We have seen that the development of the middle class was a slow and gradual process, the complex result of a complex mass of forces. Considering that the special theme of the _Working Men’s Programme_ is the historical function of the working class, it is certainly a most serious defect of Lassalle’s exposition that he says so little of the causes which have conditioned the development of the working class as the representatives of a new era. Their appearance on the pages of Lassalle as the supporters of a great _rôle_ is far too sudden. On the 24th of February 1848, he says, broke the first dawn of a new historical period. On that day in France a revolution broke out, which called a workman into the Provisional Government; which declared the aim of the State to be the improvement of the lot of the working class; and which proclaimed direct and universal suffrage, whereby every citizen who had attained the age of twenty-one should, without regard to property, have an equal share in all political activity. The working class were therefore destined to be the rulers and makers of a new society. But the rule of the working class had this enormous difference from other forms of class rule, that it admits of no special privilege. We are all workers, in so far as we have the will in any way to make ourselves useful to the human society. The working class is therefore identical with the whole human race. Its cause is in truth the cause of entire humanity, its freedom is the freedom of humanity itself, its rule is the rule of all. The formal means of realising this is direct universal suffrage, which is no magic wand, but which at least can rectify its own mistakes. It is the lance which heals the wounds itself has made. Under universal suffrage the legislature is the true mirror of the people that has chosen it, reflecting its defects, but its progress also, for which it affords unlimited expression and development. The people must therefore always regard direct universal suffrage as its indispensable political weapon, as the most fundamental and weightiest of its demands. And we need not fear that they will abuse their power; for while the position and interests of the old privileged classes became inconsistent with the general progress of humanity, the mass of the people must know that their interests can be advanced only by promoting the good of their whole class. Even a very moderate sense of their own welfare must teach them that each individual can separately do very little to improve his condition. They can prevail only by union. Thus their personal interest, instead of being opposed to the movement of history, coincides with the development of the whole people and is in harmony with freedom, culture, and the highest ideas of our time.