scribed to you, I
should consider even that a great gain, and account myself richly
rewarded for my presentation.

Above all, your soul must be free from discouragement and doubt, to
which an insufficiently valid consideration of historical efforts
might easily lead. So, for instance, it is absolutely false that in
France the Republic was overthrown by the _coup d'etat_ of December,
1851.

What could not maintain itself in France, what really was destroyed at
that time, was not _the_ Republic but _that_ republic, which, as I
have already shown you, abolished, by the law of May 30, 1850, the
universal franchise, and introduced a disguised property qualification
for the exclusion of the workingman. It was the capitalist republic
which wished to put the stamp of the _bourgeoisie_--the domination of
capital--upon the republican forms of the State; it was this which
gave the French usurper the possibility, under an apparent restoration
of the universal franchise, to overthrow the Republic, which otherwise
would have found an invincible bulwark in the breast of the French
workingman. So what in France could not maintain itself, and was
overthrown, was not the Republic, but the _bourgeois_ republic; and,
on really correct consideration, the fact is confirmed, even by this
example, that the historical period which began with February, 1848,
will no longer tolerate any State which, whether in monarchical or in
republican form, tries to impress upon it, or maintain within it, the
controlling political stamp of the third class of society.

From the lofty mountain tops of science the dawn of a new day is seen
earlier than below in the turmoil of daily life.

Have you ever beheld a sunrise from the top of a high mountain? A
purple line colors blood-red the farthest horizon, announcing the new
light. Clouds and mists collect and oppose the morning red, veiling
its beams for a moment; but no power on earth can prevail against the
slow and majestic rising of the sun which, an hour later, visible to
all the world, radiating light and warmth, stands bright in the
firmament. What an hour is, in the natural phenomena of every day, a
decade or two is in the still more impressive spectacle of a sunrise
in the world's history.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 47: The word _bourgeoisie_ is henceforth used throughout the
discussion to designate the political party now defined.--TRANSLATOR.]

[Footnote 48: Here the speaker quotes statistics sho