s the regnant principle. It presided over the
session of the Committee which drew up the Constitution of the second
Republic. Armand Marrast, the most important of the men who framed that
document, based the measure of universal suffrage upon "the invisible
law which rules societies," the law of progress which has been so long
denied but which is rooted in the nature of man. His argument was
this: Revolutions are due to the repression of progress, and are the
expression and triumph of a progress which has been achieved. But such
convulsions are an undesirable method of progressing; how can they be
avoided? Only by organising elastic institutions in which new ideas
of amelioration can easily be incorporated, and laws which can be
accommodated without struggle or friction to the rise of new opinions.
What is needed is a flexible government open to the penetration of
ideas, and the key to such a government is universal suffrage.

[Footnote: Marrast, "the invisible law"; "Oui," he continues, "toute
societe est progressive, parce que tout individu est educable,
perfectible; on peut mesurer, limiter, peut-etre les facultes d'un
individu; on ne saurait limiter, mesurer ce que peuvent, dans l'ordre
des idees, les intelligences dont les produits ne s'ajoutent pas
seulement mais se fecondent et se multiplient dans une progression
indefinie." No. 393 Republique francoise. Assemblee nationale. Projet de
Constitution... precede par un rapport fait au nom de la Commission par
le citoyen Armand Marrast. Seance du 30 aout, 1848.]

Universal suffrage was practical politics, but the success of the
revolution fluttered agreeably all the mansions of Utopia, and social
reformers of every type sought to improve the occasion. In the history
of the political struggles of 1848 the names are written of Proudhon,
of Victor Considerant the disciple of Fourier, of Pierre Leroux the
humanitarian communist, and his devoted pupil George Sand. The chief
title of Leroux to be remembered is just his influence over the soul
of the great novelist. Her later romances are pervaded by ideas derived
from his teaching. His communism was vague and ineffectual, but he was
one of the minor forces in the thought of the period, and there are some
features in his theory which deserve to be pointed out.

Leroux had begun as a member of the Saint-Simonian school, but he
diverged into a path of his own. He reinstated the ideal of equality
which Saint-Simon rejected, a