it. The sacrifice of Victor Fialin, Comte de Persigny, Minister of the Interior, who was responsible for the elections, the substitution of ministers without portfolio by a sort of presidency of the council (?) given to Eugène Rouher, the "vice-emperor", and the appointment of Victor Duruy, an anticlerical, to the post of Minister of Public Instruction, in response to these attacks by the Church which were to culminate in the Syllabus of 1864, everything indicated a significant rapprochement between the Emperor and the left. .
But even if the opposition represented by Thiers was more constitutional than dynastic, there was another irreconcilable opposition, that of the republicans granted amnesty or voluntarily exiled, of which Victor Hugo was the eloquent spokesperson. Those who had previously constituted the ruling classes were now again showing signs of their ambition to rule. There appeared the risk that this movement born within the bourgeoisie could spread to the people. As Antaeus held his strength by touching the earth, Napoleon believed he could check his threatened power by turning once again to the working masses from whom he held his power.