orship of Cavaignac and to the constitutional assembly.

In Article 44 of the Constitution it is said "The President of the
French Republic must never have lost his status as a French citizen."
The first President of the French Republic, L. N. Bonaparte, had not
only lost his status as a French citizen, had not only been an English
special constable, but was even a naturalized Swiss citizen.

In the previous chapter I have explained the meaning of the election of
December 10. I shall not here return to it. Suffice it here to say that
it was a reaction of the farmers' class, who had been expected to pay
the costs of the February revolution, against the other classes of the
nation: it was a reaction of the country against the city. It met
with great favor among the soldiers, to whom the republicans of
the "National" had brought neither fame nor funds; among the great
bourgeoisie, who hailed Bonaparte as a bridge to the monarchy; and
among the proletarians and small traders, who hailed him as a scourge to
Cavaignac. I shall later have occasion to enter closer into the relation
of the farmers to the French revolution.

The epoch between December 20, 1848, and the dissolution of the
constitutional assembly in May, 1849, embraces the history of the
downfall of the bourgeois republicans. After they had founded a republic
for the bourgeoisie, had driven the revolutionary proletariat from the
field and had meanwhile silenced the democratic middle class, they
are themselves shoved aside by the mass of the bourgeoisie who justly
appropriate this republic as their property. This bourgeois mass was
Royalist, however. A part thereof, the large landed proprietors, had
ruled under the restoration, hence, was Legitimist; the other part, the
aristocrats of finance and the large industrial capitalists, had ruled
under the July monarchy, hence, was Orleanist. The high functionaries of
the Army, of the University, of the Church, in the civil service, of the
Academy and of the press, divided themselves on both sides, although in
unequal parts. Here, in the bourgeois republic, that bore neither the
name of Bourbon, nor of Orleans, but the name of Capital, they had
found the form of government under which they could all rule in common.
Already the June insurrection had united them all into a "Party of
Order." The next thing to do was to remove the bourgeois republicans who
still held the seats in the National Assembly. As brutally as these pu