6. The French Party.
The French Party has its tap root touching the Revolution, and it grew up through the schools, like Saint-Simonism, to which I have already referred. The revolutionary idealism of France finds the yoke of party galling and hard to bear. It blazed up in 1848, and again in 1871, and in both cases the flame was stamped out by the ruthless foot of the military. The hero of 1848 was Louis Blanc; the hero of 1871 was the people. Upon the heads of both, the prejudice that has written so much of our histories has put the crown of the fool and the knave, and no heads, in reality, are less justly decorated by that symbol.
The national workshops of the first revolution were started and managed contrary to Louis Blanc's advice, and in a spirit antagonistic to him. Yet upon his back the burden of their ludicrous failure has been placed. The scenes of popular riot, bloodshed and disorder which compose the lurid picture generally painted to represent the Commune are little more than visions of the prejudiced and frightened imagination. Probably never did an army in occupation rule a city with more mercy and calmness than the communists ruled Paris, with their assassins thundering at their gates. The suppression of peace Radicalism in Great Britain in the days of Pitt was attended by more blundering cruelty and wanton persecution than can be crowded into those terrible days in Paris by any
