3-089-350 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Décidément elle est bien malade!, 1851. (No doubt, she is very sick!) On 31 May 1850, the French National Assembly passed a law to end universal male suffrage, which had been put in place by the Second Republic Constitution in 1848. Public reaction to the new law, which eliminated nearly a third of France's eligible voters, led to violent protests that threatened to overturn it. Daumier portrays the law's chief supporter, Marie Joseph Louis Adolphe Thiers (1797-1877), as a physician checking the pulse of a baby who personifies the Loi du 31 Mai (May 31 law).