CHAP. XLVIII. real republic. As such the middle classes would have supported it, and the people applauded. This, no doubt, had its risks and incertitudes. War was one of them, and to what war might have led, none can tell. But the accusation was perhaps just that Louis-Philippe and M. Guizot merely essayed a second edition of the Restoration, which, with the elder Bourbons for monarchs, might have done very well, but with the King of the Barricades was an anachronism. We now come to the experiment of the republic. It was by no means the people that either plotted or suggested it. The writers of the National, Lamartine, Garnier Pagès, Marrast, Ledru-Rollin, were amateur politicians, literary or professional men of the middle class, Lamartine himself of a higher grade of society, who saw no possible sovereign, and desired none, and who in consequence tried the more impracticable scheme of erecting a republic, governed by middle-class intelligence, interests, and ideas, in the midst of a civic population, of which the very dregs had boiled up to the surface. Could one even have swept away this mass of popular and civic foam, a republic was difficult, if not impossible, in a vast country without republican institutions, and without habits of local independence. This republic, too, became the banner of the most disorderly and anarchic classes of the capital and the provinces, which, instead of having learned to avoid the excesses and atrocities of the first republic, gloried in them on the contrary, the popular horde in the capital eager to recommence and re-enact them. That a French republic in 1848 must end in dictatorship and despotism was evident indeed from the first day. The only questions were, Who should be the dictator? and, Of what kind should be the despotism? It took three years to decide. And yet it required no wonderful gift of prophecy to foretell where authority would concentrate. Almost every eminent person sent in his adherence to the republic, XLVIII. from Béranger and Larochejaquelin to the members of CHAP. the Buonaparte family. Louis-Napoleon came at once to Paris with his adhesion; but the Provisional Government feared his presence, and bade him begone, as dangerous to their supremacy and to the public peace. The Prince instantly obeyed. The first personage, who in the afternoon of the 24th reached the Hôtel de Ville, and assumed authority there was Garnier Pagès,* who had been sent by Odilon Barrot. He found the municipal council sitting, and he was forthwith chosen and installed as mayor. Soon after came Lamartine and the members of the Provisional Government, named at the Chamber, Dupont de l'Eure, Arago, Crémieux, Marie, and Ledru-Rollin. They experienced great difficulty in making their way into the edifice, and almost as great in finding a room in which they might sit and constitute a council. The crowd followed, and hustled and threatened, a bevy of friends and students struggling to keep them off. The first serious business was to distribute the offices and duties of the ministry. The most aged, Dupont de l'Eure, was declared president of the council. Lamartine took foreign affairs; Ledru, the interior; Crémieux, an Israelite, with a most un-Jewish physiognomy, became justice minister; Marie, public works; Carnot, public instruction; the Banker Goudchaux, finance; Arago, marine. This was accomplished by seven o'clock, when some time after eight appeared Marrast, Flocon, and Louis Blanc, to claim their share in the government. The writers of the Réforme, a more radical Republican paper, on hearing that the National had drawn up a list of governors for the country, made out another one of equal right. It was the same list as that of the National, except that Flocon, editor of the Réforme, well known * His Histoire de la Révolution de 1848; Lamartine's Histoire de la Révolution de 1848; Régnault's Hist. du Gouvernement provisionnel; CHAP. XLVIII. as a reporter in the gallery to the Constitutionnel, and Louis Blanc, one of its writers, were added, and with them an artisan, named Albert, a manufacturer of buttons, and a member of the secret Republican societies.* The Réforme was too late to despatch its list to the Chamber and get it sanctioned there. But it did not deem its right of electing the sovereigns of the country less sacred, or less clear. The original seven, however, named by the Chamber, objected to receive their new colleagues except as secretaries. So M. Garnier Pagès arranged it. The secretaries, however, took their seats with the other members of the government, and the question being soon raised as to whether a republic should be proclaimed or not, the new members showed themselves as loud and as influential as the others. They were indeed for proclaiming a republic at once and absolutely, whilst the others were for proclaiming it conditionally, until its ratification by the country. This latter proposal prevailed, and the Republic was proclaimed from the windows of the Hôtel de Ville. Loud as were the acclamations which followed this announcement, it satisfied and tranquillised no one. To the middle class, the Republic enthroned at the Hôtel de Ville offered nothing to which they could rally. On the other hand, the secret societies and more ardent of the people were disappointed to see supreme power wielded by parliamentarians such as Lamartine, Garnier Pagès, and Marie. There was no time or means for making any plot or plan for altering this constitution of the government. But individuals and bands came one after the other, all through the evening and night, to apostrophise the members of the government, menace, hustle them, and demand all kinds of absurdities and impossibilities. Lamartine was the chief orator of the government, who faced them, whose eloquence often appeased, some * Garnier Pagès, Louis Blanc's Pages d'Histoire, De la Hodde. XLVIII. times dominated them, always at least prevented the CHAP. crowd from proceeding to violence. Some, however, demanded his head. "My head, citizen, I wish it was on your shoulders, and then you would have some common sense." This trifling retort changed the imprecations of the mob to laughter. Whilst Lamartine thus perorated for his life and the existence of government at the Hôtel de Ville, some of his colleagues laboured to quiet the disorder, which from the streets had spread to the environs of the capital. Everywhere country houses and palaces were sacked, that of Louis-Philippe at Neuilly, of Rothschild at Boulogne. The railway stations were burned; Vincennes was threatened.* The National Guards marched forth to prevent these excesses; that of Versailles saved the palace. The first impulse of such members of the government as met in the morning of the 25th was to follow an example given in 1830, and enrol the wild youth of the barricades into regiments to be called the garde nationale mobile. They were given good pay, the liberty of choosing their own officers, and other immunities. The offer was grasped at; and the young marauders of the 24th became regular soldiers on the 28th. It was well for the government thus to collect a force, for the anarchists were organising themselves. Caussidière and two agents of the secret societies, as well as of the Réforme, took possession of the police, and organised there a regiment of the worst and most reckless of the combatants of the barricades, not the gamins, but the veterans of conspiracy and crime. The army itself was threatened with dissolution. The people had everywhere broken into the barracks, taken the muskets, whilst the soldiers, disgusted, were ready to disband. Ere the new garde mobile could be organised, or either the National Guard or the soldiers brought to Memoirs of Caussidière. XLVIII. protect the new government, its members, during the 25th, were assaulted by the same enemies which had first shown themselves, but no longer in a confused manner or in unorganised groups. The popular opponents of a civic republican government by such men as Lamartine might be classed either as Socialists or Terrorists. The first had conceived the idea, if not of seizing and confiscating all capital, at least substituting for it an employing power to be wielded by the State. This doctrine, preached in the secret societies, had not as yet the opportunity of prevailing or being applied. Two of its professors, Louis Blanc and Albert, had installed themselves in the Provisional Government. And deputations of their followers came on the 25th, not to recommend or supplicate, but insist upon this view being acted upon. A stentor of the name of Marche was their spokesman on this occasion, his rudeness alone being sufficient to excite opposition. This was shown not only by Lamartine, but by Arago, Dupont de l'Eure, and Marie. Louis Blanc tried to soften and excuse his rude behaviour. But the majority of the government would not sign or sanction these Socialist demands. They consented, however, to a compromise. The government promised to find labour for the workman, and to fix a minimum of his gains. And this was the essential point. Lamartine and his friends did not perceive that in granting this they really granted all. And it was seen a few days later when Marie, as minister of public works, prepared to open national workshops for all artisans and labourers out of employ. Louis Blanc was unjustly charged with having originated this system of State employ for the labourer. But in truth, he had nothing to do with the national workshops. His ideas were more scientific and more complex. And whether impracticable or not, since he had been allowed a seat in the government, he ought to have been permitted to preside over and direct the experi |