On June 6, 1871, M. Jules Favre issued a circular to all the 
European Powers, calling upon them to hunt down the Interna- 
tional Working Men’s Association.* A few remarks will suffice to 
characterize that document. 

In the very preamble of our statutes it is stated that the 
International was founded “September 28, 1864, at a public 
meeting held at St. Martin’s Hall, London.”” For purposes of 
his own Jules Favre puts back the date of its origin behind 
1862. 

In order to explain our principles, he professes to quote “their 
(the International’s) sheet of the 25th of March, 1869.” And then 
what does he quote? The sheet of a society which is not the 
International.© This sort of manoeuvre he already recurred to 
when, still a comparatively young lawyer, he had to defend the 
National newspaper, prosecuted for libel by Cabet. Then he 
pretended to read extracts from Cabet’s pamphlets while reading 
interpolations of his own—a trick exposed while the court was 

sitting, and which but for the indulgence of Cabet, would have 
been punished by Jules Favre’s expulsion from the Paris bar. 
Of all the documents quoted by him as documents of the Interna- 
tional not one belongs to the International. He says, for in- 
stance, 

“The Alliance declares itself Atheist, says the General Council, constituted in 
London in July, 1869.” 

The General Council never issued such a document. On the 
contrary, it issued a document’ which quashed the original statutes | 
of the “Alliance’—L’Alliance de la Démocratie Socialiste at 
Geneva—quoted by Jules Favre. 

Throughout his circular, which pretends in part also to be 
directed against the Empire, Jules Favre repeats against the 
International but the police inventions of the public prosecutors of 
the Empire, and which broke down miserably even before the law 
courts of that Empire. 

It is known that in its two addresses (of July and September last) 
on the late war? the General Council of the International 
denounced the Prussian plans of conquest against France. Later 
on Mr. Reitlinger, Jules Favre’s private secretary, applied, though 
of course in vain, to some members of the General Council for 
getting up by the Council a demonstration against Bismarck, in 
favour of the Government of National Defence; they were 
particularly requested not to mention the Republic. The prepara- 
tions for a demonstration with regard to the expected arrival of 
Jules Favre in London were made—certainly with the best of 
intentions—in spite of the General Council, which in its address of 
the 9th of September had distinctly forewarned the Paris workmen 
against Jules Favre and his colleagues. 

What would Jules Favre say if in its turn the International were 
to send a circular on Jules Favre to all the Cabinets of Europe, 
drawing their particular attention to the documents published at 
Paris by the late M. Milliére?‘ 

I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 

John Hales, 
Secretary to the General Council 
of the International Working Men’s Association 

256, High Holborn, W.C., June 12, 1871