The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-05-05
THE COMMUNE" AS A BASIS OF GOV
ERNMENT.

From the Pail Mall Gazette.
1t is a strange and significant sign Of deere
pitude when an old man forgets the lessons
of his long years of busy and active life, and
reverts by preference to the scenes and asso-
Citations of early youth. And a similar dis
eased senility appears to attach to political
philosophy when it goes back for precedents
to the examples afforded by less advanced
stage of society. But though this kind of
retrospective wisdom is pretty sure sign of
weakness in political philosophy itself, it is
not unfrequently token of rude vigor in
the individual minds which indulge in it.
The fashion of mimicl1ing the language
and demeanor of classical republics
which prevailed in the y French demo-
cracy of 1898 was ludicrous enough,
as ludicrous as the contemporary mode among
ladies of dressing or rather undressing, in
classical tunics, and facing Partisan climate
in winter with stockingless feet and very ex-
posed shoulders But the men who thus
modelled themselves after an extinct type
were, many of them, neither foolish nor
weak. Mistaken as they were in supposlng
| the lessons of antiquity directly applicable to
their own day, they could themselves appre-
ciate what was great and what was wise in the
recollections of ages gone by, and regulate
| their own conduct to a certain extent in
unison with such guidance. They we're utterly
mistaken in fancying Sparta and Athens
models for France; they were not themselves
the worse, but the better, so far as they were
in earnest, for acting the parts of Spartans
and Athenians.
These reflections are not unnaturally occa-
stoned by the singular anaGhronism which is
now attempted-we cannot say perpetrated-
| by the eGtemp0Te government established for
the nonce in Paris Of course, the maj jority
of its leading spirits are simply of the anar-
chical or destructive character; but there are
l,xx.
an idea of q possible State, such as Europe
for many generations has not witnessed in
actual existence. There have been times and
countries in which the cities and their
indwellers were almost everything-the mass
of mankind who cultivated the earth nothing
Inside the walls, affiuence, education,
comfort, luxury; outside, multi
tude scarcely removed above bar
barism, subject to number of
feudal lords who no doubt defied the citizens
and plundered them when they were able,
but whom their own lawless habits and pau
perism placed in general at the mercy of the
burghers whom they affected to despise
Such were the Netherlands at one PERIOD
such more especially was Northern Italy SIN
every other part of Europe" says Macaulay,
"a large and powerful privileged class tram
pied on the people and defied the Govern
ment. But in the most fourishing parts of
Italy the mobiles were reduced to comparative
insignifcance. In some districts they took
shelter under the protection of the powerful
componweaths which they were unable to
oppose, and gradually sank into the mass of
burghers."
Such is the precedent, If public rumor is
correct, which the few thoughtful spirits
among the Red rulers of the Hotel de Vile
have before their eyes. They dream of a
France consisting of number of confederate
cities, exercising in harmony with each other
all political power, and multitude of be-
nighted agriculturists obeying the laws which
the cities dictate and paying the taxes which
they impose. Such is the theory which Asst,
the chief of the International Society, is said
to have drawn from the pages of the only
book which he admits having studied-M.
Quinet's History of Italy" Whatever may
be the deficiencies of Citizen Assi's political
education, he is evidently a man who
thinks for himself and who possesses the
leaders faculty of expounding his thoughts;
and, if it be true that he is already under
prescription by the merely anarchical section
of the Commune, he has evidently earned
the ordinary reward of one who thinks for
himself in troublesome times, but has not
strength to enforce his thoughts-either
neglect or martyrdom. The ideas of such a
man are generally more worth investigation
than better instructed but more common
place personages are apt to suppose.
Let as portray to ourselves for moment the
features of an Italian civic commonwealth of
the Middle Ages, and with the guidance of
safer authorities than M. Quinet's epigrams.
AT the time of its greatest development in
the fourteenth century, republican Florence
was a city with some ninety or a hundred
thousand inhabitants. In theory, its Consti-
tuition established a government of trades
unions There were twenty-ons or twenty
three guilds; the greater and lesser "arts"-
lawyers, notaries, wholesale Dealers bankers,
etc., belonging to the former; retailers,
shoemakers, butchers, tailors and the
like to the smaller. Each of these COM
panies had its own council and its own
executive. Each excluded the competition
of private traders by the most iealeusly
, exclusive laws. United, or rather federated,
they constituted the common Health-with it's
general executive, composed of members
chosen by constantly changing series of re-
| fined contrivances; its two elected legislative
councils; and its device for occasionally re-
, sorting to plebiscite, a resolution. +" in Hal
lam words, ''Of all deriYatiVe powers into
the immediate operation of the popular will, 4"
when Florence was technically said ''far 81
popolo, to make itself people-from which
people, I" however, not only mere proletaries
but citizens not enrolled in the trades were
carefully excluded.
Such was the general outline of Florentine
\ Government for nearly two centuries, but
= subject to perpetual variations of detail and
interrupted by periods of anarchy and ty-
ranpy. Nevertheless, il secured an amount
of wealth, comfort, social refinement such as
+ was only approached in tho times of which
we are speaking in few other communities
5 similarly circumstanced. The difference be-