Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 401, March 1849. Various
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. During the waverings and vacillations of the majority – itself clinging to place and power – they more than once expected a triumph for themselves in a declaration of the Assembly's permanence, with the secret hope, en arrière pensée, of finding fair cause for that insurrection by which alone they would fully profit, if a coup-de-main were to be attempted by the government, in obedience to the loudly-expressed clamour of popular opinion, to wreck that "holy ark" in which they had embarked their lesser hopes. When, however, they found that the crew were disposed to desert it, on feeling the storms of public manifestation blowing too hard against it – when they found that they themselves must in a few weeks, or at latest months, quit its tottering planks, their rage has known no bounds. Every manœuvre that can be used to prolong life, by prolonging even the daily existence of the Assembly, is unscrupulously put into practice. They clamour, they interrupt discussion – they denounce – they produce those daily "incidents" of French parliamentary tradition which prevent the progress of parliamentary business – they invent fresh interpellations, to create further delays by long-protracted angry quarrel and acrimony. Part of all this system of denunciation, recrimination, and acrimonious accusation, belongs, it is true, to their assumed character as the dramatis personæ of an imaginary Convention. They have their cherished models of old, to copy which is their task, and their glory; the dramatic traditions of the old Convention are ever in their winds, and are to be followed in manner, and even costume, as far as possible. And thus Ledru Rollin, another would-be Danton, tosses back his head, and raises his nose aloft, and pulls up his burly form, to thunder forth his angry Red-republican indignation; and Felix Pyat, the melodramatic dramatist, of the boulevard du crime– fully in his place where living dramas, almost as extravagant and ranting as those from his own pen, are to be performed – rolls his large round dark eyes, and swells his voice, and shouts, and throws about his arms, after the fashion of those melodrama actors for whose noisy declamation he has afforded such good stuff, and because of his picturesque appearance, fancies himself, it would seem, a new St Just. And Sarrans, soi-disant "the young," acts after no less melodramatic a fashion, as if in rivalry for the parts of jeune premier in the drama, but cannot get beyond the airs of a provincial groundling; and Lagrange, with his ferocious and haggard countenance, and his grizzled long hair and beard, yells from his seat, although in the tribune he affects a milder language now, as if to contradict and deny his past deeds. And Proudhon shouts too, although he puts on a benevolent air patelin, beneath the spectacles on his round face, when he proposes his schemes for the destruction of the whole fabric of society. And Pierre Leroux, the frantic philosopher, shakes his wild greasy mane of hair about his heavy greasy face, and raves, as ever, discordantly; and old Lammenais, the renegade ex-priest, bends his gloomy head, and snarls and growls, and utters low imprecations, instead of priestly blessings, and looks like another Marat, even if he denies the moral resemblance to its full extent. And Greppo shouts and struggles with Felix Pyat for the much-desired part of St Just. And gray-bearded Couthons, who have not even the ardour of youth to excuse their extravagancies, rise from their curule chairs to toss up their arms, and howl in chorus. And even Jules Favre, although he belongs not to their party, barks, bites, accuses, and denounces too, all things and all men, and spits forth venom, as if he was regardless where the venom fell, or whom it blistered; and, with his pale, bilious face, and scrupulously-attired spare form, seems to endeavour to preserve, as far as he can, in a new republic, the agreeable tradition of another Robespierre. And let it not be supposed, that malice or prejudice attaches to the Montagnards these names. The men of the last republican era, whom history has execrated, calumniously and unjustly they will say, are their heroes and their demi-gods; the sage legislators, whose principles they vaunt as those of republican civilisation and humanity; the models whom they avowedly, and with a confessed air of ambition, aspire to copy in word and deed. Part, however, of the systematic confusion, which it is their evident aim to introduce into the deliberations of the Assembly, is, in latter days, to be attributable to their desire to create delays, and lead to episodical discussions of angry quarrel and recrimination, which may prolong the convulsive existence of the Assembly to an indefinite period, or by which they may profit to forward their own designs. Thus the day is rare, as a ray of sunshine in a permanent equinoctial storm, when the Montagnards do not start from their seats, upon the faintest pretext for discontent or accusation of reactionary tendencies; and, either en masse or individually, fulminate, gesticulate, clamour, shout, denounce, and threaten. The thunder upon the "Mountain's" brow is incessant: if it does not burst forth in heavy peals, it never ceases to growl. Each Montagnard is a Jupiter in his own conceit, and hurls his thunderbolt with what force he may. Not a word can be spoken by a supposed reactionary orator without a murmur – not a phrase completed without a shout of denegation, a torrent of interruptions, or peeling bursts of ironical laughter. The "Mountain" is in perpetual labour; but its produce bears more resemblance to a yelping pack of hungry blood-hounds, than to an innocent mouse: it is in perpetual movement; and, like crushing avalanches from its summit, rush down its most energetic members to the tribune, to attempt to crush the Assembly by vehemence and violence of language. These scenes of systematic tumult have necessarily increased in force, since the boiling spite of disappointment has flowed over in hot reality, in place of the affected and acted indignation: the rage and agitation no longer know the least control. The affair of the abolition of the clubs had scarcely lent an excellent pretext for this violence, when the suppression of the insurrection, and the arrests consequent upon the discomfiture of the conspiracy on the 29th of January, gave a wide field for the exercise of the system of denunciation commonly pursued. To be beforehand with accusation by counter-accusation, has been always the tactics of the party: when the party-chiefs find themselves involved in the suspicion of subversive attempts, they begin the attack. The Montagnards have burst forth, then, to declare that the military precautions were a systematic provocation on the part of the ministry and General Changarnier, to incite the population of Paris to civil discord; that the only conspiracy existed in the government itself, to suppress liberty and overthrow the republic – at least to cast a slur upon the only true republicans, and have an excuse for tyrannical oppression towards them. They closed their eyes to the fact that the insurrection, of the proposed reality of which no doubt can remain, spite of these angry denegations, would have produced a crisis to which the real reactionary anti-republicans looked as one that must produce a change in the detested government of the country, should the moderate party triumph in the struggle, as was probable; and that by the suppression of the insurrection the crisis was averted, and the republic evidently consolidated for a time, not weakened. With their usual inconsistency, and want of logical deduction, at the same time that they accused the minister of a useless and provocative display of the military force, they denounced the conspiracy as real, but as proceeding from "infamous royalists," and not anarchist Red republicans. And then, to follow up this pell-mell of self-contradictions – while, on the one hand, they denied any insurrectionary movement at