Page:The Paris Commune - Karl Marx - ed. Lucien Sanial (1902).djvu/52

sent some troops of the line with the order to steal the artillery belonging to the National Guard, which had been manufactured and paid for by public subscription during the siege of Paris. The attempt miscarried. Paris instantly rose in arms like one man, and war was declared between Paris and the French Government sitting at Versailles. On the 26th of March the Paris Commune was elected, and proclaimed on the 28th. The Central Committee of the National Guard, which had hitherto carried on the Government, decreed the abolition of the scandalous Parisian "guardians of morality," and then abdicated its functions into the hands of the Commune. On the 30th the Commune abolished the conscription and the standing army, and declared the National Guard, to which all citizens capable of bearing arms were to belong, to be the only force with the right to bear arms; it remitted all rents of dwellings from October, 1870, to April, 1871, such rent as had already been paid to be deducted from future payments; and stopped all sales of pledges in the city's pawnshop. The same day the foreigners elected to the Commune were confirmed in their functions, since "the flag of the Commune is that of the Universal Republic." On the 1st of April it was decided that the highest salary of a functionary of the Commune, whether a member or otherwise, was not to exceed 6,000 francs ($1,200) a year. On the following day was decreed the separation of Church and State, the abolition of all State payments for religious purposes, and the transformation of all ecclesiastical wealth into national property. As a consequence of this, all religious symbols, dogmas, prayers—in short, "all things appertaining to the sphere of the individual conscience"—were on the 8th of April ordered to be banished from the schools, an order which was carried out as