upward line.

Just the reverse in 1848. The proletarian party appears as an appendage
to the small traders' or democratic party; it is betrayed by the latter
and allowed to fall on April 16, May 15, and in the June days. In its
turn, the democratic party leans upon the shoulders of the bourgeois
republicans; barely do the bourgeois republicans believe themselves
firmly in power, than they shake off these troublesome associates for
the purpose of themselves leaning upon the shoulders of the party of
Order. The party of Order draws in its shoulders, lets the bourgeois
republicans tumble down heels over head, and throws itself upon the
shoulders of the armed power. Finally, still of the mind that it is
sustained by the shoulders of the armed power, the party of Order
notices one fine morning that these shoulders have turned into bayonets.
Each party kicks backward at those that are pushing forward, and leans
forward upon those that are crowding backward; no wonder that, in this
ludicrous posture, each loses its balance, and, after having cut
the unavoidable grimaces, breaks down amid singular somersaults.
Accordingly, the revolution moves along a downward line. It finds itself
in this retreating motion before the last February-barricade is cleared
away, and the first governmental authority of the revolution has been
constituted.

The period we now have before us embraces the motliest jumble of crying
contradictions: constitutionalists, who openly conspire against the
Constitution; revolutionists, who admittedly are constitutional;
a National Assembly that wishes to be omnipotent yet remains
parliamentary; a Mountain, that finds its occupation in submission,
that parries its present defeats with prophecies of future victories;
royalists, who constitute the "patres conscripti" of the republic, and