COMMONS, House of. See Parliament.
COMMUNE, the smallest administrative division of France, corresponding in its main features to the municipal borough of England. Communes constitute legal corporations of elaborate organization, capable of holding property, contracting debts, and appearing as persons in court. The chief magistrate of a commune is the maire, who is assisted by one or more adjoints, and a deliberative assembly, called the conseil municipal, or municipal council, As an agent of the national Government, he is charged with the local promulgation and execution of the general laws and decrees of the country ; and as a member of the municipality he has to attend to the police, the revenue, and the public works of the commune, and, in general, to act as representative of the corporation. In communes that either rank as the administrative centres of a department, arrondissement, or canton, or have a population of more than 3000, the maire is nominated by the central Government ; in those which are not thus distinguished, the appointment lies with the prefect of the department. Suspension from office may be inflicted by the prefect; but deposition can only proceed from the Government. An adjoint may be intrusted by the maire with the discharge of any of his functions ; and as the maire s representative he may preside over the conseil municipal even if he be not otherwise a member of the body. The councillors are elected by the votes of the communal electors ; and like the maire and the adjoints, they hold office for a term of five years. The decisions of the council in regard to the local budget and various other matters are subject to revision and amendment by the prefect of the department.
See Leber, Hist, critique du pouvoir municipal, 1828; Reynouard, Hist, du droit municipal, 1829; Dupin, Hist, dc I administration locale, 1829; Champagnac, Du, passe, du present, ct de Vavenir de I organ, munic. en France, 1843 ; Gorges, Organisation de la com mune en France, 1848.
COMMUNISM is the name that has been given to the schemes of social innovation which have for their starting- point the attempted overthrow of the institution of private property. It is not to be wondered at that so stupendous an undertaking should have failed, except in a very few instances, in its immediate object. The principle of private property has been called by one who was by no means a blind worshipper of the social condition which has been built upon it, " that primary and fundamental institution on which, unless in some exceptional and very limited cases, the economical arrangements of society have always rested." To attack this primary and fundamental institu tion indicates a mind so bold as well as so imaginative that it might well be thought that the assaults upon it would be few and far between, limited to a single country or to a single age, or at least to a class of individuals rendered desperate by having nothing to lose by a general social revolution. The opinion that a communist is a man who has no property to lose and who therefore advocates a general redistribution of wealth is very wide-spread and popular. It is embodied in the well-known lines of the corn-law rhymer:—
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" What is a Communist ? One who hath yearnings For equal division of unequal earnings. Idler or bungler, or both, he is willing To fork out his penny and pocket your shilling."
The facts connected with the history of communism show that the movements against the institution of private property have taken place in nearly every country, and in almost every age. They have originated with men of such divergent intellectual rank as Plato and Robert Owen, as widely sundered in respect of time, country, and social sur roundings as the Essenes, Sir Thomas More, Saint Simon, and Father Rapp. The mere mention of these names goes some way towards the refutation of the popular conception of a communist as a needy adventurer seeking a means to possess himself of the property of others. There may have been some so-called communists attracted to the movement by the hope of being enabled to live on the labour and industry of their neighbours ; but such men have never originated any socialistic movement, and their motives have generally been quickly detected by the genuine communists, who have not infrequently adopted very vigorous means to expel such black sheep from their ilock. Among tbe modern leaders of communistic movements who have actually reduced to practice the theoretical schemes of The Republic and Utopia have been men who have devoted great wealth and rare organizing faculties to the carrying out of their plans for the reconstruction of society. It has been estimated that Robert Owen, during the course of his long life, devoted no less a sum than 00,000 from his own private fortune to the promotion of communistic schemes ; what he sacrificed indirectly to his views on social reform cannot be easily estimated. His faculty for the successful conduct of business was so remarkable that at the early age of twenty-six, without a shilling of capital of his own, he was appointed manager of the mills of the Chorlton Company with a salary of ,1000 a year, besides one-ninth of the profits realized by the company. There can be no doubt that Owen had the personal qualities which would have enabled him to amass a colossal fortune if his ambition had lain in that direction. The immense pecuniary and personal sacrifices which he made to the cause of communism show that he at least was animated by motives the direct opposite of the selfishness and sloth generally attributed to the advocates of that system. Another leading communist, Saint Simon, was the representative of one of the most ancient families of the French nobility. A career in the army was open to him in which he might easily have satisfied the usual ambition of the class to which he belonged. As a young man he served with distinction through five campaigns.
Many other instances might be given of the dis interestedness of the leaders of communistic schemes. Among American associations one of the most successful as to the number and material prosperity of its members is the society known as the Perfectionists of Oneida and Wallingford. Their founder, John Humphrey Noyes, is the son of a banker, and a man fitted by education and natural gifts to have succeeded in any of the ordinary careers of professional or commercial activity. Whether we look at communism as depicted in the pages of Plato s Republic and Sir Thomas More s Utopia, or in the practical efforts made to realize these philosophical speculations by such men as Owen and Noyes, we find no justification for the assumption that the movement is one for enabling " idlers and bunglers " to live on the industry and talents of their more energetic and skilful neighbours.
than endeavouring to define what it is, this is perhaps the right place to state that communism, meaning thereby community of goods and the abolition of private property, has no connection with the doings of the Commune of Paris which was overthrown in May 1871. The French word Commune is a household word in France for " Township " or " Corporation." Every town and village in France has its Commune or municipality. In nearly every town and village there is corporate property called Les Biens Com- munaux, and this property is vested in the corporation or Commune. The similarity, however, of the French word for corporation to ours for expressing the doctrine of com munity of goods, has led to a great amount of misconception and confusion, even among writers who are generally careful
and well informed. The revolution of the Commune was