Whether opposed or not, whether assented to or not, the republic, all
illusions apart, is the future, proximate or remote, but inevitable, of
the nations.

How is the republic to be established? There are two ways of
establishing it: by strife and by progress. The democrats would arrive
at it by progress; their adversaries, the men of the past, appear to
desire to arrive at it by strife.

As we have just observed, the men of the past are for resisting; they
persist; they apply the axe to the tree, expecting to stop the mounting
sap. They lavish their strength, their puerility, and their anger.

Let us not utter a single bitter word against our old adversaries,
fallen with ourselves on the same day, and several among them with
honour on their side; let us confine ourselves to noting that it was
into this struggle that the majority of the Legislative Assembly of
France entered at the very beginning of its career, in the month of
May, 1849.

This policy of resistance is a deplorable policy. This struggle between
man and his Maker is inevitably vain; but, though void of result, it is
fruitful in catastrophes. That which ought to be will be; that which
ought to flow will flow; that which ought to fall will fall; that which
ought to spring up will spring up; that which ought to grow will grow;
but, obstruct these natural laws, confusion follows, disorder begins.
It is a melancholy fact that it was this disorder which was called
order.

Tie up a vein, and sickness ensues; clog up a stream, and the water
overflows; obstruct the future, and revolutions break out.

Persist in preserving among you, as if it were alive, the past, which
is dead, and you produce an indescribable moral cholera; corruption
spreads abroad, it is in the air, we breathe it; entire classes of
society, the public officials, for instance, fall into decay. Keep dead
bodies in your houses, the plague will break out.

This policy inevitably makes blind those who adopt it. Those men who
dub themselves statesmen do not understand that they themselves have
made, with their own hands and with untold labour, and with the sweat
of their brows, the terrible events they deplore, and that the very
catastrophes which fall upon them were by them constructed. What would
be said of a peasant who should build a dam from one side of a river to
the other, in front of his cottage, and who, when he saw the river
turned into a torrent, overflow, sweep away his wall, and