Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/34



of a part of the city, have constructed fortifications on which they keep guard, and on which they force you to mount guard with them by order of an unknown committee. They pretend alone to command a part of the National Guard, and do not recognize the authority of General d'Aurelle des Paladines, who so nobly deserves to be at your head. Their wish is to institute a government in opposition to the legal government instituted by universal suffrage. Those persons who have already done you so much harm—those persons who on the 15th of December last you yourselves scattered, after they had pretended that it was their intention to defend you against the Prussians who did but appear inside your walls, and whose final departure is only delayed by these disorders—those persons have turned their guns so that, if they fired, they would reduce your homes to ruins, kill your children and yourselves. Finally, they have compromised the Republic instead of defending it, because if it once becomes the opinion of France that the Republic is necessarily accompanied by disorders, the Republic is lost. Do not believe them. Hear the truth which we tell you in all sincerity. The government, established by the entire nation, could have retaken the cannon robbed from the state, and which actually threaten you. It could have removed these ridiculous intrenchments which stop your commerce, and have placed in the hands of justice the criminals who do not fear to make civil war succeed foreign war; but it has wished to give to the deceived time to separate from those who deceive them. Still, time is granted to the good men to separate from the bad, and you are entreated by your love of peace, by your own well-being, by the well-being of all France, not to prolong indefinitely the duration of this state of things. Commerce is stopped; the shops are deserted; large orders, which would arrive from all parts, are suspended; your arms are