Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/309

BETWEEN THE CZAR AND THE SULTAN. 267 President was tumbling as fast as was necessary, chap. and would soon be defeated aud punished. Be- _ — L sides, by the contrivance already described, the plotters had paralysed the National Guard. More- over, it would seem that the great body of the working men did not conceive themselves to be hurt by what had been done. Universal suffrage, and the immediate privilege of choosing a dictator for France, were offerings well fitted to win over many honest though credulous labourers, and the baser sort, whose vice is envy, were gratified by what had been done ; for they loved to see the kind of inversion which was implied in the fact that men like Lamoriciere, and Bedeau, and Cavaignac, like De Luines, like De Tocqueville, and the Due de Broglie, could be shut up in a jail or thrown into a felon's van by persons like Morny, and Maupas, and St Arnaud formerly Le Roy. Thus there was no sufficing material for the immediate formation of insurgent forces in Paris. The rich and the middle classes were indignant, but they had a horror of insurrection ; and the poor had less dread of insurrection, but then they were not indignant. It is known, moreover, that for the moment there was no fight- ing power in Paris. Paris has generally abounded in warlike and daring men, who love fighting for fighting's sake ; but, for the time, this portion of the French community had been crushed by the result of the great street-battle of June 1848, and the seizures and banishments which followed the defeat of the insurgents. The men of the bam-