Citizen Palladino,

I have just received your letter of the 13th inst. and I thank you for the account of the history of the Naples Section, which I shall submit to the General Council at its next meeting.

Whatever resolutions the Council may adopt regarding the publicity to be given to the content of this memorandum, the necessary discretion will always be observed.

I regret that you consider it your duty to tell me that you in no way accept the resolutions of the last Conference. As it appears from your letter itself that there is no longer an organised section of the International in Naples, […] I can only accept this declaration as expressing your personal, individual opinion […] and not as that of the […] Naples Section, dissolved by force. Nevertheless, […] I am anxious to avoid misunderstandings, and I reply to you on this matter in detail.

1) You are not satisfied, […] with ‘del modo come fu convocata la Conferenza medesima, non certo conforme alle prescrizioni dei nostri Statuti generali’. To this accusation there are two replies:

a) Certainly our General Statutes do not know of Conferences, they know only of Congresses; they were drafted in the more or less naive confidence that the governments would let us do so. […] The governments having made it impossible for us to convene the Congress in 1870, the sections, […] consulted immediately, confirmed and continued the powers of the General Council, and gave it full power to decide on the date and place of the next Congress. In 1871, the governments made the holding of a Congress even more impossible. In France the Association was dissolved, in Spain, in Italy, in Germany, in Austria and Hungary it was subjected to prosecutions that totally disorganised it. There remained America, England, Belgium, Switzerland 
as the only countries where the Internationals could at least meet openly. And in Belgium a law against the International was announced. The elections of delegates to a Congress which, according to the Statutes, is required to hold public sessions alongside administrative sessions, became impossible in such a state of affairs. In France, in Italy, in Germany, in Austria, in Spain, the association was crushed. Your Naples Section, which could not even elect a delegate to the Conference, how would it have obtained representation at a Congress, with public sessions?

In this state of affairs, it was necessary to have recourse to the precedent of 1865, when for more or less serious reasons, the General Council took it upon itself to convene, instead of the Congress prescribed by the Statutes, a Conference. What took place in Naples and which made it impossible to elect a delegate for the Conference. We have the proofs, if you doubt it. But you will not do so; ‘non potendosi più riunire la Sezione Napolitana dell’Int.’ since […] 20 August 1871, it could not elect a delegate to a Congress. And similarly in France, in Germany, in Austria, in Spain, the Federal Council had had to take refuge in Portugal! What then? There remained the precedent of 1865, when, for certain reasons, the semi-public Congress was replaced by a private Conference held in London, whose convocation and proceedings were sanctioned by the following Congress. You may tell me that these precedents are bourgeois and authoritarian old junk unworthy of true revolutionaries of the proletariat, and I shall reply that the General Statutes, administrative regulations, resolutions of Congresses, etc., etc., belong to the same category, but that unfortunately no […] association, even the most revolutionary, can do without them. Well, the General Council on its own responsibility […] proposed to the sections that for the moment the impossible Congress be replaced by a possible Conference; possible because the delegates would not be known to the governments. The sections accepted, none protested, and the Council is ready to answer for its action to the future Congress.

b) As for the convocation itself of the Conference, it was entirely regular. All the federations, all the isolated sections […] in regular communication with the General Council were […] notified in good time.

2) You complain of ‘la scarsezza dei delegati’.

c) Besides, if there were any observations to make about the legality or the manner of convoking the Conference, the time to present them […] was before or during the Conference. None were made.

2) You complain of ‘la scarsezza dei delegati’. That is not the fault of the General Council. However, Belgium, Spain, Holland, England, Germany, Switzerland and Russia were directly represented at it. As for France, […] almost all the members of the Paris Commune then present in London were there, and I do not think you would want to dispute the validity of their mandate. If no delegates were sent from Italy, you must blame your government, which it is time you offered some effective opposition.

3) You say that the delegates ‘si hanno arrogato i diritti propri di un Congresso Generale’. That is […] entirely contrary to the facts. The resolutions of the Conference in no way affect the content of the Statutes.
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4) Then you object to the ‘tenore stesso di tali risoluzioni che a vostro parere sono in aperta contradizione con i principii della nostra Associazione fissati nei nostri Statuti generali’: I entirely dispute that, and I await the proofs from your part […].

The founders of the International, those who drafted the Statutes and the resolutions of the Congresses of our Association, were very well represented at the Conference, and you will forgive me if I place credence, in the first place, in their interpretation of those statutes […] and in that made by the successive Congresses themselves. Do not forget that the International has its own history and that this history – of which it has every reason to be proud – provides the best commentary on the Statutes; that the International in no way intends to repudiate this glorious history, and […] that at this moment the spontaneous movement of the proletarian masses in favour of our Association – a movement more pronounced and more enthusiastic in Italy than anywhere else – is the most striking ratification […] not only of the letter of the Statutes, but also of this whole history.

[…] Whatever your misgivings regarding the great responsibility which the General Council has taken upon itself, that Council will always remain faithful to the banner […] which the confidence of the workers of the civilised world has entrusted to its care for seven years. It will respect individual opinions, […] it is ready to lay down its […] powers into the hands of its […] mandatories, but as long as it
is charged with the supreme direction of the Association, it will see to it that the character of the movement which […] has made the International what it now is shall not be distorted, and it will conform to the resolutions of the Conference until a Congress shall have decided otherwise.

According to Resolution X of the Conference, there shall be no obstacle to the dissolved Naples Section reconstituting itself under the name of Federazione Operaja Napolitana, or under any other name whatsoever.
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Some merely reaffirm resolutions of previous Congresses, little or not at all known to recently formed sections and members. Others are of a purely administrative character. Far from exceeding the competence of a Conference, neither the one nor the other even goes beyond that of the General Council.