accompanied by profound changes in social life, are often worse
than useless. It is to Proudhon’s credit that, almost alone among
the men o f his time, he saw immediately the dangers of such
a fallacy.
Proudhon’s articles in Le Representant du Peuple continued in
this uncompromising style, commenting on events, advancing his
cherished theories, and occasionally making turbulent sorties
into places outside the field o f political commentators. Writing
of this kind appealed to Proudhon’s readers. The circulation of
Le Representant du Peuple rose steadily, and Proudhon, even
though he still had no standing as a partisan leader, nevertheless
became recognised as one of the leading men in the socialist
movement, and that despite the fact that he did not make the
least effort to placate his readers, and was just as liable to rail at
the workers as to praise them.
One sign o f his growing reputation appeared on the 15 th
May, when a demonstration led by Blanqui and Barbas, Sobrier,
Raspail and Huber, invaded the Constituent Assembly and
demanded a series of extravagant steps, including the abolition
o f poverty, the organisation o f labour and the declaration o f war
to rescue the Poles; finally Huber declared the Assembly dissolved,
and then, at the Hotel de Ville, the demonstrators proclaimed a
new government of nine members, including Proudhon’s name
on the list with acclamation. The insurrection, if so noisily
ineffective an incident deserves such a title, was quickly crushed
by the National Guard. The leaders were arrested and the radical
clubs were closed down. Proudhon himself was fortunate in
having denounced the demonstration in advance and in having
kept away from the Hotel de Ville; otherwise, he would almost
certainly have shared the imprisonment o f Blanqui and the other
leading demonstrators.4
On the jth June a new election was held to fill a number of
vacancies in the Constituent Assembly, and Proudhon was once
again a candidate. He took his nomination very seriously, and
prepared an elaborate address to the electors o f the Seine which
was published in three issues of Le Representant du Peuple. It must
have been an indigestible election manifesto for the average man
in the street, for it ran into almost twenty thousand words and
THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE