Johann Georg Eccarius
Record of Karl Marx's speech on Jules Favre

at the meeting of the General Council, January 17, 1871

The Eastern Post.
Nr. 121, 21. Januar 1871

... [O]ne of the continental members said it was of the utmost importance that at
the present moment the English members of the council should not confound the
person of Jules Favre with the official representative of the French Republic. One
member of the council had made a speech in St. James's Hall in praise of Mr.
Jules Favre, which would be received with laughter by the Continental members
of the association. In the second address on the war, it had been distinctly stated
that the Provisional Government of the French Republic was composed of men,
upon some of whom the Revolution of 1848 left an indelible stigma. Jules Favre
was one of them. If he had come to London it would have been the duty of the
London workmen to welcome him as the official representative of the French
Republic, but his personage ought not in any way to be mixed up with it. According to all appearance, there was a danger that the person of Jules Favre
would be brought in the foreground. The French workmen considered him anything but a friend and a patriot. After the Revolution of 1848, when Jules Favre
had been under-secretary of the Interior, one of the first things he had done was
to bring the army back to Paris, which had afterwards enabled the bourgeoisie to
shoot down the workpeople. In May, 1848, when the workpeople had tried to
induce the Constituent Assembly to proclaim the independence of Poland and
war against Russia, a crowd had rushed into the Assembly, and the president had
asked Louis Blanc to speak to them and pacify them. A few days later Jules
Favre had, without the consent, and against the will of his colleagues in the
Government, demanded an order for the prosecution of Louis Blanc as an accomplice of the disturbers, but he had failed at that time. On the 17" of June he
had carried a law against the gathering of armed men in the streets, by which
everyone with a pocket pistol about him could have been taken up. Three days
later the insurrection of June had been provoked by the closing of the national
workshops. On the 21", when the people had been imprisoned and moved down,
he had proposed the suppression of the Executive Committee and the substitution of a military dictatorship. On the 27: he had drawn up and carried a decree
to transport the prisoners made without trial, and 15,000 had been transported.
In November the Assembly had been compelled to inquire into the matter, when
in Brest alone 1000 of the prisoners, not yet transported, had had to be liberated

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as not having been in any way implicated in the insurrection. The prisoners
pointed out as ringleaders had been reserved for trial by a military commission,
many ofthem had been dismissed; others had been sentenced to short terms of
imprisonment. Subsequently, Ledru Rollin and others had insisted on an amnesty; Favre had offered an unqualified opposition. Then he had moved for a commission of inquiry into the doings of the whole Revolution, except the days of
February, and denounced his old friends. The press laws, made under the guidance of Favre, were the most infamous ever concocted. By one paragraph, everybody who criticised religion, law, or family relations could have been punished as
a criminal, and the laws of association had been a match. They had paved the
way for the empire, and Napoleon had turned them the good account. Favre had
denounced and opposed Ledru Rollin, Lamartine, and others, who wanted to
exclude Napoleon from the Assembly three days after, with the assistance of
Favre, he had been admitted. Favre had been the chief promoter of the expedition by which the Roman Republic had been destroyed, which had been the first
step towards the Empire. A number of circulars written by himself or under his
instructions while in office had afterwards, under the Bonapartist regime, when
Favre had joined the opposition, been characterised by himself as infamous, and,
when taunted that himself was responsible for them, he had meekly confessed
that he had been mistaken. It was not to be expected that every English workman
should be cognisant of these things, but if any member of the Council committed
himself, the Continental members would hold the whole Council responsible for
their defects. If Favre was a political necessity at the moment, which was for the
French to determine, he could only be looked upon in this country as the representative of the Republic, indépendant of all personal considerations, the man
Favre must be separated from the Favre who was the foreign minister of the
French Republic. ...

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