THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE6
Proudhon spoke late, but he spoke with effect at a time when
his was almost the only voice raised to defend the persecuted.
And, having spoken, he did not cease, for he chose this moment
to make an appeal for drastic action to avert the worsening
economic conditions which had already bred the bitterness and
violence of the June days. Quarter day, the day for settling bills
and paying rents, would fall due on the 15 th July, and Proudhon
dreaded the hardship it might cause at such a time. On the 8th
July he published a manifesto in which he called the people of
France to demand that the government should decree a third
reduction in all payments falling due. It was bold at such a time
to suggest anything so radical, for the state o f siege was still in
full force, but Proudhon did more, for his article was worded as
a direct call to the National Guard to intervene in the situation.
‘G o then, misled National Guards, ask for work, credit and
bread from your pretended protectors!... It is no longer a
question o f saving the proletariat; the proletariat no longer
exists, it has been thrown on the garbage heap. We must save
the bourgeoisie, the lower bourgeoisie from hunger, the middle
bourgeoisie from ruin, the upper bourgeoisie from its infernal
egotism. Today the question is for the bourgeoisie what it was
on the 23rd June for the proletariat.’
Cavaignac, whom the Assembly had given dictatorial powers
to administer the state of siege, immediately suppressed this
issue o f Le Representant du Peuple. Thereupon the editors, feeling
that the situation did not allow them sufficient freedom o f speech,
decided to suspend the paper voluntarily, two days later, and it
did not appear again for almost a month. Proudhon himself was
shielded from prosecution, for the time being at least, by his
parliamentary immunity.
But he had no intention of abandoning his proposal, and
elaborated it into a memorandum to the Assembly. He suggested
that creditors should be asked to surrender a third o f what was
owed them over the past three years, half to be returned to
tenants, debtors, etc., to re-establish their positions, and the rest
to go to the State as a fund to restore the standard o f living which
had existed before the revolution.
Judged by modern practice, it seems a plan which, if perhaps