The Committee of Public Safety contributed to the defence by a decree obliging all the inhabitants of Paris to provide themselves with a civil card, whose production might be requested by any National Guard--as impracticable and unpractised a decree as that on the refractory recruits. The Hotel-de-Ville awed nobody; behind its big words impotence made itself felt. On the 12th, some battalions having surrounded the Bank and wanting to make a search, old Beslay prevented them doing so, and the terrible dictators of the Committee of Public Safety disavowed their own agent. The public chaffed--a terrible thing! A last blow, and it was all over with the authority of the Commune; and this blow came from the minority. The latter was exasperated at seeing its most capable members expelled from the services--Vermorel from the Commission of Public Safety, Longuet from the _Officiel_, Varlin from the Commissariat--and was struck with dismay at the disorder of the War Office. It had the unfortunate idea of denying its own responsibility, prepared a manifesto, and brought it to the sitting of the 15th. The majority, forewarned, with the exception of four or five members, kept away. The minority had their absence verified, and instead of waiting for the next sitting, sent the declaration to the papers. "The Commune," it said, "has abdicated its power into the hands of a dictatorship, to which it has given the name of Committee of Public Safety. The majority has declared itself irresponsible by its vote. The minority, on the contrary, affirms that the Commune owes it to the revolutionary movement to accept all responsibilities. As to ourselves, we claim the right of being alone answerable for our acts without screening ourselves behind a supreme dictatorship. We withdraw to our arrondissements. Convinced that the question of the war takes the lead of all other ones, we shall spend the time left us by our municipal functions in the midst of our brothers of the National Guard." A great fault this, and altogether inexcusable. The minority had not the right to cry out about a dictatorship, having voted, without making any express reserve, for the second Committee. It had not the right to say that the elected delegates of the people were encroaching upon its sovereignty, for this concentration of power was quite accidental, necessitated by the battle, and leaving the principle of the people's sovereignty intact under ordinary circumstances. It would have been more dignified to openly disavow the acts of the Committee, and then propose something better themselves. It would have been logical, since "the question of the war took the lead of all others," not to thus morally weaken the defence by deserting the Hotel-de-Ville. It was not with a view to retain them in their arrondissements that the arrondissements had sent delegates to the Council.