IV. The Abolition of the General Franchise in 1850

(The continuation of the foregoing three chapters is to be found in the “Review” of the last, the fifth and sixth double number of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. After the great commercial crisis, which broke out in England in 1847, has been described and, from its repercussions on the European continent the political complications, coming to a point in the revolutions of February and March, 1848, have been explained, it is then set forth how the prosperity of commerce and industry, recurrent in the course of 1848, and rising still higher in 1849, lamed the revolutionary upward swing and made possible the simultaneous victories of the reaction. Specifically in regard to France, it is then said:)

The same symptoms showed themselves in France since 1849, particularly since the beginning of 1850. The Paris industries are fully employed, and the cotton mills of Rouen and Mulhausen are fairly active, although there, just as in England, the high price of the raw material has had a retarding influence. The development of prosperity in France was also specifically advanced by the comprehensive custom reforms in Spain, and by the reduction of custom duties upon sundry articles of luxury in Mexico; to both markets the export of French goods has materially increased. The increase of capital led in France to a series of speculations, for which the exploitation of the California gold mines on a large scale served as a pretext. A mass of corporations appeared, whose low-priced shares and socialistically-colored prospectuses appealed directly to the purse of the petty bourgeoisie and to the workers, and which, one and all, meant nothing but the plain cheating that is so typical of Frenchmen and Chinese. One of these corporations was even the direct protégé of the government. The duties on imports, during the first nine months of 1848, amounted in France to 63 million francs; in 1849 to 95 million francs; and in 1850 to 93 million francs. They rose again in the month of September, 1850, by more than one million francs as compared with the same month in 1849. Exports also rose in 1849 and more so in 1850.

The most striking proof of the revamped prosperity is the resumption of cash payments by the Bank of France through the law of September 6, 1850. On March 15, 1848, the bank had been authorized to suspend cash payments. At that time its note circulation, including the provincial banks, amounted to 373 million francs, equal to 14,920,000 pounds sterling. On November 2, 1849, this circulation amounted to 482 million francs, or 19,280,000 pounds sterling, an increase of 4,360,000 pounds sterling, and on September 2, 1850, 496 million francs, or 19,840,000 pounds sterling, a total gain of about 5 million pounds sterling. No depreciation of the notes took place; on the contrary, the increased circulation of the notes was accompanied by a constantly growing accumulation of gold and silver in the vaults of the bank, so that, in the summer of 1850, the reserves amounted to about 14 million pounds sterling—an unheard-of sum for France. That the bank was thus put in a position to increase its active capital by 123 million francs, or 5 million pounds sterling, proves conclusively how correct was our assertion, made in a previous chapter, that the aristocracy of finance, so far from being overthrown by the revolution, was actually strengthened by it. Still more obvious does this result become by the following survey of French banking legislation of the last few years: On June 10, 1847, the bank was authorized to issue notes of 200 francs, the lowest note hitherto having been for 500 francs; a decree of March 15, 1848, declared the notes of the Bank of France legal tender and released the bank from the obligation to redeem them in cash; its note issue was restricted to 350 million francs and it was at the same time authorized to issue notes in the denomination of 100 francs. A decree of April 27 ordered the amalgamation of the departmental banks with the Bank of France; and another decree of May 2, 1848, increased its note issue to 442 million francs. A decree of December 22, 1849, increased the maximum of its note issue to 525 million francs. Finally, the law of September 6, 1850, reestablished the exchange of the notes with cash.

These facts, the constant increase of circulation, the concentration of the entire credit of France in the hands of the bank, and the accumulation of all French gold and silver in the vaults of the bank, led Proudhon to the conclusion that the bank would now shed its old and useless snakeskin and would metamorphose itself into a Proudhon People’s Bank. He would not even need to know the history of English bank restrictions, from 1797 to 1819, in order to see that this fact, unknown to him, in the history of bourgeois society was nothing but a most normal bourgeois event, which only in France occurred now for the first time. It is seen that the pretending revolutionary theoreticians, who after the Provisional Government spoke so loudly in Paris, were as ignorant of the nature and the results of the measures resorted to as were the gentlemen of the Provisional Government themselves. Despite the industrial and commercial prosperity which France enjoyed for the moment, the mass of the population, the 25 million peasants, labored under a severe depression. The good crops of the last few years had depressed grain prices in France even more than in England, and the position of debt-ridden peasants, sucked dry by usury and oppressed by taxation could not be very brilliant. The history of the last three years, however, has amply proved that this class of the population is thoroughly incapable of revolutionary initiative.

Just as the period of the crisis appears on the continent later than in England, so does that of prosperity. Always in England does the original process take place; it is the demiurge [maker of the world] of the bourgeois cosmos. On the continent, the different phases of the cycle that bourgeois society runs through ever anew appear in secondary and tertiary forms. Firstly, the continent exports to England incomparably more goods than to any other country. This exportation, however, again depends upon the position of England, especially in regard to the over-sea markets. Then, again, England exports to over-sea countries incomparably more than the entire continent, so that the quantity of the continental export to these countries is always dependent upon the simultaneous over-sea export of England. If, therefore, the crises bring forth revolutions first upon the continent, the foundation of the same is always laid in England. At the extremities of bourgeois anatomy it must naturally come to violent eruptions sooner than at its heart, because there the possibility of adjustment is greater than elsewhere. On the other hand, the degree with which continental revolutions react upon England furnishes the thermometer on which is indicated to what extent these revolutions really call in question the bourgeois vital conditions, or how far they only affect political formations.

With such general prosperity, whereby the productive forces of bourgeois society are developed so exuberantly, as far as this is at all possible within bourgeois conditions, a real revolution is out of the question. Such a revolution is possible only in those periods where these two factors, the modern productive forces and the bourgeois form of production, come into conflict with one another. The many quarrels, now indulged in by the representatives of the different factions of the continental party of order, and whereby they mutually compromise each other, so far from giving cause to new revolutions, on the contrary are possible only because the foundation of conditions is for the moment so secure, and, although the reaction does not know it—so bourgeois. From it all attempts of the reaction to retard bourgeois development will rebound, just as will all the moral indignation and the enthused proclamation of the democrats. A new revolution is possible only on the trail of a new crisis. But, then, it is just as certain as the latter.

Let us now proceed to France.

The victory which the people, in conjunction with the petty bourgeoisie, had gained in the elections of March 10, was annulled by the people itself in that it provoked the new election of April 28. Vidal, elected in Paris, had also been chosen on the Lower Rhine. The Paris committee, wherein the Montagne and the petty bourgeoisie were strongly represented, prevailed upon him to accept for the Lower Rhine. Thus, the victory of March 10 ceased to be decisive; the decisive moment was again postponed, popular tension slackened, the people became accustomed to legal instead of revolutionary triumphs. The revolutionary sense of March 10, the rehabilitation of the June insurrection, was in the end completely destroyed by the candidacy of Eugene Sue, sentimentally-bourgeois social visionary, which at best the proletariat could only accept as a joke made to please the grisettes. As against this well-meaning candidacy, the party of order, made more bold by the vacillating policy of its opponents, put up a candidate who was to represent the June victory. This comical candidate was the Spartan pater-familias Leclerc, from whom the press tore his heroic coat of mail piece by piece, and who, at the election, met with a brilliant defeat. The new electoral victory of April 28 made the Montagne and the petty bourgeoisie bumptious. Already did they revel in the thought of arriving at the goal of their desires in a purely legal way and without having to push the proletariat again to the front in a new revolution; they calculated confidently that, at the next election, in 1852, by means of the general suffrage they would land Ledru-Rollin in the presidential chair and a majority of Montagnards in the Assembly. The party of order, made thoroughly secure by the renewal of the election, the candidacy of Sue, and by the mood of the Montagne and the petty bourgeoisie that these, under all conditions, were determined to keep quiet, answered the two election victories with the electoral law—which abolished the general suffrage.

The government took good care not to present this proposed law on its own responsibility. It made a seeming concession to the majority in that it assigned the draft of the law to the grand dignitaries of that same majority, the seventeen burgraves. Therefore, it was not the government that proposed to the Assembly, but the Assembly that proposed to itself, the abolition of the general suffrage.

On May 8 the project was brought into the Chamber. The entire social democratic press rose like one man to preach to the people the maintenance of a dignified demeanor, a majestic calm, passivity and confidence in its leaders. Every article of these journals was an admission that a revolution would, first of all, destroy the so-called revolutionary press and that, therefore, it was a matter of self-preservation for them. The pretended revolutionary press revealed its entire secret. It signed its own death warrant.

On May 21 the Montagne forced the preliminary question to a debate and moved the rejection of the project on the ground that it violated the constitution. The party of order replied that it would violate the constitution, if need be, but that there was now no need of that for the reason that the constitution was capable of any interpretation, and because the majority alone would competently decide about the correct interpretation. As against the unbridled and wild attacks of Thiers and Montalembert, the Montagne opposed a decent and refined humanism. It took its stand on the ground of legal right; the party of order referred it to the ground where the right grows, upon bourgeois property. The Montagne whined: was it really the purpose forcibly to bring about revolutions? The party of order answered: we shall wait and see.

On May 22, the preliminary question was disposed of by a vote of 462 against 227. The same men who had proved with such solemn thoroughness that the National Assembly, and every deputy thereto, would in effect resign if they went back on the people (the source of their power), clung to their seats and, instead of acting themselves, suddenly sought to get the country to act through petitions; and they still sat unmoved when, on May 31, the law went through triumphantly. They sought to revenge themselves by means of a protest, wherein they placed on the record their innocence of the rape of the constitution, a protest which they did not even place openly upon the table but smuggled surreptitiously into the pocket of the President.

An army of 150,000 in Paris, a protracted decision, the dissuasion of the press, the pusillanimity of the Montagne and the newly elected representatives, the majestic calm of the petty bourgeoisie, above all, however, the commercial and industrial prosperity, prevented every attempt at revolution on the part of the proletariat.

The general suffrage had fulfilled its mission. The majority of the people had gone through this school of development, in which capacity it can only serve in a revolutionary epoch. It had to be removed, either through a revolution or by the reaction.

A still greater display of energy did the Montagne exhibit on an occasion following soon thereafter. The Minister of War, d’Hautpoul, from the tribune, had pronounced the February revolution a dire catastrophe. The speakers of the Montagne, who, as always, distinguished themselves by the bluster of moral indignation, were not recognized by the President, Dupin. Girardin proposed to the Montagne at once to resign en masse. Result: the Montagne kept its seats, but Girardin was expelled from its midst as unworthy.

The election law still required a supplement, a new press law. This did not have to be waited for very long. A proposition of the government, frequently aggravated by amendments of the party of order, increased the security bond, put an extra stamp tax on serial novels (an answer to the election of Eugene Sue), taxed all publications appearing in weekly or monthly issues up to a certain number of pages, and, finally, decreed that the signature of the author must be attached to every article in a journal. The stipulations governing the security bond killed the so-called revolutionary press; the people regarded its destruction as a satisfaction for the abolition of the general franchise. But neither the tendency nor the effect of this new law was confined solely to this part of the press. So long as the newspaper press was anonymous, it appeared as an organ of the numberless and nameless public opinion; it was the third State power. But through the attachment of a signature to every article a newspaper became nothing but a collection of literary contributions on the part of more or less known individuals. Every article sank down to the status of an advertisement. Hitherto, the newspapers had circulated as the paper currency of public opinion; now they dissolved themselves into more or less doubtful individual notes, the validity and circulation of which depended upon the credit not only of the issuer but also upon that of the endorser. As the press of the party of order had favored the abolition of the right to vote, so also had it favored the most extreme measures against the bad press. But the good press itself, in its uncanny anonymity, proved irksome to the party of order and, more so, to its individual provincial representatives. For reasons of their own they now demanded only the paid writer, with name, residence and personal description. In vain did the good press lament the ingratitude with which its services were rewarded. The law went through and the feature calling for the mentioning of names hit the good press first of all. The names of the republican writers of the day were quite well known; but the respectable firms of the Journal des Débats, of the Assemblée Nationale, of the Constitutionnel, etc., etc., cut a rather sorry figure with their so strenuously asserted political wisdom when the mysterious company suddenly dissolved itself into venal penny-a-liners of long practice who had for cash defended all sorts of causes, such as Granier de Cassagnac, or into old dish clouts who called themselves statesmen, such as Capefigue, or into coquetting nutcrackers, such as Monsieur Lemoinne of the Débats.

During the debate over the press law the Montagne had already sunk to such a depth of moral deterioration that it had to confine itself to applaud the brilliant tirades of an old “louisphilippic” notability, Monsieur Victor Hugo.

With the electoral law and the press law, the revolutionary and democratic party retires from the official stage. Prior to their departure for home, right after the closing of the session, the two factions of the Montagne, the socialistic Democrats and the democratic Socialists, issued two manifestoes, two testimonia paupertatis, wherein they proved that, although power and success had never been on their side, they had ever been on the side of eternal right and on the side of all the rest of the eternal truths.

Let us now take a look at the party of order. The Neue Rheinische Zeitung, number 3, page 16, said: “As against the restorational desires of the united Orleanists and Legitimists, Napoleon represents the title of his de facto power—the republic. As against the restorational desires of Bonaparte, the party of order represents the title of its common rule—the republic. As against the Orleanists, the Orleanists represent the status quo—the republic. All these factions of the party of order, each of which holds its own king and its own restoration in reserve, as against the usurpational and insurrectional desires of their rivals, mutually assert the common rule of the bourgeoisie, the form wherein their specific claims are neutralized and reserved—the republic.... And Thiers spoke more truly than he knew when he said: ‘We, the royalists, are the real pillars of the constitutional republic.’ ”

This comedy of the républicains malgré eux [republicans in spite of themselves], their disrelish of the status quo and the constant solidification of same; the incessant friction between Bonaparte and the National Assembly; the ever renewed threat of the party of order to dissolve its several constituent parts, and the ever repeated consolidation of its factions; the endeavor of each faction to convert every victory against the common foe into a defeat of its temporary allies; the mutual jealousy, rancor, harrying, the indefatigable drawing of swords, which ever again ends with a baiser-l’amourette [love kiss]—this whole disagreeable comedy of errors never developed more classically than during the last six months.

The party of order looked upon the electoral law as a victory over Bonaparte also. Had not the government resigned when it had assigned to the commission of seventeen the drafting and the responsibility of its own proposal? And did not the main strength of Bonaparte, as against the Assembly, rest upon the fact that he was the elected, the chosen one of six millions? Bonaparte, on his part, treated the electoral law as a concession to the Assembly, wherewith he had purchased harmony between the legislative and executive powers. For a reward, this common adventurer demanded an increase of his civil list in the amount of three million francs. Could the National Assembly enter upon a conflict with the executive at a moment when the great majority of Frenchmen anathematized it? It started up angrily, seemed inclined to drive things to an extreme, its commission rejected the proposition, the Bonapartist press threatened and pointed to a disinherited people, robbed of its right to vote, a number of noisy attempts at transaction took place—and the Assembly finally yielded in the matter but at the same time revenged itself in point of principle. Instead of an annual, statutory increase of the civil list of three million francs, it made only a temporary appropriation of 2,160,000 francs; and, not satisfied therewith, it only made this concession after Changarnier had supported it—Changarnier, the general of the party of order and the obtrusive protector of Bonaparte. Thus, in reality, it conceded the two millions not to Bonaparte, but to Changarnier.

This present, chucked at him de mauvaise grâce [with bad grace], was received by Bonaparte wholly in the sense of the giver. The Bonapartist press blustered anew against the National Assembly. When, during the debate of the press law, the amendment calling for the signing of names was made, which was again mainly directed against the minor papers (the ones representing the private interests of Bonaparte), the chief Bonapartist organ, the Pouvoir, published an unconcealed and violent attack against the National Assembly. The Ministers were forced to repudiate the paper before the Assembly; the guarantor of the Pouvoir was summoned before the bar of the National Assembly, and was condemned to the highest money fine, 5,000 francs. On the following day, the Pouvoir published a far more impudent article against the Assembly, and, as a matter of revenge on the part of the government, the public prosecutor immediately proceeded against several Legitimist journals for violation of the constitution.

Finally the question of the adjournment of the Chamber arose. Bonaparte desired it in order to be able to operate unhampered by the Assembly. The party of order desired it, partly to see through its factional intrigues, partly for the pursuance of the private interests of some deputies. Both needed it in order to consolidate and extend the victories of reaction in the provinces. The Assembly, accordingly, adjourned on August 11, until November 11. Since, however, Bonaparte in no way concealed that he only wanted to get rid of the annoying supervision of the National Assembly, the Assembly itself impressed upon the vote of confidence the stamp of distrust against the President. From the permanent commission of twenty-eight members, who were to remain behind during the vacation as the guardians of the republic’s chastity, all Bonapartists were excluded. Instead, even some republicans of the Siécle and the National were elected, just to demonstrate to the President the adherence of the majority to the constitutional republic.

Shortly before, and particularly immediately after the adjournment of the Chamber, the two great factions of the party of order, the Orleanists and the Legitimists, appeared to be on the point of reconciliation, because of the amalgamation of the two royal houses under whose banners they fought. The papers were full of offers of conciliation that were said to have been discussed at the sickbed of Louis Philippe at St. Leonards, when the death of Louis Philippe suddenly simplified the situation. Louis Philippe was the usurper, Henry V. was the robbed one, the Count of Paris, however (Henry V. being without issue), was the legitimate heir to the throne. Now, every obstacle to the amalgamation of the two dynastic interests had vanished. But just then the two factions of the bourgeoisie discovered that what separated them was not the reverence for a certain royal house, but that far more their separate class interests kept the two dynasties apart. The Legitimists, who had made their pilgrimages to the Court of Henry V. at Wiesbaden, just as their competitors had made theirs to St. Leonards, received there the news of the death of Louis Philippe. At once they formed a Ministry in partibus infidelium [in infidel countries], consisting mostly of members of that commission of guardians of the chastity of the republic, and which, on the occasion of a squabble within the party, came out with the most frank proclamation of the right by the grace of God. The Orleanists jubilated over the compromising scandal this manifesto gave rise to in the press, and never concealed for a moment their open hostility against the Legitimists.

During the adjournment of the National Assembly, the departmental councils convened. Their majority expressed itself in favor of a more or less involved revision of the constitution, that is, in favor of a not too closely defined monarchist restoration as a “solution,” admitting at the same time that it was too incompetent and too cowardly to find this solution. The Bonapartist faction promptly interpreted this desire for revision in the sense of a desire for the prolongation of the presidency of Bonaparte.

The constitutional solution, the abdication of Bonaparte in May, 1852, the simultaneous election of a new President by all the voters of the country, the revision of the constitution by a Chamber of Revision during the first months of the new presidential term, all that is for the ruling class entirely inadmissible. The day of the new presidential election would be the day for a rendezvous of all the hostile parties—Legitimists, Orleanists, bourgeois republicans, revolutionaries. It would have to come to a forcible decision between the different factions. Even if the party of order should succeed in agreeing upon the candidacy of a neutral man outside of the dynastic families, they would always and again be faced by Bonaparte. The party of order, in its struggle against the people, is forced constantly to augment the power of the executive. Every increase of the power of the executive increases the power of its incumbent, Bonaparte. In the same measure, therefore, that the party of order strengthens its collective power, it strengthens the means of combat of Bonaparte’s dynastic pretensions, strengthens his chances, on the day of decision, forcibly to frustrate the constitutional solution. As against the party of order, he would in such case care as little about one foundation pillar of the constitution as it cared about another when, in the matter of the electoral law, it deprived the people of the right to vote. He would, as against the Assembly, and as a matter of show, appeal even to the general suffrage. In one word, the constitutional solution calls in question the entire political status quo, and behind the menace to the status quo the bourgeois sees chaos, anarchy, civil war. He sees his purchases and his sales, his notes, his marriages, his notarial commitments, his mortgages, ground rent, house rent, profits, the sum total of his contracts and sources of income called in question on the first Sunday in May, 1852, and he cannot expose himself to such risk. Behind the menace to the political status quo is hidden the danger of a collapse of the whole of bourgeois society. The only possible solution, in the sense of the bourgeoisie, is the postponement of the solution. It can save the constitutional republic only through a violation of the constitution, through a prolongation of the power of the President. This, too, is the last word of the press of order after the long drawn-out and profound debates about the solutions in which it indulged after the sessions of the departmental councils. The high and mighty party of order is forced, much to its chagrin, to take seriously the ridiculous, ordinary and by it so much hated person of the pseudo-Bonaparte.

This unclean personage also deceived himself as to the causes that conferred upon him more and more the character of the man of the hour. While his party possessed sufficient discernment to ascribe the growing significance of Bonaparte to conditions, he believed that it was due solely to the magic power of his name and his uninterrupted caricaturing of Napoleon. Daily, he became more enterprising. The pilgrimages to St. Leonards and Wiesbaden he offset with his circuit junkets through France. The Bonapartists themselves had so little confidence in the magic effect of his personality that, everywhere, they sent with him men of the Society of December 10, that organization of the Paris lumpenproletariat, who, packed in mass in railroad trains and mail coaches, went along as claqueurs. They put into the mouth of their marionette speeches which, according to the receptions met with in the different cities, proclaimed either republican resignation or unremitting tenacity as the motto of the presidential policy. In spite of all maneuvers, these journeys were nothing less than triumphant forays.

After Bonaparte believed that he had so enthused the people, he set himself in motion to win the army. On the plain of Satori, near Versailles, he held great troop reviews at which he sought to purchase the soldiers by means of sausages, champaign and cigars. If the genuine Napoleon, during the hardships of his conquering expeditions, knew how to encourage his fatigued soldiers by means of a momentary patriarchal familiarity, the pseudo-Napoleon believed that the troops would cry in gratitude: Vive Napoléon! Vive le saucisson!—that is, Long live the Wurst! [sausage]—Long live the Hanswurst!*[clown.]

These reviews brought to a head the long deferred quarrel between Bonaparte and his Minister of War, d’Hautpoul, on the one hand, and Changarnier on the other. In Changarnier the party of order had found its really neutral man, with whom there could be no question of dynastic aspirations. Him it had intended as the successor of Bonaparte. Changarnier, moreover, through his attitude on January 29 and on June 13, 1849, had become the great captain of the party of order, the modern Alexander, who, by his brutal intervention, in the eyes of the timid bourgeoisie, had cut the Gordian knot of the revolution. Essentially just as ridiculous as Bonaparte, he had in this cheap manner become a power, and he was set up by the National Assembly against the President as a sort of supervisor. He himself coquetted with the protection he bestowed upon Bonaparte, as for instance in the question of the civil list dotation, and assumed an ever more dominant attitude against him and the Ministers. When, at the time of the passage of the electoral law, an insurrection was expected, Changarnier forbade his officers to accept any orders from the Minister of War or from the President. The press also contributed to magnify the stature of Changarnier. With the total lack of great personalities, the party of order naturally was prompted to impute the power which its entire class lacked to a single individual, and then to swell him up to a monstrosity. Thus arose the myth of Changarnier, the “bulwark of society.” The arrogant charlatanry, the secretive pomposity, wherewith Changarnier deigned to carry the world on his shoulders, form the most ridiculous contrast with the events during and after the review of Satori, proving incontrovertibly that it required but a stroke of the pen on the part of Bonaparte, the infinitely little, to reduce the colossus Changarnier, this fantastic spawn of bourgeois fear, to the dimensions of mediocrity, and to transform the society-saving hero into a pensioned general.

Bonaparte, for some time past, had revenged himself upon Changarnier by having the Minister of War provoke disciplinary squabbles with the inconvenient protector. The last review at Satori finally brought the old grudge to the surface. The constitutional indignation of Changarnier no longer knew its bounds when he saw the cavalry regiments march past with the unconstitutional cry: Vive l’Empereur! Bonaparte, in order to forestall all disagreeable debates about this cry at the coming session of the Chamber, removed the Minister of War, d’Hautpoul, by appointing him Governor of Algier. In his place he put an old dependable general of the time of the empire, who, in point of brutality, was easily the equal of Changarnier. Then, not to make the removal of d’Hautpoul appear as a concession to Changarnier, he transferred at the same time the right arm of the great society saver, General Neumayer, from Paris to Nantes. It had been Neumayer who, at the last review, had seen to it that the entire infantry had, in icy silence, marched past the successor of Napoleon. Changarnier, himself hit via Neumayer, protested and threatened. In vain. After two days of negotiation, there appeared in the Moniteur the Neumayer decree of transfer, there being then nothing left to the hero of order but to conform to discipline or to resign.

The struggle of Bonaparte with Changarnier is the continuation of his struggle with the party of order. The reopening of the National Assembly on November 11 occurs therefore under threatening auspices. It will be a tempest in a tea-pot. In essence, the old game must continue. The majority of the party of order, notwithstanding the chatter on the part of the principle-mongers of its different factions, will be compelled to prolong the power of the President. And just so will Bonaparte, in spite of all preliminary protestations, because forced by the lack of funds, accept this prolongation of his power as a simple delegation from the hands of the National Assembly. Thus the solution will be postponed, the status quo maintained, one faction of the party of order compromised, weakened, made impossible by the other, the repression against the common enemy, the mass of the nation, extended and exhausted until the conditions themselves have again arrived at that point of development where a new explosion blows into the air all the quarrelling parties with their constitutional republic.

For the appeasement of the bourgeoisie it must, however, be said that the scandal between Bonaparte and the party of order had this result: to ruin a large number of small capitalists on the stock exchange and to play their property into the pockets of the big wolves of the exchange.