Mr. Washburne to Mr. Fish,
Sir: The election for the commune which took place in Paris yesterday was a perfect farce. It was ordered by the comité central without the shadow of authority, and the acquiescence in it at the eleventh hour by nearly all the mayors and some ten members of the National Assembly representing Paris, gave it no legality. Yet if the people had generally voted there would have been a certain moral force in the result. But that was not the case. There are some five hundred and fifty thousand voters in the city. On yesterday there were not more than one hundred and eighty thousand votes cast. It is estimated that sixty thousand of these votes were given by men not in sympathy with the commune movement, leaving, therefore, the central committee at the Hotel de Ville only backed by a little more than one-fifth of the whole number of votes. Notwithstanding all this, the insurgents will claim an advantage from the election, and assume that they have been indorsed by the people of Paris. The election will bring no change for the better, but, on the other hand, the situation will become more threatening. It is now the insurgents of Paris who are endeavoring to associate with themselves the insurgents in the other cities against the government of France. A dissolution of the present assembly is to be pronounced [Page 317] and a decree of accusation against its members, when the “order of revenge is to strike without pity.”
There seems to be little doing here. The assembly had to-day a very short session. Mr. Thiers made a speech, appealing to the members to be patient and to be silent. He denied in the most emphatic terms that the government intended to overthrow the republic. He said, “We have formed the republic and we will here serve the republic.” Further, he said: “Our mission is to re-organize the country, to bring back peace, activity, labor, and prosperity, if it be possible, and then to leave to France entire liberty as to the choice of its destinies.”
The government here evidently does not feel strong enough to cope with the Paris insurgents, and is waiting to get up other and more reliable troops.
Mr. Thiers told a gentleman to-day it would probably be two weeks before they would be ready. In the mean time you may well ask what is to become, of Paris? Domiciliary visits have already commenced. The Père Duchêne, one of the worst of the Jacobin journals, and the favored organ of the government of the Hotel de Ville, demands the inauguration of the “policy of suspicion” and a “committee of public safety.” The red flag has replaced the tri-color at the Hotel de Ville, the palace of justice, and the tribunal of commerce. Chauzy has been released, and is now here. He made his way on foot out from Paris. Henri de l’Espée, appointed prefect of the Loire on the 20th instant, has just been assassinated at the Hotel de Ville of St. Etienne. The spirit of insurrection and revolution is spreading over all France, and who knows that while the Versailles government is wasting its days in a “masterly inactivity,” the insurrectionists, by their activity and audacity, will not gather power enough to completely defy it, if not overthrow it. I shall return to Paris to-morrow, and come out here again Thursday?
I have, &c.,