Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 401, March 1849Various
Science
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 401, March 1849
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
Of the hopes and designs of the extreme moderate and supposed
reactionary party, little can be said, inasmuch as it has kept its
thoughts to itself, and not permitted itself to give any open
evidences whatever upon the point. But the ardent and impetuous
_Montagnards_ are by no means so cautious: their designs, and hopes,
and fears, have been clearly enough expressed; and they flash forth
continually, as lightnings in the midst of the thunder of their
incessant tumult. The allies and representatives, and, if all tales be
true, the chiefs of the Red-republican party out of the Assembly--they
still cherish the hope of establishing an ultra-democratic republican
government, by some means or other--"by foul if fair should fail"--a
government of despotic rule by violence--of propagandism by
constraint--of systematic anarchy. They still form visions of some
future Convention of which they may be the heroes--of a parliamentary
tyrannical oligarchy, by which they may enforce their extravagant
opinions. Driven to the most flagrant inconsistencies by their false
position, they declare themselves also the true and supreme organ--not
only of those they call "the people," but of the nation at large;
while, at the same time, they affect to despise, and they even
denounce as criminal, the general expression of public opinion, as
evidenced by universal suffrage. They assume the attitudes of
_sauveurs de la patrie_; and in the next breath they declare that
_patrie traitre_ to itself. They vaunt themselves to be the _élus de
la nation_; and they openly express their repugnance to meet again, as
candidates for the new legislative assembly, that majority of the
nation which they now would drag before the tribunal of republicanism
as counter-revolutionary and reactionary. In short, the only universal
suffrage to which they would appeal is that of the furious minority of
their perverted or hired bands among the dregs of the people. They
have thus in vain used every effort to prolong to an indefinite
period, or even to render permanent, if possible, the existence of
that Assembly which their own party attacked in May, and which they
themselves have so often denounced as reactionary. It is the rock of
salvation upon which they fix their frail anchor of power, in default
of that more solid and elevated foundation for their sway, which they
are well aware can now only be laid for them by the hands of
insurgents, and cemented by the blood of civil strife in the already
blood-flooded streets of Paris. With the same necessary inconsistency
which marks their whole conduct, they fix their hopes of advent to
power upon the overthrow of the Assembly of which they are not
masters, together with the whole present system of government; while
they support the principle of the inviolability and immovability of
that same Assembly, under such circumstances called by them "the holy
ark of the country," when a fresh appeal is to be made to the mass of
the nation at large.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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