position was strengthened by acceptance on all sides. On the very night of its installation the Provisional Government received by the mouth of the marshals and the most distinguished generals the homage of the army. That of the National Guard followed. On the report of the telegraph the departments were to pass at once from the monarchy to the republic. The members of the government undoubtedly tried to do the best they could, but apart from the evil of multiple executive power the new government suffered from the vice of its origin. It had no traditional or dynastic claim. It did not represent any national opinion, had no class or constituency to appeal to for support. It was in effect self-nominated and approved by the Paris mob. It must to a great extent obey its masters. In the first place a government based upon the will of the people' could not suppress or limit any mode of expression of popular opinion. The organizers of the banquets, the publishers of the National and the Reforme, were obliged by political necessity to recognize the absolute liberty of the press and of association. The provisional government did this by repealing the laws of September, 1835, by abolishing the stamp tax on periodicals and the security fund of the papers, and by allowing clubs of all kinds to be opened in Paris and in all the cities of France.

There were two sections of the government, representing two policies, embodied in a general way in Lamartine and Louis Blanc. The former proposed as the aim of the new government, charity among the different classes of the citizens, to be realized by all such institutions of assistance, association, benevolence, as are compatible with the liberty of capital and the security of property.' These last words show that Lamartine, while he hoped the Republic might discover a solution of the economical problem, was determined to have nothing to do with the proposals

of the socialists, and in this he was supported by the majority of the members. But the workingmen, who had fought on the barricades and supplied the material force of the revolution, had acted in the expectation that with the government would fall the tyranny of capital; to them the Republic was socialist or nothing, and they were not to be comforted by general hopes of a gradual and tentative amelioration; they believed in the possibility of a social transformation, radical and instantaneous, and this they were determined to exact from the men whom they had delegated to authority.

There were two men in the provisional government who shared this view. Blanc, supported by Albert, in his aim to 'enfranchise the people by endeavoring to abolish this double slavery, ignorance and misery,' wished to replace private by public property, and this he hoped to achieve by means of coöperative productive associations, federated together so as gradually to oust the competition of private producers, and started, in the first instance, by loans advanced by the State. Such was the most definite expression of the socialism of 1848; but the word had been used to include much more than this; it had been identified passionately and vaguely with revolution and robbery; secret societies and revolutionary clubs had urged and were urging its propaganda; it had come to be regarded, not as a rational scheme of economic reform, but as a conspiracy to dissolve society in a general scramble for property. Under this general condemnation fell the project of Louis Blanc. The provisional government was divided into Socialists and anti-Socialists, and before it had been in existence a day was irreconcilably at variance with itself.1

Almost from the moment of its installation, and for sixty hours at a stretch, the provisional government was

1"Revolution and Reaction in Modern France," pp. 177-179.

besieged in the Hôtel de Ville. The besiegers might be regarded as allies, but allies on condition of being obeyed. Miscellaneously armed with muskets, swords, pikes, bayonets, and the like, they filled the square in front of the building, broke down the railings, forced the gates, and thronged every hall and passage till they reached the room where the government sat; without thundered the chorus of the Marseillaise, within was the clash of steel, the detonation of aimless discharges, windows shattering, woodwork crashing, altercations, threats, and fragments of song; and, in the midst of this confusion, backed by the argument of force, arrived a deputation to demand the recognition of the right to labor (droit au travail). While Lamartine was arguing with them, Louis Blanc had already drawn up a decree which was submitted to his colleagues, signed in haste, and issued on the spot. It ran as follows:

The Provisional Government of the French Republic engages to guarantee work to all citizens. It recognizes that the workmen ought to form associations in order to enjoy the legitimate reward of their labor. It restores to the workmen, to whom the money belongs, the million which will be due on the civil list.1

This decree was practically extorted by force from the government: it promised much more than was ever guaranteed by such socialism as Louis Blanc's, and, a fortiori, much more than a government could extemporize into performance.2

In execution of this decree, a vote was passed, February 27, ordering the establishment of national workshops for thirteen thousand men. M. Émile Thomas, charged with organizing them, did it in military fashion. Eleven men formed a squad, with a chief elected by themselves. Five squads formed a brigade, besides a brigadier who was elected by a direct vote of the brigade, making 56 1 Op. cit., p. 181.

2 Ibid.

men.

The com

Four brigades made a lieutenancy of 225 men including the lieutenant. Four lieutenancies formed a company, making, with their chief, 901 men. panies were united by threes, with a chef de service commanding, 2703 men. Finally, a chef d'arrondissement commanded the whole of his ward. The eighth arrondissement, which had alone furnished twenty thousand men, counted eight chefs de service. The pay was fixed as follows:

The rush was so great that a check had to be made to admissions. Men poured in from the country, and private employers complained that they could get no help. The list of admissions was:

These workshops soon became an overwhelming burden. on the treasury already prostrated by the crisis. The pay amounted to 300,000 francs a day at a time when the government had not the means of meeting ordinary administration. The credits opened between March 20 and June 24 amounted to 24,000,000 francs. Instead of giving these men honorable work, they were turned into the Champ de Mars with pickaxes and wheelbarrows to level the terraces formerly raised on the day of the Federation. The workmen felt themselves degraded by such a mockery of work, and left it to talk politics in the

wineshops. It was evident that something must be done. Leon Faucher, Wolosowski, and Michel Chevalier tried reform in vain. As the month of June advanced, however, the question took the simplest possible form. The government determined to break up the national workshops, and the national workshops determined not to be broken up. The chiefs of brigade were assembled, and informed that squads of workmen would be sent to the provinces to execute works of breaking up land; that private employers could requisition workmen at their pleasure; that all workmen from eighteen to twenty-five years would be incorporated in the army; and that all payment would be suppressed for workmen who could not prove a residence of six months in Paris. And because the director, M. Émile Thomas, resolutely refused to subject the workmen to these stern conditions, he was privately arrested on ministerial order and hurried off to Bordeaux. The response to these things was the insurrection of June. At the session of July 4, General Cavaignac announced to the Assembly the dissolution of the workshops, and it was decided that families without work should receive aid, under the supervision of the maires of the different sections. It was the right to assistance replacing the right to labor.1

This account gives but one instance, though perhaps the strongest, of the difficulties which beset the provisional government on every side. We have next to consider what steps were taken to put the government on a permanent basis. When the Constituent Assembly came together on the 4th of May, one of its first steps was to replace the Provisional Government by an executive commission, preceding this by a formal recognition of the services, the merits, and the sacrifices of the retiring body. The new

1 Grande Encyclopédie, article "Ateliers Nationaux "; Maxime du Camp, "Revolution of 1818," p. 232.