Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/282



we represent, the right to answer ourselves to our electors for our acts, without sheltering ourselves behind a supreme dictatorship which our mandate does not permit us to recognize.

"We shall not, therefore, again appear in the Assembly until the day when it shall constitute itself into a court of justice to try one of its members.

"Devoted to our great Communal cause, for which so many citizens die every day, we shall withdraw to our arrondissements, which have perhaps been too much neglected.

"Convinced, morever, that the question of war at this moment takes precedence of all others, the time left us from our municipal functions we shall go and pass in the midst of our brothers of the National Guard, and we shall take our part in this decisive struggle, sustained in the name of the people's rights.

"There still, we shall usefully serve our convictions; and we shall avoid creating in the Commune those dissensions which we all censure; for we are persuaded that, majority or minority, notwithstanding our political divergences, we shall pursue the same object—

"Political liberty; and emancipation of the working classes.

"Vive la République Sociale! Vive la Commune!"

"Charles Beslay, Jourde, Theisz, Lefrançais, Eugene, Gérardin, Andrieux, Vermorel, Clémence, Serrailler, Longuet, Arthur Arnould, V. Clement, Avrial, Ostyn, Franckel, Pindy, Arnold, Vallés, Tridon, Varlin, G. Courbet."

The day following the publication of the above manifesto there was a stormy sitting of the Commune, at which sixty-six members were present, including the