IT

T is somewhat important to know whether, apart from the war, which was only an incidental, and to a great extent accidental, phase of the general question, the working classes of England approved of the broad principles and aims of the Paris Communists, and to what extent. In my opinion the working classes of this country did sympathise with the Commune, though not upon strictly Communistic grounds. In what feelings and beliefs their sympathy was founded we will try to make clear. Average English workmen are not so political as Continental, and especially French, workmen are. Their knowledge of governmental constitutions is limited to a general idea of the differences between the monarchical and republican forms. Their capability of political feeling is dormant until roused by some incidents, or series of incidents, that at once raises their anger, and points to some person or persons against whom it can be directed. They have not the type of mind for which theoretical or philosophical politics have fascinations, or the habits of life which lead to the interchange of political deas and the keeping alive and intensifying of political feeling. Of late they have come to know that among the ideas of regenerative social systems there is one of a Commune, having as its leading object that of placing the labouring classes in a relatively better position, not only towards the non-productive classes, but also towards capitalists, as sharers in the results of productive labour; and that is about the extent of what they do know about it. Of such things as St. Simonism and Fourierism, they have, as a

rule, never heard; and in any case they have no knowledge of their principles. Their knowledge of the fundamental principles of general political economy is equally scanty, though in this last respect they are probably not more deficient than the majority of Continental workmen, whose minds are continually exercised with ideas of political panaceas for all the social ills of the working classes. Just at present their chief political wish is to unhorse monarchy in this country; but in a general way their political thoughts and aspirations, though they scarcely recognise them as being strictly political, turn exclusively upon improving the position of labour in relation to capital. And this they seek to accomplish by direct action-as, for instance, by strikes and the strengthening of trades-unions-and not by the establishment of entirely new social systems.

Such men as these, it will be easily understood, could not be, so to speak, en rapport with the Paris Communists as Communists. This average portion of the working classes is the little educated one, below it is the uneducated, above it the better educated section of the general body. Those among them who take an interest in political matters do understand sufficient both of the principles and details of Communism to be able to form an opinion for themselves concerning its merits, and they are opposed to it as a technical system of society.

They believe that, carried to its legitimate conclusion it would make the skilful and thrifty workman suffer for those who are neither. There are thousands of well-to-do workmen,

men who own houses, have shares in building societies, and money in banks; men also who, by reason of the 'push' and energy which have, as a rule, enabled them to accumulate money or property, are among the most influential of their class and with their class, and these men are keenly opposed to anything that tends to trench upon the sacredness' of individual property, or about which there is any savour of the levelling doc trine. Moreover they are of opinion that, though Communism may be a noble idea and a theoretic possibility, it is not practically workable on any considerable scale.

But while the working classes generally had no particular sympathy with the Paris Commune simply as such, they entertained a warm and very decided sympathy with the Communists on the broader ground that they believed them to be thorough patriots and true republicans. They regarded them with admiration as being men having the courage of their opinions to the extent of fighting and dying for them, and with gratitude as being the soldiers of the general cause of the unprivileged against the privileged classes, and the boldest foes of the hereditary principle in government. The point, however, on which the English working classes were perhaps most unreservedly and emphatically in sympathy with the Paris Commune was that of the latter's avowed desire to extinguish international rivalries; and their being so illustrates some of the characteristic differences between English and Continental workmen to which we have referred. In seeking to effect this object the foreign workmen have, among their other ideas on the subject, some sublime ones about universal brotherhood and the like; but so have not the English workmen. Their motive in wishing to bring about a 'federa

VOL. IV.-NO. XIX. NEW SERIES.

tion of the world' is entirely a practical, some people would say a sordid, one. Through the agency of the Workmen's International Association the working classes of this country generally, and the trade unionists in particular, are striving to effect this extinguishment; but they took up and are persevering in the object simply as a phase of the question of Labour versus Capital. They have arrived⚫ at the conclusion-the soundness or unsoundness of which need not be argued here-that only by friendly relations and joint action with 'the foreigners' can they hope to make any permanently better terms with capital. The capitalists, they reason, play off the foreigners against them. The mechanical schoolmaster has been abroad, the mechanical arts have spread and are spreading. Branches of trade of which England had once practically a monopoly are now carried on extensively in various parts of the Continent, where labour is cheaper than here. Some of the more thoughtful among English artisans have of late years come to see that strikes, even when successful for the time being, have proved ultimately detrimental to the interests of labour in this country. English manufacturers tendering for contracts, in the face of wages forced from them by strikes, were cut out by foreigners; and worse still, in some instances English capitalists, after being engaged in contests with labour, have established factories abroad, and employed foreign labour to produce the same goods they had previously done at home. It is in connection with these matters that the English workmen are so eager to extinguish international rivalries, so willing to do their part in sinking them. Knowing that to bring about a common good feeling, conjoint action, and a fusion of interests among the working classes throughout the world, was a chief

F

object of the Commune; that some of the leaders of the Commune were also leading men in the Workmen's International Association; knowing this, they sympathised very heartily with them on that point, and wished for their success as a means to that end.

The general idea of the English working classes with regard to the Communist rising was, however, something like this: when the war with Germany was over, there was the royalty of Germany safe in person and covered with glory; while the ex-Emperor of the French, though defeated, was still in a position to live in luxurious ease, and still evincing a desire to thrust himself upon the French nation again. That people at large had borne the bulk of the bitter suffering of the war. One result of the war, however, they fondly believed, had been to purge the country of the imperialism that could create such wars for purposes of dynastic ambition; and this to them seemed almost sufficient compensation for what they had gone through. But simultaneously with the election of Thiers's Republic came rumours of Orleanist and Bonapartist intrigues, and signs of the Republican ministers having an inclination to the imperial system, and particularly to that part of it which enabled the government to use the ignorant priest-ridden peasantry as an instrument for overruling the-at any rate comparatively-intelligent town populations.

The Communists might have been wrong; but they did believe that, though names might be altered, the old accursed thing of a special governing and privileged class would be forced upon the people again, unless the people themselves could prevent it. To attempt to prevent it was the object of the Communists in taking up arms. They wanted a republic in fact as well as name; they believed they

were well on the way to it, and that a determined attitude, and, if need be, a determined fight, at the point they had reached, would enable them to attain their desire.

This, in the opinion of English workmen, was substantially the motive and meaning of the rising; and, despite all that has been said against the Communists, they (the English workmen) hold that they fought bravely and disinterestedly, and that their battle was, as we have said, the general battle of the unprivileged against the privileged classes. When Paris was taken there was the most passionate indignation among the working classes of this country at the manner in which Communist prisoners were butchered by the mercenary soldiery, whom shame at the inglorious figure they made when opposed to the Germans should, if nothing else did, have made merciful to their countrymen, who, whatever may be thought of their cause, fought with a bravery that extorted the admiration even of those most bitterly opposed to their political creed. Though the working classes did not approve of the manner in which the Communists destroyed the public buildings, they objected to the proceeding rather as being bad policy than as being, as others argue, utterly unjustifiable and condemnable. They remembered that, in the minds of the Communists, the churches and palaces would be inseparably associated with the sacerdotal tyranny and monarchical selfishness from which the people have suffered so much and so long; and it was as monuments of these things that they were destroyed, not in a spirit of mere vandalism. The working classes bear in mind, too, that, if the Communists slew those they held as hostages, it was not until their own prisoners had been slaughtered like beasts. It would have been infinitely more noble on the part of the Com

munists to have left such an act undone, though no credit would have been allowed to them even in that case. It was a stern deed and a bloody one, but, according to the laws governing such evil things, it was a justifiable one. Had it been committed by the hired soldiery of a monarchy, its harshness might have been condemned, but their right to do it would not have been questioned.

The victims of the act were avowedly held as hostages, and were saved alive long after the strict rule of warlike reprisals would have justified their execution. The conduct of the Versailles soldiers in persisting in the wanton slaying of unarmed Communist prisoners was what really led to the death of the hostages. To stigmatise the shooting of the hostages as assassination and murder, while calling the wholesale butchering of Communist prisoners executions, shows partisanship; and the working-class idea on this point is that partisanship and a desire to misrepresent are what the leading English papers have, in varying degrees, shown in dealing with the Commune. Anyone taking the general tone of English public opinion from the organs' which are popularly supposed to embody it would have been led to the conclusion that horror and reprobation were the universal feelings in regard to the Commune. But any one who could have penetrated into working-class circles, who, let us say, could have sat with the men round workshop breakfast stoves, or in workshop dining or reading rooms, who could have followed them into the lodges of their trade and benefit societies and to their own firesides; anyone who could have done this in the Metropolis, and such districts as the Black Country, the Tyne, Clyde, and the manufacturing towns of Lancashire, would have found from the talk of

the men that newspaper public opinion was the opinion of a section only; that, as we have been pointing out, the sympathy of people was with the Communists. What is said in this article is no mere expression of individual opinion; it is the generalised opinion of working men as expressed among themselves in the places in which they most do congregate. The intention of the article is not to insist that the opinions are right or dispute that they are wrong, but to point out that they do exist, and are firmly believed to be right by those who hold them.

In the tone of the English newspapers upon the Communist rising the working classes saw a special significance. As we have already said, they have but little knowledge of the technicalities of political systems, but they have a considerable degree of the useful quality called 'rough common sense; 'and this enabled them to see that, whatever the rising in Paris might be called, or whatever might be its theoretic details, it was essentially a battle between the two parties who still divide the worldof those who want and those who have.' Knowing this, they saw from the tone of the English newspapers that those who have' were banding together throughout Europe to give their moral support to those who were fighting the Commune; and so, independently of the instinctive feeling leading them thereto, they argued that it also behoved the party of those who want' to band together, and throw in their sympathy with the Communists. At the same time, theirs was not a mere blind party sympathy. What their idea of the meaning of the rising was we have stated, and the monarchist intriguing that has been going on since the fall of the Commune furnishes the most ample justification of the belief of the Communists that the old thing was

to be thrust upon them again. What the Communists wantedwhat if granted to them would have prevented their rising-was perfectly just. Simply put, the sum of their demands was only that those who had been elected as Republicans should show themselves to be really Republicans. The real traitors to France were not the Communists, but those who, after being chosen by the people as Republicans, lent a too willing ear to monarchist intrigues.

In connection with this matter of the sympathy of the English working classes with the Paris Commune, it is a significant fact that the English workmen find satisfaction and consolation in the belief that the Communists, though beaten, have not failed. They hold

that

They never fail who die in a great cause. And to their thinking the Communist rising was a great, even if not a faultless, cause. They believe that the rising, though defeated in its immediate aim, will yet be a material caution to, and restraint upon, the right divine' school, not only in France but throughout Europe. If it is, so much the better for the peoples of Europe; if it is not, so much the worse for the party of right divine.

The spirit that in France took the name of Communism is stalking abroad, and it is an evil one-one that, if not exorcised, will mean social disturbance, and may come to mean social destruction. It has entered into the minds of the English working classes, and is sinking deeper, and becoming more dangerous as it sinks. The very concessions that it might have been thought would have laid this spirit have only served to embitter it. Repealed corn laws, and extended franchise, and other things of that kind that they have fought for and won, under the firm persuasion that

their condition would be materially improved by these, have in result left matters pretty much as they were-the rich growing richer and the poor poorer. It is not, of course, the fault of other sections of society that such measures have failed to realise the expectations of the working classes, but the disappointing experience has embittered them against the present constitution of society. They say now that these things may be very well in their way, but that it is apparent that they do not go to the root of things, that it is mere frittering to be struggling for Acts of Parliament, that what is wanted is a thorough change. If asked what was the change they desired, they would be unable to give any definite answer. They do not know, and, still worse, they scarcely care; their feeling is, that no change that would arise out of a disruption of the present state of society could be worse for them, while any such change might easily be better for them. In this frame of mind they are likely to grasp at any specious plan that promised to bring about revolutionary changes beneficial to them; and still more likely to be reckless as to the means whereby it was sought to carry out such plans. One fixed idea, however, they have, and that is, that the present constitution of society is unfair to them, and that the power of regulating that constitution is monopolised by those whose interest it is to make it continue unfair, and who persistently act for their own interests, yielding nothing until it is extorted from them by fear, and even then trying to give only the name, not the substance of the thing. They believe that before they can rise the class which is composed of the rich, the titled, and the privileged must be brought down, and the power of governing and law-making wrested from them. They have come to be of opinion that between that class and