Let us now turn to France.
The victory that the people, in conjunction with the petty bourgeois, had won in the elections of March 10 was annulled by the people itself when it provoked the new election of April 28.Vidal was elected not only in Paris, but also in the Lower Rhine.The Paris Committee, in which the Montagne and the petty bourgeoisie were strongly represented, induced him to accept for the Lower Rhine.The victory of March 10 ceased to be a decisive one; the date of the decision was once more postponed; the tension of the people was relaxed; it became accustomed to legal triumphs instead of revolutionary ones.The revolutionary meaning of March 10, the rehabilitation of the June insurrection, was finally completely annihilated by the candidature of Eugene Sue, the sentimental petty-bourgeois social-fantast, which the proletariat could at best accept as a joke to please the grisettes.As against this well-meaning candidature, the party of Order, emboldened by the vacillating policy of its opponents, put up a candidate who was to represent the June victory.This comic candidate was the Spartan paterfamilias Leclerc, from whose person, however, the heroic armor was torn piece by piece by the press, and who experienced a brilliant defeat in the election.
The new election victory on April 28 put the Montagne and the petty bourgeoisie in high feather.They already exulted in the thought of being able to arrive at the goal of their wishes in a purely legal way and without again pushing the proletariat into the foreground through a new revolution; they reckoned positively on bringing Ledru-Rollin into the presidential chair and a majority of Montagnards into the Assembly through universal suffrage in the new elections of 1852.The party of Order, rendered perfectly certain by the prospective elections, by Sue's candidature, and by the mood of the Montagne and the petty bourgeoisie, that the latter were resolved to remain quiet no matter what happened, answered the two election victories with an election law which abolished universal suffrage.
The government took good care not to make this legislative proposal on its own responsibility.It made an apparent concession to the majority by entrusting the working out of the bill to the high dignitaries of this majority, the seventeen burgraves.Thus it was not the government that proposed the repeal of universal suffrage to the Assembly; the majority of the Assembly proposed it to itself.
On May 8 the project was brought into the Chamber.The entire Social-Democratic press rose as one man in order to preach to the people dignified bearing, calme majestueux , passivity, and trust in its representatives.Every article of these journals was a confession that a revolution would, above all, annihilate the so-called revolutionary press, and that therefore it was now a question of its self-preservation.The allegedly revolutionary press betrayed its whole secret.It signed its own death warrant.
On May 21 the Montagne put the preliminary question to debate and moved the rejection of the whole project on the ground that it violated the constitution.The party of Order answered that the constitution would be violated if it were necessary; there was, however, no need for this at present, because the constitution was capable of every interpretation, and because the majority alone was competent to decide on the correct interpretation.
To the unbridled, savage attacks of Thiers and Montalembert the Montagne opposed a decorous and refined humanism.It took its stand on the ground of law; the party of Order referred it to the ground on which the law grows, to bourgeois property.The Montagne whimpered: Did they really want, then, to conjure up revolutions by main force? The party of Order replied: One would await them.
On May 22 the preliminary question was settled by 462 Votes to 227.The same men who had proved with such solemn profundity that the National Assembly and every individual deputy would be renouncing his mandate if he renounced the people, his mandatory, now stuck to their seats and suddenly sought to let the country act, through petitions at that, instead of acting themselves, and still sat there unmoved when, on May 31, the law went through in splendid fashion.They sought to revenge themselves by a protest in which they recorded their innocence of the rape of the constitution, a protest which they did not even submit openly, but smuggled into the President's pocket from the rear.
An army of 150,000 men in Paris, the long deferment of the decision, the appeasing attitude of the press, the pusillanimity of the Montagne and of the newly elected representatives, the majestic calm of the petty bourgeois, but above all, the commercial and industrial prosperity, prevented any attempt at revolution on the part of the proletariat.
Universal suffrage had fulfilled its mission.The majority of the people had passed through the school of development, which is all that universal suffrage can serve for in a revolutionary period.It had to be set aside by a revolution or by the reaction.
The Montagne developed a still greater display of energy on an occasion that arose soon afterward.From the tribune War Minister Hautpoul had termed the February Revolution a baneful catastrophe.The orators of the Montagne, who, as always, distinguished themselves by their morally indignant bluster, were not allowed by the President, Dupin, to speak.
Girardin proposed to the Montagne that it should walk out at once en masse.
Result: The Montagne remained seated, but Girardin was cast out from its midst as unworthy.
