nothing more under the head of local guarantees, on the well-understood condition of regaining, in a grand central administration and delegation from the Federal Communes, the realization and practice of those principles; but in favor of her autonomy, and profiting by her liberty of action, she reserves to herself to bring about as may seem good to her administrative and economic reforms which the people demand, and to create such institutions as may serve to develop and further education. Produce, exchange, and credit have to universalize power and property according to the necessities of the moment, the wishes of those interested, and the data furnished by experience.
"Our enemies deceive themselves, or deceive the country, when they accuse Paris of desiring to impose its will and supremacy upon the rest of the nation, and to aspire to a dictatorship which would be a veritable attempt to overthrow the independence and sovereignty of other Communes. They deceive themselves when they accuse Paris of seeking the destruction of French unity established by the Revolution. The unity which has been imposed upon us up to the present by the Empire, the Monarchy, and the Parliamentary Government, is nothing but centralization, despotic, unintelligent, arbitrary, and onerous. The political unity, as desired by Paris, is a voluntary association of all local initiative, the free and spontaneous co-operation of all individual energies with the common object of the well-being, liberty, and security of all. The Communal revolution, initiated by the people on the 18th of March, inaugurated a new era in politics, experimental, positive, and scientific. It was the end of the old governmental and clerical world, of military supremacy and bureaucracy, of jobbing in monopolies, and privileges to which the proletariat owed its slavery, and the country its misfortunes and disasters. The strife between Paris and Versailles is one of those that cannot
