26 EMPLOYMENT OF THE PLEBISCITE [324 



citizens were to be " all Frenchmen, twenty years of age and 

 domiciled for one year, except paid domestics."'^^ 



The system under which the vote was taken on this new 

 constitution admitted all citizens, but they were forced to 

 record their vote in public. By the Law of the 23 frimaire 

 it was decreed that in each commune public registers were 

 to be opened, one for acceptance and another for non-ac- 

 ceptance. Each citizen had to enter in person his " yes " 

 in the register d'acception, or his " no " in the register de 

 non-acception.^^ When the date set for the voting arrived 

 Napoleon found a way to extend the time over nearly two 

 months, and by another coup d'etat, in the midst of the vot- 

 ing (by the Law of the 3 nivose) placed in operation the 

 very same constitution whose acceptance or rejection was 

 subject to the vote which was not concluded until the end 

 of the same month. '^^ The "yeas" counted 3,011,007, the 

 "nays" i,562.»* 



Aulard refers to this plebiscite as the one which brought 

 the term " le suffrage universel " into usage. He cites Mallet 

 du Pan, writing in London on the Constitution of the year 

 VIII, as the first to use the term when he applied it in the 

 Mercure hritanniquc of January, 1800, and he judges that 

 it was Mallet who introduced the term " universal suffrage" 

 into English political phraseology.''^ 



With this successful vote on the constitution there began 

 in France the era of the plebiscites, or, as Aulard expresses 

 it. "thus was founded in France the Rcpublique plcbisci- 

 taire.'"^^ 



In the year X of the Republic (1802) another plebiscite 

 by Old and non was held. Out of a total of 3.577,259 not 

 less than 3,568,885 citizens voted in favor of making Napo- 

 leon Bonaparte consul for life." 



"1 Aulard, pp. 701-71 1. 



^^ Ibid., p.7og. 



t^a Ibid. 



0* Ibid., pp. 710-71 1. 



^^ Ibid., pp. 706 (note), 710-711. 



''" Ibid., p. 711. 



" Ibid., pp. 750-751. 



