this aim in mind that Senart, the President o f the Assembly,
brought into the Address to the Nation, which was read to
celebrate the victory o f ‘order,’ a remark stigmatising ‘savage
doctrines in which the family is only a name and property a
theft.’ The Abbe Lacordaire recorded that at this unfair thrust
(for it would be hard to find a more fanatical supporter o f the
family than Proudhon) ‘the whole hall turned its looks towards
the bench where M. Proudhon sat.’ He did not flinch, but
showed his dissent by remaining seated while the rest of the
representatives rose to approve the Address.
Thus, while he was not so emphatic as Lamennais, who cried
out to his colleagues: ‘God will call you to account for all this
bloodshed,’ in his own way he expressed the change that had
taken place in his attitude during these four terrible days. Now
he recognised the Assembly as a body whose purpose was
opposed to his own, and saw that his role within it must be an
isolated and rebellious one. In his diary for the 28th June he
noted: ‘The ill will of the Assembly was the cause of the insurrec
tion.’
On the 6th July he finally took his stand in public beside the
calumniated and defeated victims o f June. During the fighting
Le Representant du Peuple had taken no clear position, and even
afterwards the editors confined themselves to expressing pity for
the victims o f a savage repression. For this slight departure from
the prevalent attitude of total condemnation they were violently
attacked in the conservative Journal des Debats, which again tried
to associate Proudhon with the insurrection. This was too much
for him, and in a furious article in the form o f a letter to the
editors he cried out in anger against the policy o f the government.
‘Four months o f unemployment were suddenly converted into
a casus belli, into an insurrection against the government of the
Republic; there is the whole truth of these funereal days... The
English proletarian lives nobly on the poor rate; the German
journeyman, loaded with money and clothes, does not blush to
beg, from workshop to workshop, the cost of his travel; the
Spanish beggar does more— he asks caridad at the point of a
blunderbuss; the French worker asks for work, you offer him
alms, and he rebels, he shoots at you. I prefer the French worker,
and I glory in belonging to that proud race, inaccessible to
dishonour... ’
THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE