carry off his
roof, should exclaim: "Wicked river!"? The statesmen of the past, those
great builders of dams across streams, spend their time in exclaiming:
"Wicked people!"

Take away Polignac and the July ordinances, that is to say, the dam,
and Charles X would have died at the Tuileries. Reform in 1847 the
electoral laws, that is to say once more, take away the dam, and Louis
Philippe would have died on the throne. Do I mean thereby that the
Republic would not have come? Not so. The Republic, we repeat, is the
future; it would have come, but step by step, successive progress by
progress, conquest by conquest, like a river that flows, and not like a
deluge that overflows; it would have come at its own hour, when all was
ready for it; it would have come, certainly not more enduring, for it
is already indestructible, but more tranquil, free from all possibility
of reaction, with no princes keeping watch, with no _coup d'etat_
behind.

The policy which obstructs the progress of mankind--let us insist on
this point--excels in producing artificial floods. Thus it had managed
to render the year 1852 a sort of formidable eventuality, and this
again by the same contrivance, by means of a dam. Here is a railway; a
train will pass in an hour; throw a beam across the rails, and when the
train comes to that point it will be wrecked, as it was at Fampoux;
remove the beam before the train arrives, and it will pass without even
suspecting the catastrophe recently lurking there. This beam is the law
of the 31st of May.

The leaders of the majority of the Legislative Assembly had thrown it
across 1852, and they cried: "This is where society will be crushed!"
The Left replied: "Take away your beam, and let universal suffrage pass
unobstructed." This is the whole history of the law of the 31st of May.

These are things for children to understand, but which "statesmen" do
not understand.

Now let us answer the question we just now proposed: Without the 2nd of
December, what would have occurred in 1852?

Revoke the law of the 31st of May, take away the dam from before the
people, deprive Bonaparte of his lever, his weapon, his pretext, let
universal suffrage alone, take the beam off the rails, and do you know
what you would have had in 1852?

Nothing.

Elections.

A sort of peaceful Sundays, when the people would have come forward to
vote, labourers yesterday, today electors, to-morrow labourers, and
always sovereign.

Some