The Commune on Wednesday published another manifesto, intended to be
a full programme of their ideas. They deny that they wish to govern France, but declare that they will end "the old official and clerical world of military supremacy and bureaucracy," that Paris has a right to control her own budgets, her own expenses, her own police, magistracy, and education, and her own system of defence, to make any economic reforms the people may demand, and to join herself to that grand central delegation of Federalized Communes which is to govern France. The Commune, in fact, demands that every city in France shall be a free city, like Hamburg or Bremen, and that the cities united shall elect a government for the country. The reign of privileged classes is to be replaced by a reign of privileged communes, who distinctly promise to govern the people on ideas they do not like. The project might work, but it would be much more likely to end in an armed conflict between town and country, and is essentially tyrannical. The towns must, however, enjoy a much larger place in any new electoral system.
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