Page:Ferdinand Lassalle - The Working Man's Programme - tr. Edward Peters (1884).djvu/37

 or the possession of capital had become the condition of sovereignty over the State, as nobility or landed property had been in the Middle Ages.

This principle of the census remains the leading principle of all the constitutions which resulted from the French Revolution. The only exception was a short period during which the French Republic of 1793 lasted, which perished on account of its own want of definiteness, and of the entire condition of society at that time, and on which I cannot enter here more particularly.

Yes, following the rule which is common to all principles, it was a necessary consequence that the amount first fixed should soon develope itself into a much larger one.

In the decree of 1814, 300 francs or 80 thalers, instead of the former amount of three days labour, was fixed as the qualification of the franchise by the charter granted by Louis XVIII. The Revolution of 1830 broke out, and nevertheless, the law of the 19th of April 1831 enacts that a payment of direct taxes to the amount of 200 francs or about 53 thalers, shall be the qualification of the franchise.

That which was called, under Louis Phillipe and Guizot, the "pays légal" the country recognised by law, consisted of 200,000 men. There were no more than 200,000 electors in France qualified by the amount of their private property, and these bore rule over a country of thirty millions of inhabitants.

We must here observe that it is obviously a matter of indifference, whether the principle of the census, the exclusion of those who have no property from the