Page:General Rules and Administrative Regulations of the International Working Men's-Association (1871).pdf/15



Conference held at London from 17th to 23rd September, 1871, has charged the General Council to issue a new, authentic and revised edition, in English, French, and German, of the "General Rules and Regulations of the International Working Men's Association," for the following reasons:—

The Geneva Congress (1866) adopted, with a few additions, the provisional rules of the Association, published at London in November, 1864. It also decided (see "Congrès ouvrier de l'Association Internationale des Travailleurs, tenu à Genève du 3 au 8 Septbre., 1868." Genève, 1868, p. 27, note), that the General Council should publish the official and obligatory text of the Rules as well as of the Regulations voted by the Congress. The General Council was prevented from executing this order by the seizure, on the part of the Bonapartist Government, of the minutes of the Geneva Congress on their transit through France. When at last, through the intercession of Lord Stanley, then British Foreign Secretary, the minutes were recovered, a French edition had already been issued at Geneva, and the text of the Rules and Regulations contained in it was at once reproduced in all French-speaking countries. This text was faulty in many respects.

1. The Paris edition of the London Provisional Rules had been accepted as a true translation; but the Paris Committee to which this translation is due, had not only introduced most important alterations in the preamble of the Rules which, on the interpellation of the General Council, were represented as changes unavoidable under the existing political state of France. From an insufficient acquaintance with the English language, it had also misinterpreted some of the articles of the Rules.

2. The Geneva Congress having to give a final character to the provisional Rules, the Committee appointed for this purpose simply struck out all passages in which anything of a provisional nature was alluded to, without noticing that several of these passages contained most important matter of no provisional character whatever. In the English edition published after the Lausanne Congress (1867) the same omissions are repeated.

The administrative Regulations hitherto published conjointly with