ABSTRACT
Louis-Philippe's personal courage and determination, and his willingness to make changes during the days of revolution were to no avail. The political conflict was between them and a vocal minority in parliament, which, in the weeks before the February revolution, had begun to make common cause with popular unrest. The constitutional monarchies depended on a basic level of consent. In neither regime was the opportunity to weigh and consider serious dissent envisaged in practice. The National Guard and army were relied upon to maintain the shrinking area between order and revolution. The explanation for the instability of nineteenth-century regimes, monarchist, was the fear of the elites that 'masses' were always ready to overturn the established social, economic and political order and the willingness of their most radical critics to threaten unleash 'the dangerous classes'. The reluctance of government critics to press their advantage and actually play the card of popular insurrection was apparent in both July 1830 and February 1848.
