P. J. PROUDHON: HIS LIFE AND HIS WORKS.
The
correspondence of P. J. Proudhon, the first volumes of
which we publish today, has been collected since his death by
the faithful and intelligent labors of his daughter, aided by a
few friends. It was incomplete when submitted to Sainte Beuve,
but the portion with which the illustrious academician became
acquainted was sufficient to allow him to estimate it as a whole
with that soundness of judgment which characterized him as a
literary critic.
In the
French edition of Proudhon's works, the above sketch of his
life is prefixed to the first volume of his
correspondence, but the translator prefers to insert it here
as
the best method of introducing the author to the American public.
He would,
however, caution readers against accepting the biographer's
interpretation of the author's views as in any sense
authoritative; advising them, rather, to await the publication
of
the remainder of Proudhon's writings, that they may form an
opinion for themselves.--
Translator.
In an important
work, which his habitual readers certainly have
not forgotten, although death did not allow him to finish it,
Sainte Beuve thus judges the correspondence of the great
publicist:--
"The
letters of Proudhon, even outside the circle of his
particular friends, will always be of value; we can always
learn something from them, and here is the proper place to
determine
the general character of his correspondence.
"It has
always been large, especially since he became so celebrated;
and, to tell the truth, I am persuaded
that, in the future, the correspondence
of Proudhon will be his principal, vital work, and that most of his books
will be only accessory to and corroborative of this. At any
rate, his books can
be well understood only by the aid of his letters and the
continual explanations
which he makes to those who consult him in their doubt, and request him
to define more clearly his position.
"There
are, among celebrated people, many methods of correspondence.
There are those to
whom letter-writing is a bore, and who, assailed with questions
and compliments, reply in the greatest haste, solely that
the job may be over with, and who return politeness for politeness,
mingling it with more or less wit. This kind of correspondence,
though coming from celebrated people, is insignificant
and
unworthy of collection and classification.
"After
those who write letters in performance of a disagreeable
duty, and almost side by side with them in point of
insignificance, I should put those who write in a manner
wholly external,
wholly superficial, devoted only to flattery, lavishing
praise like gold, without counting it; and those also
who weigh every word, who reply formally and pompously, with
a view to fine phrases and effects. They exchange words
only, and choose them solely for their brilliancy and
show.
You think it is you, individually, to whom they speak;
but they are addressing themselves in your person to
the four corners of Europe. Such letters are empty, and teach
as nothing but theatrical execution and the favorite
pose
of their writers.
"I
will not class among the latter the more prudent
and sagacious authors who, when writing to individuals,
keep one eye on posterity. We know that many who
pursue this method have written long, finished, charming,
flattering, and tolerably natural letters. Beranger
furnishes us with the best example of this class.
"Proudhon,
however, is a man of entirely different nature
and habits. In writing, he thinks of nothing
but his idea and the person whom he addresses: ad
rem et ad hominem. A man of conviction
and doctrine, to write does not weary him; to be
questioned does not annoy him. When approached,
he cares only to know that your motive is not one
of futile curiosity, but the love of truth; he
assumes you to be serious, he replies, he examines
your objections, sometimes verbally, sometimes
in writing; for, as he remarks, `if there be some
points which correspondence can never settle, but
which can be made clear by conversation in two
minutes, at other times just the opposite is the
case: an objection clearly stated in writing, a
doubt well expressed, which elicits a direct and
positive reply, helps things along more than ten
hours of oral intercourse!'
In writing to you he does not hesitate to treat
the subject anew; he unfolds to you the foundation
and superstructure of his thought: rarely does
he confess himself defeated -- it is not his way;
he holds to his position, but admits the breaks,
the variations, in short, the evolution of
his mind. The history of his mind is in his letters;
there it must be sought.
"Proudhon,
whoever addresses him, is always ready; he quits
the page of the book on which he is at work to
answer you with the same pen, and that without
losing patience, without getting confused, without
sparing or complaining of his ink; he is a public
man, devoted to the propagation of his idea by
all methods, and the best method, with him, is
always the present one, the latest one. His very
handwriting, bold, uniform, legible, even in the
most tiresome passages, betrays no haste, no hurry
to finish. Each line is accurate: nothing is left
to chance; the punctuation, very correct and a
little emphatic and decided, indicates with precision
and delicate distinction all the links in the chain
of his argument. He is devoted entirely to you,
to his business and yours, while writing to you,
and never to anything else. All the letters of
his which I have seen are serious: not one is commonplace.
"But
at the same time he is not at all artistic or affected; he
does not construct his letters, he does not revise them, he spends no time in reading them over; we have a first draught, excellent and clear, a jet from the fountain-head, but that is all. The new arguments, which he discovers in support of his ideas and which opposition suggests to him, are an agreeable surprise, and shed a light which we should vainly search for even in his works. His correspondence differs essentially from his books, in that it gives you no uneasiness; it places you in the very heart of the man, explains him to you, and leaves you with an impression of moral esteem and almost of intellectual security. We feel his sincerity. I know of no one to whom he can be more fitly compared in this respect than George Sand, whose correspondence is large, and at the same time full of sincerity. His rôle and
his nature correspond. If he is writing to a young man who
unbosoms himself to him in sceptical anxiety, to a young
woman who asks him to decide delicate questions of conduct
for her, his letter takes the form of a short moral essay,
of a father-confessor's advice. Has he perchance attended
the theatre (a rare thing for him) to witness one of Ponsart's
comedies, or a drama of Charles Edmond's, he feels bound
to give an account of his impressions to the friend to whom
he is indebted for this pleasure, and his letter becomes
a literary and philosophical criticism, full of sense, and
like no other. His familiarity is suited to his correspondent;
he affects no rudeness. The terms of civility or affection
which he employs towards his correspondents are
sober, measured, appropriate to each, and honest in their
simplicity and cordiality. When he speaks of morals and the
family, he seems
at times like the patriarchs of the Bible. His command of language
is complete, and he never fails to avail himself of it. Now
and then a coarse word, a few personalities, too bitter and
quite unjust
or injurious, will have to be suppressed in printing; time,
however, as it passes away, permits many things and renders
them inoffensive.
Am I right in saying that Proudhon's correspondence, always
substantial, will one day be the most accessible and attractive
portion of his
works?"
Almost the whole of Proudhon's real biography is included in
his correspondence. Up to 1837, the date of the first letter
which we have been able to collect, his life, narrated by Sainte
Beuve, from whom we make numerous extracts, may be summed up
in a few pages.
Pierre Joseph Proudhon
was born on the 15th of January, 1809, in a suburb of Besançon, called Mouillère.
His father and mother were employed in the great brewery belonging
to M. Renaud. His father, though a cousin of the jurist Proudhon,
the celebrated professor in the faculty of Dijon, was a journeyman
brewer. His mother, a genuine peasant, was a common servant.
She was an orderly person of great good sense; and, as they who
knew her say, a superior woman of heroic character, --
to use the expression of the venerable M. Weiss, the librarian
at Besançon. She it was especially that Proudhon resembled:
she and his grandfather Tournési, the soldier peasant
of whom his mother told him, and whose courageous deeds he has
described in his work on "Justice." Proudhon, who always felt
a great veneration for his mother Catharine, gave her name to
the elder of his daughters. In 1814, when Besançon was
blockaded, Mouillère, which stood in front of the walls
of the town, was destroyed in the defence
of the place; and Proudhon's father established a cooper's shop
in a suburb of Battant, called Vignerons. Very honest, but simple-minded
and short-sighted, this cooper, the father of five children,
of whom Pierre Joseph was the eldest, passed his life in poverty.
At eight years of age, Proudhon either made himself useful in
the house, or tended the cattle out of doors. No one should fail
to read that beautiful and precious page of his work on "Justice," in
which he describes the rural sports which he enjoyed when a neatherd.
At the age of twelve, he was a cellar-boy in an inn. This, however,
did not prevent him from studying. His mother was greatly aided
by M. Renaud, the former owner of the brewery, who had at that
time retired from business, and was engaged in the education
of his children.
Proudhon entered school as a day-scholar in the sixth class.
He was necessarily irregular in his attendance; domestic cares
and restraints sometimes kept him from his classes. He succeeded
nevertheless in his studies; he showed great perseverance. His
family were so poor that they could not afford to furnish him
with books; he was obliged to borrow them from his comrades,
and copy the text of his lessons. He has himself told us that
he was obliged to leave his wooden shoes outside the door, that
he might not disturb the classes with his noise; and that, having
no hat, he went to school bareheaded. One day, towards the close
of his studies, on returning from the distribution of the prizes,
loaded with crowns, he found nothing to eat in the house.
"In his eagerness for labor and his thirst for knowledge, Proudhon," says
Sainte Beuve, "was not content with the instruction of his teachers.
From his twelfth to his fourteenth year, he was a constant frequenter
of the
town library. One curiosity led to another, and he called for
book after book, sometimes eight or ten at one sitting. The learned
librarian, the friend and almost the brother of Charles Nodier,
M. Weiss, approached him one day, and said, smiling, `But, my
little friend, what do you wish to do with all these books?'
The child raised his head, eyed his questioner, and replied:
`What's that to you?' And the good M. Weiss remembers it to this
day."
Forced
to earn his living, Proudhon could not continue his studies.
He entered a printing-office in Besançon as a proof-reader.
Becoming, soon after, a compositor, he made a tour of France
in this capacity. At Toulon, where he found himself without money
and without work, he had a scene with the mayor, which he describes
in his work on "Justice."
Sainte Beuve says that, after his tour of France, his service
book being filled with good certificates, Proudhon was promoted
to the position of foreman. But he does not tell us, for the
reason that he had no knowledge of a letter written by Fallot,
of which we never heard until six months since, that the printer
at that time contemplated quitting his trade in order to become
a teacher.
Towards 1829, Fallot,
who was a little older than Proudhon, and who, after having
obtained the Suard pension in 1832, died
in his twenty-ninth year, while filling the position of assistant
librarian at the Institute, was charged, Protestant though he
was, with the revisal of a "Life of the Saints," which was published
at Besançon. The book was in Latin, and Fallot added some
notes which also were in Latin.
"But," says Sainte Beuve, "it
happened that some errors escaped his attention, which Proudhon,
then proof-reader in the printing
office, did not fail to point out to him. Surprised at finding
so good a Latin scholar in a workshop, he desired to make his
acquaintance; and soon there sprung up between them a most earnest
and intimate friendship: a friendship of the intellect and of
the heart."
Addressed
to a printer between twenty-two and twenty-three years of age,
and predicting in formal terms his future fame, Fallot's letter
seems to us so interesting that we do not hesitate to reproduce
it entire.
"PARIS, December 5, 1831.
"MY
DEAR PROUDHON, -- YOU have a right to be surprised at,
and even dissatisfied with, my long delay in replying
to your kind letter; I will tell you the cause of it.
It became necessary to forward an account of your ideas
to M. J. de Gray; to hear his objections, to reply to
them, and to await his definitive response, which reached
me but a short time ago; for M. J. is a sort of financial
king, who takes no pains to be punctual in dealing with
poor devils like ourselves. I, too, am careless in matters
of business; I sometimes push my negligence even to disorder,
and the metaphysical musings which continually occupy
my mind, added to the amusements of Paris, render me
the most incapable man in the world for conducting a
negotiation with despatch.
"I
have M. Jobard's decision; here it is: In his judgment,
you are too learned and clever for his children; he fears
that you could not accommodate your mind and character
to the childish notions common to their age and station.
In short. he is what the world calls a good father; that
is, he wants to spoil his children, and, in order to
do this easily, he thinks fit to retain his present instructor,
who is not very learned, but who takes part in their
games and joyous sports with wonderful facility, who
points out the letters of the alphabet to the little
girl, who takes the little boys to mass, and who, no
less obliging than the worthy Abbé P. of our acquaintance,
would readily dance for Madame's amusement. Such a profession
would not suit you, you who have a free, proud, and manly
soul: you are refused; let us dismiss the matter from
our minds. Perhaps another time my solicitude will be
less unfortunate. I can only ask your pardon for having
thought of thus disposing of you almost without consulting
you. I find my excuse in the motives which guided me;
I had in view your well-being and advancement in the
ways of this world.
"I see
in your letter, my comrade, through its brilliant witticisms
and beneath the frank and artless gayety with which you
have sprinkled it, a tinge of sadness and despondency which
pains me. You are unhappy, my friend: your present situation
does not suit you; you cannot remain in it, it was not
made for you, it is beneath you; you ought, by all means,
to leave it, before its injurious influence begins to affect
your faculties, and before you become settled, as they
say, in the ways of your profession,
were it possible that such a thing could ever happen, which
I flatly deny. You are unhappy; you have not yet entered
upon the path which Nature has marked out for you. But, faint-hearted
soul, is that a cause for despondency? Ought you to feel
discouraged? Struggle, morbleu,
struggle persistently, and you will triumph. J. J. Rousseau groped
about for forty years before his genius was revealed to him. You
are not J. J Rousseau; but listen: I know not whether I should
have divined the author of "Emile" when he was twenty years of
age, supposing that I had been his contemporary, and had enjoyed
the honor of his acquaintance. But I have known you, I have loved
you, I have divined your future, if I may venture to say so; for
the first time in my life, I am going to risk a prophecy. Keep
this letter, read it again fifteen or twenty years hence, perhaps
twenty-five, and if at that time the prediction which I am about
to make has not been fulfilled, burn it as a piece of folly out
of charity and respect for my memory. This is my prediction: you
will be, Proudhon, in spite of yourself, inevitably, by the fact
of your destiny, a writer, an author; you will be a philosopher;
you will be one of the lights of the century, and your name will
occupy a place in the annals of the nineteenth century, like those
of Gassendi, Descartes, Malebranche, and Bacon in the seventeenth,
and those of Diderot, Montesquieu, Helvetius. Locke, Hume, and
Holbach in the eighteenth. Such will be your lot! Do now what you
will, set type in a printing-office, bring up children, bury yourself
in deep seclusion, seek obscure and lonely villages, it is all
one to me; you cannot escape your destiny; you cannot divest yourself
of your noblest feature, that active, strong, and inquiring mind,
with which you are endowed; your place in the world has been appointed,
and it cannot remain empty. Go where you please, I expect you in
Paris, talking philosophy and the doctrines of Plato; you will
have to come, whether you want to or not. I, who say this to you,
must feel very sure of it in order to be willing to put it upon
paper, since, without reward for my prophetic skill, -- to which,
I assure you, I make not the slightest claim, -- I run the risk
of passing for a hare-brained fellow, in case I prove to be mistaken:
he plays a bold game who risks his good sense upon his cards, in
return for the very trifling and insignificant merit of having
divined a young man's future.
"When
I say that I expect you in Paris, I use only a proverbial
phrase which you must not allow to mislead you as to my projects
and plans. To reside in Paris is disagreeable to me, very
much so; and when this fine-art fever which possesses me
has left me, I shall abandon the place without regret to
seek a more peaceful residence in a provincial town, provided
always the town shall afford me the means of living, bread,
a bed,
books, rest, and solitude. How I miss, my good Proudhon,
that dark, obscure, smoky chamber in which I dwelt in Besançon,
and where we spent so many pleasant hours in the discussion of
philosophy! Do you remember it? But that is now far away. Will
that happy time ever return? Shall we one day meet again? Here
my life is restless, uncertain, precarious, and, what is worse,
indolent, illiterate, and vagrant. I do no work, I live in idleness,
I ramble about; I do not read, I no longer study; my books are
forsaken; now and then I glance over a few metaphysical works,
and after a days walk through dirty, filthy, crowded streets. I
lie down with empty head and tired body, to repeat the performance
on the following day. What is the object of these walks, you will
ask. I make visits, my friend; I hold interviews with stupid people.
Then a fit of curiosity seizes me, the least inquisitive of beings:
there are museums, libraries, assemblies, churches, palaces, gardens,
and theatres to visit. I am fond of pictures, fond of music, fond
of sculpture; all these are beautiful and good, but they cannot
appease hunger, nor take the place of my pleasant readings of Bailly,
Hume, and Tennemann, which I used to enjoy by my fireside when
I was able to read.
"But enough
of complaints. Do not allow this letter to affect you too
much, and do not think that I give way to dejection or despondency;
no, I am a fatalist, and I believe in my star. I do not know
yet what my calling is, nor for what branch of polite literature
I am best fitted; I do not even know whether I am, or ever
shall be, fitted for any: but what matters it? I suffer,
I labor, I dream, I enjoy, I think; and, in a word, when
my last hour strikes, I shall have lived.
"Proudhon,
I love you, I esteem you; and, believe me, these are not
mere phrases. What interest could I have in flattering and
praising a poor printer? Are you rich, that you may pay for
courtiers? Have you a sumptuous table, a dashing wife, and
gold to scatter, in order to attract them to your suite?
Have you the glory, honors, credit, which would render your
acquaintance pleasing to their vanity and pride? No; you
are poor, obscure, abandoned; but, poor, obscure, and abandoned,
you have a friend, and a friend who knows all the obligations
which that word imposes upon honorable people, when they
venture to assume it. That friend is myself: put me to the
test.
"GUSTAVE
FALLOT."
It appears
from this letter that if, at this period, Proudhon had already
exhibited to the eyes of a clairvoyant friend his genius for
research and investigation, it was in the direction of
philosophical, rather than of economical and social, questions.
Having
become foreman in the house of Gauthier & Co., who carried
on a large printing establishment at Besançon, he corrected
the proofs of ecclesiastical writers, the Fathers of the Church.
As they were printing a Bible, a Vulgate, he was led to compare
the Latin with the original Hebrew.
"In this way," says Sainte Beuve, "he
learned Hebrew by himself, and, as everything was connected
in his mind, he was led to the
study of comparative philology. As the house of Gauthier published
many works on Church history and theology, he came also to acquire,
through this desire of his to investigate everything, an extensive
knowledge of theology, which afterwards caused misinformed persons
to think that he had been in an ecclesiastical seminary."
Towards 1836, Proudhon
left the house of Gauthier, and, in company with an associate,
established a small printing-office in Besançon.
His contribution to the partnership consisted, not so much in
capital, as in his knowledge of the trade. His partner committing
suicide in 1838, Proudhon was obliged to wind up the business,
an operation which he did not accomplish as quickly and as easily
as he hoped. He was then urged by his friends to enter the ranks
of the competitors for the Suard pension. This pension consisted
of an income of fifteen hundred francs bequeathed to the Academy
of Besançon by Madame Suard, the widow of the academician,
to be given once in three years to the young man residing in
the department of Doubs, a bachelor of letters or of science,
and not possessing a fortune, whom the Academy of Besançon should
deem best fitted for a literary or scientific career, or for
the study of law or of medicine. The first to win the Suard
pension was Gustave Fallot. Mauvais, who was
a distinguished astronomer in the Academy of Sciences, was the
second. Proudhon aspired to be the third. To qualify himself,
he had to be received as a bachelor of letters, and was obliged
to write a letter to the Academy of Besançon. In a phrase
of this letter, the terms of which he had to modify, though he
absolutely refused to change its spirit, Proudhon expressed his
firm resolve to labor for the amelioration of the condition of
his brothers, the working-men.
The
only thing which he had then published was an "Essay on
General Grammar," which appeared without the author's signature.
While reprinting, at Besançon, the "Primitive Elements
of Languages, Discovered by the Comparison of Hebrew roots with
those of the Latin and French," by the Abbé Bergier, Proudhon
had enlarged the edition of his "Essay on General Grammar."
The date of the edition,
1837, proves that he did not at that time think of competing
for the Suard pension. In this work,
which continued and completed that of the Abbé Bergier,
Proudhon adopted the same point of view, that of Moses and of
Biblical tradition. Two years later, in February, 1839, being
already in possession of the Suard pension, he addressed to the
Institute, as a competitor for the Volney prize, a memoir entitled: "Studies
in Grammatical Classification and the Derivation of some French
words." It was his first work, revised and presented in another
form. Four memoirs only were sent to the Institute, none of which
gained the prize. Two honorable mentions were granted, one of
them to memoir No. 4; that is, to P. J. Proudhon, printer at
Besançon. The judges were MM. Améddé Jaubert,
Reinaud, and Burnouf.
"The committee," said the report presented at the annual meeting
of the five academies on Thursday, May 2, 1839, "has paid especial
attention
to manuscripts No. 1 and No. 4. Still, it does not feel able
to grant the prize to either of these works, because they do
not appear to be sufficiently elaborated. The committee, which
finds in No. 4 some ingenious analyses, particularly in regard
to the mechanism of the Hebrew language, regrets that the author
has resorted to hazardous conjectures, and has sometimes forgotten
the special recommendation of the committee to pursue the experimental
and comparative method."
Proudhon
remembered this. He attended the lectures of Eugène
Burnouf, and, as soon as he became acquainted with the labors
and discoveries of Bopp and his successors, he definitively abandoned
an hypothesis which had been condemned by the Academy of Inscriptions
and Belles-lettres. He then sold, for the value of the paper,
the remaining copies of the "Essay" published by him in 1837.
In 1850, they were still lying in a grocer's back-shop. A neighboring
publisher then placed the edition on the market, with the attractive
name of Proudhon upon it. A lawsuit ensued, in which the author
was beaten. His enemies, and at that time there were many of
them, would have been glad to have proved him a renegade and
a recanter. Proudhon, in his work on "Justice," gives some interesting
details of this lawsuit.
In possession of
the Suard pension, Proudhon took part in the contest proposed
by the Academy of Besançon on the question
of the utility of the celebration of Sunday. His memoir obtained
honorable mention, together with a medal which was awarded him,
in open session, on the 24th of August, 1839. The reporter of
the committee, the Abbé Doney, since made Bishop of Montauban,
called attention to the unquestionable superiority of his talent.
"But," says Sainte Beuve, "he
reproached him with having adopted dangerous theories, and
with having touched upon questions of
practical politics and social organization, where upright intentions
and zeal for the public welfare cannot justify rash solutions."
Was
it policy, we mean prudence, which induced Proudhon to screen
his ideas of equality behind the Mosaic law? Sainte Beuve, like
many others, seems to think so. But we remember perfectly well
that, having asked Proudhon, in August, 1848, if he did not consider
himself indebted in some respects to his fellow-countryman, Charles
Fourier, we received from him the following reply: "I have certainly
read Fourier, and have spoken of him more than once in my works;
but, upon the whole, I do not think that I owe anything to him.
My real masters, those who have caused fertile ideas to spring
up in my mind, are three in number: first, the Bible; next, Adam
Smith; and last, Hegel.
Freely confessed
in the "Celebration of Sunday," the influence
of the Bible on Proudhon is no less manifest in his first memoir
on property. Proudhon undoubtedly brought to this work many ideas
of his own; but is not the very foundation of ancient Jewish
law to be found in its condemnation of usurious interest and
its denial of the right of personal appropriation of land?
The first memoir
on property appeared in 1840, under the title, "What
is Property? or an Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of
Government." Proudhon dedicated it, in a letter which served
as the preface, to the Academy of Besançon. The latter,
finding itself brought to trial by its pensioner, took the affair
to heart, and evoked it, says Sainte Beuve, with all possible
haste. The pension narrowly escaped being immediately withdrawn
from the bold defender of the principle of equality of conditions.
M. Vivien, then Minister of Justice, who was earnestly solicited
to prosecute the author, wished first to obtain the opinion of
the economist, Blanqui, a
member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. Proudhon
having presented to this academy a copy of his book, M. Blanqui
was appointed to review it. This review, though it opposed Proudhon's
views, shielded him. Treated as a savant by M. Blanqui,
the author was not prosecuted. He was always grateful to MM.
Blanqui and Vivien for their handsome conduct in the matter.
M.
Blanqui's review, which was partially reproduced by "Le Moniteur," on
the 7th of September, 1840, naturally led Proudhon to address
to him, in the form of a letter, his second memoir on property,
which appeared in April, 1841. Proudhon had endeavored, in his
first memoir, to demonstrate that the pursuit of equality of
conditions is the true principle of right and of government.
In the "Letter to M. Blanqui," he passes in review the numerous
and varied methods by which this principle gradually becomes
realized in all societies, especially in modern society.
In 1842, a third
memoir appeared, entitled, "A Notice to Proprietors,
or a Letter to M. Victor Considérant, Editor of `La Phalange,'
in Reply to a Defence of Property." Here the influence of Adam
Smith manifested itself, and was frankly admitted. Did not Adam
Smith find, in the principle of equality, the first of all the
laws which govern wages? There are other laws, undoubtedly; but
Proudhon considers them all as springing from the principle of
property, as he defined it in his first memoir. Thus, in humanity,
there are two principles, -- one which leads us to equality,
another which separates us from it. By the former, we treat each
other as associates; by the latter, as strangers, not to say
enemies. This distinction, which is constantly met with throughout
the three
memoirs, contained already, in germ, the idea which gave birth
to the "System of Economical Contradictions," which appeared
in 1846, the idea of antinomy or contre-loi.
The "Notice to Proprietors" was seized by the magistrates of
Besançon; and Proudhon was summoned to appear before the
assizes of Doubs within a week. He read his written defence to
the jurors in person, and was acquitted. The jury, like M. Blanqui,
viewed him only as a philosopher, an inquirer, a savant.
In 1843, Proudhon
published the "Creation of Order in Humanity," a
large volume, which does not deal exclusively with questions
of social economy. Religion, philosophy, method, certainty, logic,
and dialectics are treated at considerable length.
Released from his
printing-office on the 1st of March of the same year, Proudhon
had to look for a chance to earn his living.
Messrs. Gauthier Bros., carriers by water between Mulhouse and
Lyons, the eldest of whom was Proudhon's companion in childhood,
conceived the happy thought of employing him, of utilizing his
ability in their business, and in settling the numerous points
of difficulty which daily arose. Besides the large number of
accounts which his new duties required him to make out, and which
retarded the publication of the "System of Economical Contradictions," until
October, 1846, we ought to mention a work, which, before it appeared
in pamphlet form, was published in the "Revue des Economistes," -- "Competition
between Railroads and Navigable Ways."
"Le Miserere, or the Repentance of a King," which he published
in March, 1845, in the "Revue Indépendante," during that
Lenten season when Lacordaire was preaching in Lyons, proves
that, though devoting himself with ardor to the study of economical
problems, Proudhon had not lost his interest in questions of
religious history. Among his writings on these questions, which
he was unfortunately obliged to leave unfinished, we may mention
a nearly completed history of the early Christian heresies, and
of the struggle of Christianity against Cæsarism.
We
have said that, in 1848, Proudhon recognized three masters.
Having no knowledge of the German language, he could not have
read the works of Hegel, which at that time had not been translated
into French. It was Charles Grün, a German, who had come
to France to study the various philosophical and socialistic
systems, who gave him the substance of the Hegelian ideas. During
the winter of 1844-45, Charles Grün had some long conversations
with Proudhon, which determined, very decisively, not the ideas,
which belonged exclusively to the bisontin thinker, but
the form of the important work on which he labored after 1843,
and which was published in 1846 by Guillaumin.
Hegel's great idea,
which Proudhon appropriated, and which he demonstrates with
wonderful ability in the "System of Economical
Contradictions," is as follows: Antinomy, that is, the existence
of two laws or tendencies which are opposed to each other, is
possible, not only with two different things, but with one and
the same thing. Considered in their thesis, that is, in the law
or tendency which created them, all the economical categories
are rational, -- competition, monopoly, the balance of trade,
and property, as well as the division of labor, machinery, taxation,
and credit. But, like communism and
population, all these categories are antinomical; all are opposed,
not only to each other, but to themselves. All is opposition,
and disorder is born of this system of opposition. Hence, the
sub-title of the work, -- "Philosophy of Misery." No category
can be suppressed; the opposition, antinomy, or contre-tendance,
which exists in each of them, cannot be suppressed.
Where,
then, lies the solution of the social problem? Influenced by
the Hegelian ideas, Proudhon began to look for it in a superior
synthesis, which should reconcile the thesis and antithesis.
Afterwards, while at work upon his book on "Justice," he saw
that the antinomical terms do not cancel each other, any more
than the opposite poles of an electric pile destroy each other;
that they are the procreative cause of motion, life, and progress;
that the problem is to discover, not their fusion, which would
be death, but their equilibrium, -- an equilibrium for ever unstable,
varying with the development of society.
On the cover of the "System of Economical Contradictions," Proudhon
announced, as soon to appear, his "Solution of the Social Problem." This
work, upon which he was engaged when the Revolution of 1848 broke
out, had to be cut up into pamphlets and newspaper articles.
The two pamphlets, which he published in March, 1848, before
he became editor of "Le Représentant du Peuple," bear
the same title, -- "Solution of the Social Problem." The first,
which is mainly a criticism of the early acts of the provisional
government, is notable from the fact that in it Proudhon, in
advance of all others, energetically opposed the establishment
of national workshops. The second, "Organization of Credit and
Circulation," sums
up in a few pages his idea of economical progress: a gradual
reduction of interest, profit, rent, taxes, and wages. All progress
hitherto has been made in this manner; in this manner it must
continue to be made. Those workingmen who favor a nominal increase
of wages are, unconsciously. following a back-track, opposed
to all their interests.
After
having published in "Le Représentant du Peuple," the
statutes of the Bank of Exchange, -- a bank which was to make
no profits, since it was to have no stockholders, and which,
consequently, was to discount commercial paper with out interest,
charging only a commission sufficient to defray its running expenses,
-- Proudhon endeavored, in a number of articles, to explain its
mechanism and necessity. These articles have been collected in
one volume, under the double title, "Résumé of
the Social Question; Bank of Exchange." His other articles, those
which up to December, 1848, were inspired by the progress of
events, have been collected in another volume, -- "Revolutionary
Ideas."
Almost unknown in March, 1848, and struck off in April from
the list of candidates for the Constituent Assembly by the delegation
of workingmen which sat at the Luxembourg, Proudhon had but a
very small number of votes at the general elections of April.
At the complementary elections, which were held in the early
days of June, he was elected in Paris by seventy-seven thousand
votes.
After the fatal days of June, he published an article on le
terme, which caused the first suspension of "Le Représentant
du Peuple." It was at that time that he introduced a bill into
the Assembly, which, being referred to the Committee on the
Finances, drew forth, first, the report of M. Thiers, and then the
speech which Proudhon delivered, on the 31st of July, in reply
to this report. "Le Représentant du Peuple," reappearing
a few days later, he wrote, à propos of the law
requiring journals to give bonds, his famous article on "The
Malthusians" (August 10, 1848). Ten days afterwards, "Le Représentant
du Peuple," again suspended, definitively ceased to appear. "Le
Peuple," of which he was the editor-in-chief, and the first
number of which was issued in the early part of September,
appeared weekly at first, for want of sufficient bonds; it
afterwards appeared daily, with a double number once a week.
Before "Le Peuple" had obtained its first bond, Proudhon published
a remarkable pamphlet on the "Right to Labor," -- a right which
he denied in the form in which it was then affirmed. It was
during the same period that he proposed, at the Poissonniere
banquet, his Toast to the Revolution.
Proudhon,
who had been asked to preside at the banquet, refused, and proposed
in his stead, first, Ledru-Rollin, and then, in view of the reluctance
of the organizers of the banquet, the illustrious president of
the party of the Mountain, Lamennais. It was evidently his intention
to induce the representatives of the Extreme Left to proclaim
at last with him the Democratic and Social Republic. Lamennais
being accepted by the organizers, the Mountain promised to be
present at the banquet. The night before, all seemed right, when
General Cavaignac replaced Minister Sénart by Minister
Dufaure-Vivien. The Mountain, questioning the government, proposed
a vote of confidence in the old minister, and, tacitly, of want
of confidence in the new. Proudhon ab-stained from voting on
this proposition. The Mountain declared that it would not attend
the banquet, if Proudhon was to be present. Five
Montagnards, Mathieu of Drôme at their head, went to the
temporary office of "Le Peuple" to notify him of this. "Citizen
Proudhon," said they to the organizers in his presence, "in abstaining
from voting to-day on the proposition of the Mountain, has betrayed
the Republican cause." Proudhon, vehemently questioned, began
his defence by recalling, on the one hand, the treatment which
he had received from the dismissed minister; and, on the other,
the impartial conduct displayed towards him in 1840 by M. Vivien,
the new minister. He then attacked the Mountain by telling its
delegates that it sought only a pretext, and that really, in
spite of its professions of Socialism in private conversation,
whether with him or with the organizers of the banquet, it had
not the courage to publicly declare itself Socialist.
On the following
day, in his Toast to the Revolution, a toast which was
filled with allusions to the exciting scene of the night before,
Proudhon commenced his struggle against the Mountain. His duel
with Félix Pyat was one of the episodes of this struggle,
which became less bitter on Proudhon's side after the Mountain
finally decided to publicly proclaim the Democratic and Social
Republic. The campaign for the election of a President of the
Republic had just begun. Proudhon made a very sharp attack on
the candidacy of Louis Bonaparte in a pamphlet which is regarded
as one of his literary chefs-d'oeuvre: the "Pamphlet on
the Presidency." An opponent of this institution, against which
he had voted in the Constituent Assembly, he at first decided
to take no part in the campaign. But soon seeing that he was
thus increasing the chances of Louis Bonaparte, and that if,
as was not at all probable, the latter should
not obtain an absolute majority of the votes, the Assembly would
not fail to elect General Cavaignac, he espoused, for the sake
of form, the candidacy of Raspail, who was supported by his friends
in the Socialist Committee. Charles Delescluze, the editor-in-chief
of "La Révolution Démocratique et Sociale," who
could not forgive him for having preferred Raspail to Ledru-Rollin,
the candidate of the Mountain, attacked him on the day after
the election with a violence which overstepped all bounds. At
first, Proudhon had the wisdom to refrain from answering him.
At length, driven to an extremity, he became aggressive himself,
and Delescluze sent him his seconds. This time, Proudhon positively
refused to fight; he would not have fought with Félix
Pyat, had not his courage been called in question.
On the 25th of January, 1849, Proudhon, rising from a sick bed,
saw that the existence of the Constituent Assembly was endangered
by the coalition of the monarchical parties with Louis Bonaparte,
who was already planning his coup d'Etat. He did not hesitate
to openly attack the man who had just received five millions
of votes. He wanted to break the idol; he succeeded only in getting
prosecuted and condemned himself. The prosecution demanded against
him was authorized by a majority of the Constituent Assembly,
in spite of the speech which he delivered on that occasion. Declared
guilty by the jury, he was sentenced, in March, 1849, to three
years' imprisonment and the payment of a fine of ten thousand
francs.
Proudhon had not abandoned for a single moment his project of
a Bank of Exchange, which was to operate without capital with
a sufficient number of merchants and manufacturers
for adherents. This bank, which he then called the Bank of
the People, and around which he wished to gather the numerous
working-people's associations which had been formed since the
24th of February, 1848, had already obtained a certain number
of subscribers and adherents, the latter to the number of thirty-seven
thousand. It was about to commence operations, when Proudhon's
sentence forced him to choose between imprisonment and exile.
He did not hesitate to abandon his project and return the money
to the subscribers. He explained the motives which led him to
this decision in an article in "Le Peuple."
Having
fled to Belgium, he remained there but a few days, going thence
to Paris, under an assumed name, to conceal himself in
a house in the Rue de Chabrol. From his hiding-place he sent
articles almost every day, signed and unsigned, to "Le Peuple." In
the evening, dressed in a blouse, he went to some secluded spot
to take the air. Soon, emboldened by habit, he risked an evening
promenade upon the Boulevards, and afterwards carried his imprudence
so far as to take a stroll by daylight in the neighborhood of
the Gare du Nord. It was not long before he was recognized by
the police, who arrested him on the 6th of June, 1849, in the
Rue du Faubourg-Poissonniere.
Taken to the office
of the prefect of police, then to Sainte -- Pélagie, he was in the Conciergerie on the day of the
13th of June, 1849, which ended with the violent suppression
of "Le Peuple." He then began to write the "Confessions of a
Revolutionist," published towards the end of the year. He had
been again transferred to Sainte-Pélagie, when he married,
in December, 1849, Mlle. Euphrasie Piégard, a young working girl
whose hand he had requested in 1847. Madame Proudhon bore him
four daughters, of whom but two, Catherine and Stéphanie,
survived their father. Stéphanie died in 1873.
In
October, 1849, "Le Peuple" was replaced by a new journal, "La
Voix du Peuple," which Proudhon edited from his prison cell.
In it were published his discussions with Pierre Leroux and Bastiat.
The political articles which he sent to "La Voix du Peuple" so
displeased the government finally, that it transferred him to
Doullens, where he was secretly confined for some time. Afterwards
taken back to Paris, to appear before the assizes of the Seine
in reference to an article in "La Voix du Peuple," he was defended
by M. Cremieux and acquitted. From the Conciergerie he went again
to Sainte-Pélagie, where he ended his three years in prison
on the 6th of June, 1852.
"La Voix du Peuple," suppressed before the promulgation of the
law of the 31st of May, had been replaced by a weekly sheet, "Le
Peuple" of 1850. Established by the aid of the principal members
of the Mountain, this journal soon met with the fate of its predecessors.
In 1851, several months before the coup d'Etat,
Proudhon published the "General Idea of the Revolution of the Nineteenth
Century," in which, after having shown the logical series of
unitary governments, -- from monarchy, which is the first term,
to the direct government of the people, which is the last, --
he opposes the ideal of an-archy or self-government to the communistic
or governmental ideal.
At this period, the Socialist party, discouraged by the elections
of 1849, which resulted in a greater conservative triumph than
those of 1848, and justly angry with the national representative
body which had just passed the law of the 31st
of May, 1850, demanded direct legislation and direct government.
Proudhon, who did not want, at any price, the plebiscitary system
which he had good reason to regard as destructive of liberty,
did not hesitate to point out, to those of his friends who expected
every thing from direct legislation, one of the antinomies of
universal suffrage. In so far as it is an institution intended
to achieve, for the benefit of the greatest number, the social
reforms to which landed suffrage is opposed, universal suffrage
is powerless; especially if it pretends to legislate or govern
directly. For, until the social reforms are accomplished, the
greatest number is of necessity the least enlightened, and consequently
the least capable of understanding and effecting reforms. In
regard to the antinomy, pointed out by him, of liberty and government,
-- whether the latter be monarchic, aristocratic, or democratic
in form, -- Proudhon, whose chief desire was to preserve liberty,
naturally sought the solution in the free contract. But though
the free contract may be a practical solution of purely economical
questions, it cannot be made use of in politics. Proudhon recognized
this ten years later, when his beautiful study on "War and Peace" led
him to find in the federative principle the exact equilibrium
of liberty and government.
"The Social
Revolution Demonstrated by the Coup d' Etat" appeared in 1852,
a few months after his release from prison. At that time, terror
prevailed to such an extent that no one was willing to publish
his book without express permission from the government. He succeeded
in obtaining this permission by writing to Louis Bonaparte a
letter which he published at the same time with the work. The
latter being offered for sale, Proudhon was warned that he would
not be allowed to publish any more books of the
same character. At that time he entertained the idea of writing
a universal history entitled "Chronos." This project was never
fulfilled.
Already
the father of two children, and about to be presented with
a third, Proudhon was obliged to devise some immediate means
of gaining a living; he resumed his labors, and published, at
first anonymously, the "Manual of a Speculator in the Stock-Exchange." Later,
in 1857, after having completed the work, he did not hesitate
to sign it, acknowledging in the preface his indebtedness to
his collaborator, G. Duchêne.
Meantime, he vainly
sought permission to establish a journal, or review. This permission
was steadily refused him. The imperial
government always suspected him after the publication of the "Social
Revolution Demonstrated by the Coup d'Etat."
Towards the end of
1853, Proudhon issued in Belgium a pamphlet entitled "The Philosophy of Progress." Entirely
inoffensive as it was, this pamphlet, which he endeavored to
send into France,
was seized on the frontier. Proudhon's complaints were of no
avail.
The empire gave grants after grants to large companies. A financial
society, having asked for the grant of a railroad in the east
of France, employed Proudhon to write several memoirs in support
of this demand. The grant was given to another company. The author
was offered an indemnity as compensation, to be paid (as was
customary in such cases) by the company which received the grant.
It is needless to say that Proudhon would accept nothing. Then,
wishing to explain to the public, as well as to the government,
the end which he had
in view, he published the work entitled "Reforms to be Effected
in the Management of Railroads."
Towards
the end of 1854, Proudhon had already begun his book on "Justice," when
he had a violent attack of cholera, from which he recovered
with great difficulty. Ever afterwards his health
was delicate.
At last, on the 22d
of April, 1858, he published, in three large volumes, the important
work upon which he had labored since 1854.
This work had two titles: the first, "Justice in the Revolution
and in the Church;" the second, "New Principles of Practical
Philosophy, addressed to His Highness Monseigneur Mathieu, Cardinal-Archbishop
of Besançon." On the 27th of April, when there had scarcely
been time to read the work, an order was issued by the magistrate
for its seizure; on the 28th the seizure was effected. To this
first act of the magistracy, the author of the incriminated book
replied on the 11th of May in a strongly-motived petition, demanding
a revision of the concordat of 1802; or, in other words, a new
adjustment of the relations between Church and State. At bottom,
this petition was but the logical consequence of the work itself.
An edition of a thousand copies being published on the 17th of
May, the "Petition to the Senate" was regarded by the public
prosecutor as an aggravation of the offence or offences discovered
in the body of the work to which it was an appendix, and was
seized in its turn on the 23d. On the first of June, the author
appealed to the Senate in a second "Petition," which was deposited
with the first in the office of the Secretary of the Assembly,
the guardian and guarantee, according to the constitution of
1852, of the principles of '89. On the 2d of June, the two processes
being united, Proudhon appeared
at the bar with his publisher, the printer of the book, and the
printer of the petition, to receive the sentence of the police
magistrate, which condemned him to three years' imprisonment,
a fine of four thousand francs, and the suppression of his work.
It is needless to say that the publisher and printers were also
condemned by the sixth chamber.
Proudhon
lodged an appeal; he wrote a memoir which the law of 1819,
in the absence of which he would have been liable to a
new prosecution, gave him the power to publish previous to the
hearing. Having decided to make use of the means which the law
permitted, he urged in vain the printers who were prosecuted
with him to lend him their aid. He then demanded of Attorney-General
Chaix d'Est Ange a statement to the effect that the twenty-third
article of the law of the 17th of May, 1819, allows a written
defence, and that a printer runs no risk in printing it. The
attorney-general flatly refused. Proudhon then started for Belgium,
where he printed his defence, which could not, of course, cross
the French frontier. This memoir is entitled to rank with the
best of Beaumarchais's; it is entitled: "Justice prosecuted by
the Church; An Appeal from the Sentence passed upon P. J. Proudhon
by the Police Magistrate of the Seine, on the 2d of June, 1858." A
very close discussion of the grounds of the judgment of the sixth
chamber, it was at the same time an excellent résumé of
his great work.
Once in Belgium, Proudhon did not fail to remain there. In 1859,
after the general amnesty which followed the Italian war, he
at first thought himself included in it. But the imperial government,
consulted by his friends, notified him that, in its opinion,
and in spite of the contrary advice of M. Faustin
Hélie, his condemnation was not of a political character.
Proudhon, thus classed by the government with the authors of
immoral works, thought it beneath his dignity to protest, and
waited patiently for the advent of 1863 to allow him to return
to France.
In
Belgium, where he was not slow in forming new friendships,
he published in 1859-60, in separate parts, a new edition of
his great work on "Justice." Each number contained, in addition
to the original text carefully reviewed and corrected, numerous
explanatory notes and some "Tidings of the Revolution." In these
tidings, which form a sort of review of the progress of ideas
in Europe, Proudhon sorrowfully asserts that, after having for
a long time marched at the head of the progressive nations, France
has become, without appearing to suspect it, the most retrogressive
of nations; and he considers her more than once as seriously
threatened with moral death.
The Italian war led
him to write a new work, which he published in 1861, entitled "War and Peace." This work, in which, running
counter to a multitude of ideas accepted until then without examination,
he pronounced for the first time against the restoration of an
aristocratic and priestly Poland, and against the establishment
of a unitary government in Italy, created for him a multitude
of enemies. Most of his friends, disconcerted by his categorical
affirmation of a right of force, notified him that they decidedly
disapproved of his new publication. "You see," triumphantly cried
those whom he had always combated, "this man is only a sophist."
Led by his previous
studies to test every thing by the question of right, Proudhon
asks, in his "War and Peace," whether there
is a real right of which war is the vindication, and victory
the demonstration. This right, which he roughly calls the right
of the strongest or the right of force, and which is, after all,
only the right of the most worthy to the preference in certain
definite cases, exists, says Proudhon, independently of war.
It cannot be legitimately vindicated except where necessity clearly
demands the subordination of one will to another, and within
the limits in which it exists; that is, without ever involving
the enslavement of one by the other. Among nations, the right
of the majority, which is only a corollary of the right of force,
is as unacceptable as universal monarchy. Hence, until equilibrium
is established and recognized between States or national forces,
there must be war. War, says Proudhon, is not always necessary
to determine which side is the strongest; and he has no trouble
in proving this by examples drawn from the family, the workshop,
and elsewhere. Passing then to the study of war, he proves that
it by no means corresponds in practice to that which it ought
to be according to his theory of the right of force. The systematic
horrors of war naturally lead him to seek a cause for it other
than the vindication of this right; and then only does the economist
take it upon himself to denounce this cause to those who, like
himself, want peace. The necessity of finding abroad a compensation
for the misery resulting in every nation from the absence of
economical equilibrium, is, according to Proudhon, the ever real,
though ever concealed, cause of war. The pages devoted to this
demonstration and to his theory of poverty, which he clearly
distinguishes from misery and pauperism, shed entirely new light
upon the philosophy of history. As for the author's conclusion,
it is a very simple one. Since the treaty of Westphalia, and
especially since the treaties of 1815, equilibrium has been the
international law of Europe. It remains now, not to destroy it,
but, while maintaining it, to labor peacefully, in every nation
protected by it, for the equilibrium of economical forces. The
last line of the book, evidently written to check imperial ambition,
is: "Humanity wants no more war."
In 1861, after Garibaldi's expedition and the battle of Castelfidardo,
Proudhon immediately saw that the establishment of Italian unity
would be a severe blow to European equilibrium. It was chiefly
in order to maintain this equilibrium that he pronounced so energetically
in favor of Italian federation, even though it should be at first
only a federation of monarchs. In vain was it objected that,
in being established by France, Italian unity would break European
equilibrium in our favor. Proudhon, appealing to history, showed
that every State which breaks the equilibrium in its own favor
only causes the other States to combine against it, and thereby
diminishes its influence and power. He added that, nations being
essentially selfish, Italy would not fail, when opportunity offered,
to place her interest above her gratitude.
To maintain European equilibrium by diminishing great States
and multiplying small ones; to unite the latter in organized
federations, not for attack, but for defence; and with these
federations, which, if they were not republican already, would
quickly become so, to hold in check the great military monarchies,
-- such, in the beginning of 1861, was the political programme
of Proudhon.
The object of the federations, he said, will be to guarantee,
as far as possible, the beneficent reign of peace; and they will
have the further effect of securing in every nation the triumph of
liberty over despotism. Where the largest unitary State is, there
liberty is in the greatest danger; further, if this State be
democratic, despotism without the counterpoise of majorities
is to be feared. With the federation, it is not so. The universal
suffrage of the federal State is checked by the universal suffrage
of the federated States; and the latter is offset in its turn
by property, the stronghold of liberty, which it tends,
not to destroy, but to balance with the institutions of mutualism.
All
these ideas, and many others which were only hinted at in his
work on "War and Peace," were developed by Proudhon in his
subsequent publications, one of which has for its motto, "Reforms
always, Utopias never." The thinker had evidently finished his
evolution.
The Council of State
of the canton of Vaud having offered prizes for essays on the
question of taxation, previously discussed
at a congress held at Lausanne, Proudhon entered the ranks and
carried off the first prize. His memoir was published in 1861
under the title of "The Theory of Taxation."
About the same time,
he wrote at Brussels, in "L'Office de Publicité," some
remarkable articles on the question of literary property, which
was discussed at a congress held in Belgium, These articles must
not be confounded with "Literary Majorats," a more complete work
on the same subject, which was published in 1863, soon after
his return to France.
Arbitrarily excepted from the amnesty in 1859, Proudhon was
pardoned two years later by a special act. He did not wish to
take advantage of this favor, and seemed resolved to remain in
Belgium until the 2d of June, 1863, the time when he was to acquire
the privilege of prescription, when an absurd and
ridiculous riot, excited in Brussels by an article published
by him on federation and unity in Italy, induced him to hasten
his return to France. Stones were thrown against the house in
which he lived, in the Faubourg d'Ixelles. After having placed
his wife and daughters in safety among his friends at Brussels,
he arrived in Paris in September, 1862, and published there, "Federation
and Italian Unity," a pamphlet which naturally commences with
the article which served as a pretext for the rioters in Brussels.
Among
the works begun by Proudhon while in Belgium, which death did
not allow him to finish, we ought to mention a "History of
Poland," which will be published later; and, "The Theory of Property," which
appeared in 1865, before "The Gospels Annotated," and after the
volume entitled "The Principle of Art and its Social Destiny."
The publications
of Proudhon, in 1863, were: 1. "Literary Majorats:
An Examination of a Bill having for its object the Creation of
a Perpetual Monopoly for the Benefit of Authors, Inventors, and
Artists;" 2. "The Federative Principle and the Necessity of Re-establishing
the Revolutionary party;" 3. "The Sworn Democrats and the Refractories;" 4. "Whether
the Treaties of 1815 have ceased to exist? Acts of the Future
Congress."
The disease which
was destined to kill him grew worse and worse; but Proudhon
labored constantly! . . . A series of articles,
published in 1864 in "Le Messager de Paris," have been collected
in a pamphlet under the title of "New Observations on Italian
Unity." He hoped to publish during the same year his work on "The
Political Capacity of the Working Classes," but was unable to
write the last chapter. . . . He grew weaker continually.
His doctor prescribed rest. In the month of August he went to
Franche-Comté, where he spent a month. Having returned
to Paris, he resumed his labor with difficulty. . . . From the
month of December onwards, the heart disease made rapid progress;
the oppression became insupportable, his legs were swollen, and
he could not sleep. . . .
On the 19th of January, 1865, he died, towards two o'clock in
the morning, in the arms of his wife, his sister-in-law, and
the friend who writes these lines. . . .
The publication of his correspondence, to which his daughter
Catherine is faithfully devoted, will tend, no doubt, to increase
his reputation as a thinker, as a writer, and as an honest man.
J. A. LANGLOIS.
Go
to Table of Contents .. Go
to Preface
CLICK
HERE TO DISCUSS THIS BOOK
|