After the Commune, What?
By Editor
THE dispatches which we publish this morning announce the entire defeat of the Paris insurgents. M. Thiers and his troops are in possession of so much of the city as still remains, and if any struggles continue they are the hopeless efforts of a few hundred Communists barricaded in a corner, to whom despair has lent a hideous sort of courage. There can be no doubt that the Commune, as a military or political force, has ceased to exist. Possibly it is too soon to sum up its record or write its epitaph, but it is difficult to believe that the remotest age will remember it without a shudder, or the most impartial historian modify the passionate condemnation which all the world has already pronounced on its acts. Mr. Frederic Harrison, in The Fortnightly Review, is, we believe, the only known writer who has found an explanation for the Commune, or discovered any method in its madness. But the dreadful work of the last week destroys the only value which might have belonged to the passionate rhapsody of the Positivist speculator. The better the idea out of which the Commune sprung, the worse for the world. An idea that has found expositors like Pyat and Rigault, and that enlisted Dombrowski and Cluseret in its defense, has little chance of being accepted hereafter by honest men. Paris had a right to municipal self-government, no doubt, but the only possible apology for the Imperial oppression against which the great city protested, has been supplied by the madmen who made her the offer of liberty. The social questions which the Commune sought to raise have been pressing for a settlement for years past. They never had so good a chance for fair consideration as within the past twelvemonth. It is probable that the Commune has postponed them for half a century. Social reorganizations have come before now through convulsions and great agonies, but they come in spite of disorders, and not by help of them. The September massacres made Republicanism impossible in France. The barbarities of the Commune have undone the work of a score of reformers, and closed the ear of Europe to every demand for social readjustments. If the overthrow of the Vendome column was meant as a protest against the military spirit, in behalf of what new doctrine of good-will do the charred ruins of Paris plead? But the death of the Commune is only the beginning of the end. M. Thiers is master of Paris to-day, and being master, his difficulties are still all before him. The Versailles Government has never been popular even with the Parisians to whom the Commune was most odious. Before it quitted Bordeaux, it had contrived to outrage the sensibilities of the vainest population in the world. Every shopkeeper on the Boulevards felt himself humiliated at being governed from a provincial city, and the vote of the assembly to adjourn to Versailles instead of Paris was resented as a wanton affront. For all this M. Thiers was held responsible. He had not been thoroughly popular in Paris even when Paris chose him as one of her deputies in the Corps législatif. It was not Thiers whom they loved, so much as Napoleon whom they hated, and in the same way it was the fierce hostility of Paris to the rulers who surrendered the city to the Prussians that led them to welcome any successors. When the Executive whom the Bordeaux Assembly had chosen had established itself in the capital, Paris at once found itself divided into two hostile camps. Paris in rags sat scowling from the Buttes Montmartre, while Paris in broadcloth implored M. Thiers either to govern or give way to somebody who would. He did neither. The insurgents might have been dispersed without difficulty during the first week or fortnight. They might have been beaten even after a month's delay, had M. Thiers known how to attach his own troops to him, or had Vinoy shown ordinary skill in planning his movement. The double failure drove the Thiers government to Versailles, followed by the hiss-es of the city he could not rule. Then came that long period of inaction and that weary show of incapacity and fear, while the insurrection grew daily stronger, while the Commune organized itself and entrenched the city, and throughout which the contempt of the Parisians for M. Thiers darkened day by day into hate. His bombardment of the city followed, and Paris saw with indignation her lawful rulers battering down what her enemies had spared. From the day when the shells began falling about the Arc de Triomphe, the anger against M. Thiers was as strong among his old partisans as among his old opponents. What must it be to-day, when the city lies in ruins solely because the chief who ought to have saved her was unequal to the work? That is the immediate difficulty of the situation. It is not possible to believe that M. Thiers can long continue at the head of this Government. It is equally difficult to name a successor under whom the Government could be carried on in its present shape. If we are to regard the existing Government as permanent in form, we shall look about in vain for an Executive whose claims to popular confidence can inspire any hope of success. To put a weak man or an unknown man in M. Thier’s place is to encourage intrigues of Orleanists, of Bourbons, and of Imperialists alike. There are no means of forming an opinion on the probable chances of either, nor is it certain that society may not find a savior who should prove neither an imbecile nor a tyrant. But he must be a sanguine man indeed who can discover in the circumstances of to-day much ground for believing that the Republic is likely to prove stronger than all its opponents together.—N. Y. Tribune.