d
theirs: religion, family, property. With that commonplace adroitness
which suffices when one speaks to fear, they exploited certain obscure
aspects of what was called socialism. It was a question of "saving
religion, property, and the family."--"Save the flag!" they exclaimed.
The vulgar herd of terrified selfish interests threw themselves into
the current.

They coalesced, they made a stand, they formed in mass. They had a
crowd around them. This crowd was composed of diverse elements. The
landed proprietor entered it because his rents had fallen; the peasant,
because he had paid the forty-five centimes; he who did not believe in
God thought it necessary to save religion, because he had been forced
to sell his horses. They extracted from this crowd the force it
contained, and made use of it. They made everything contribute to
repression: the law, despotism, the assemblies, the tribune, the jury,
the magistracy, the police; in Lombardy the sabre, at Naples the
convict prison, in Hungary the gibbet. To remuzzle men's intellects, to
replace the fetters on men's minds, these runaway slaves, to prevent
the past from disappearing, to prevent the future from being born, to
remain kings, powerful, privileged and happy, all means were good, all
just, all legitimate. For the exigencies of the struggle, they
manufactured and spread throughout the world a sort of ambuscade-morality
against liberty, which Ferdinand put in action at Palermo, Antonelli at
Rome, Schwartzenberg at Milan and at Pesth, and later, at Paris, those
wolves of state, the men of December.

There was a nation among the nations, which was a sort of elder brother
in this family of the oppressed, a prophet in the human tribe. This
nation took the initiative of the whole human movement. It went on,
saying, "Come!" and the rest followed. As a complement to the
fraternity of men, in the Gospel, it taught the fraternity of nations.
It spoke by the voice of its writers, of its poets, of its
philosophers, of its orators, as by a single mouth, and its words flew
to the extremities of the earth, to rest, like tongues of fire, upon
the brow of all nations. It presided over the communion of intellects.
It multiplied the bread of life to those who were wandering in the
desert. One day it was enveloped in a tempest; it marched over the
abyss, and said to the frightened nations: "Why are you afraid?" The
wave of the revolutions it had excited subsided under its footsteps,