y, it was silly not to foresee that it would meet with a warlike
reception; if it was intended for actual war, it was rather original
to lay aside the weapons with which war had to be conducted. But the
revolutionary threats of the middle class and of their democratic
representatives are mere attempts to frighten an adversary; when they
have run themselves into a blind alley, when they have sufficiently
compromised themselves and are compelled to execute their threats, the
thing is done in a hesitating manner that avoids nothing so much as the
means to the end, and catches at pretexts to succumb. The bray of the
overture, that announces the fray, is lost in a timid growl so soon as
this is to start; the actors cease to take themselves seriously, and the
performance falls flat like an inflated balloon that is pricked with a
needle.

No party exaggerates to itself the means at its disposal more than
the democratic, none deceives itself with greater heedlessness on the
situation. A part of the Army voted for it, thereupon the Mountain is
of the opinion that the Army would revolt in its favor. And by what
occasion? By an occasion, that, from the standpoint of the troops, meant
nothing else than that the revolutionary soldiers should take the part
of the soldiers of Rome against French soldiers. On the other hand,
the memory of June, 1848, was still too fresh not to keep alive a deep
aversion on the part of the proletariat towards the National Guard, and
a strong feeling of mistrust on the part of the leaders of the secret
societies for the democratic leaders. In order to balance these
differences, great common interests at stake were needed. The violation
of an abstract constitutional paragraph could not supply such interests.
Had not the constitution been repeatedly violated, according to the
assurances of the democrats themselves? Had not the most popular papers
branded them as a counter-revolutionary artifice? But the democrat--by
reason of his representing the middle class, that is to say, a
Transition Class, in which the interests of two other classes are
mutually dulled--, imagines himself above all class contrast. The
democrats grant that opposed to them stands a privileged class, but
they, together with the whole remaining mass of the nation, constitute
the "PEOPLE." What they represent is the "people's rights"; their
interests are the "people's interests." Hence, they do not consider
that, at an impending struggle,