Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/92



"To a usurpation of power the new body will not have to respond by a similar step. Federated with the communes of France already freed, it will have in its own name, and those of Lyons, Marseilles, and perhaps soon of ten large towns, to study the clauses of the contract which will unite them to the nation and to draw up the ultimatum of the treaty they intend to sign.

"What will the terms of it be? First of all the fact is clear that it will have to contain the guarantee of the autonomy and sovereignty reconquered by the municipality. In the second place, it will have to assure the free play of the relations between the Commune and the representatives of the national unity.

"Finally, it will have to impose on the Assembly, if it consents to negotiate, the promulgation of an electoral law such that the representation of the towns shall not in future be absorbed, and as it were drowned in that of the country districts. So long as a measure conceived in that spirit shall not have been applied, the broken national unity, the destroyed social equilibrium, cannot be re-established.

"On those conditions, and those only, the insurgent city will again become the capital. Its spirit, circulating more freely throughout France, will soon become that of the nation itself, the sentiment of order, progress, justice, that is to say, of revolution.

"Avoine Fils, Ant. Arnaud, G. Arnold, Assi, Andignoux, Bouit, J. Bergeret, Babick, Barou, Billioray, Blanchet, Castioni, Chouteau, C. Dupont, Ferrat, Fabre, Fleury, Fougeret, C. Gaudier, Gouhier, Guiral, Géresme, Grolard, Josselin, F. Jourde, Lavalette, Maljournal, Ed. Moreau, Prudhomme, Rousseau, Ranvier, Varlin, Viard—Le Comité de la Garde Nationale."