Louis Blanc

“ It was the first cup of coffee of the day served in the establishment. I was never on terms of intimacy with Blanc, and least of all then, for I shared with Major Fraser a dislike to politic-mongers, and, rightly or wrongly, I have always considered the author of "L'Histoire de Dix Ans" as such. Though Louis Blanc was three or four and thirty then, he looked like a boy of seventeen—a fact not altogether owing to his diminutive stature, though he was one of the smallest men, if not the smallest man, I ever saw. Of course I mean a man not absolutely a dwarf. ”

“ The “propriétaire” of the Hôtel de Paris had the mentality of the superficially civilized man who has retained the worst blood of the savage. Louis Blanc was a Parisian, a Parisian of the cabaret type who happened to have been born in the provinces. He had a long head, immense appetites, and an exaggeration of the Latin temperament that the word “flamboyant” describes so well. A crowd made him brave, especially a crowd of women, and one woman would do the trick if she happened to be pretty. Bibi swaggered; but there was a streak of cowardice in the man when you cut the hair of his vanity. ”

“ It can be seen, without my need to make the remark, that the arguments of Louis Blanc for taking up the dictatorship are exactly the same as those which honest and moderate Republicans have used since to legitimize twice consecutively the state of siege, give the dictatorship to General Cavaignac, bring to the presidency Louis Bonaparte, declare the socialists enemies of society, and create, under the Republic, a despotism such, that one might be tempted to regard as a liberator the first pretender to take the crown. ”

“ The working men who sat in the Luxembourg during the months of March and April under the presidency of M. Louis Blanc, showed a sort of respect for the Chamber of Peers they replaced. The armchairs of the peers were occupied, but not soiled. There was no insult, no affront, no abuse. Not a piece of velvet was torn, not a piece of leather was dirtied. There is a good deal of the child about the people, it is given to chalking its anger, its joy and its irony on walls; these labouring men were serious and inoffensive. ”

“ At midnight a proclamation of the Provisional Government was read by torchlight to the excited masses by Louis Blanc, from the steps of the Hôtel de Ville, declaring for a government of the people by itself, with liberty, equality and fraternity for its principles, while order was devised and maintained by the people—which served somewhat to allay their apprehensions and distrust. ”

“ Louis Blanc’s ‘point of honour of industry’ is a conscious impulse—it is not too much to say—with most of the Tuscan contadini; but as each effort they make for their master they make also for the bread of their children, it is no wonder that the land they cultivate has a look of life. But in all colour, in all luxury, and in all that gives material for picturesque English, this lovely scenery for food and wine and raiment has that little less to which we desire to recall a rhetorical world. ”

“ So how does one prevent the announced demonstration? It is Louis Blanc who poses in this way the question. — And if it were true that unknown agitators would have wanted to make some storm come out of the foundation of the multitude set in motion, how does one foil their plans? It is still Louis Blanc who addresses the situation. Agitators! cried he. Mr. Guizot said: factions!
The means proposed by Louis Blanc is cited: it merited being proposed to Mr. Guizot. The Revolution was hijacked on 22 February, as the alleged dictatorship of Blanqui was on 17 March. ”

“ He was a practical politician of too much influence to make it possible to ignore him, but politics were always a means, never an end. Louis Blanc is thus the connecting link between the older socialism, which was in many respects superstitious, absurd, and fantastical, and the newer, which is sceptical, hard, and practical. ”

“ The visions of perfectibility and utopian projects of Louis Blanc, Lamartine, and Ledru Rollin, have already landed the social interests of France in the straits of the Reign of Terror—its practical government in the armed despotism of the Algerine pirates, or the turbulent sway of the Sikh soldiery.
But the contagion of violence, the ascendant of ambition, the lust of rapine have not been confined to the armed janissaries of Paris, or their delegates the Provisional Government. They have extended to other countries: they have spread to other states. ”

“ But though Louis Blanc is right in saying that the evil that Napoleon did, lived after him in the memories of thinking men, it is also true that those born since the fall of the Second Empire can have no idea of the general Page 66 enthusiasm that still lingered in France in Louis Philippe's reign, round memories of the glories of Napoleon. Men might not wish him back again, but they worshipped him as the national demigod. ”

“ The more fruitful fancy of the one is balanced by the character in the works of the other."
In France the dissatisfaction with Louis Philippe's government, as administered by Guizot, was steadily increasing. The Socialist party, led by Louis Blanc, agitated the country for reform. An appeal to Revolutionary traditions was made by the simultaneous publication of Blanc's and Michelet's histories of the French Revolution. At the same time, Lamartine Death of Oudinot brought out his "Histoire des Girondins." ”

“ The evidence of talent afforded by his first art criticism induced Louis Blanc to confide to him successively the editorship of several provincial papers. But Charles's inclinations were toward the calm atmosphere of art; he was, and ever remained, indifferent to politics, and looked upon the fiery, active Louis with astonishment, even while catching his energy and ambition. On his return to Paris he began a history of the 'French Painters of the Nineteenth Century,' but one volume of which appeared ”

“ Once come to power all men are alike. It's always the same zeal for authority, the same distrust of the people, the same fanaticism for order. Is it not pleasant to see that, on 17 March, the preoccupations that agitated Louis Blanc, secret fomenter of the demonstration, were precisely the same as those which, three weeks earlier, had agitated Mr. Guizot?
“The people were to focus en masse on the Hotel de Ville to obtain the postponement of the elections. ”

“ Louis Blanc, who was a member of the provisional government in France in 1848, both before and after that time was an active promoter of the scheme under which government is to furnish labor on a large scale, and to become the grand employer of the working-class. In Germany, socialism in its later distinctive form, as defined above, has been advocated by a number of well-known writers. ”

“ But it was possible that her name might not be Manon Latour.
Brent smiled and, picking up his bundle, walked on towards Beaucourt. He was well content with life, a life that was full of the fascination of contriving, creating, conquering; a simple life in which hands and head worked together. No thought of Louie Blanc crossed his mind. The evening was too peaceful.
XXVII About four o’clock that afternoon Louis Blanc came down the stairs of the stone house, crossed the street, and walked into the kitchen of the Café de la Victoire. ”

“ He does not flaunt the red flag in the eyes of the nation. So cautious and prudent is he that some of the extreme radicals, like Louis Blanc, oppose him earnestly, as seeking to found a government which is republican only in name. But he judges more wisely that the only Republic which France, with its monarchical traditions, will accept, is a conservative one, which shall not frighten capital by its wild theories of a division of property, but which, while it secures liberty, secures order also. ”

“ After the fate of Louis XVI. no monarch was willing to wait and face a Paris mob. The kingdom was overthrown, and a republic, the second which France had known, was established, the aged Dupont de l’Eure being chosen president. The poet Lamartine, the socialist Louis Blanc, the statesmen Ledru-Rollin and Arago became members of the Cabinet, and all looked forward to a reign of peace and prosperity. The socialists tried the experiment of establishing national workshops in which artisans were to be employed at the expense of the state, with the idea that this would give work to all. ”

“ The first outbreak occurred in France, in 1831, when the workingmen of Lyons, during a period of distressing financial depression, marched under the banner, "Live working, or die fighting," demanding bread for their families and work for themselves. This second chapter of the development of Socialism begins with a red letter.
Louis Blanc (1813-82) , the first philosopher of the new movement, struck out boldly for a democratic organization of the government. This differentiates him from Fourier and Saint-Simon, and links him with the leading Socialist writers of our day. ”

“ After his return to Paris Louis Blanc published a work on questions of the time, entitled “Questions d’Aujourd’hui et de Demain.” [98] He continued to advocate quietly his doctrines in behalf of oppressed [115] humanity, and had so gained in public estimation that upon his death, on the 6th of December, 1882, in Cannes, France, the Chamber of Deputies voted him the honor of a state funeral. ”

“ If there was ever a position calculated to test the capabilities of its occupant, it was that in which Louis Napoleon found himself when he obeyed the voice of the French people, and accepted the presidency of the French republic. Surrounded by men holding all kinds of political opinions, from the agrarian Proudhon to the impracticable Louis Blanc, and men of no political opinions whatever,—he found himself obliged to use all the power reposed in him by the constitution, to keep the government from falling asunder. ”

“ And there he stood on the château hill and saw that damned fellow of Manon Latour’s putting up a roof before he—Bibi—had bought a foot of timber!
“The devil scorch his blue trousers, but where did he get that wood?”
Louis Blanc walked his bicycle down the château hill, and left it leaning against the wall by the doorway of the Hôtel de Paris. He went in and had another critical look at this place of his, crunching over the broken bricks, examining the walls, the foundations. The precarious state of the great central chimney-stack was as obvious to him as it had been to Paul ”

“ BLANC, (Jean Joseph Charles) LOUIS (1811–1882) , French politician and historian, was born on the 29th of October 1811 at Madrid, where his father held the post of inspector-general of finance under Joseph Bonaparte. ”

“ Louis Blanc was of my way of thinking, as were also Meurice, Vacquerie and my sons, who dined with us.
December 23.—Henri Rochefort came to dine with me. I had not seen him since August of last year, when we were in Brussels. Georges did not recognise his godfather. I was very cordial. I like him very much. He has great talent and great courage. The dinner was a very merry one, although we are all threatened with incarceration in a Prussian fortress if Paris is captured. ”

“ No wonder he hoped so little for the people, and trusted to accomplish so little through them."
"There can be no doubt that the social principle which Republicanism is now unconsciously assuming all over France," mildly remarked Louis Blanc, "is lending to the cause incalculable strength. How terribly impressed with a conviction of the justice of the cause in which they perished must have been the unhappy insurgents of Lyons, when, with this motto on their banner: 'To live toiling or die fighting,' they marched firmly up to the cannon's mouth and fought, and, thus fighting, fell. ”

“ He waits for the expression of our wishes. Let us proclaim those wishes and he will accept the charter, as we have always understood and desired it. It is from the French people he will hold the crown."
"This proclamation," says Louis Blanc, "was drawn up with great art. ”

“ When, however, the fall of Louis Philippe in the revolution of 1848 led her to join the ultra-democratic party and to begin her crusade against "property and capital, orthodoxy and family," society was closed against her, and it was then that such men as Rodrigues, Enfantin, Lamartine, and Louis Blanc sought her company. ”

“ If anything could add to the duration of the reign, condemned in advance, it was the plan expounded by him to his co-religionists on the Left: this theory, of which M. Laffitte was the High Priest, and M. Odilon Barrot the Apostle, consisted in recovering possession of power by [Pg 257] the help of a parliamentary majority, to make the infusion of political clemency triumphant, and to make the monarchy definitively—the word is Louis Blanc's—guardian over liberty; a narrow but honest dream, which, compelled to tread between reaction and insurrection, could never become a reality. ”

“ Perhaps the vagueness we complain of in M. Louis Blanc, is dictated by mere prudence; perhaps there is no vagueness to the eye of a propagandist. One sentiment of French democracy he certainly expresses with sufficient hardihood. It is not often we meet with the principle of intervention between state and state, asserted in these days with so much boldness as in the following passage:—“Men have stigmatized the war in Spain, calling the principle of intervention an oppressive principle. Puerile accusation! All people are brothers, and all revolutions cosmopolite. ”