4.

A vague confidence in Progress had lain behind and encouraged the revolution of 1789, but in the revolution of 1848 the idea was definitely enthroned as the regnant principle.  It presided over the session of the Committee which drew up the Constitution of the second Republic.  Armand Marrast, the most important of the men who framed that document, based the measure of universal suffrage upon “the invisible law which rules societies,” the law of progress which has been so long denied but which is rooted in the nature of man.  His argument was this:  Revolutions are due to the repression of progress, and are the expression and triumph of a progress which has been achieved.  But such convulsions are an undesirable method of progressing; how can they be avoided?  Only by organising elastic institutions in which new ideas of amelioration can easily be incorporated, and laws which can be accommodated without struggle or friction to the rise of new opinions.  What is needed is a flexible government open to the penetration of ideas, and the key to such a government is universal suffrage.

[Footnote:  Marrast, “the invisible law”; “Oui,” he continues, “toute societe est progressive, parce que tout individu est educable, perfectible; on peut mesurer, limiter, peut-etre les facultes d’un individu; on ne saurait limiter, mesurer ce que peuvent, dans l’ordre des idees, les intelligences dont les produits ne s’ajoutent pas seulement mais se fecondent et se multiplient dans une progression indefinie.”  No. 393 Republique francoise.  Assemblee nationale.  Projet de Constitution ... precede par un rapport fait au nom de la Commission par le citoyen Armand Marrast.  Seance du 30 aout, 1848.]

Universal suffrage was practical politics, but the success of the revolution fluttered agreeably all the mansions of Utopia, and social reformers of every type sought to improve the occasion.  In the history of the political struggles of 1848 the names are written of Proudhon, of Victor Considerant the disciple of Fourier, of Pierre Leroux the humanitarian communist, and his devoted pupil George Sand.  The chief title of Leroux to be remembered is just his influence over the soul of the great novelist.  Her later romances are pervaded by ideas derived from his teaching.  His communism was vague and ineffectual, but he was one of the minor forces in the thought of the period, and there are some features in his theory which deserve to be pointed out.

Leroux had begun as a member of the Saint-Simonian school, but he diverged into a path of his own.  He reinstated the ideal of equality which Saint-Simon rejected, and made the approach to that ideal the measure of Progress.  The most significant process in history, he held, is the gradual breaking down of caste and class:  the process is now approaching its completion; “today man is synonymous with equal.”