of the whole world, it
should make its own testament with its own hands, and, in the name of
the people, declare: "All that exists deserves to perish."

It is not enough to say, as the Frenchmen do, that their nation was
taken by surprise. A nation, no more than a woman, is excused for the
unguarded hour when the first adventurer who comes along can do violence
to her. The riddle is not solved by such shifts, it is only formulated
in other words. There remains to be explained how a nation of thirty-six
millions can be surprised by three swindlers, and taken to prison
without resistance.

Let us recapitulate in general outlines the phases which the French
revolution of' February 24th, 1848, to December, 1851, ran through.

Three main periods are unmistakable:

First--The February period;

Second--The period of constituting the republic, or of the constitutive
national assembly (May 4, 1848, to May 29th, 1849);

Third--The period of the constitutional republic, or of the legislative
national assembly (May 29, 1849, to December 2, 1851).

The first period, from February 24, or the downfall of Louis Philippe,
to May 4, 1848, the date of the assembling of the constitutive
assembly--the February period proper--may be designated as the prologue
of the revolution. It officially expressed its' own character in this,
that the government which it improvised declared itself "provisional;"
and, like the government, everything that was broached, attempted, or
uttered, pronounced itself provisional. Nobody and nothing dared to
assume the right of permanent existence and of an actual fact. All
the elements that had prepared or determined the revolution--dynastic
opposition, republican bourgeoisie, democratic-republican small traders'
class, social-democratic labor element-all found "provisionally" their
place in the February government.

It could not be otherwise. The February days contemplated originally
a reform of the suffrage laws, whereby the area of the politically
privileged among the property-holding class was to be extended, while
the exclusive rule of the aristocracy of finance was to be overthrown.
When however, it came to a real conflict, when the people mounted the
barricades, when the National Guard stood passive, when the army offered
no serious resistance, and the kingdom ran away, then the republic
seemed self-understood. Each party interpreted it in its own sense. Won,
arms in hand, by the proletariat, they