The National Assembly had itself forbidden the coalition of the workers against its bourgeois.And the clubs -- what were they but a coalition of the whole working class against the whole bourgeois class, the formation of a workers' state against the bourgeois state? Were they not just so many constituent assemblies of the proletariat and just so many military detachments of revolt in fighting trim -- what the constitution was to constitute above all else was the rule of the bourgeoisie.By the right of association the constitution, therefore, could manifestly mean only associations that harmonized with the rule of the bourgeoisie, that is, with bourgeois order.If for reasons of theoretical propriety it expressed itself in general terms, were not the government and the National Assembly there to interpret and apply it in a special case, And if in the primeval epoch of the republic the clubs actually were forbidden by the state of siege, had they not to be forbidden in the ordered, constituted republic by the law? The tri-color republicans had nothing to oppose to this prosaic interpretation of the constitution but the high-flown phraseology of the constitution.A section of them, Pagnerre, Duclerc, etc., voted for the ministry and thereby gave it a majority.The others, with the archangel Cavaignac and the father of the church Marrast at their head, retired, after the article on the prohibition of the clubs had gone through, to a special committee room, jointly with Ledru-Rollin and the Montagne --"and held a council." The National Assembly was paralyzed; it no longer had a quorum.At the right time, M.Cr6mieux remembered in the committee room that the way from here led directly to the street and that it was no longer February, 1848, but March, 1849.The party of the National, suddenly enlightened, returned to the National Assembly's hall of session, behind it the Montagne, duped once more.The latter, constantly tormented by revolutionary longings, just as constantly clutched at constitutional possibilities, and still felt itself more in place behind the bourgeois republicans than in front of the revolutionary proletariat.Thus the comedy was played.
And the Constituent Assembly itself had decreed that the violation of the letter of the constitution was the only appropriate realization of its spirit.
There was only one point left to settle, the relation of the constituted republic to the European revolution, its foreign policy.On May 8, 1849, unwonted excitement prevailed in the Constituent Assembly, whose term of life was due to end in a few days.The attack of the French army on Rome, its repulse by the Romans, its political infamy and military disgrace, the foul assassination of the Roman republic by the French republic --the first Italian campaign of the second Bonaparte -- was on the order of the day.The Montagne had once more played its great trump; Ledru-Rollin had laid on the President's table the inevitable bill of impeachment against the ministry, and this time also against Bonaparte, for violation of the constitution.
The motive of May 8 was repeated later as the motive of June 13.
Let us get clear about the expedition to Rome.
As early as the middle of November, 1848, Cavaignac had sent a battle fleet to Civita Vecchia in order to protect the Pope, to take him on board and ship him over to France.The Pope was to consecrate the respectable republic, and to insure the election of Cavaignac as President.With the Pope, Cavaignac wanted to angle for the priests, with the priests for the peasants, and with the peasants for the presidency.The expedition of Cavaignac, an election advertisement in its immediate purpose, was at the same time a protest and a threat against the Roman revolution.It contained in embryo France's intervention in favor of the Pope.
This intervention on behalf of the Pope, in association with Austria and Naples against the Roman republic, was decided at the first meeting of Bonaparte's ministerial council, on December 23.Falloux in the ministry -- that meant the Pope in Rome -- and in the Rome of the Pope.Bonaparte no longer needed the Pope in order to become the President of the peasants;but he needed the conservation of the Pope in order to conserve the peasants of the President.Their credulity had made him President.With faith they would lose credulity, and with the Pope, faith.And the Orléanists and Legitimists in coalition, who ruled in Bonaparte's name! Before the king was restored, the power that consecrates kings had to be restored.
Apart from their royalism: without the old Rome, subject to his temporal rule, no Pope; without the Pope, no Catholicism; without Catholicism, no French religion, and without religion, what would become of the old French society? The mortgage the peasant has on heavenly possessions guarantees the mortgage the bourgeois has on peasant possessions.The Roman revolution was therefore an attack on property, on the bourgeois order, dreadful as the June Revolution.Reestablished bourgeois rule in France required the restoration of papal rule in Rome.Finally, to smite the Roman revolutionists was to smite the allies of the French revolutionists; the alliance of the counterrevolutionary classes in the constituted French republic was necessarily supplemented by the alliance of the French republic with the Holy Alliance, with Naples and Austria.
The decision of the ministerial council on December 23 was no secret to the Constituent Assembly.On January 8 Ledru-Rollin had interpellated the ministry about it; the ministry had denied it and the National Assembly had proceeded to the order of the day.Did it trust the word of the ministry We know it spent the whole month of January giving the ministry no-confidence votes.But if it was part of the ministry's role to lie, it was part of the National Assembly's role to feign belief in its lie and thereby save republican dehors [face].
