Unhindered by the provocations of the government, which only heightened the general exasperation at the existing situation, the election committee, wholly under the influence of the workers, put forward three candidates for Paris: Deflotte, Vidal, and Carnot.Deflotte was a June deportee, amnestied through one of Bonaparte's popularity-seeking ideas; he was a friend of Blanqui and had taken part in the attempt of May 15.Vidal, known as a communist writer through his book Concerning the Distribution of Wealth, was formerly secretary to Louis Blanc in the Luxembourg Commission.Carnot, son of the man of the Convention who had organized the victory, the least compromised member of the National party, Minister of Education in the Provisional Government and the Executive Commission, was through his democratic public education bill a living protest against the education law of the Jesuits.These three candidates represented the three allied classes: at the head, the June insurgent, the representative of the revolutionary proletariat;next to him the doctrinaire socialist, the representative of the socialist petty bourgeoisie; finally, the third, the representative of the republican bourgeois party whose democratic formulas had gained a socialist significance vis-a-vis the party of Order and had long lost their own significance.
This was a general coalition against the bourgeoisie and the government, as in February.But this time the proletariat was at the head of the revolutionary league.
In spite of all efforts the socialist candidates won.The army itself voted for the June insurgent against its own War Minister La Hitte.
The party of Order was thunderstruck.The elections in the departments did not solace them; the departments gave a majority to the Montagnards.
The election of March 10, 1850! It was the revocation of June, 1848: the butchers and deportees of the June insurgents returned to the National Assembly but returned, bowed down, in the train of the deported, and with their principles on their lips.It was the revocation of June 13, 1849: the Montagne, proscribed by the National Assembly, returned to the National Assembly, but as advance trumpeters of the revolution, no longer as its commanders.It was the revocation of December 10: Napoleon had lost out with his Minister La Hitte.The parliamentary history of France knows only one analogy: the rejection of d'Haussez, minister of Charles X, in 1830.Finally, the election of March 10, 1850, was the cancellation of the election of May 13, which had given the party of Order a majority.
The election of March 10 protested against the majority of May 13.March 10 was a revolution.Behind the ballots lie the paving stones.
"The vote of March 10 means war," shouted Segur d'Aguesseau, one of the most advanced members of the party of Order.
With March 10, 1850, the constitutional republic entered a new phase, the phase of its dissolution.The different factions of the majority are again united among themselves and with Bonaparte; they are again the saviors of order -- he is again their neutral man.If they remember that they are royalists, it happens only from despair of the possibility of a bourgeois republic; if he remembers that he is a pretender, it happens only because he despairs of remaining President.
At the command of the party of Order, Bonaparte answers the election of Deflotte, the June insurgent, by appointing Baroche Minister of Internal Affairs, Baroche, the accuser of Blanqui and Barb6s, of Ledru-Rollin and Guinard.The Legislative Assembly answers the election of Carnot by adopting the education law, the election of Vidal by suppressing the socialist press.
The party of Order seeks to blare away its own fears by the trumpet blasts of its press."The sword is holy," cries one of its organs; "the defenders of order must take the offensive against the Red party," cries another;"between socialism and society there is a duel to the death, a war without surcease or mercy; in this duel of desperation one or the other must go under; if society does not annihilate socialism, socialism will annihilate society," crows a third cock of Order.Throw up the barricades of order, the barricades of religion, the barricades of the family! An end must be made of the 127,000 voters of Paris! A Bartholomew's Night for the socialists!
And the party of Order believes for a moment in its own certainty of victory.
Their organs hold forth most fanatically of all against the "boutiquiers of Paris." The June insurgent of Paris elected by the shopkeepers of Paris as their representative! This means that a second June, 1848, is impossible;this means that a second June 13, 1849, is impossible; this means that the moral influence of capital is broken; this means that the bourgeois assembly now represents only the bourgeoisie; this means that big property is lost, because its vassal, small property, seeks its salvation in the camp of the propertyless.
The party of Order naturally returns to its inevitable commonplace.
"More repression," it cries, "tenfold repression!" But its power of repression has diminished tenfold, while resistance has increased a hundredfold.Must not the chief instrument of repression, the army, itself be repressed?
And the party of Order speaks its last word: "The iron ring of suffocating legality must be broken.The constitutional republic is impossible.We must fight with our true weapons; since February, 1848, we have fought the revolution with its weapons and on its terrain -- , we have accepted its institutions; the constitution is a fortress which safeguards only the besiegers, not the besieged! By smuggling ourselves into holy Ilion in the belly of the Trojan horse, we have, unlike our forefathers, the Grecs [12] , not conquered the hostile town, but made prisoners of ourselves.
The foundation of the constitution, however, is universal suffrage.
