If we present to ourselves first the real meaning of the movements of 1789 and 1793, the great French Revolution, it is clear even to those of limited vision that the revolution of 1789 was purely a middle-class movement, and indeed carried on by the higher part of the middle-class. It is the struggle of the upper middle-class for the recognition of its rights, and for relief from the privileges of the ruling class of society--from the fetters in which it had been held by feudal powers. It expresses this struggle in demands for equality and freedom, but it really means from the very start a limited equality and freedom. Look at the first, trenchant, we may call them social, laws which were passed by the new regime of France. They are by no means of a popular character, or partial to the working-man; we see at the first look that they were not made by the masses for the masses, but by an aristocratic middle-class, which places itself in sharp opposition to the rabble. Thus the well-known _Loi martiale_ of October 20, 1789, a riot act, gives expression to this distinction as it speaks of the "_bons citoyens_" who must be protected by stern police regulation against the attacks of the _gens mal intentionés_; "when the mob does not disperse on warning, then the armed forces shall fire." They would so control the caprices of the masses that not a second time should a dagger find its way into the breast of an honourable baker, when the populace without authority would appropriate to itself the bread in the bakeries. I think of a second important law, born out of the doctrinaire middle-class spirit of these first years; the "Coalitions Law" of June 17, 1791. It punishes every combination of tradesworkers for the furtherance of their "alleged" common interests, as an attempt upon the freedom and rights of man, by a fine of five hundred livres and the loss of citizenship for a year. This applies equally to the employer and the working-man, we may better say the master and the journeyman; but we all know what crying injustice this equality has produced. Then comes the first consolidation of the new society, the Constitution of November 3, 1791, which, through the introduction, of limited franchise, brings to sharp and clear expression the separation between a ruling class of those well-to-do and a ruled class of the "have-nothings." There are now "full citizens" and citizens of the second class.