第21章
In the conflict between the Constituent Assembly and the President, the former could not refer back to the general election as its origin, for the appeal was from the Assembly to universal suffrage.It could base itself on no regularly constituted power, for the issue was the struggle against the legal power.It could not overthrow the ministry by no-confidence votes, as it again essayed to do on January 6 and 26, for the ministry did not ask for its confidence.Only one possibility was left to it, that of insurrection.The fighting forces of the insurrection were the republican part of the National Guard, the Mobile Guard, and the centers of the revolutionary proletariat, the clubs.The Mobile Guard, those heroes of the June days, in December formed the organized fighting force of the republican faction of the bourgeoisie, just as before June the national ateliers had formed the organized fighting force of the revolutionary proletariat.As the Executive Commission of the Constituent Assembly directed its brutal attack on the national ateliers , when it had to put an end to the now unbearable pretensions of the proletariat, so the ministry of Bonaparte directed its attack on the Mobile Guard, when it had to put an end to the now unbearable pretensions of the republican faction of the bourgeoisie.
It ordered the disbanding of the Mobile Guard.One half of it was dismissed and thrown on the street, the other was organized on monarchist instead of democratic lines, and its pay was reduced to the usual pay of troops of the line.The Mobile Guard found itself in the position of the June insurgents and every day the press carried public confessions in which it admitted its blame for June and implored the proletariat to forgive it.
And the clubs? From the moment when the Constituent Assembly in the person of Barrot called in question the President, and in the person of the President the constituted bourgeois republic, and in the person of the constituted bourgeois republic the bourgeois republic in general, all the constituent elements of the February Republic necessarily ranged themselves around it -- all the parties that wished to overthrow the existing republic and by a violent retrograde process to transform it into a republic of their class interests and principles.The scrambled eggs were unscrambled, the crystallizations of the revolutionary movement had again become fluid, the republic that was being fought for was again the indefinite republic of the February days, the defining of which each party reserved to itself.
For a moment the parties again took up their old February positions, without sharing the illusions of February.The tricolor republicans on the National again leaned on the democratic republicans of the Rifonne and pushed them as protagonists into the foreground of the parliamentary struggle.The democratic republicans again leaned on the socialist republicans -- on January 27 a public manifesto announced their reconciliation and union -- and prepared their insurrectional background in the clubs.The ministerial press rightly treated the tricolor republicans of the National as the resurrected insurgents of June.In order to maintain themselves at the head of the bourgeois republic, they called in question the bourgeois republic itself.
On January 26 Minister Faucher proposed a law on the right of association, the first paragraph of which read: "Clubs are forbidden." He moved that this bill immediately be discussed as urgent.The Constituent Assembly rejected the motion of urgency, and on January 27 Ledru-Rollin put forward a proposition, with 230 signatures appended to it, to impeach the ministry for violation of the constitution.The impeachment of the ministry at times when such an act was a tactless disclosure of the impotence of the judge, to wit, the majority of the Chamber, or an impotent protest of the accuser against this majority itself -- that was the great revolutionary trump that the latter-day Montagne played from now on at each high spot of the crisis.Poor Montagne! crushed by the weight of its own name!
On May 15 Blanqui, Barbes, Raspall, etc., had attempted to break up the Constituent Assembly by forcing an entrance into its hall at the head of the Paris proletariat.Barrot prepared a moral May 15 for the same Assembly when he wanted to dictate its self-dissolution and close the hall.
The same Assembly had commissioned Barrot to make the inquiry against the May accused, and now, at the moment when he appeared before it like a royalist Blanqui, when it sought for allies against him in the clubs, among the revolutionary proletarians, in the party of Blanqui -- at this moment the relentless Barrot tormented it with the proposal to withdraw the May prisoners from the Court of Assizes with its jury and hand them over to the High Court, the haute cour devised by the party of the National.Remarkable how wild fear for a ministerial portfolio could pound out of the head of a Barrot points worthy of a Beaumarchais! After much vacillation the National Assembly accepted his proposal.As against the makers of the May attempt, it reverted to its normal character.