So also must its natural corollary: that the minority, if rendered desperate, may be driven to arm itself with new and terrible engines of destruction in order to shatter that superiority of force with which science has endowed the centralised Governments of to-day.
Certain it is that desperation, perhaps brought about by a sense of helplessness in face of an armed nation, was one of the characteristics of the Paris Commune, as it was also of Nihilism in Russia.

In fact the Communist effort of 1871 may be termed a belated attempt on the part of a daring minority to dominate France by seizing the machinery of government at Paris.

The success of the Extremists of 1793 and 1848 in similar experiments--not to speak of the Communistic rising of Babeuf in 1797--was only temporary; but doubtless it encouraged the "Reds" of 1871 to make their mad bid for power.

Now, however, the case was very different.

France was no longer a lethargic mass, dominated solely by the eager brain of Paris.