the throne, but through a grape-shot-and-canistered mutiny of the
proletariat against Capital. That which it imagined to be the most
revolutionary, came about as the most counter-revolutionary event. The
fruit fell into its lap, but it fell from the Tree of Knowledge, not
from the Tree of life.

The exclusive power of the bourgeois republic lasted only from June
24 to the 10th of December, 1848. It is summed up in the framing of a
republican constitution and in the state of siege of Paris.

The new Constitution was in substance only a republicanized edition of
the constitutional charter of 1830. The limited suffrage of the July
monarchy, which excluded even a large portion of the bourgeoisie from
political power, was irreconcilable with the existence of the bourgeois
republic. The February revolution had forthwith proclaimed direct and
universal suffrage in place of the old law. The bourgeois republic could
not annul this act. They had to content themselves with tacking to it
the limitation a six months' residence. The old organization of the
administrative law, of municipal government, of court procedures of the
army, etc., remained untouched, or, where the constitution did change
them, the change affected their index, not their subject; their name,
not their substance.

The inevitable "General Staff" of the "freedoms" of 1848--personal
freedom, freedom of the press, of speech, of association and of
assemblage, freedom of instruction, of religion, etc.--received a
constitutional uniform that rendered them invulnerable. Each of these
freedoms is proclaimed the absolute right of the French citizen, but
always with the gloss that it is unlimited in so far only as it be not
curtailed by the "equal rights of others," and by the "public safety,"