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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: taken by surprise. A nation, no more than a woman, is excused for the
unguarded hour when the first adventurer who comes along can do violence
to her. The riddle is not solved by such shifts, it is only formulated
in other words. There remains to be explained how a nation of
thirty-six millions can be surprised by three swindlers, and taken to
prison without resistance.
Let us recapitulate in general outlines the phases which the French
revolution of' February 24th, 1848, to December, 1851, ran through.
Three main periods are unmistakable:
First--The February period;
Second--The period of constituting the republic, or of the constitutive
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