giant,
arising, from all sides, on the shoulders of those most wretched in
their poverty, and through all the devious ways of politics; it was
especially shameless in its way of taking part in war and its glorious
successes. Even the rapid progress of technique, hastened by the urgency
of circumstances, gave material and occasion to the prosperity of
business.

The laws of bourgeois economics, which are those of individual
production in the antagonistic field of competition, revolted furiously,
through violence and ruse, against the idealistic efforts of a
revolutionary government which, strong in its certainty of saving its
country, and stronger still in its illusion of founding for eternity the
liberty of equals, believed it was possible to suppress gambling by the
guillotine, to eliminate Business by closing the Stock Exchange and to
assure existence to the common people by fixing the maximum of prices
for objects of prime necessity. Commodities, prices and Business
reasserted with violence their own liberty against those who wished to
preach to them and impose ethics upon them.

Thermidor, whatever may have been the original intentions of the
Thermidorians, whether vile, cowardly, or misguided, was, in its hidden
causes as in its apparent effects, the triumph of Business over
democratic idealism. The constitution of 1793, which marks the extreme
limit that can be reached by the democratic ideal, was never put into
practice. The grave pressure of circumstances, the menace of the
foreigner, the different forms of internal rebellion, from the
Girondists to the Vendee, rendered necessary an exceptional government,
which was the Terror, born of fear. In proportion as dangers ceased, the
need of the terror ceased. But the democracy shattered itself against
the Business which was bringing into existence the property of new
proprietors. The constitution of the year III. consecrated the principle
of moderate liberalism, whence proceeds all the constitutionalism of the
European continent; but it was, before all else, the road leading to the
guaranty of property. To change the proprietors while preserving
property--that is the banner, the watchword, the ensign which defied
through the years from Aug. 10, 1792, the violent tumults as well as the
bold designs of those who attempted to found society upon virtue,
equality and Spartan abnegation. But the Directory was the footpath by
which the revolution arrived at the downfall o