Page:Friedrich Engels - The Revolutionary Act - tr. Henry Kuhn (1922).pdf/38

 be stemmed, or could even for a time be thrown back: a collision on a large scale with the military, a blood-letting like that of 1871 in Paris. In the long run, that too would be overcome. To shoot out of existence a party numbering millions, that is not possible with all the magazine rifles in Europe and America. But normal development would be hindered, the decision delayed, prolonged and coupled with heavy sacrifices.

The irony of history turns everything upside down. We, the "revolutionists," the "upsetters," we thrive much better with legal than with illegal means in forcing an overthrow. The parties of order, as they call themselves, perish because of the legal conditions set up by themselves. With Odilon Barrot they cry out in despair: la légalité nous tue—legality is our death—while we with this same legality acquire swelling muscles and red cheeks and look the picture of health. And if we are not insane enough to favor them by letting them drive us into street battles, nothing will in the end be left to them but themselves to break through the legality that is so fatal to them.

Meantime, they are grinding out new laws against the revolution. Again, everything has been set up head down. The fanatics of anti-revolution of today, are not they themselves the revolutionists of yesterday? Did we perchance bring about the civil war in 1866? Did we depose and drive away from their ancestral legitimate realms the King of Hanover, the Elector of Hesse, the Duke of Nassau and annex their