APPENDIX II.*

FRENCH REPUBLIC.

LIBERTY--EQUALITY-FRATERNITY.

COMMUNE OF PARIS.

PROGRAMME.

In the grievous and ghastly conflict which has once more covered Paris with the horrors of siege and bombardment, which sheds French blood, and which destroys with shot and shell our brethren, our wives, our children, it is necessary that public opinion should not be divided and that the national consciousness should be clear from doubt. It is necessary for Paris and the whole country to know what is the nature, the reason, the aim of the Revolution which is now in progress. It is necessary in short that the responsibility of the sorrows, of the suffering and of the ills of which we are the victims should fall upon those who, after having betrayed France and delivered up Paris to the foreigner, pursue with blind and cruel obstinacy the ruin of the capital in order to bury in the disaster of the Republic and of Liberty the double proof of their treachery and their crime.

It is the duty of the Commune to affirm and to define the aspirations and desires of the people of Paris, stating precisely what is the meaning of the movement begun on the 18th of March, which has been ignored, misunderstood, and misrepresented by the politicians who now sit at Versailles.

Paris works and suffers once more, for all France, preparing

*The Manifesto of the Commune to the People of England, translated (I believe) by Félix Pyat himself, and printed at the "Imprimerie Nationale." I reproduce it verbatim.

for it, by fighting and by sacrifice, intellectual, moral, administrative and economical regeneration, glory and prosperity.

What is it that Paris claims?

The recognition and the consolidation of the Republic, the only form of government compatible with the rights of the people and with the regular and free development of society.

The absolute self-government of the Commune extended to every locality in France, and assuring to each commune the integrity of its rights, and to every Frenchman the full exercise of his faculties and aptitudes as a man, a citizen and a worker.

The self-government of the Commune will have no limits but the equal right of self-government which must be accorded to all the other communes entering into the contract and necessarily forming by their association the unity of France.

The inherent rights of the Commune are:

The voting of the communal budget of income and expenditure; the assessment of taxes; the direction of local services; the organisation of the magistracy, of interior police and of public instruction; the administration of the property of the commune; the election either by choice or by competition, with the responsibility and the permanent right of control and of revocation of the magistrates and communal functionaries of every order. The absolute security of individual liberty, the liberty of conscience and the liberty of work. The permanent interference of the citizens in the affairs of the commune by the free expression of their ideas, and the free defence of their interests, guarantees of safety being given to these manifestations by the commune which is alone charged with the duty of supervising and of assuring the free and fair exercise of the right of meeting and of publication. The organisation of the town defences and of the National Guards who elect their chiefs and have alone to watch over and to maintain order in the city.

Paris wishes for nothing more in the way of local guarantees, on the condition of course that the great Central Administration constituted by delegation from the federated communes shall be found to realise and to practise the same principles.

But thanks to its self-government and profiting by its liberty

of action, Paris reserves to itself the right of directing as it may deem fit such administrative and economical reforms as its population may demand, of creating institutions to develope and propagate education, manufactures, free trade and credit, as well as to universalise power and property according to the necessities of the hour, the wishes of those interested and the lessons furnished by experience.

Our enemies deceive themselves or they deceive the country when they accuse Paris of wishing to impose its will or its supremacy upon the rest of the nation, and of pretending to a dictatorship which would be an outrage upon the independence and the sovereignty of the other communes.

They deceive themselves or they deceive the country when they accuse Paris of seeking the destruction of the French unity constituted by the Revolution amid the acclamations of our fathers who had gathered from all parts of old France to the Fête of the Federation.

Unity, such as the Empire, the Monarchy and Parliamentarism have hitherto imposed it upon us, has been but a despotic, unintelligent, arbitrary and onerous centralisation.

Political unity, such as Paris desires, is the voluntary association of every local initiative, the spontaneous and free concurrence of all individual energies in one common aim, the wellbeing, the liberty, and the security of all.

The Communal Revolution, begun by the popular initiative of the 18th March, inaugurates a new era of experimental, positive, scientific politics.

It is the end of the old governmental and clerical world of militarism, of professional politics, of political farming, of jobbery, of monopoly, of privileges, to which the people owe their bondage and the country its misfortunes and disasters.

The struggle between Paris and Versailles is one of those which cannot end by an illusory compromise: the issue must not be doubtful. Victory, pursued with indomitable energy by the National Guard will remain with the idea and with right. We appeal to France.

Informed that Paris in arms possesses as much calm as

bravery; that she sustains order with as much energy as enthusiasm; that she sacrifices herself with as much reason as heroism; that she has taken up arms only through devotion to the liberty and glory of all, let France put an end to this bloody conflict.

It is for France to disarm Versailles by the solemn manifestation of her irresistible will.

Called to benefit by our conquests, let it declare itself one with us in our efforts; let it be our ally in the struggle which cannot end but by the triumph of the communal idea or else by the ruin of Paris.

As for us, citizens of Paris, we have for our mission to achieve the modern revolution, the greatest and the most fruitful of all those which have illuminated history.

Our duty is to fight and to conquer.

THE COMMUNE OF PARIS.

April 19th, 1871.

THE END.

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