of a monarchic form of bourgeois government; above all, it demanded
for the bourgeoisie the lion's share of the government. As to how this
transformation was to be accomplished, the party was far from being
clear. What, however, was clear as day to it and was openly declared at
the reform banquets during the last days of Louis Philippe's reign, was
its unpopularity with the democratic middle class, especially with the
revolutionary proletariat. These pure republicans, as pure republicans
go, were at first on the very point of contenting themselves with the
regency of the Duchess of Orleans, when the February revolution broke
out, and when it gave their best known representatives a place in the
provisional government. Of course, they enjoyed from the start the
confidence of the bourgeoisie and of the majority of the Constitutional
National Assembly. The Socialist elements of the Provisional Government
were promptly excluded from the Executive Committee which the Assembly
had elected upon its convening, and the party of the "National"
subsequently utilized the outbreak of the June insurrection to dismiss
this Executive Committee also, and thus rid itself of its nearest
rivals--the small traders' class or democratic republicans
(Ledru-Rollin, etc.). Cavaignac, the General of the bourgeois republican
party, who command at the battle of June, stepped into the place of the
Executive Committee with a sort of dictatorial power. Marrast, former
editor-in-chief of the "National", became permanent President of the
Constitutional National Assembly, and the Secretaryship of State,
together with all the other important posts, devolved upon the pure
republicans.

The republican bourgeois party, which since long had looked upon itself
as the legitimate heir of the July monarchy, thus found itself surpassed
in its own ideal; but it cam to power, not as it had dreamed under
Louis Philippe, through a liberal revolt of the bourgeoisie against