THE CUMMUNIST LEADERS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 19, 3 June 1871, Page 16

THE CUMMUNIST LEADERS.

GUSTAVE FLOURENS. The " Daily News" Paris correspondent thus speaks of Elourens : 'He is a hotheaded, dreamy fanatic, with many generous impulses, and with a refinement, an education, and- a polish which do not belong to his party the Pare. But he will now have an opportunity of perfectly comprehending what is the nature of the game which he has played at, and it may be hoped the generosity of the Government will teach him a little wisdom. He is naturally a gentleman if I may "break this word into its constituents; and on the day of the 31st October he used his influence to save the lives of the then Government. But he is one of the most imprudent men living, and one of the most pugnacious. FELIX PYAT. Of Pyat, one of the most dangerous of the insurgents, the same writer says : —" The savage, articles, strongly tainted with profanity, which M. frelix Pyat daily delivers from his editorial chair, through th 6 columns of his newspaper, the Avenger, reflect accurately the violent tendencies of the party to which he belongs. ' Were there no receivers there would be no thieves,' is a trite although not an absolutely true saying; for it leaves out of sight those who are born with the instincts of theft and dishonesty, who thieve for the sake of thieving. We may say with more truth of Le Vengeur, that if it found no readers it would cease to appear. It not only appears but flourishes; a Bign that it possesses a hold upon an extensive circle of sympathising spirits. Who are they, where are they? No sensible man is'* likely to be misled by the political doctrines M. Felix preaches. It is certain they are repudiated with a shudder of

horror by the majority of orderly citizens, and perhaps by a considerable number even of his own disciples. The inference is that they are the favorite pabulum of the very lowest classes ; the illiterate; the least amenable to reason; the least industrious; the most abandoned to vicious indigencies; to instincts of the beast kind—in a word, of the most dangerous elements of the community." The Paris correspondent of the " Times" says : " The eccentricities of a person of this sort might fairly be considered as unworthy of notice as the ravings of the late Mrs Cottle, were it not that he is a power in the country, and that his paper exercises an immense influence over a certain class. That 150,000 voters could be found in Paris, who could choose him as a Delegate leaves, indeed, a painful impression upon one's mind as to the political sanity of a large section of the community. After all, perhaps M. Pyat exactly represents the sense oi his constituents. " GENERAL" HENRY. Of this officer, as we suppose we must call him, who is reported to have been taken prisoner by the Government troops, the same correspondent of the " Times" writes :—" We hear nothing more of Commander-in-Chief Darras, but a new aspirant for the highest honor has sprung up in the person of a certain Monsieur Henry, of the 103rd battalion of the National Guard, who has established his head-quarters as commander-in-chief of the whole of the National Guard in the 14th Arrondissement in the Route de Maine, and assumes to have entered officially upon his command. It is probable that he has been named by the Republican federation of the National Guard." BLANQUI. The writings of Blanqui are sufficiently characteristic of the man. He is, with the sole exception perhaps of Pyat, the most bloodthirsty of the insurgent chiefs. HENBI EOCHEFORT. In a leading article the " Times" thus speaks of Rochefort:—" The public life of Rochefort hardly exceeds two years. His actual success began and ended with the " Lanterne," and the merit of that publication consisted in the incredible amount of vexation and annoyance its not very pungent satire caused in high places. It was not by real wit or humor that M. Rochefort distinguished himself, but simply by the transcendant audacity of his invective, and by the sanguinary ferocity of his sarcasm. As a writer of vaudevilles and farces he had achieved little more than mediocrity ; but the buffoonery which fell flat on the stage might, with better success, be introduced into the world of politics. By being democratised satire in France lost all that keen point which suited it to the character of a highly refined and fastidious people. Rochefort slashed and hacked like a butcher, and it was the very coarseness and brutalily of his work which for a season made him a personage in the estimation of the populace. Our correspondent, writing from Paris, has quoted the last leading article appearing in M. Rochefort's journal under M. Rochefort's editorship. It marks a very decided downward progress towards the lowest scurrillity, for, as is the nature of all over-rated talent, the Mot d'Ordre was outdoing itself, as if anxious to keep ahead of its imitators, and to maintain its pi ace at the head of a school which ventures beyond the worst outrages of the master, and puts his very shamelessness to the blush. That notwithstanding the popularity the " Lanterne" enjoyed in early days, M. Rochefort's powers were not of a nature to engure him the applause of decent persons for any length of time, we may infer from the promptiu'de with which he broke down so soon as he ceased to be an object of Imperial resentment. It was with the greatest reluctance that even M. Gambetta allowed the editor of the " Marseillaise" to claim ' solidarity' with him ; and Ledru Roll in resented as a personal insult the advances made to him by the Democratic Opposition, because their message was conveyed to him by such a mere gamin de Paris as M. Rochefort. The very exile to which the Imperial Government, in an evil hour for themselves condemned him, faiJed to confer on M. Rochefort that political dignity to which he so ardently aspired. Whether it was a member of an Assem-

bly or of a Cabinet, he no sooner found himself installed in the which had formed the object of his ambition than he felt he was beyond his depth, and struggled about and splashed and floundered till he got out of it. Wavering ia his aims, inconsistent in his principles, or, indeed, utterly destitute of all aim and principle, he sought in popular agitation that same gratification of a day's vanity which the success of one of his light pieces on the stage would have given him. The warfare he so rashly engaged in was to him mere play, and when matters assumed an earnest aspect, as when, on the occasion of Victor Noir's funeral, he found himself at the head of a mob of some hundred thousand breathing fire and vengeance, he shrunk from the contest he had done his utmost to provoke. The more we look at the man, the more we consider the chances he had and lost from sheer want of anything like character, the less we can understand how he could be, even for one moment, the object of enthusiasm —how even the idolatry of a rabble could be bestowed with so little discernment and on such flimsy grounds."