[94] _Enquête sur le 18 Mars_, Dr. Danet, vol. ii. p. 531.
[95] Of course the Radicals have seen in this a Bonapartist manoeuvre, have written and said from the tribune of the Assembly, "The Bonapartist director of the Bank of France saved the Revolution; without the million of the Monday the Central Committee would have capitulated." Two facts answer this: From the 19th the Committee had in the Ministry of Finance 4,600,000 francs; the municipal coffers contained 1,200,000 francs, and on the 21st the Octroi had brought in 500,000 more.
"L'ideé de voir un massacre me remplissait de douleur."-- _Jules Favre, Enquête sur le 4 Septembre._
THE MAYORS, THE DEPUTIES, THE JOURNALISTS, THE ASSEMBLY COMBINE AGAINST PARIS--THE REACTION MARCHES ON THE PLACE VENDÔME, AND IS PUNISHED.
On the 21st the situation stood out in bold relief.
At Paris--the Central Committee, with it all the workmen and all the generous and enlightened men of the small middle-class. The Committee said, "We have but one object--the elections. Everybody is welcome to co-operate with us, but we shall not leave the Hôtel-de-Ville before they have been made."
At Versailles--the Assembly;--all the monarchists, all the great bourgeoisie, all the slaveholders. They yelled, "Paris is only a rebel, the Central Committee a band of brigands."
Between Versailles and Paris--a few Radical deputies, all the mayors, many adjuncts. They comprised the Liberal bourgeois, that sacred herd that makes all revolutions and allows all the empires to be made. Despised by the Assembly, disdained by the people, they cried to the Central Committee, "Usurpers!" and to the Assembly, "You will spoil all."
The day of the 21st is memorable, for on it all these voices made themselves heard.
The Central Committee: "Paris has in nowise the intention of separating from France; far from it. For France she has borne with the Empire and the Government of the National Defence, with all their treachery and defections, certainly not to abandon her now, but only to say to her as an elder sister: Sustain thyself as I have sustained myself; oppose thyself to oppression as I have done."
And the _Journal Officiel_, in the first of those articles where Moreau, Longuet, and Rogeard commented upon the new revolution, said: "The proletarians of the capital, amidst the failures and treasons of the ruling classes, have understood that the hour has struck for them to save the situation by taking into their own hands the direction of public affairs. Hardly possessed of the government, they have hastened to convoke the people of Paris to the ballot-boxes. There is no example in history of a provisional government so anxious to divest itself of its mandate. In the presence of conduct so disinterested, one may well ask how a press can be found unjust enough to pour out upon these citizens slander, contumely, and insult? The workingmen, those who produce everything and enjoy nothing, are they then for ever to be exposed to outrage? The bourgeoisie, which has accomplished its emancipation, does it not understand that now the time for the emancipation of the proletariat is come? Why, then, does it persist in refusing the proletariat its legitimate share?"