This proclamation has now been posted two hours, and I have not yet met a single person who does not approve of it entirely. The deputies of the Seine and the _maires_ of Paris have, by the flight of the Government to Versailles, become the legitimate chiefs. We have elected them, it is for them to lead us. To them belongs the duty of reconciling the Assembly with the city; and it appears to us that they have taken the last means of bringing about that conciliation, by disengaging all that is legitimate and practical in its claims from the exaggeration of the _émeute_. Let them therefore have all praise for this truly patriotic attempt. Let them hasten to obtain from the Assembly a recognition of our rights. In acceding to the demands of the deputies and the _maires_, the Government will not be treating with insurrection; on the contrary, it will effect a radical triumph over it, for it will take away from it every pretext of existence, and will separate from it, in a definite way, all those men who have been blinded to the illegal and violent manner in which this programme is drawn up, by the justice of certain parts of it.
If the Assembly consent to this, all that will remain of the 18th of March will be the recollection--painful enough, without doubt--of one sanguinary day, while out of a great evil will come a great benefit.
Whatever may happen, we are resolute; we--that is to say, all those who, without having followed the Government of Versailles, and without having taken an active part in the insurrection, equally desire the re-establishment of legitimate power and the development of municipal liberties--we are resolved to follow where our deputies and the _maires_ may lead us. They represent at this, moment the only legal authority which seems to us to have fairly understood the difficulties of the situation, and if, in the case of all hope of conciliation being lost, they should tell us to take up arms, we will do so.
Paris has this evening, the 21st of March, an air of extraordinary contentment; it has belief in the deputies and the _maires_, it has trust even, in the National Assembly. People talk of the manifestation of the Friends of Order and approve of it. A foreigner, a Russian, Monsieur A---- J----, who has inhabited Paris for ten years, and is consequently Parisian, has given me the following information, of which I took hasty note:--