ferent groups represented among the Communists, (3) the requirements of the existing situation in France.

REFERENCES. Seignobos. Europe Since 1814, 190-194; Andrews, Modern Europe, II, 345-349; Dickinson, Revolution and Reaction in Modern France, Ch. VIII; Hanotaux, Contemporary France, I, 166-169; Lavisse and Rambaud, Histoire Generale, XII, 2-7.

DECLARATION TO THE FRENCH PEOPLE.

In the painful and terrible conflict which once again imposes upon Paris the horrors of siege and bombardment, which causes French blood to flow, which causes our brothers, our wives, and our children to perish, sinking before shells and grape shot, it is necessary that public opinion should not be divided and that the national conscience should not be troubled.

It is necessary that Paris and the whole country should know what is the nature, the reason, and the aim of the Revolution which is accomplished. It is necessary, in fine, that the responsibility for the sorrows, the sufferings and the misfortunes of which we are the victims should return upon those who, after having betrayed France and delivered Paris to the foreigner, are seeking with a blind and cruel obstinacy the ruin of the capital, in order to conceal in the disaster to the Republic and to Liberty the double testimony to their treason and their crime.

It is the duty of the Commune to ascertain and assert the aspirations and the views of the population of Paris, to state precisely the character of the movement of March 18, misunderstood, unknown and calumniated by the politicians who sit at Versailles.

Once again Paris labors and suffers for all France, for which by her conflicts and sacrifices she prepares intellectual, moral, administrative and economic regeneration, glory and prosperity.

What does she ask for?

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

The absolute autonomy of the Commune extended to all the localities in France, and insuring to each the integrity of

its rights and to every Frenchman the full exercise of his faculties and aptitudes, as man, citizen and worker;

The autonomy of the Commune shall have for its limits only the equal right of autonomy for all the other communes adhering to the contract, the association of which must insure French unity.

The rights inherent in the Commune are:

The voting of the communal budget, receipts and expenditures; the determination and partition of taxation; the management of the local services; the organization of its magistrature, the internal police and education; the administration of the property belonging to the Commune;

The choice by election or competition, with responsibility and the permanent right of control and of removal, of the communal magistrates and functionaries of all sorts;

The absolute guarantee of personal liberty, of liberty of conscience and liberty of labor;

The permanent participation of the citizens in communal affairs by the free expression of their ideas and the free defence of their interests; guarantees to be given for these expressions by the Commune, which alone is to be charged with the supervision and assuring of the free and just exercise of the right of meeting and of publicity;

The organization of urban defence and of the National Guard, which elects its leaders and alone watches over the maintenance of order within the city.

Paris wishes for nothing more in the way of local guarantees, on condition, well understood, of finding in the grand central administration, the delegation of the federated communes, the realization and the practice of the same principles.

But, in favor of its autonomy and profiting from its liberty of action, Paris reserves to herself to effect for herself, as she may think proper, the administrative and economic reforms which her population demand; to create suitable institutions to develop and promote education, productior, exchange and credit; to universalize power and property, according to the necessities of the moment and the opinion of those interested and the data furnished by experience.

Our enemies deceive themselves or deceive the country

when they accuse Paris of wishing to impose its will or its supremacy upon the remainder of the nation and of designing a dictatorship which would be a veritable attack upon the independence and sovereignty of the other communes.

They deceive themselves or deceive the country when they accuse Paris of seeking the destruction of French unity, established by the Revolution amid the acclamations of our fathers flocking to the Fête of the Federation from all points of old France.

Unity such as has been imposed on us up to this day by the Empire, the Monarchy and Parliamentarism is only despotic, unintelligent, arbitrary and onerous centralization.

Political unity such as Paris wishes is the voluntary association of all the local initiatives, the free and spontaneous cooperation of all the individual energies in view of a common purpose, the welfare, the liberty and the security of all.

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

It is the end of the old governmental and clerical world, of militarism, officialism, exploitation, stock jobbing, monopolies, and privileges, to which the proletariate owes its servitude and the fatherland its misfortunes and its disasters.

Let this beloved and splendid fatherland, imposed upon by falsehoods and calumnies, reassure itself then!

The struggle brought on between Paris and Versailles is one of those which cannot be terminated by illusory compromises; the issue of it cannot be doubtful. Victory, pursued with an indomitable energy by the National Guard, will remain with the idea and the right.

We appeal, therefore, to France!

Informed that Paris in arms possesses as much of calmness as of bravery; that it preserves order with as much energy as enthusiasm; that it sacrifices itself with as much reason as heroism; and that it has armed itself only out of devotion to the liberty and glory of all; let France cause this bloody conflict to cease!

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

Summoned to profit from our conquests, let her declare

herself identified with our efforts; let her be our ally in this conflict which can end only by the triumph of the communal idea or the ruin of Paris!

As for ourselves, citizens of Paris, we have the mission of accomplishing the modern revolution, the greatest and the most fruitful of all those which have illuminated history.

It is our duty to struggle and to conquer!

Paris, April 19, 1871.

THE COMMUNE OF PARIS.

127. Laws for Reorganizing Local Government.

These laws with No. 128 are the most important of the reorganization measures of the Thiers government. The system outlined in them still exists with but little change. It should be compared with that of the Second Empire.

REFERENCES. Seignobos. Europe Since 1814, 195; Hanotaux, Contemporary France, I, 235-240; Lavisse and Rambaud, Histoire Generale, XII, 9-10.

A. Communal Law. April 14, 1871. Duvergier, Lois, LXXI, 71-79.

2. Within the shortest possible space of time after the promulgation of the present law, the government shall convoke the electors in all the communes in order to proceed to the entire renewal of the municipal councils.

3. The elections shall take place by scrutin de liste for every commune. Nevertheless, the commune can be divided into sections, each of which shall elect a number of councillors proportionate to the figure of the population.

4. All French citizens fully 21 years of age, in enjoyment of their civil and political rights, not being in any position of incapacity as provided by the law, and having for at least a year past their actual domicile in the commune, are electors.

All the electors 25 years of age meeting the conditions provided in the preceding paragraph are eligible to the municipal council of a commune.

Moreover, there can be chosen to the municipal council of a commune, without the condition of domicile, a fourth of

the members who shall compose it, on condition that the elected who are not domiciled pay in the said commune one of the four direct taxes.

7. In all of the communes, whatever may be their population, the balloting shall continue only one day. It shall be opened and closed on a Sunday. The counting shall be done immediately.

8. The municipal councils selected shall remain in office until the promulgation of the organic law upon the municipalities. Nevertheless, the duration of their functions cannot exceed three years.

9. The municipal council shall elect the mayor and the assistants from among its own members by secret ballot and majority. If after two ballots no candidate has obtained the majority the procedure shall be by ballotage between the two candidates who have obtained the most votes.

The mayors and the assistants thus elected shall be removable by decree.

Dismissed mayors and assistants shall not be re-eligible for a year. The selection of the mayors and the assistants shall take place provisionally by decree of the Government in the cities of more than 20,000 souls and in the head-towns of the department and the district, whatever may be their population. The mayors shall be taken from within the municipal council.

10-17. [Provide a special municipal system for Paris.]

19. The functions of mayor, assistants and municipal councillors are essentially gratuitous.

B. Departmental Law. August 10, 1871. Duvergier, Lois, LXXI, 181-210.

TITLE I. GENERAL PROVISIONS.

I. There is in each department a general council.

2. The general council elects from within its own body a departmental commission.

3. The prefect is the representative of the executive au