THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLEleisure, but always for the chance to work for a subsistence, for
the right not to starve in idleness.
It was not merely the revolutionaries who foresaw that this
situation could not continue without some violent outcome. Even
the conservative Thiers prophesied civil war, and on the 27th
January, 1848, Alexis de Tocqueville made his speech of warning
in the Chamber of Deputies. ‘You say that there is no peril
because there are no riots; you argue that as society is calm on the
surface, revolution is an age away. But you are utterly mistaken.
It is true that there is no visible sign of disorder, but that is because
the disorder is deep in people’s hearts. Try to see what is going on
in the hearts of the workers— who I admit seem peaceable enough
at the moment. It is true that they are not torn by political passions
as they used to be. But do you not see that their aims are now
social, not political?’
Proudhon, the man who more than any other in France ex
pressed in his writings the social as distinct from the political
principle of revolution, was as much aware as de Tocqueville of
the storm that was brewing in the first weeks of 1848. He looked
towards it with mixed and apprehensive feelings, for despite his
destructive way o f speaking, he feared social conflict, and always
hoped to find a means by which the changes he thought necessary
could be achieved without violent disruption. So, on the last day
of 1847, he noted in his diary: ‘One dreads the year that is coming.’
‘Be on your guard, workers,’ he added, and a flash of insight led
him to see through the partisan struggles of the time into the
ominous future, for there is a remarkable anticipation of the
Bonapartist ending to the drama of 1848 in this entry from early
January: ‘If we follow the inspiration o f the parties, France,
brought low by them alone, will seek through twenty-five years of
war and poverty what should not cost her a centime.’ 'What should
not cost her a centime’ means the social solution Proudhon believed
could be brought about by goodwill and reason. But he despaired
of these qualities having any part in the forthcoming struggle.
‘In the scuffle,’ he told himself on the 18th January, ‘there is no
longer any room for reason. I am more and more convinced that
I have no place in this situation.’
More than a year later Proudhon wrote, in Le Peuple for the
19th February, 1849, an account of his reactions during the days
leading up to the revolution; its frankness makes it a revealing