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inent. He would have conducted it at least better than the lawyer Marie, who was totally ignorant on the subject. Had Louis Blanc succeeded, he would at any rate have quieted the labouring classes. Had he failed, he would have been incapacitated from mischief. But the Provisional Government unfortunately did not entrust the workshops to the chief Socialist professor, but placed that professor at the head of a commission which was to sit in the Luxembourg, and instead of practising on the national workshops, he was to preach and propagate hopes and ideas with the working and other classes assembled to hear and discuss with him. The result was that Louis Blanc and his aide-de-camp, Albert, created an enthusiastic army of followers at the Luxembourg, whilst the minister of public works was enrolling workmen to play at pitch and toss, and receive government salary at the rate of thousands a day.

Whilst the Socialists thus partially succeeded with the government, the Terrorists, or Sans-culottes of the old traditions of the Revolution, came to make their demands too. They had far more villanous intentions, and a more formidable following, than the Socialists, filling the Place de Grève with their bands, whilst their chiefs penetrated to the presence of the Provisional Government. Their desires, indeed, were not such as could be expressed. They objected to a garde mobile, or indeed to any new force save their own revolutionary legion, organised under Caussidière, at the Prefecture. The people who followed them did not ask for employment or workshops, but pay, such as the revolutionists received in 1793, for inspiring and supporting terror. A tax on the rich to feed themselves, or the poor, as they alleged. All these things, which could only be obtained by terror, and terror awakened chiefly by the guillotine, were expressed in the one symbol-the red flag. The colour red indeed was sought by them to be universally applied. Cockades, colours, caps, all

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CHAP. were to be red. And to make this demand of the red republic, the Terrorists gathered to the Hôtel de Ville. Fortunately the different parties were not as yet directly marked and decided, though each of them had already collected in clubs.

There were many mistaken moderate men, and of no opinion, mixed up and confounded with others predetermined to go every revolutionary length. Lamartine made a most courageous resistance to the red flag, and he inspirited his colleagnes to show equal resolution. Louis Blanc at first seemed to say that the colour of the flag was of little consequence, and that at all events each revolution, as it was different in spirit and aim from its predecessor, had a right to a different flag. But Lamartine would not abide such a theory. The flag denoted the cause, and the red flag, if hoisted, would be but the recommencement of the old revolution, its men, and its armies. The Provisional Government, or its majority, adopted his views, and shared his resolution. The difficulty was to persuade and overrule the mob, the packed mob of revolutionists. This Lamartine and, indeed, his colleagues, undertook, defending themselves, and haranguing each portion of the people as they surged up, and declaring that the Tricolour flag, which had made the victorious tour of the world, should be their flag, and not the despicable rag, never red but in the blood of its own fellow-citizens.

Lamartine has left an animated description of his struggles on this occasion,* of the effect of his eloquence, and of the way in which, making one or two proselytes in the crowd, these came to his succour, and, with tears as well as passion, aided in dissuading their comrades from violence and from obstinacy. The people, it was evident, were not Terrorist. Though led away at first to adopt their shibboleth and symbol, they remained the

* See also Dunoyer, Hist. de la Rév. de 1848.

honest citizens of the nineteenth century, not the maniacs of the close of the eighteenth. They were persuaded by the arguments of such orators as Lamartine, and were brought to admit that order, glory, and the Tricolour were preferable to anarchy, bloodshed, and even plunder under the red flag. It was a glorious triumph, for which Lamartine did not indeed reap his reward at the time, but which twenty years later was remembered in the national grant of 500,000 francs voted him by the Assembly of 1867.

After having settled the great question of the national colours, proclaimed the abolition of the pain of death, gone through a solemn funeral ceremony in honour of the slain during the last revolution, the Provisional Government announced (March 5) that, the Assembly being dissolved, another was to be immediately elected by universal suffrage, and by lists, as was the habit in America. Six months' residence was required. number of members was fixed at 900.

The

After this the most pressing subject was the financial. The half year's interest on the Five per Cents was due the 22nd, and there was little more money in the Treasury than what would suffice to meet it. The Bank had already suspended cash payments, but was bound not to issue more than a certain amount of notes. How to pay the new garde mobile, the army, the national workshops? The revolution had suspended the octroi of Paris. Different interests pressed for a reduction of these taxes. The journals almost refused to pay the stamp duty. The provinces clamoured against the gabelle, or salt tax.* Goudchaux, the finance minister, resigned, and Garnier Pagès was obliged to take his place. In the paralysis or abolition of indirect taxes, direct taxes could only be come upon. Garnier Pagès, by a decree, augmented these by 45 per cent.

* Memoir of Garnier Pagès; Goudchaux's Report.

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CHAP. XLVIII.

This was a contribution of 7,000,000l. or 8,000,0007. sterling, struck chiefly upon the landed proprietors, so many of them poor,* throughout France. It was the first boon which the revolution conferred upon them, and they never forgave it. Yet had the country known the alternatives which were proposed and discussed, such as national bankruptcy, a tax on the rich exclusively, a forced loan, and other projects of the kind, it would have hailed Garnier Pagès' tax as the salvation of property and society. The rural population were nevertheless in their first burst of indignation at what they called the rapacity of the Parisians, when a flock of commissioners arrived amongst them for the purpose of republicanising the rural districts, and influencing the elections. These strangers were very ill received, except by a certain class in the chief towns, the members of the revolutionary societies. A kind of journal, or bulletin, was at this time issued from the home office, and circulated by post. Written by Madame Sand, under the patronage of Ledru-Rollin, in glowing style and with Socialist conclusions, it excited its readers amongst the populace to insurrection, and seriously alarmed every one else. † The ministerial instructions to the commissioners, also published, endowed them with the duties and powers of the old proconsuls of the Convention. Their authority and their duties were both declared in the document to be revolutionary. The interests of the Republic were to be secured at all risks and all extremes. The elections were to be forced, and if government was not successful in them, another insurrection would set all right. The Committee of Public Safety might have

*Cassagnac speaks of 5,500,000

of peasant proprietors paying but
5 francs tax.

"If the new elections," said
one of these bulletins, "do not pro-
duce the triumph of Socialist truth,
and merely express the interests of

a caste, there will remain but one resource for the people of the barricades. This is to manifest its will once more, and adjourn the decisions of a false representative assembly of the nation."-See Danie! Stern's Hist. de la Révolution.

issued these decrees with the guillotine at its back, but to send forth such edicts without terror to suppress resistance and disgust was on the part of Ledru-Rollin little short of madness.*

The Paris clubs, in the meantime, were affected with alarm at the prospect of the new Assembly. Their friends in the provinces wrote to say that they were in a minority, that the elections were indifferent and hostile, and that, to obtain a majority, it would require the employ of the old revolutionary excitement and terrorism to work up the feelings or the fears of the people to the due pitch. They demanded in consequence the adjournment of the elections. In this they were seconded by the Socialists, who were convinced that the new Assembly, chosen by millions of proprietors, would not sanction such a scheme, or such principles, as Louis Blanc's. A government which would at once proceed to the realisation and enforcement of these schemes, and accomplish its complete organisation and establishment, before the gathering of an Assembly was what the Socialists demanded. Louis Blanc expressed this in the demand for a dictatorship for a year. For this, however, it was not only necessary to adjourn the elections but to change the government, in other words, to expel the moderate and anti-Socialist members, Lamartine, Arago, and leave Ledru-Rollin and Louis Blanc masters of the situation. To such a project Ledru-Rollin himself and Louis Blanc objected. They did not want to go the length of expelling their moderate colleagues from the government, but only frightening them into acquiescence.

Such plans were mooted and discussed when a very foolish incident facilitated them. The home minister had claimed the power of annulling the election of officers to the National Guard,† and decided that

* Ledru Rollin's Circular.

Lord Normanby's Year of Revolution,

CHAP.

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