Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/27

 inexcusable for having brought about the 4th September, badly defending Paris, engaging the country by empty phrases, maintaining an excited population in arms, which were useless against the foreign enemy, and a danger to itself; for having aggravated the preliminaries by the treaty of peace; and, lastly, for having ended by the destruction of Paris.

"You have filled up the measure. France is indignant, and posterity will judge you. In the darkness in which the country is now plunged; in presence of those maniacs who, in their fury, burn our public buildings, throw down the column, and break up that glorious bronze, the fragments of which inflict a wound on the heart of each of our soldiers, some issue of safety must be found. It is not in the intrigues of pretenders, but in the will of the country; apart from that, there can be only conflict and confusion.

"The wished-for haven is not to be found in a principle which is the negation of modern society; in the white flag which France knows no longer, nor in a denial of universal suffrage; in a white terror succeeding the red; in the fusion of the contending claimants, and the return of the French Stuarts. No;—to a new society a fresh symbol is necessary. What is required, and modern right demands it, is the abdication of all before the will of the people, freely and directly expressed. Once more I say, apart from that, there is only chaos.

"Monarchical faith cannot be decreed. The only basis on which a government in France can establish its principle, and the only source from which it can derive force and legality, is an appeal to the people, which we demand, and which France ought to exact.

""