In 1848 the insurgent towns placed their trust in changes of government, or in constitutional reforms, but such would not be the case at the present time. The working man of Paris, Lyons, or Marseilles, will not wait to receive the accomplishment of his desires from any government, not even from the free commune; he will set to work himself, and say to himself, “That will be so much the more finished and done with.” The Russian people will not wait for a constituent assembly to give them the land they cultivate; they will take it themselves, and at once. It will be the name with Italy and Spain; and, if a certain number of German workingmen allow themselves to be bamboozled by half-hearted or treacherous leaders of their party in Parliament who urge them to wait for constitutional reforms, the example of their neighbors will not be long in teaching them the true revolutionary road. To sum up briefly, the approaching revolution will be effected by the people, “without waiting for it to fall from on high like manna from heaven.” Friends! we who are the people have had to make many sacrifices in the past, and we will have to make them; unjust sacrifices extorted from us against our will, and sacrifices which we earnestly desire to free ourselves from; sacrifices of time and health, of comfort, of instruction, of home affections, and of all that constitutes the happiness of life and makes it worth living. Yet we have another sacrifice to make, and, until we do so cheerfully, I fear that we shall not play our part in the great work of emancipation. We must sacrifice one by one, or, better still, altogether, those prejudices, those thousand prejudices, which we have inherited, and which are the only heritage that most of us have received. But among these prejudices there is one which deserves all our attention, not only because it is the basis of our modern institutions, but because we find traces of it in nearly all the social theories which have been put forward by reformers. The prejudice I refer to is that which consists in putting faith in representative government, or government by proxy. Toward the end of the last century the French people overturned the monarchy, and the last of the absolute kings expiated on the scaffold, not only his own crimes, but also those of his predecessors. Well, it would appear that at the very time whet: everything which was good or great or lasting in the revolutionary work had been accomplished, thanks to the energy and on the responsibility of individuals or of groups, and thanks also to the weakness of the central power,— it would seem, I say, that at that very time the people were preparing to return under the yoke of a new power. And such was the one. Under the influence of governmental prejudices, and deceived by the appearance of Liberty supposed to be enjoyed by the people: of England and America under the constitutions of those countries, the French people hastened to give itself constitutions which it has never wearied or changing. Later, the example of France has been followed by all the nations of Europe, with the single exception of Russia; all, at different times, have shaken off the yoke of despotic personal rule to place themselves under the thumb of assemblies of representatives even under the Commune of 1871 a decided tendency to parliamentarism was at times shown. Happily, however, a new light is breaking upon the eyes of the people with reference to this matter, and they are beginning to see that the best way to be free is not to be too much represented, not to abandon everything either to Providence or to their deputies, but to conduct and administer their affairs themselves.
H. Droege.
London, December, 1881.
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