This applies,
of course, only to the mercantile, not to the industrial classes. And
yet, surely there were grounds at the beginning of the year from which
to draw a contrary conclusion; the stock of products was scanty, capital
was abundant, provisions cheap, a rich autumn was assured, there was
uninterrupted peace on the continent and no political and financial
disturbances at home; indeed, never were the wings of trade more
unshackled. . . . What is this unfavorable result to be ascribed to?
We believe to excessive trade in imports as well as exports. If our
merchants do not themselves rein in their activity, nothing can keep us
going, except a panic every three years."
Imagine now the French bourgeois, in the midst of this business panic,
having his trade-sick brain tortured, buzzed at and deafened with rumors
of a "coup d'etat" and the restoration of universal suffrage; with the
struggle between the Legislature and the Executive; with the
Fronde warfare between Orleanists and Legitimists; with communistic
conspiracies in southern France; with alleged Jacqueries [#2 Peasant
revolts] in the Departments of Nievre and Cher; with the advertisements
of the several candidates for President; with "social solutions"
huckstered about by the journals; with the threats of the republicans to
uphold, arms in hand, the Constitution and universal suffrage; with the
gospels, according to the emigrant heroes "in partibus," who announced
the destruction of the world for May 2,--imagine that, and one can
understand how the bourgeois, in this unspeakable and noisy confusion
of fusion, revision, prorogation, constitution, conspiracy, coalition,
emigration, usurpation and revolution, blurts out at his parliamentary
republic: "Rather an End With Fright, Than a Fright Without End.
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