of popularising the enjoyment of power and property in accordance with the necessities of the hour, the wish of all persons interested, and the data furnished by experience. Our enemies deceive themselves or deceive the country when they accuse Paris of desiring to impose its will or its supremacy upon the rest of the nation, and of aspiring to a Dictatorship which would amount to a veritable attack against the independence and sovereignty of other Communes. They deceive themselves or the country when they accuse Paris of seeking the destruction of French unity as established by the Revolution. The unity which has hitherto been imposed upon us by the Empire, the Monarchy, and the Parliamentary Government is nothing but a centralisation, despotic, unintelligent, arbitrary, and burdensome. Political unity as desired by Paris is a voluntary association of each local initiative, a free and spontaneous co-operation of all individual energies with one common object-the well-being, liberty, and security of all, The Communal Revolution initiated by the people on the 18th of March inaugurated a new political era, experimental, positive, and scientific. It was the end of the old official and clerical world, of military and bureaucratic régime, of jobbing in monopolies and privileges, to which the working class owed its state of servitude, and our country its misfortunes and disasters.' . This ideal programme of the Communist Revolution will remain for its justification or excuse long after the nation has swept away and cast out the feeble and disunited men whose acts mocked and turned into ridiculous satire the principles which they professed to carry out. Side by side with it, and as a comment upon it, men will remember the practical conduct of the Communal Government, their tyrannous all and childish acts, more petty and contemptible, if less wicked and disgusting, than the excesses of the first Commune. The pith and substance of the Declaration is a claim on the part of the working classes to the unfettered right of administering certain political offices, executing certain functions in the State, and freely discussing matters thus coming within the scope of their jurisdiction. The concession of these rights entails of necessity that bright dream of French reformers, decentralisation. Perhaps the word expresses more readily than anything except a detailed explanation the object of the Revolution. The hated centralisation of the old régime was to be replaced by a system of federation under the new; and, instead of their odious subjection under the surveillance of an imperial magistrate, the several municipalities would enjoy a comparatively full independence, limited only by the mutual rights, inter se, of the other members of the federation. Whether so complicated a scheme could ever have been carried into practice-whether, supposing it to be so, the towns could have made a proper use of their extended powers, are questions upon which grave doubts may exist. But the partisans of the Commune had no manner of doubt upon the subject, and would have answered both questions conscientiously in the affirmative. The French workman, with his thin skin of superficial knowledge, and his unstable, speculative mind, had no idea of the danger veiled under this specious proposed reign of liberty. He fought, as he sincerely believed, for the emancipation and independence of labour. With all his boasted philosophising and rhetoricising, he never reflected upon the chances of a war of emancipation becoming a war of conquest, nor looked around him to see how the claims of labour thus asserted might lead to a complete disintegration of human society. There is another word which expresses accurately the aspirations of the men of the Commune, and illustrates the object at which they were aiming. It is an English word, much coveted by French orators and writers self-government-a word that exists not in their language, an institution which seems to be practically incompatible with the national character; the abortive attempts to establish which for the last eighty years have plunged France again and again into anarchy and distress. The Commune, once born, proceeded without delay to divest itself, in a great measure, of all active initiative duties and powers, reserving only its superintendence over the measures taken by its committees and delegates. The power of originating measures seems at first to have been vested in an executive committee, upon which the most conspicuous names are Pyat and Delescluze. Over this body as well as over the generals of the army the Commune was supposed to exercise a control. But from the very first it became apparent how slight was the authority of the latter in matters executive. Constantly measures passed by the Commune remained altogether unexecuted. As an instance, the order prohibiting bakers from working at night was simply ignored and neglected by the bakers, as it had to be passed afresh, was very imperfectly obeyed, and has been since withdrawn. The Council itself, a scene of frequent tumult and disorder, made up its own mind with great difficulty. In successive divisions on the same subjects, which were often if not ordinarily taken, members would change sides as if under mere caprice, and vote without any consistency or appa It rent sense of responsibility. was, in every sense of the word, 'a house divided against itself.' The more energetic members, urging matters on with reckless precipitation, disgusted and terrified their less violent colleagues. The consequence was the resignation and retirement of the latter in extraordinary numbers. By the time the war had fairly broken out no less than a fourth part of the deputies had withdrawn from the Commune, and before the supplemental elections could be held a full third of the Chamber had to be re-elected. The divided councils of the Communal Assembly and its two committees, the Executive and the Central, must account for the delay the fatal delay as it turned out to march against Versailles. Had the Commune followed up its successes of the 18th by an immediate attack upon Versailles, it is extremely probable that the disorganised and disaffected regiments there would have been defeated or decoyed into the insurgents' ranks. There is abundant testimony that until near the end of March the soldiers in camp at Versailles were wholly untrustworthy, and were known by their officers to be so. Exactly a fortnight after the affair of Montmartre, the commencement of actual war and the consequent interruption of communication committed definitely to the cause of the Commune those who had elected to be its partisans. Reviewing its forces after the unsuccessful sortie of the 3rd of April, the Commune could hardly congratulate itself upon the adoption of ultra measures and the result of their violent policy. They found themselves without the aid of those deputies and men of position who had once so loudly advocated their cause.1 Their leaders were, as Thiers had called them, men Louis Blanc: La Commune et l'État. either quite unknown or known only to bad fame. They stood alone in France, unsupported by a single city, even those most prone to revolution and most imbued with socialist ideas. Their army was plainly overmatched; their position clearly not tenable for long. The die was cast; the game was lost: it remained only to hold out as martyrs to the cause; to defend Paris, the sole enlightened spot on the whole earth, to the last ounce of powder and behind the last barricade; to give a pattern to the blind and thankless world, and carry out to the last their peculiar schemes of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. To the Executive Committee, whose authority gradually and unaccountably waned, succeeded, as the most influential power in Paris, the 'Delegates,' appointed by the Commune. These citizens occupied the post and discharged, to all intents and purposes, the functions of ministers ordinarily so called; their authority, as limited by the mandate which appointed them, was exceedingly vague and indefinite. That it was capable of being stretched to a very wide extent is proved by the vast power usurped and long exercised by General Cluseret, the Delegate of War. That man seems to have had the power of a Dictator almost already within his grasp, when he was suddenly degraded, supplanted by the intrigues of his aide-de-camp and his chief General in a manner at present wholly incomprehensible. The treachery and ingratitude of Rossel are doubly conspicuous, from the consideration that after overreaching his patron he was found incompetent to take his place, and almost on the morrow of his appointment threw up his cards and avowed himself unable to play out the game which he had refused to allow an abler man to finish. With Cluseret fell the hope or fear of a military dictatorship, and the possibility of united councils among the Executive Ministers of the Commune. During the rule of Cluseret at the War Office an important decree had been passed by the Commune, professing to define, but in reality leaving more undefined than ever, the powers of the several Delegates. Thenceforth they were to be nine in number, and to exercise jurisdiction. over the nine ministries or delegacies amongst whom the decree divided the whole executive functions of Government. To each ministry was appointed also a Committee, consisting of five members, the nature of whose relations with the Delegate was the subject of a fierce debate. The moderate party and those who saw no chance of making themselves dictators wished the Committee to be a check upon the Delegate; Cluseret and the extreme men were for setting up the authority of the Delegates above and out of reach of all interference from below them. The discussion, like many of those in the Commune, ended in no decision being arrived at: it was understood, of course, that the Commune should have a supervising and correcting power over all acts of each Delegate; but as the authority of the Commune was, at best, an unwieldy and slowmoving power, its superiority did not imply any very serious check. The escape of Rossel while the Commune was actually voting his arrest is an illustration of this remark. Immediately after the fall of Cluseret followed the appointment of the Committee of Public Safety -a power which it was expected, perhaps, owing to the historic terror of the name, would override and supersede the authority both of Delegates and committees of all kinds. Instead of this, however, it sank into the same rank with its fellow committees, and flickering forth now and then in proclama tions and decrees, relapsed always immediately into silence and insignificance. The old Central Committee, which had been rather under a cloud since Cluseret's assumption of power, started up into fresh life at his dismissal, and again began to meddle with military matters, and to worry the Delegate of War. As if committees could never be numerous enough, we had next on the scene the Committee of War, a lumbering and useless body, whose interference or unmanageable assistance was equally troublesome to the War Minister, and drove the impatient and inexperienced young successor to Cluseret to an angry resignation. While these rapid changes were being effected in the important bureau of the War Department, other Delegates were carrying on their duties, if not to the satisfaction of the public, at least without any very flagrant acts of folly or incompetency. It is too early at present to criticise the acts of internal administration which they carried out during their stay in office. When the history of the Communal Government of 1871 shall have been made more fully known to us, it will be curious to note how far they have succeeded in carrying into practice in the several departments of the State the theoretic principles of their philosophy. Very interesting it would be, moreover, to compare the history of the modern Commune with that of its dreaded prototype in 1791. The similarities are many, and the former always took the latter as its pattern and ideal. The differences between the two, which are also great, are such as one might reasonably expect considering the advance in latter times of the Socialist ideas and of the positivism preached by Comte. As the causes of the first Communal Revolution were far stronger, so was its career far more vigorous and energetic. But no one thing is more peculiar in the history of the Revolution, as in the history of the Prussian war, than the fact that no really great man has been floated to power by his exertions or his luck from amidst the confusion and disorder of these troubled times. There has been no Robespierre and no Marat in the Commune of 1871. In gazing on the dreary records of defeats, failures, and weaknesses, one is tempted to ask-is the old race of Frenchmen come to an end for evermore? Are the men of the greatest vigour and most dangerous ambition in France sunk to the level of Gambetta and Cluseret? and is there no abler man than the iconoclast Pyat and the libel-monger Delescluze to become the right-hand man of the Commune? The acts of childish mischief and wanton folly in which the modern Commune have indulged are more contemptible, if less criminal and disgusting, than the excesses of 1791 and 1792. The follies of the Paris Government can only be palliated by comparison with the more egregious blunders of Versailles. E. B. M. Eastern Question, the, 174 English Republicanism, by a Working Europe, the Tenure of Land in, by D. Grant, Europeans, What the Chinese really Think Fatherland, Jubilee in, 1871, 724 Canada, the Free-grant Lands of, by Charles Fortnight, a, in Kerry, 2nd article, by the I. 328 II. 503 III. 613 Chinese, What the, really think of Euro- Conington, Dryden and, Virgil as Translated Corona, the Sun's, by Richard A. Proctor, Corona, What, then, is the? by Richard A. Crimean War, on the Causes of the, by Crisis in France, the, 257 Crow Castle, a Bird's-eye View from, by Editor, 28 Germany, Prussia and, by Professor Pauli, Government Scheme, the, of Army Reform, Hulee, the Travels and Adventures of a Indian Deficit, the, 14 Indian Mutiny, Kaye's, 232 Ingoldsby, Thomas (Barham), 302 |