Montesquieu LVI.

* Cologne, 20 January. The “honourable” Joseph Dumont has an anonymous writer, not paid by him but paying him, who behind the line works on the primary electors, address the following apostrophe to the *Neue Rheinische Zeitung*:

“It has pleased the *Neue Rheinische Zeitung*, the organ of democracy, to take notice of the articles published in this paper under the title ‘To the Primary Electors’ and to designate them as borrowed from the *Neue Preußische Zeitung*.
In the face of this lie, simply the declaration that these articles are paid for as advertisements, that they, with the exception of the first, which is taken from parliamentary correspondence, are written in Cologne, and that the author of the same has to this day not even seen, let alone read, the *Neue Preußische Zeitung*.”

We comprehend what importance it has for Montesquieu LVI. to establish his property. We comprehend just as well how important for Herr Dumont is the declaration that he is “paid,” even for the leaflets and advertisements which he has set, printed and distributed in the interest of his own class, the bourgeoisie.
As for the anonymous writer, he knows the French proverb: “les beaux esprits se rencontrent.” It is not his fault if his very own intellectual products resemble those of the *Neue Preußische Zeitung* and the “Preußenvereine” as like as two peas, to the point of confusion.
We have never read his advertisements in the *Kölnische Zeitung*, but only the leaflets coming from Dumont’s printing works, which were sent to us from left and right, and which we favoured with a fleeting glance; we now find, however, by comparison, that the same scraps play their role as advertisement and leaflet simultaneously.

To atone for our offence against the anonymous Montesquieu LVI., we have imposed upon ourselves the harsh penance of reading through all his advertisements in the *Kölnische Zeitung* and of surrendering his intellectual private property to the German public as “collective property.”
Here is wisdom!
Montesquieu LVI. occupies himself preferentially with the social question. He has found the “easiest, simplest way” to its solution and extols his Morison’s pill with the most unctuous, naively shameless, mountebank pathos:
“The easiest, simplest way, however, to this end (namely to the solution of the social question) is: to accept the constitution octroyed on 5 December of last year, to revise it, then to have it sworn to from all sides and so to establish it. That is the only way which leads us to salvation.... He, therefore, who bears a heart in his breast for the distress of his poor brothers, he who will feed the hungry and clothe the naked, he who in a word will solve the social question – let him elect no one who pronounces against the constitution.” (Montesquieu LVI.)
Vote for Brandenburg-Manteuffel-Ladenberg, and the social question is solved in the “simplest” and “easiest way”! Vote for Dumont, Camphausen, Wittgenstein, or even for the *minorum gentium* such as Compes, Mevissen, and the like – and the social question is solved. The “social question” for one vote! He who “will feed the hungry and clothe the naked”, let him vote for the Hansemanns and Stupps! One social question less for each vote! Acceptance of the octroyed constitution – voilà la solution du problème social!
We do not doubt for an instant that not only Montesquieu LVI., but also his patrons in the Citizens’ Association will not wait for the acceptance, revision, swearing-to and establishment of the octroyed constitution in order to “feed the hungry and clothe the naked.” Measures to this end have, moreover, already been taken.
For some weeks circulars have been flying about here in which the master artisans, shopkeepers, etc., are informed by the capitalists that, in consideration of today’s circumstances and the reawakening of credit, on philanthropic grounds the rate of interest is raised from 4 to 5 per cent. First solution of the social question!
In the same spirit the local municipal council has drawn up “the workers’ card” for the unfortunates who must starve – or sell their arms to the city (compare No. 187 of the *Neue Rheinische Zeitung*). It will be recalled that in this charter octroyed to the workers the worker who has become breadless is contractually obliged to place himself under police supervision. Second solution of the social question!

In Cologne, shortly after the March labour-pains, the municipal council founded an eating establishment at cost prices, nicely fitted out, with splendidly heated rooms, etc. After the granting of the octroyed constitution this locale was replaced by another, subordinated to the poor-relief administration, where there is no heating, the eating vessels are lacking, where it is not permitted to consume the food on the premises, but where a quart of a nameless broth is sold for 8 pfennigs. Third solution of the social question!
In Vienna, during their ascendancy, the workers guarded the bank, the houses and the riches of the bourgeoisie who had run away. On their return these same bourgeois denounced these “robbers” to Windischgrätz for hanging. The unemployed who appealed to the municipal council were stuck into the army against Hungary. Fourth solution of the social question!
In Breslau, the municipal council and government calmly cast the wretches, who have to seek refuge in the poorhouse, into the arms of cholera by withdrawing the physically most indispensable means of subsistence, and only took notice of the victims of their cruel charity when the plague itself attacked their own persons. Fifth solution of the social question!
In the Berlin Association “With God for King and Fatherland” a friend of the octroyed constitution declared that it was distressing that one still always had to pay compliments to the “proletariat” in order to push through one’s interests and intentions.
That [is] the solution of the “solution of the social question.”
“The Prussian spies are so dangerous precisely because they are never paid, but always hope to be paid,” says our friend Heine. And the Prussian bourgeois are so dangerous precisely because they never pay, but always promise to pay.
The English and French bourgeois allow such an election day to cost them a great deal of money. Their bribery manoeuvres are world-renowned. The Prussian bourgeois, “those are the cleverest people of all!” Far too moral and solid to draw their purse, they pay with the “solution of the social question.” That costs nothing! Yet Montesquieu LVI., as Dumont officially assures, at least pays the insertion fees to the *Kölnische Zeitung* and supplies the solution of the “social questions” – gratis.
The practical part of the petits Œuvres of our Montesquieu thus consists in: Vote for Brandenburg-Manteuffel-Ladenberg! Elect Camphausen-Hansemann! Send us to Berlin, let our people first establish themselves there! That is the solution of the social question!

The immortal Hansemann has solved these questions. First, restoration of order, in order to restore credit. Then, as in the year 1844, when “my dear Silesian weavers had to be and were bound to be helped,” powder and lead, in order to solve the “social question”!
So vote for friends of the octroyed constitution!
But Montesquieu LVI. only accepts the octroyed constitution in order subsequently to revise it and have it sworn to.
Best of Montesquieus! Once you have accepted the constitution, you will revise it only on its own foundation, i.e., revise it so far as it suits the pleasure of the king and of the Second Chamber composed of country squires, finance barons, high officials and parsons. This uniquely possible revision is, by way of precaution, already indicated in the octroyed constitution itself. It consists in the abandonment of the constitutional system and in the restoration of the old Christian-Germanic system of estates.
That is the revision which, after acceptance of the octroyed constitution, is uniquely possible and uniquely permitted, which cannot have escaped the acumen of a Montesquieu.
The practical part of the petits Œuvres of Montesquieu LVI. thus boils down to: Vote for Hansemann-Camphausen! Vote for Dumont-Stupp! Vote for Brandenburg-Manteuffel! Accept the octroyed constitution! Elect electors who accept the octroyed constitution and all that under the pretext of “solving the social question.”
What the devil do we care about the pretext, once the octroyed constitution is there.
But our Montesquieu has naturally prefaced his practical instruction for “solving the social question,” the actual point of his giant work, with a theoretical part. Let us look at this theoretical part.
The profound thinker first explains what the “social questions” are.
“So what exactly is the social question?
Man ought and wants to live.
To live man needs shelter, clothing, food.
Nature does not produce shelter and clothing at all; food grows wild only sparsely and for a long time not sufficiently.
Man must therefore procure these necessities for himself.
That is done by labour.
Labour is therefore the first condition of our life; without labour we cannot live.
Among the earliest peoples each man built his own hut, made his own clothing from animal skins, broke his own fruits for eating. That was the original condition.”

If man, however, needs nothing but shelter, clothing, food, if he thus merely satisfies his physical needs, then he stands on the same level as the animal; for the animal does that too. But man is a higher being than the animal, he needs more for life: he needs joy, he ought to raise himself to a moral worth. He can only do that, however, if he lives in society.
As soon as men lived in society, however, a quite different relationship arose. They soon noticed that labour was much easier when each individual did only a specific kind of work. And so one made clothing, a second built houses, a third provided food, and the first gave the second what the latter lacked. In this way the different estates of men formed quite naturally, some becoming hunters, others handicraftsmen, still others husbandmen. But men did not stop there; for mankind must progress. Inventions were made. Spinning and weaving were invented, the forging of iron, the tanning of animal hides. The more inventions were made, the more diverse handicraft became, the easier agriculture, to which handicraft supplied plough and spade. Everything helped each other, everything interlocked. Then people came together with neighbouring peoples; one people had what another lacked – and the latter possessed what the former did not have. They exchanged these things. Thus trade arose, and with it a new branch of human activity. In this way civilisation advanced from stage to stage; from the first clumsy inventions, over centuries, one finally arrived at the inventions of our own time.
Thus the sciences and arts developed among men, and life grew ever richer, ever more varied. The physician healed the sick, the parson preached, the merchant traded, the husbandman tilled the field, the gardener grew flowers, the mason built the houses which the joiner furnished with household goods, the miller ground the flour which the baker baked into bread – one thing meshed with another; no one could stand alone, no one could procure his needs by himself alone.
These are the social relations.
They have arisen quite naturally of their own accord. And if today you make a revolution which destroys all these relations root and branch, when you then begin to live anew tomorrow, the relations will form again exactly as they are now. For millennia it has been the same with all the peoples of the earth. If anyone now draws a distinction between workers and bourgeoisie – that is a great lie. We all work, each in his own way,
each according to his powers and abilities. The physician works when he visits the sick, the musician when he plays for the dance, the merchant when he writes his letters, all work, each at his post.

Here is wisdom! He that hath ears to hear, let him hear!

What, then, is actually the point with the physiological question!

Every physical being presupposes a certain weight, density, etc. Every organic body consists of various components, each of which exercises its own function, and where the reciprocal organs mesh together.
“These are the physiological relations.”

Montesquieu LVI., it is undeniable, possesses an original talent for the simplification of science. A patent (without government guarantee) for Montesquieu LVI.

Products of labour are brought forth only through labour. No sowing, no harvest; no spinning, no yarn, etc.

Europe will bow in admiration before the colossal genius who has brought these truths to light in Cologne itself, without any assistance from the “Neue Preußische Zeitung”.

In labour men enter into definite relations with one another. A division of labour occurs which is more or less diverse. One bakes, another forges, one digs, another howls, Montesquieu LVI. writes and Dumont prints. Adam Smith, recognise thy master—!

These discoveries now, that labour and the division of labour are vital conditions of every human society, enable Montesquieu LVI. to conclude that the “different estates” are natural, that the distinction between “bourgeoisie and proletariat” is a “great lie”, that the existing “social relations”, even if a “revolution” were to destroy them root and branch today, will “form again exactly as they are now” and that finally it is absolutely necessary to elect electors in the spirit of Manteuffel and the imposed constitution, provided one otherwise “bears a heart in one’s bosom for the distress of one’s poor brothers” and intends to partake of the respect of Montesquieu LVI.

“For millennia it has exactly been the same with all peoples of the earth”!!!

In Egypt there were labour and division of labour and castes; in Greece and Rome labour and division of labour – and freemen and slaves; in the Middle Ages labour and division of labour and feudal lords and serfs, guilds, estates and the like. In our time there is labour and division of labour and classes, one of which is in possession of all the instruments of production and means of subsistence, while the other

only lives as long as it sells its labour and only sells its labour as long as the labour-providing class enriches itself by buying this labour.

Is it not, then, as clear as day that “it has exactly been the same with all the peoples of the earth for millennia” as it is nowadays in Prussia, because labour and division of labour have always existed in one or another form? Or does it, on the contrary, appear that the social relations, the property relations, were constantly overturned precisely by the constantly changed manner of labour and division of labour?

In the year 1789 the bourgeois did not call out to feudal society: Noble remain noble, serf remain serf, guildsman remain guildsman – for without labour and division of labour no society! Without breathing in air no life! So breathe in the foul air and do not by any means open the windows – thus reasoneth Montesquieu LVI.

It takes all the naive, loutish, impudent stupidity of a German Reichspfahlbürger grown grey in brutal ignorance, after he has superficially and slanted driven the first letters of political economy – labour, division of labour – into his sluggish brain matter, to hold forth oracularly on questions over which our century breaks its teeth.

“Without labour and division of labour, no society!
Therefore
elect friends of the imposed Prussian constitution, and only friends of the imposed constitution, as electors.”

This epitaph will one day stand out in large letters on the walls of the magnificent marble mausoleum which grateful posterity will feel obliged to build for the solver of the social question, Montesquieu LVI. (not to be confused with Henry CCLXXXIV. of Reuß-Schleitz-Greitz-Lobenstein-Eberswalde).

Montesquieu LVI. does not conceal from us “where the knot is” and what he intends to do once he is proclaimed legislator.
“For this,” he instructs us, “the state must see to it that everyone receives enough education to be able to learn something decent in the world.”
Montesquieu LVI. has never heard tell that under existing relations the division of labour replaces complex labour with simple, adults with children, men with women, the independent worker with automata, that in the same proportion in which modern industry develops, the education of the worker becomes superfluous and impossible. We refer the Cologne Montesquieu neither to Saint-Simon nor to Fourier, but to Malthus and Ricardo. The worthy

man should first learn the elementary outlines of present-day relations before he improves them and—dispenses oracles.

“For people impoverished by sickness, by old age, the community must provide.”
And if the community itself becomes impoverished—which cannot fail to happen with the hundred million in taxes and the epidemic states of siege imposed together with the new constitution—what then, Montesquieu?

“Where new inventions or commercial crises destroy whole branches of industry, the state must come to the rescue and find a remedy.”
Unfamiliar as the Cologne Montesquieu is with the things of this world, it can hardly have escaped his notice that the “new inventions” and the commercial crises are as permanent as Prussian ministerial edicts and legal dodges. In Germany in particular, new inventions are introduced only when competition with foreign nations makes their introduction a matter of life and death, and the newly rising branches of industry are supposed to ruin themselves in order to come to the aid of the declining ones! The branches of industry newly rising through inventions rise precisely because they produce more cheaply than the declining ones. Where the devil would be the advantage if they had to victual the declining ones? But the state, the government, notoriously gives only in appearance. First it must be given to, so that it may give. Who, however, should give to it, Montesquieu LVI.? The declining branch of industry, so that it declines still faster? Or the rising one, so that it stunts already while rising? Or those branches of industry not affected by the new inventions, so that they go bankrupt through the invention of a new tax? Ponder that thoroughly, Montesquieu LVI.!

And now the commercial crises, my good fellow? When a European commercial crisis breaks out, the Prussian state can ponder nothing more anxiously than how to squeeze the last drops of water from its accustomed tax sources by means of distraint and the like. The poor Prussian state! In order for the Prussian state to render commercial crises harmless, it would need to possess, besides national labour, a third source of revenue in the clouds. Indeed, if money could be stamped out of the ground by Most High New Year’s wishes, Wrangel’s army orders, or Manteuffel’s ministerial edicts, the “refusal of taxes” would not have cast such panic-stricken terror among Prussia’s “beloved lieges”, and the social question would have been solved even without an imposed constitution.

It is known that the *Neue Preußische Zeitung* declared our Hansemann a Communist because he contemplated abolishing tax exemptions. Our Montesquieu, who has never read the “*Neue Preußische Zeitung*”, hits upon the idea in Cologne of declaring anyone a “Communist” and “red Republican” who threatens the imposed constitution! Therefore vote for Manteuffel or you are not only personal enemies of labour and the division of labour, but also Communists and red Republicans. Recognise the latest “legal basis” of Brüggemann, or – renounce the *Code civil*!
*Figaro, tu n’aurais pas trouvé ça!*
Tomorrow more from Montesquieu LVI.

* Cologne, 21 January. Montesquieu LVI. seeks to palm off the “gift horse”,
No. 202, 22 January 1849
*Neue Rheinische Zeitung.*
the imposed constitution, with all the petty, crafty cunning of a highly experienced horse-dealer, on the primary electors. He is the Montesquieu of the horse market.

He who does not want the imposed constitution wants the republic, and not merely the republic plain and simple, but the red republic! Unfortunately, in our elections what is at stake is nothing less than republic and red republic. The issue is simply this:

Do you want the old absolutism together with a newly freshened up system of Estates – or do you want a bourgeois representative system? Do you want a political constitution that corresponds to the “existing social relations” of past centuries, or do you want a political constitution that suits the “existing social relations” of your own century?

In this matter, therefore, what is at stake is not a struggle against bourgeois property relations, such as is taking place in France and is being prepared in England. On the contrary, it is a struggle against a political constitution which endangers the “bourgeois property relations” by handing the helm of state to the representatives of “feudal property relations”, the king by the grace of God, the army, the bureaucracy, the country squires, and some finance barons and philistines allied with them.

Through the imposed constitution, the social question is solved in the sense of these gentlemen. No doubt.

What is the “social question” in the sense of the official? It is the maintenance of his salary and his hitherto superior position over the people.

And what is the “social question” in the sense of the nobility and its great landowners? It is the maintenance of the previous feudal landed prerogatives, the monopolisation of the most lucrative posts in the army and civil service by their families, and finally the direct receipt of alms from the public treasury. Besides these tangible material and therefore “most sacred” interests of the gentlemen “with God, for King and Fatherland”, what is at stake for them, of course, is also the maintenance of the social distinctions which distinguish their race from the base bourgeois, peasant and plebeian race. The old National Assembly was, after all, dispersed precisely because it dared to lay a hand on these “most sacred interests”. What the gentlemen understand by “revision” of the imposed constitution is, as has already been indicated earlier, nothing but the introduction of the Estates system, i.e., a form of political constitution which represents the “social” interests of the feudal nobility, the bureaucracy, and the throne by the grace of God.

Once again! No doubt that the “social question” in the sense of the nobility and the bureaucracy is solved by the imposed constitution, i.e., that it grants these gentlemen a form of government which secures the exploitation of the people by these demigods.

But is the “social question” in the sense of the bourgeoisie solved by the imposed constitution? In other words, does the bourgeoisie obtain a state form in which they can freely administer the common affairs of their class, the interests of trade, industry, agriculture; in which they can employ public funds in the most productive manner, arrange the state budget in the cheapest way, effectively protect national labour externally, and internally open up all the wellsprings of national wealth blocked by feudal mire?

Does history show us a single example that the bourgeoisie, with a king imposed by the grace of God, has ever been able to carry through a political state form corresponding to its material interests?

In order to establish constitutional monarchy, in England they had to expel the Stuarts twice, in France the hereditary Bourbons, in Belgium the Nassau dynasty.

Whence this phenomenon?

A hereditary king by the grace of God is not a single individual, it is the embodied representative of the old society within the new society. State power in the hands of the king by the grace of God is state power in the hands of the old society, which now exists only in ruins; it is state power in the hands of the feudal estates, whose interests stand in the most hostile opposition to the interests of the bourgeoisie.

But the foundation of the imposed constitution is precisely the “king by the grace of God”.

Just as the feudal elements of society see in the monarchy by the grace of God their political summit, so the monarchy by the grace of God sees in the feudal estates its social foundation, the well-known “king’s bulwark”.

Whenever, therefore, the interests of the feudal lords and of the army and bureaucracy ruled by them intersect with the interests of the bourgeoisie, the monarchy by the grace of God will each time be driven to a *coup d’état*, and a revolutionary or counter-revolutionary crisis will be prepared.

Why was the National Assembly dispersed? Only because it represented the interests of the bourgeoisie against the interests of feudalism; because it wished to abolish the feudal relations hampering agriculture, to subordinate the army and bureaucracy to trade and industry, to put a stop to the squandering of the state treasury, to abolish aristocratic and bureaucratic titles.

In all these questions, what was at stake was pre-eminently and directly the interest of the bourgeoisie.

Thus, *coups d’état* and counter-revolutionary crises are the vital conditions of the monarchy by the grace of God, which has been forced by the March events or other events to humble itself and reluctantly adopt the sham form of a bourgeois monarchy.

Can credit ever revive in a state form whose necessary point is *coups d’état*, counter-revolutionary crises and states of siege? What delusion!

Bourgeois industry must burst the fetters of absolutism and feudalism. A revolution against both proves precisely that bourgeois industry has reached a climax where it must conquer a state form appropriate to it, or perish.

The bureaucratic tutelage system secured by the imposed constitution is the death of industry. Just look at the Prussian mining administration, the factory regulations, etc.! When the English manufacturer compares his production costs with those of the Prussian manufacturer, he will always establish, in the first place, the loss of time which the Prussian manufacturer suffers through the necessary observance of the bureaucratic regulations.

What sugar refiner does not recall the Prussian trade treaty with Holland in 1839? What Prussian industrialist does not blush at the remembrance of the year 1846, when the Prussian government cut off a whole province’s export to Galicia through its complaisance towards the Austrian government, and the Prussian ministry, when bankruptcy upon bankruptcy broke out in Breslau, declared in astonishment that it had not known that such a significant export to Galicia, etc., was taking place!

Men of the same race are placed at the helm of state by the imposed constitution, just as this gift itself comes from the hands of these men. So look at it twice.

The Galician adventure calls our attention to another point.

At that time, the Prussian government, in league with Austria and Russia, sacrificed Silesian industry and Silesian trade to the counter-revolution. This manoeuvre will be repeated daily. The banker of the Prussian-Austrian-Russian counter-revolution, in which the monarchy by the grace of God with its king’s bulwarks will and must always seek its foreign support – is England. The most dangerous opponent of German industry is that same England. We believe these two data speak sufficiently.

Internally, industry hampered by bureaucratic fetters, agriculture by feudal privileges, externally, trade sold to England by the counter-revolution – these are the fates of Prussian national wealth under the aegis of the imposed constitution.

The report of the “Finance Commission” of the dispersed National Assembly has shed sufficient light on the by-the-grace-of-God administration of the state’s assets.

Meanwhile, this report only adduces by way of example sums that were withdrawn from the public treasury in order to prop up the tottering king’s bulwarks and to gild the foreign pretenders of absolute monarchy (Don Carlos). These monies, which are filched from the pockets of the rest of the citizens so that the aristocracy may lead a life in accordance with its status and the “pillars” of the feudal monarchy are kept in good repair, are, however, only a side issue when considering the state budget imposed simultaneously with the Manteuffel constitution. Above all a strong army, so that the minority may rule over the majority, the largest possible army of officials, so that as many as possible ... for the general ...

interest alienated by their private interest; the use of state funds in the most unproductive manner so that wealth, as the _Neue Preußische Zeitung_ says, does not render the subjects insolent; the utmost laying aside of state funds instead of their industrial employment so that the government by the grace of God can confront the people independently in easily foreseeable moments of crisis – these are the basic features of the octroyed conduct of the state. The employment of taxes to maintain state power as a repressive, independent and sanctified force vis-à-vis industry, trade and agriculture, instead of degrading it to the profane instrument of bourgeois society – that is the life-principle of the octroyed Prussian constitution!

As the giver, so the gift. As the present Prussian government, so the constitution bestowed by it. To characterise the enmity of this government towards the bourgeoisie, it suffices to call attention to the draft industrial code it has prepared. The government seeks to return to the guild under the pretext of progressing to association. Competition forces production to become ever cheaper, hence on an ever larger scale, i.e. with larger capital, with ever more extended division of labour and ever increasing application of machinery. Every new division of labour depreciates the old skill of the handicraftsman, every new machine displaces hundreds of workers, every production on a larger scale, i.e. with greater capital, ruins the petty shop and the petty-bourgeois enterprise. The government promises handicraft protection against factory operation, the acquired skill against the division of labour, the small capital against the large by means of feudal guild institutions. Thus the German, and in particular the Prussian, nation, which only with great effort resists total defeat by English competition through the utmost exertion of strength, is to be thrown defenceless into its arms by having forced upon it an industrial organisation that contradicts modern means of production and has been blown sky-high by modern industry!

We are certainly the last to desire the rule of the bourgeoisie. We were the first in Germany to raise our voice against it, when the present “men of action” were complacently indulging themselves in subaltern squabbling.

But we call out to the workers and petty bourgeois: Suffer rather in modern bourgeois society, which through its industry creates the material means for the founding of a new society that will free you all, than return to a past social form which, under the pretext of saving your classes, hurls the whole nation back into medieval barbarism!

The government by the grace of God, as we have seen, has medieval estates and conditions as its social basis. It does not suit modern bourgeois society. It must seek to create a society after its own image. It is pure consistency when it seeks to supplant free competition by the guild, machine spinning by the spinning-wheel, the steam plough by the hoe.

How then does it come about under these conditions that the Prussian bourgeoisie, in complete contradiction to its French, English and Belgian predecessors, trumpets the octroyed constitution (with it the monarchy by the grace of God, the bureaucracy and the Junkerdom) as its Shibboleth?

The commercial and industrial part of the bourgeoisie throws itself into the arms of counter-revolution out of fear of the revolution. As if counter-revolution were anything other than the overture to revolution?

Besides, there is a part of the bourgeoisie which, indifferent to the general interests of its class, pursues a particular, even hostile, special interest.

These are the financial barons, the great state creditors, bankers, rentiers, whose wealth grows in the same measure as the poverty of the people, and finally people whose business is geared to the old state conditions, e.g. Dumont and his literary lumpenproletariat. They are ambitious professors, lawyers and the like, who only in a state where it is a lucrative business to betray the people to the government can hope to grab lucrative posts.

There are individual manufacturers who do good business with the government, purveyors who draw their considerable percentages from the general exploitation of the people, philistines whose significance is lost in a great political life, municipal councillors who, under the protection of existing institutions, have promoted their dirty private interests at the expense of public interests, oil merchants who through betrayal of the revolution have become excellencies and knights of the Order of the Eagle, bankrupt cloth merchants and railway speculators who have become royal bank directors, etc., etc.

“These are the friends of the octroyed constitution.” If the bourgeoisie has any heart in its breast for these its poor brothers, and if it wishes to make itself worthy of the esteem of Montesquieu’s LVI, let it elect electors in the sense of the octroyed constitution.