XIII.—(Page 274.)
Here is an extract from the report addressed to the Municipal Council of Toulouse by the delegates sent to Versailles to M. Thiers and the deputies of the Extreme Left to inquire into the situation:—
"We went then for information to the members of the Extreme Left; Martin Bernard, the companion and friend of Barbès, Louis Blanc, Schœlcher, &c.
"M. Louis Blanc gave us the most precise information. It is useless, said he to us, to again attempt conciliation; there is too much animosity on both sides. Besides, with whom could one treat in Paris? These different and hostile forces dispute for power.
"First there is the Commune, the result of an election at which only a small number of electors took part, composed chiefly of unknown men, of doubtful capacities, and some times even of doubtful honour.
"In the second place, a Committee of Public Safety named by the Commune, but soon coming to a violent rupture with it because it wanted to direct dictatorially.
"In the third place, the Central Committee, formed during the siege, and principally composed of agents of the International, solely occupied with cosmopolitan interests, and caring very little for Parisian or French interests; it is this Central Committee which disposes of the cannon and the munitions, in one word, of almost all the material forces.
"To all this must be added the Bonapartist and Prussian influences, whose more or less apparent action it is easy to trace in all three powers.[269]
"The Parisian insurrection," continued M. Louis Blanc, "is legitimate in its motives and in its first aim—the revindication of the municipal franchise of Paris. But the intervention of the Central Committee and the pretension manifested of governing all the other Communes of the Republic, have quite altered its character. Finally, the insurrection in the presence of the Prussian army, ready to enter Paris if the Commune is victorious, is altogether condemnable, and must be condemned by every true Republican. This is why the mayors of Paris, the Left of the Assembly, and the Extreme Left, have not hesitated to protest against an insurrection which the presence of the Prussian army and other circumstances might render criminal.
"M. Martin Bernard held the same language, and spoke almost in the same terms. 'If Barbès still lived,' cried he, 'his heart would have been rent, and he too would have condemned this fatal insurrection.'