macy of many of your
claims, may say to himself, "Really all that is very just." Let us
unravel if you please this skein of red worsted so ingeniously tangled.
The vote of the Communal budget, receipts and expenses, the levying and
division of taxes, the administration of the Communal property, are
rights which certainly belong to the Commune; if it had not got them it
would not exist. And why do they belong to it? Because it alone could
know what is good for it in these matters, and could come to such
decision upon them, as it thought fit, without injuring the whole
country. But it is not the same as regards measures concerning the
magistracy, the police, and education. Well, suppose one fine day a
Commune should say, "Magistrates? I don't want any magistrates; these
black-robed gentry are no use to me; let others nourish these idlers,
who send brave thieves and honest assassins to the galleys; I love
assassins and I honour thieves, and more, I choose that the culprits
should judge the magistrates of the Republic." Now, if a Commune were to
say that, or something like that, what could you answer in reply?
Absolutely nothing; for, according to your system, each locality in
France has the right to organise its magistracy as it pleases. As
regards the police and education, it would be easy to make out similar
hypotheses, and thus to exhibit the absurdity of your Communal
pretensions. Should a Commune say, "No person shall be arrested in
future, and it is prohibited under pain of death to learn by heart the
fable of the wolf and the fox." What could you say to that? Nothing,
unless you admitted that you were mistaken just now in supposing, that
the integrity of the Commune ought to have no other limit but the right
of equal independence of all the other Communes. There exists another
limit, and that is the general interests of the country, which cannot
permit one part of it to injure the rest, by bad example or in any other
way; the central power alone can judge those questions where a single
absurd measure--of which more than one "locality" may probably be
guilty--might compromise the honour or the interests of France; the
magistracy, the police, and education, are evidently questions of that
nature.

The other rights of the Commune are, always be it understood, according
to the declaration made to the French people:

"The choice by election or competition; with the responsibility and
the permanent right of cont