Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/68



"That, in consequence, the committee which is installed at the Hotel de Ville has neither the right nor the quality to make this convocation.

"The representatives of the undersigned journals consider the convocation announced for the 22d of March as null and void, and request the electors to regard it in that light.

(Signed)

"Journal des Débats, Constitutionnel, Electeur Libre, Petite Presse, Vérité, Figaro, Gaulois, Paris Journal, Petit National, Rappel, Presse, France, Liberté, Pays, National, Univers, Cloche, Patrie, Français, Bien Public, Union, Opinion Nationale, Journal des Villes et Campagnes, Journal de Paris, Moniteur Universel, France Nouvelle, Gazette de France, Messager de Paris, Soir."

This collective declaration of the Paris journals does them great honor, as they embody every shade of politics. The committee, however, threatened with severe repression any resistance to its authority, and announced that the reactionary journals had recourse to falsehood and calumny to cast a slur on the patriots who had ensured the triumph of the people's rights. "We cannot attack the liberty of the press," it said; "only, the Government of Versailles having suspended the ordinary course of the tribunals, we warn all badly-intentioned writers to whom would be applicable in other times the common law on slander and insult, that they will be immediately tried by the Central Committee of the National Guard."

Assi, one of the chiefs of the insurrection, a leading member of the International Society, the instigator and promoter nearly all the "strikes" that have occurred