The Place of the Hôtel-de-Ville was still astir when the newly elected members of the Commune assembled in the municipal council-hall.
The ballot had returned sixteen mayors, adjuncts, and Liberals of all shades,[107] a few Radicals,[108] and about sixty Revolutionists of all sorts.[109]
How came these latter to be chosen? All must be told, and virile truth at last substituted for the stale flattery of the old romantic school styling itself "Revolutionary." There might be something more terrible than the defeat: to misconstrue or to forget its causes.
Responsibility weighs heavily enough upon the elected, but we must not charge it all to one side—the electors also have their share of it.
The Central Committee had told the people on Sunday, the 19th instant, "Prepare for your communal elections." They thus had a whole week in which to frame a mandate and select their mandatories. No doubt the resistance of the mayors and the occupation of the military posts kept away many of the revolutionary electors from their arrondissements, but there still remained enough citizens to conduct the work of selection.
Never had a mandate been more indispensable, for the question at issue was to give Paris a communal constitution acceptable to all France. Never did Paris stand in such need of enlightened and practical men, capable at once of negotiating and of combating.
Yet there was never less preparatory discussion. A few men only recalled to prudence a people habitually so over-scrupulous in electoral matters, and which had just made a revolution to get rid of their representatives. The Committee of the twenty arrondissements issued a manifesto very pertinent in several points, and which might have served as an outline; the two delegates at the Home Office tried, through an article in the Officiel, to impress Paris with the importance of her vote. Not a single assembly framed the general programme of Paris; only two or three arrondissements gave some sort of mandate.
Instead of voting for a programme, they voted for names. Those who had demanded the Commune, made a mark at the Corderie or during the siege, were elected without being asked for further explanations, some even twice, like Flourens, in spite of the blunders of the 31st October. Only seven or eight, and those not the best, of the obscure men of the Central Committee were named, the latter, it is true, having decided not to present itself for election. The public meetings in many arrondissements sent up the most violent talkers, romanticists sprung up during the siege, and lacking all knowledge of practical life. Nowhere were the candidates put to any test. In the ardour of the struggle they took no thought for the morrow. One might have fancied that the object in view was a simple manifestation, not the foundation of a new order of things.
Twenty-four workmen only were elected, and of these a third belonged rather to the public meetings than to the International or the workingmen's societies. The other delegates of the people were chosen from the small middle-class and the so-called liberal professions, accountants, publicists—there were as many as twelve of these—doctors and lawyers. These, save a few really studious men, whether veterans or new-comers, were as ignorant as the workmen of the political and administrative mechanism of the bourgeoisie, albeit full of their own personality. The safety of the Central Committee lay in this, that it was unadorned with great men, each one provided with a formula of his own. The Council of the Commune, on the contrary, abounded in chapels, groups, semi-celebrities, and hence endless competition and rivalry.
Thus the precipitation and heedlessness of the Revolutionary electors sent up to the Hôtel-de-Ville a majority of men, most of them devoted, but chosen without discernment, and, into the bargain, abandoned them to their own inspirations, to their whims, without any determined mandate to restrain and guide them in the struggle entered upon.