Page:Georgii Valentinovich Plekhanov - The Bourgeois Revolution- Its Attainments and Its Limitations - tr. Henry Kuhn (1926).pdf/23

 manifesto of the Duke of Brunswick, and like the threats of a reactionary Europe against France.

Let us now proceed to the internal causes which made it impossible for the Montagnards to find a "free, lawful and mild" republic to their taste. Here we must first of all direct the attention of the reader to the famous rights of man and of the citizen. Among these we find many rights which conform to the interests of the lowest class of the population; but we also find among them one toward which this class, from the very outset, was compelled to maintain a peculiar and contradictory attitude. We refer to the right of property. How would, for instance, a Paris "sansculotte" (literally a man without pants [culottes], a nickname resembling the English word "ragamuffin") conceive this right, when his very name shows that he himself is bare of all property? How could he proceed to exercise this wonderful right conceded to him? There was no lack of examples lying near to his hand, The bourgeoisie had taken unto itself many a piece of aristocrat and