Law Rivet

A law full with contradictions

This law is contradictory, in what:

it creates a new title, that of President of the Republic (thus replacing that of chief of the executive power of the French Republic ), which it gives to Adolphe Thiers, but while claiming of nothing to change at the bottom of the things, since the preamble specifies that this title has of another goal only to affirm the intention of the Parliament to persevere in the honest test of the Republic started in Bordeaux (where the Government had taken refuge after the Commune of Paris);
it declares that the capacities of the President will last as much as those of the Parliament, but refuses to devote its irremovability, since it holds at the same time for the Parliament, the right to revoke it;
it affirms that the President is responsible and however compels his acts with the formality of the Contreseing responsible ministers themselves (the counter-signature is in the beginning a technique which made endorse the responsibility for the acts to the ministers, because the chief of the Executive, the King, was him irresponsible).

Context

Since 1870, Thiers overcame the Commune of Paris, it carried out the negotiations with Germany to succeed in making admit the principle of the release of the territory and it already started to make reappear the confidence of the people. The Parliament then will take shade of this providential man. Also seeks she to free herself from the tyranny of this servant, including one most of the force came from what constantly it could from go away or be returned; while making play its personal liabilities, Thiers held a speech of the " type; if you do not accept all my policy, I pars".

By these mechanisms of responsibilities establish by the law, the Parliament hoped that Thiers cannot any more be but exceptionally responsible for the acts of the general policy. In this way, Thiers could not always any more have proposed its personal liabilities.

In fact, the law of August 31st l871 did not modify the former situation. Thiers had too the taste of the capacity to become the adviser not involved in a policy for which it remained responsible. The responsibility for the ministers was destroyed completely by that for the President for the Republic and the Parliament continued to deliberate under the dictatorship that Thiers exerted on it by its personal authority and its threats of retirement.

Also the Parliament which supported this situation impatiently decided it to decrease the responsibility for Thiers further and especially to make rarer her intervention in the debates: it is the object of the law of the March 13rd, 1873, known as law or Constitution of Broglie.

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