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TO THE PEOPLES:

THE ORGANIZATION OF DEMOCRACY,

HE forces of Democracy are immense. God and his providential law, the aspirations of thinkers, the instincts and the wants of the masses, the crimes and the faults of its adversaries, combat for it. At every instant it gains a new focus; it rises like the tide. From Paris to Vienna, from Rome to Warsaw, it furrows the European soil, it directs and binds together the thought of nations. Everything comes to its aid: the progressive development of intelligence, insurrectional intuition, battle or martyrdom. Evidently the times are ripe for the practical realization of its principle. That which, sixty years ago, was only the prevision of genius, is to-day a fact, the characteristic, the predominant fact of the epoch. The life of Humanity belongs henceforth, whatever may be done, to the faith which says, Liberty, Association, Progress for all, through all. The reaction well knows this; it no longer denies this holy device, but usurps it to falsify it; it no longer tears the flag, but sullies it; it no longer refutes its apostles, but calumniates them.

What is wanting to Democracy in order to triumph, and by its accession to substitute truth for falsehood, right for arbitrary power, harmony for anarchy, the pacific evolution of the common thought for the sad necessity of violent revolutions? There is only one thing wanting, but that one thing is vital: it is ORGANIZATION.

European Democracy is not constituted. The men of Democracy are everywhere; the general thought of Democracy has nowhere a collective and accepted representation. Democracy bears the word Association written upon its banner, and it is not associated. It announces to Europe a new life, and it has nothing which regularly and efficaciously incarnates this life in itself. It evangelizes the grand formula-God and Humanity, and it has no initiative centre whence the movement sets out towards this end, no kernal where lic at least the germs of that alliance of peoples without which Humanity is but a name, and which only can conquer the league of kings.

Scattered loppings of the tree whose large branches could and ought to shadow the whole European name, systems have divided and subdivided the parent-thought of the future; they have parted among them the fragments of the flag; they live an impotent life, each on a word taken from our synthetic formula. We have sects, but no church; incomplete and contradictory philosophies, but no religion,-no collective belief rallying the faithful under one single sign, and harmonizing their labours. We are without chiefs, without plan, without order-word. One might call us detached bodies having formerly belonged to a great army, now dissolved by victory. But thanks to ourselves, the victory is yet with our enemies. Triumphant at first upon every point, the peoples, turn by turn arisen, fall one by one under the concentration of hostile forces, applauded like the dying gladiator if succumbing bravely, branded if they sink without resistance, but almost always misunderstood, and always rapidly forgotten. They have forgotten Warsaw; they are forgetting Rome, It is only through organization that this state of things will cease. The day that shall find us all united, marching together under the eye of the best among us-those who have fought the most and suffered the most-will be the eve of victory. On that day we shall have counted our.elves-we shall know who we are-we shall have the consciousness of our strength.

For that two great obstacles remain to surmount, two great errors to destroy: the exaggeration of the rights of individuality, the narrow exclusiveness of theories.

We are not the Democracy, we are not Humanity; we are the precursors of Democracy, the vanguard of Humanity. Church militant, army destined to conquer the soil on which should be clevated the edifice of the new society-we must not say I, but must learn to say we. It must be understood that rights are only the results of accomplished duties, that the theory is a dead letter whenever we do not practically translate its principle in our every-day acts; that individuality represents, above all, a mission to fulfil; liberty a means of conscientiously harmonizing our efforts with those of our brothers, of taking rank among the combatants without violation of our personal dignity. Those, who, following their individual susceptibilities, refuse the little sacrifices which organization and discipline exact, deny, in virtue of the habitudes of the past, the collective faith they preach. Besides, crushed by the organization of our enemies, they abandon to them that for which they had trafficked with the cause they had sworn to serve.

Exclusiveness in theories is the negation of the very dogma we profess. Every man who says, I have found political truth, and who makes the adoption of his system, his condition of fraternal association, denies the people-the sole progressive interpreter of the world's law, in order to assert his own I. Every man who pretends by the isolated labour of his intelligence, however powerful it may be, to discover to-day a definitive solution of the problems which agitate the masses, condemns himself to error by incompleteness, in renouncing one of the eternal sources of truth-the collective intuition of the people in action. The definitive solution is the secret of victory. Placed to-day under the influence of the medium we desire to transform, agitated in spite of ourselves by all the instincts-by all the reactionary feelings of the combat, between persecution and the spectacle of egotism given us by a factitious society built upon material interest and mutilated in its most noble faculties,—we can hardly seize what there is of most holy, most vast, and most energetic, in the aspiration of the soul of the Peoples. Drawn, in the depths of our cabinets, from the teaching of tradition-disinherited of the power which springs from the cry of actuality, from the I, the conscience of Humanity,- -our systems cannot be, in great part, other than an anatomizing of corpses, discovering evil, analyzing death, but powerless to perceive or to comprehend life. Life, it is the People under emotion, it is the instinct of multitudes elevated to an exceptional power by contact, by the prophetic feeling of great things to do, by spontaneous, sudden, electrical association in the public place; it is action exciting to the highest all the faculties of hope, devotion, enthusiasm, and love, which slumber now, and revealing man in the unity of his nature, in the plenitude of his realizing powers. The grasp of a workman's hand in one of those historic moments which initiate an epoch, will perhaps teach us more of the organization of the future, than could be taught to-day by the cold and disheartened work of the intelicct, or the knowledge of the illustrious dead of the last two thousand years.

Is this saying that we ought to march forward without a banner? Is it saying that we would inscribe on our banner only a negation? It is not upon us that such a suspicion can alight. Men of the people, long engaged in its struggles,-we do not dream of leading it toward the void. We march to the realization of equality and association upon this earth. Every revolution not made for all is to us a lie. Every political change which does not aim at transforming the medium, the element in which individuals are living, radically falsifies the educational tendency which alone can render it legitimate. But the point of departure and the point of arrival-the end-once established, ought we to delay our march, to abdicate our conquest, and let our liberties be one by one taken from us, because all of us are not in accord as to the means which might realize our thought? Is

it not rather our business to open the highways of progress for the nations, than minutely to assign to them their rations, or to prejudge the details of every building under which they may seek to shelter themselves? And ought we to submit to lose the ground which has cost so much of the blood of our heroes, so many tears of our mothers, because we have not altogether explored that which we have yet to conquer?

We say that this would be at once a crime and a folly. We say that, in the presence of the reaction every where and at every moment fortifying itself, beside the sufferings of the Peoples and the insolence of their masters, beneath the weight of shame which attaches to every systematic violation of right and of human nature, the duty of all those who have given their names to the flag of progress in the truth, is to-day to establish the ground conquered by Humanity and the general tendencies which characterise the epoch; that we must organize ourselves, choose our chiefs, and march with one common accord to overthrow all obstacles, and to open as rapidly as possible to the great realizer-THE PEOPLE -the way towards the end.

Let each thinker assiduously and conscienciously pursue his researches and his apostolate in favour of the special solution of which he has had a glimpse,—the emancipated peoples will know how to judge and to choose: but let him not ramble from the camp where all his brethren ought to be assembled; let him not divest himself of his active part in the accomplishment of the common mission; let him not desert the revolution for philosophy, action for solitary thought, Democracy for any democratic system. Man is one; thought and action ought to be indissolubly united in him. At the end of the day each of us must be able to ask himself without blushing, not What hast thou thought, but What hast thou done to-day, for the holy cause of truth and eternal justice?

Does this common ground exist ?

Yes! it does exist. Surely we have not struggled for nearly a century, under the banner of progress, foreseen as the vital law of Humanity, without having conquered a series of truths sufficient to establish for us all a rallying sign, a baptism of fraternity, a basis of organization!

We all believe in the progressive development of human faculties and forces in the direction of the moral law which has been imposed upon us.

We believe in association as the only regular means which can attain this end.

We believe that the interpretation of the moral law and rule of progress cannot be confided to a caste or to an individual, but ought to be to the people enlightened by national education, directed by those among them whom virtue and genius point out to them as their best.

We believe in the sacredness of both individuality and society, which ought not to be effaced, nor to combat, but to harmonize together for the amelioration of all by all. We believe in Liberty, without which all human responsibility vanishes: In Equality, without which Liberty is only a deception:

In Fraternity, without which Liberty and Equality would be only means without end: In Association, without which Fraternity would be an unrealizable programme:

In Family, City, and Country, as so many progressive spheres in which man ought to successively grow in the knowledge and practice of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, and Association.

We believe in the holiness of work, in its inviolability, in the property which proceeds from it as its sign and its fruit:

In the duty of society to furnish the element of material work by credit, of intellectual and inoral work by education:

In the duty of the individual to make use of it with the utmost concurrence of his faculties for the common amelioration.

We believe to resume-in a social state having God and his law at the summit,-the People, the universality of the citizens free and equal, at its basc,-progress for rule, association as means, devotion for baptism, genius and virtue for lights upon the way.

And that which we believe to be true for a single people, we believe to be true for all. There is but one sun in heaven for the whole earth: there is but one law of truth and justice for all who people it.

Inasmuch as we believe in Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, and Association, for the individuals composing the State, we believe also in the Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, and Association of Nations. Peoples are the individuals of Humanity. Nationality is the sign of their individuality and the guarantee of their liberty: it is sacred. Indicated at once by tradition, by language, by a determined aptitude, by a special mission to fulfil, it ought to harmonize itself with the whole, and assume its proper functions for the amelioration of all, for the progress of Humanity.

We believe that the map and organization of Europe are to be re-made, in accordance with these principles. We believe that a pact, a congress of the representatives of all nationalities, constituted and recognized, having for mission to serry the holy alliance of Peoples and to formalize the common right and duty, are at the end of all our efforts.

We believe, in a word, in a general organization, having God and his law at the summit, Humanity, the universality of nations free and equal at its base, common progress for end, alliance for means, the example of those peoples most loving and most devoted for encouragement on the way.

Is there among us a sane man who can contest these principles? Is there among as a man so exacting, so exclusive, as to declare that this collection of truths, theoretically conquered, does not afford a base advanced enough, and sufficiently defined, to place thereon-with every reserve of independence as to the claboration of special solutions,—a common organization, having for its object to work actively for their practical realization, for the emancipation of the People and of the Peoples?

We have not now to say what this organization should be. It suffices to-day for us to establish its urgency and possibility. We are not giving a programme; we make

an appeal.

To all men who share our faith:

To all the Peoples who have a nationality to conquer:

To all those who think that every divorce, even for a time, between thought and action,

is fatal:

To all those who feel stirring within their hearts, a holy indignation against the display of brute force which is made in Europe, in the service of tyranny and falschood:

We say come to us! Sacrifice to the one great object your secondary disagreements, and rally yourselves upon the ground we are pointing out to you.

For

The question is the constitution, the establishment of European democracy; the question is the foundation of the budget, the treasury of the Peoples; the question is the organization of the army of initiators. The emancipated Peoples will do the rest. ourselves, we are to-day in their name upon the breach. Grasp hands with us, and to the combat!

London, July 22, 1850.

For the Central European Democratic Committee:
LEDRU-ROLLIN.

ALBERT DARASZ,

JOSEPH MAZZINI.

ARNOLD RUGE,

Delegate of the Polish Democratic Member of the National Assembly

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REPUBLICAN PRINCIPLES.

a

HE foregoing Address to the Peoples of Europe was issued by the Central European Democratic Committee in the second number of Le Proscrit (The Proscribed), for August, 1850. The following chapters are intended as a general explanation of the Address, by way of preface and introduction to our work. I speak, of course, without the authority of the Committec: but I believe my exposition to be in exact accordance with their views, so far as the principles are concerned. As for illustrations and applications (such for instance as the definitions of Property and specially the reference to the Land Question), they must be understood as altogether my own. The first might be fallacious and yet not vitiate the principles illustrated; the second, adapted to the condition of England, could not originate with a committee of foreigners. I believe, however, both illustrations and applications to be in logical agreement with their principles. If not, I am open to correction. The most thorough examination and complete development of the principles here enunciated, and only broadly explained, is one principal object of this journal.

EQUALITY-LIBERTY-FRATERNITY.

'We believe in Liberty, without which all Human responsibility vanishes : In Equality, without which Liberty is only a deception:

'In Fraternity without which Liberty and Equality would be only means without end. Liberty-Equality-Fraternity: these words are the battle-cry of the Republican, the formula of his faith, without the understanding whereof there is no political salvation. Liberty-Equality-Fraternity,-each and all, indissolubly united. Any attempt to solve the problem of the government or regulation of society, without due regard to cach of these three terms, must be a failure. Equality refers to the ground upon which we would build, rather than to the building: that is to say, equality is a means, not merely an end.

Liberty may be defined as the unchecked opportunity of growth: a means,

also and not an end.

Fraternity is the link which makes free and equal members constitute Humanity it is the completion of the triple law of human development.

By Equality is not meaned the equal condition of all men-as dreamed of by some of the Socialists. Equality as a result like that would be unjust and unequal. To take an casy example:-Two children are born with different facul

A monthly journal, published in Paris and London. After the appearance of two numbers, it gave place to a weekly publication, La Voir du Proscrit (The Voice of the Proscribed), which is the organ of the European Committee.

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