New-York tribune., 1871-06-28
GEN BUTLER As A COMMUNIST

GEN BUTLER As A COMMUNIST
We have long ceased to feel surprise at any
vagary of Gen. Buffers. He has kept us for
year or two in a state of pleasing uncertainty
about his probable course on most public ques-
tiOns. Ii has been favOrite amusement OF
political journals to guess what he was going
to do next, and as a general rule they have all
guessed wrong But his widest efforts for
political sensation have ceased to occasion any
astOnishment since we know that the most
unexpected thing, if we may be pardoned the
expression, ia precisely the thing that he may
he reasonably expected to do. lie Is Dehe'er
in representative government, as we under
stand it in America, and he acknowledges the
right of a sovereign nation to enforce oDedl-
ence from its component munlclpallteS-or at
least he used to when he was in New-orieans;
therefore he ought to execrate the Paris COM
mune; consequently he made speech the
other day commenting the Commune as very
good thing The logic is perfect Glyen' Ueh'
Butler as a prcmiss, and the conclusion iolio"S
naturally.
Starting with the extraordinary statement
that the reason why liberty has never found
~ a ITln lOOlIlOlu Ill llt Olu i''A' -
"of town or municipal organization'-whl
shows that if Gen. Butler ever read history he
has forgotten all about it, since government
by municipalities was ages ago the character
istic feature of some of the greatest European
nations-he assumes that the Communists were
fighting for nothing but ga town government
"such as we have herein other words, for
the right "not to be ruled against their CON
"sent by the general government of France"
Now, to begin with, town government such
as we have here does not exempt US from al
legiance to the general government. If the
City of New-York should refuse to recognize
the Government of the United States,
and proceed to build barricades, burn
the new Court. House, the Academy
of Design, and Wallacl's Theater, pull
down the Washington statue, and shoot Arch
bishop McCloskey, by way of forcing the
whole country to adopt the cumbrous medieval
system of government by federation of free
towns. it would do exactly what Gen. Butler
commends in the Paris Commune. There was
one occasion, during the Rebellion, when the
mob of New-York burned an orphan asylum,
and hanged few negroes, In vlndlcating their
right, "not to be ruled against their consent
by the General Government" at Washing
ton; but we believe Gen. Butler did not call
that "the struggle of the wOrkingman for self
government" In the next place, a munich
pal government for themselves was not what
the Communists of Paris demanded. They in
sisted upon fixing the form of government for
all France, forcing upon the entire nation a
political system which great majority of the
- fha oil
lists was victory of the provinces over the
tyranny of the worst portion of the capital
1t was stained with horrible cruelty, but for
all that it was a triumph of the true principle
of representative government.
Into the more rhetorical portion of Gen.
Buffers speech we cannot follow him far. He
thinks the destruction of the column in the
Place Vend6me was strictly "i in accordance
with the spirit of free institutions IA re-
mark evidently appropriated from one OF the
speeches of Gen. Cyrus Choke or the Hon.
Elijah Pogram; and as for the burning of the
Tuileries, the library of the Louvre, and the
Hotel de Vile, he excuses all that by asking,
" Does it lie in the mouth of the lover of
" American liberty to say that the laboring
"men of Paris should not pull down the
" palaces Oh hlHBs, IdlStu ny ucSpouSIh anu
"wrong, by unrequited labor, which never in
"any free government could have been made 7"
OF course to the curious intellectual Obliquity
which inspires such reasoning as this, any
answer would be waste of words. What
does the General mean by unrequited labor T.
Were the monuments of Paris built by the
labor of slaves or did the masOns cheat their
hands land if building is not paid for is it
therefore right for mob which did not build
it to burn it down9 1t is pretty well under
stood that the Commune derived a great deal
of its strength from the immense number of
workmen employed by the Imperial Govern
ment in "Haussmannizing" the capital and,
whatever effect the lavish expenditure upon
"Kings' palaces and other great architectural
works may have had upon the industry of the
provinces, to the labOrng and shop-keepng
classes of Paris it has been a great benefit.
People who can't read sometimes call public
libraries "monuments of human despOtism,"
and the brutal and uncultivated would gladly
blot out culture, and set your painters, and
sculptors, and poets, digging the ground and
working among the dung heaps. Gen. Butler
does not belong to that class of demagogues.
Is it possible that he does not believe word
of his own speech
WEAR And TEAR