The National Assembly reconvened in the middle of October. On November
1, Bonaparte surprised it with a message, in which he announced the
dismissal of the Barrot-Falloux Ministry, and the framing of a
new. Never have lackeys been chased from service with less ceremony
than Bonaparte did his ministers. The kicks, that were eventually
destined for the National Assembly, Barrot & Company received in the
meantime.
The Barrot Ministry was, as we have seen, composed of Legitimists and
Orleanists; it was a Ministry of the party of Order. Bonaparte needed
that Ministry in order to dissolve the republican constituent
assembly, to effect the expedition against Rome, and to break up the
democratic party. He had seemingly eclipsed himself behind this
Ministry, yielded the reins to the hands of the party of Order, and
assumed the modest mask, which, under Louis Philippe, had been worn by
the responsible overseer of the newspapers—the mask of “homme de
paille.”[13] Now he threw off the mask, it being no longer the light
curtain behind which he could conceal, but the Iron Mask, which
prevented him from revealing his own physiognomy. He had instituted
the Barrot Ministry in order to break up the republican National
Assembly in the name of the party of Order; he now dismissed it in
order to declare his own name independent of the parliament of the
party of Order.
There was no want of plausible pretexts for this dismissal. The Barrot
Ministry had neglected even the forms of decency that would have
allowed the president of the republic to appear as a power along with
the National Assembly. For instance, during the vacation of the
National Assembly, Bonaparte published a letter to Edgar Ney, in which
he seemed to disapprove the liberal attitude of the Pope, just as, in
opposition to the constitutive assembly, he had published a letter, in
which he praised Oudinot for his attack upon the Roman republic; when
the National Assembly came to vote on the budget for the Roman
expedition, Victor Hugo, out of pretended liberalism, brought up that
letter for discussion; the party of Order drowned this notion of
Bonaparte’s under exclamations of contempt and incredulity as though
notions of Bonaparte could not possibly have any political weight;—and
none of the Ministers took up the gauntlet for him. On another
occasion, Barrot, with his well-known hollow pathos, dropped, from the
speakers’ tribune in the Assembly, words of indignation upon the
“abominable machinations,” which, according to him, went on in the
immediate vicinity of the President. Finally, while the Ministry
obtained from the National Assembly a widow’s pension for the Duchess
of Orleans, it denied every motion to raise the Presidential civil
list;—and, in Bonaparte, be it always remembered, the Imperial
Pretender was so closely blended with the impecunious adventurer, that
the great idea of his being destined to restore the Empire was ever
supplemented by that other, to-wit, that the French people was
destined to pay his debts.
The Barrot-Falloux Ministry was the first and last parliamentary
Ministry that Bonaparte called into life. Its dismissal marks,
accordingly, a decisive period. With the Ministry, the party of Order
lost, never to regain, an indispensable post to the maintenance of the
parliamentary régime,—the handle to the Executive power. It is readily
understood that, in a country like France, where the Executive
disposes over an army of more than half a million office-holders, and,
consequently, keeps permanently a large mass of interests and
existences in the completest dependence upon itself; where the
Government surrounds, controls, regulates, supervises and guards
society, from its mightiest acts of national life, down to its most
insignificant motions; from its common life, down to the private life
of each individual; where, due to such extraordinary centralization,
this body of parasites acquires a ubiquity and omniscience, a
quickened capacity for motion and rapidity that finds an analogon only
in the helpless lack of self-reliance, in the unstrung weakness of the
body social itself;—that in such a country the National Assembly lost,
with the control of the ministerial posts, all real influence, unless
it simultaneously simplified the administration; if possible, reduced
the army of office-holders; and, finally, allowed society and public
opinion to establish its own organs, independent of government
censorship. But the _Material Interest_ of the French bourgeoisie is
most intimately bound up in maintenance of just such a large and
extensively ramified governmental machine. There the bourgeoisie
provides for its own superfluous membership; and supplies, in the
shape of government salaries, what it can not pocket in the form of
profit, interest, rent and fees. On the other hand, its _Political
Interests_ daily compel it to increase the power of repression,
_i.e._, the means and the personnel of the government; it is at the
same time forced to conduct an uninterrupted warfare against public
opinion, and, full of suspicion, to hamstring and lame the independent
organs of society—whenever it does not succeed in amputating them
wholly. Thus the bourgeoisie of France was forced by its own class
attitude, on the one hand, to destroy the conditions for all
parliamentary power, its own included, and, on the other, to render
irresistible the Executive power that stood hostile to it.
The new Ministry was called the d’Hautpoul Ministry. Not that General
d’Hautpoul had gained the rank of Ministerial President. Along with
Barrot, Bonaparte abolished this dignity, which, it must be granted,
condemned the President of the republic to the legal nothingness of a
constitutional kind, of a constitutional king at that, without throne
and crown, without sceptre and without sword, without
irresponsibility, without the imperishable possession of the highest
dignity in the State, and, what was most untoward of all—without a
civil list. The d’Hautpoul Ministry numbered only one man of
parliamentary reputation, the Jew Fould, one of the most notorious
members of the high finance. To him fell the portfolio of
finance. Turn to the Paris stock quotations, and it will be found that
from November 1, 1849, French stocks fall and rise with the falling
and rising of the Bonapartist shares. While Bonaparte had thus found
his ally in the Bourse, he at the same time took possession of the
Police through the appointment of Carlier as Prefect of Police.
But the consequences of the change of Ministry could reveal themselves
only in the course of events. So far, Bonaparte had taken only one
step forward, to be all the more glaringly driven back. Upon his harsh
message, followed the most servile declarations of submissiveness to
the National Assembly. As often as the Ministers made timid attempts
to introduce his own personal hobbies as bills, they themselves seemed
unwilling and compelled only by their position to run the comic
errands, of whose futility they were convinced in advance. As often as
Bonaparte blabbed out his plans behind the backs of his Ministers, and
sported his “idées napoléoniennes,”[14] his own Ministers disavowed
him from the speakers’ tribune in the National Assembly. His
aspirations after usurpation seemed to become audible only to the end
that the ironical laughter of his adversaries should not die out. He
deported himself like an unappreciated genius, whom the world takes
for a simpleton. Never did he enjoy in fuller measure the contempt of
all classes than at this period. Never did the bourgeoisie rule more
absolutely; never did it more boastfully display the insignia of
sovereignty.
It is not here my purpose to write the history of its legislative
activity, which is summed up in two laws passed during this period:
the law reestablishing the duty on wine, and the laws on education, to
suppress infidelity. While the drinking of wine was made difficult to
the Frenchmen, all the more bounteously was the water of pure life
poured out to them. Although in the law on the duty on wine the
bourgeoisie declares the old hated French tariff system to be
inviolable, it sought, by means of the laws on education, to secure
the old good will of the masses that made the former bearable. One
wonders to see the Orleanists, the liberal bourgeois, these old
apostles of Voltarianism and of eclectic philosophy, entrusting the
supervision of the French intellect to their hereditary enemies, the
Jesuits. But, while Orleanists and Legitimists could part company on
the question of the Pretender to the crown, they understood full well
that their joint reign dictated the joining of the means of oppression
of two distinct epochs; that the means of subjugation of the July
monarchy had to be supplemented with and strengthened by the means of
subjugation of the restoration.
The farmers, deceived in all their expectations, more than ever ground
down by the law scale of the price of corn, on the one hand, and, on
the other, by the growing load of taxation and mortgages, began to
stir in the Departments. They were answered by the systematic baiting
of the school masters, whom the Government subjected to the clergy; by
the systematic baiting of the Mayors, whom it subjected to the
Prefects; and by a system of espionage to which all were subjected. In
Paris and the large towns, the reaction itself carries the physiognomy
of its own epoch; it irritates more than it cows; in the country, it
becomes low, mean, petty, tiresome, vexatious,—in a word, it becomes
“gensdarme.” It is easily understood how three years of the gensdarme
régime, sanctified by the régime of the clergyman, was bound to
demoralize unripe masses.
Whatever the mass of passion and declamation, that the party of Order
expended from the speakers’ tribune in the National Assembly against
the minority, its speech remained monosyllabic, like that of the
Christian, whose speech was to be “Aye, aye; nay, nay.” It was
monosyllabic, whether from the tribune or the press; dull as a
conundrum, whose solution is known beforehand. Whether the question
was the right of petition or the duty on wine, the liberty of the
press or free trade, clubs or municipal laws, protection of individual
freedom or the regulation of national economy, the slogan returns ever
again, the theme is monotonously the same, the verdict is ever ready
and unchanged: Socialism! Even bourgeois liberalism is pronounced
socialistic; socialistic, alike, is pronounced popular education; and,
likewise, socialistic national financial reform. It was socialistic to
build a railroad where already a canal was; and it was socialistic to
defend oneself with a stick when attacked with a sword.
This was not a mere form of speech, a fashion, nor yet party
tactics. The bourgeoisie perceives correctly that all the weapons,
which it forged against feudalism, turn their edges against itself;
that all the means of education, which it brought forth, rebel against
its own civilization; that all the gods, which it made, have fallen
away from it. It understands that all its so-called citizens’ rights
and progressive organs assail and menace its class rule, both in its
social foundation and its political superstructure—consequently, have
become “socialistic.” It justly scents in this menace and assault the
secret of _Socialism_, whose meaning and tendency it estimates more
correctly than the spurious, so-called Socialism, is capable of
estimating itself, and which, consequently, is unable to understand
how it is that the bourgeoisie obdurately shuts up its ears to it,
alike whether it sentimentally whines about the sufferings of
humanity; or announces in Christian style the millennium and universal
brotherhood; or twaddles humanistically about the soul, culture and
freedom; or doctrinally matches out a system of harmony and wellbeing
for all classes. What, however, the bourgeoisie does not understand is
the consequence that its own parliamentary régime, its own political
reign, is also of necessity bound to fall under the general ban of
“socialistic.” So long as the rule of the bourgeoisie is not fully
organized, has not acquired its purely political character, the
contrast with the other classes cannot come into view in all its
sharpness; and, where it does come into view, it cannot take that
dangerous turn that converts every conflict with the Government into a
conflict with Capital. When, however, the French bourgeoisie began to
realize in every pulsation of society a menace to “peace,” how could
it, at the head of society, pretend to uphold the régime of unrest,
its own régime, the parliamentary régime, which, according to the
expression of one of its own orators, lives in struggle, and through
struggle? The parliamentary régime lives on discussion,—how can it
forbid discussion? Every single interest, every single social
institution is there converted into general thoughts, is treated as a
thought,—how could any interest or institution claim to be above
thought, and impose itself as an article of faith? The orators’
conflict in the tribune calls forth the conflict of the rowdies in the
press; the debating club in parliament is necessarily supplemented by
debating clubs in the salons and the bar-rooms; the representatives,
who are constantly appealing to popular opinion, justify popular
opinion in expressing its real opinion in petitions. The parliamentary
régime leaves everything to the decision of majorities,—how can the
large majorities beyond parliament be expected not to wish to decide?
If, from above, they hear the fiddle screeching, what else is to be
expected than that those below should dance?
Accordingly, by now persecuting as _Socialist_ what formerly it had
celebrated as _Liberal_, the bourgeoisie admits that its own interest
orders it to raise itself above the danger of self government; that,
in order to restore rest to the land, its own bourgeois parliament
must, before all, be brought to rest; that, in order to preserve its
social power unhurt, its political power must be broken; that the
private bourgeois can continue to exploit the other classes and
rejoice in “property,” “family,” “religion” and “order” only under the
condition that his own class be condemned to the same political
nullity of the other classes; that, in order to save their purse, the
crown must be knocked off their heads, and the sword, that was to
shield them, must at the same time be hung over their heads as a sword
of Damocles.
In the domain of general bourgeois interests, the National Assembly
proved itself so barren, that, for instance, the discussion over the
Paris-Avignon railroad, opened in the winter of 1850, was not yet ripe
for a vote on December 2, 1851. Wherever it did not oppress or was
reactionary, the bourgeoisie was smitten with incurable barrenness.
While Bonaparte’s Ministry either sought to take the initiative of
laws in the spirit of the party of Order, or even exaggerated their
severity in their enforcement and administration, he, on his part,
sought to win popularity by means of childishly silly propositions, to
exhibit the contrast between himself and the National Assembly, and to
hint at a secret plan, held in reserve and only through circumstances
temporarily prevented from disclosing its hidden treasures to the
French people. Of this nature was the proposition to decree a daily
extra pay of four sous to the under-officers; so, likewise, the
proposition for a “word of honor” loan bank for working-men. To have
money given and money borrowed—that was the perspective that he hoped
to cajole the masses with. Presents and loans—to that was limited the
financial wisdom of the slums, the high as well as the low; to that
were limited the springs which Bonaparte knew how to set in
motion. Never did Pretender speculate more dully upon the dullness of
the masses.
Again and again did the National Assembly fly into a passion at these
unmistakable attempts to win popularity at its expense, and at the
growing danger that this adventurer, lashed on by debts and
unrestrained by reputation, might venture upon some desperate act. The
strained relations between the party of Order and the President had
taken on a threatening aspect, when an unforeseen event threw him
back, rueful into its arms. We mean the supplementary elections of
March, 1850. These elections took place to fill the vacancies created
in the National Assembly, after June 13, by imprisonment and
exile. Paris elected only Social-Democratic candidates; it even united
the largest vote upon one of the insurgents of June,
1848,—Deflotte. In this way the small traders’ world of Paris, now
allied with the proletariat, revenged itself for the defeat of June
13, 1849. It seemed to have disappeared from the field of battle at
the hour of danger only to step on it again at a more favorable
opportunity, with increased forces for the fray, and with a bolder war
cry. A circumstance seemed to heighten the danger of this electoral
victory. The Army voted in Paris for a June insurgent against Lahitte,
a Minister of Bonaparte’s, and, in the Departments, mostly for the
candidates of the Mountain, who, there also, although not as
decisively as in Paris, maintained the upper hand over their
adversaries.
Bonaparte suddenly saw himself again face to face with the
revolution. As on January 29, 1849, as on June 13, 1849, on May 10,
1850, he vanished again behind the party of Order. He bent low; he
timidly apologized; he offered to appoint any Ministry whatever at the
behest of the parliamentary majority; he even implored the Orleanist
and Legitimist party leaders—the Thiers, Berryers, Broglies, Molés, in
short, the so-called burgraves—to take hold of the helm of State in
person. The party of Order did not know how to utilize this
opportunity, that was never to return. Instead of boldly taking
possession of the proffered power, it did not even force Bonaparte to
restore the Ministry, dismissed on November 1; it contented itself
with humiliating him with its pardon, and with affiliating Mr. Baroche
to the d’Hautpoul Ministry. This Baroche had, as Public Prosecutor,
stormed before the High Court at Bourges, once against the
revolutionists of May 15, another time against the Democrats of June
13, both times on the charge of “attentats” against the National
Assembly. None of Bonaparte’s Ministers contributed later more towards
the degradation of the National Assembly; and, after December 2, 1851,
we meet him again as the comfortably stalled and dearly paid
Vice-President of the Senate. He had spat into the soup of the
revolutionists for Bonaparte to eat it.
On its part, the Social Democratic party seemed only to look for
pretexts in order to make its own victory doubtful, and to dull its
edge. Vidal, one of the newly elected Paris representatives, was
returned for Strassburg also. He was induced to decline the seat for
Paris and accept the one for Strassburg. Thus, instead of giving a
definite character to their victory at the hustings, and thereby
compelling the party of Order forthwith to contest it in parliament;
instead of thus driving the foe to battle at the season of popular
enthusiasm and of a favorable temper in the Army, the democratic party
tired out Paris with a new campaign during the months of March and
April; it allowed the excited popular passions to wear themselves out
in this second provisional electoral play; it allowed the
revolutionary vigor to satiate itself with constitutional successes,
and lose its breath in petty intrigues, hollow declamation and sham
moves; it gave the bourgeoisie time to collect itself and make its
preparations; finally, it allowed the significance of the March
elections to find a sentimentally weakening commentary at the
subsequent April election in the victory of Eugene Sue. In one word,
it turned the 10th of March into an April Fool.
The parliamentary majority perceived the weakness of its
adversary. Its seventeen burgraves—Bonaparte had left to it the
direction ofand responsibility for the attack—, framed a new election
law, the moving of which was entrusted to Mr. Faucher, who had applied
for the honor. On May 8, he introduced the new law whereby universal
suffrage was abolished; a three years’ residence in the election
district imposed as a condition for voting; and, finally, the proof of
this residence made dependent, for the working-man, upon the testimony
of his employer.
As revolutionarily as the democrats had agitated and stormed during
the constitutional struggles, so constitutionally did they, now, when
it was imperative to attest, arms in hand, the earnestness of their
late electoral victories, preach order, “majestic calmness,” lawful
conduct, i.e., blind submission to the will of the counter-revolution,
which revealed itself as law. During the debate, the Mountain put the
party of Order to shame by maintaining the passionless attitude of the
law-abiding burger, who upholds the principle of law against
revolutionary passions; and by twitting the party of Order with the
fearful reproach of proceeding in a revolutionary manner. Even the
newly elected deputies took pains to prove by their decent and
thoughtful deportment what an act of misjudgment it was to decry them
as anarchists, or explain their election as a victory of the
revolution. The new election law was passed on May 31. The Mountain
contented itself with smuggling a protest into the pockets of the
President of the Assembly. To the election law followed a new press
law, whereby the revolutionary press was completely done away with. It
had deserved its fate. The “National” and the “Presse,” two bourgeois
organs, remained after this deluge the extreme outposts of the
revolution.
We have seen how, during March and April, the democratic leaders did
everything to involve the people of Paris in a sham battle, and how,
after May 8, they did everything to keep it away from a real
battle. We may not here forget that the year 1850 was one of the most
brilliant years of industrial and commercial prosperity; consequently,
that the Parisian proletariat was completely employed. But the
election law of May 31, 1850, excluded them from all participation in
political power; it cut the field of battle itself from under them; it
threw the workingmen back into the state of pariahs, which they had
occupied before the February revolution. In allowing themselves, in
sight of such an occurrence, to be led by the democrats, and in
forgetting the revolutionary interests of their class through
temporary comfort, the workingmen abdicated the honor of being a
conquering power; they submitted to their fate; they proved that the
defeat of June, 1848, had incapacitated them from resistance for many
a year to come; finally, that the historic process must again, for the
time being, proceed over their heads. As to the small traders’
democracy, which, on June 13, had cried out: “If they but dare to
assail universal suffrage... then... then we will show who we
are!”—they now consoled themselves with the thought that the
counter-revolutionary blow, which had struck them, was no blow at all,
and that the law of May 31 was no law. On May 2, 1852, according to
them, every Frenchman would appear at the hustings, in one hand the
ballot, in the other the sword. With this prophecy they set their
hearts at ease. Finally, the Army was punished by its superiors for
the elections of May and April, 1850, as it was punished for the
election of May 29, 1849. This time, however, it said to itself
determinately: “The revolution shall not cheat us a third time.”
The law of May 31, 1850, was the “coup d’état” of the bourgeoisie. All
its previous conquests over the revolution had only a temporary
character: they became uncertain the moment the National Assembly
stepped off the stage; they depended upon the accident of general
elections, and the history of the elections since 1848 proved
irrefutably that, in the same measure as the actual reign of the
bourgeoisie gathered strength, its moral reign over the masses wore
off. Universal suffrage pronounced itself on May 10 pointedly against
the reign of the bourgeoisie; the bourgeoisie answered with the
banishment of universal suffrage. The law of May 31 was, accordingly,
one of the necessities of the class struggle. On the other hand, the
constitution required a minimum of two million votes for the valid
election of the President of the republic. If none of the Presidential
candidates polled this minimum, then the National Assembly was to
elect the President out of the three candidates polling the highest
votes. At the time that the constitutive body made this law, ten
million voters were registered on the election rolls. In its opinion,
accordingly, one-fifth of the qualified voters sufficed to make a
choice for President valid. The law of May 31 struck at least three
million voters off the rolls, reduced the number of qualified voters
to seven millions, and yet, notwithstanding, it kept the lawful
minimum at two millions for the election of a President. Accordingly,
it raised the lawful minimum from a fifth to almost a third of the
qualified voters, i.e., it did all it could to smuggle the
Presidential election out of the hands of the people into those of the
National Assembly. Thus, by the election law of May 31, the party of
Order seemed to have doubly secured its empire, in that it placed the
election of both the National Assembly and the President of the
republic in the keeping of the stable portion of society.