ude 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 Arm