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The state ministry during the Second Empire could have been an administrative body modelled on Napoleon I’s State Secretariat. And it was, at least for the first decade of the rule of Napoleon III, when this ministry centralised, organised and oversaw the entirety of government administration. However, on the liberalisation of the regime from 1863 on, its role changed radically. It became, before disappearing in 1869, the organ of communication between the government and the two assemblies, a sort of precursor of parliamentarisation that was cut short by the fall of the second emperor. Its archives, in a much worse state of preservation and not as well described as that for Napoleon I’s state secretariat, are no less interesting since they provide evidence for the development from authoritarian power to a government in a state of metamorphosis.