censured, insulted, cursed.’ He was a regular subject for the
newspaper artists; pious ladies sent him holy medals; anonymous
letter-writers dedicated him to the wrath o f God or threatened
more immediate and earthly punishments; no less than four
petitions to the National Assembly asked for his exclusion from
that body, and the Spanish Ambassador, Donoso-Cortes,
declared that never had any being sinned so gravely against
humanity and the Holy Spirit, and suggested that, even if
Proudhon were not a demon, he must certainly be possessed by
onel
‘I am like a Salamander, I live in the fire,’ Proudhon wrote
almost enthusiastically to his Comtois friend, Dr. Maguet.
‘Abandoned, betrayed, proscribed, execrated by everybody,
I stand against the whole world and hold at bay the reaction
and all the enemies o f the Republic. The people, who regard me
henceforward as their sole representative, are flocking to me en
masse. They swear only by or against me.’7
As usual, Proudhon exaggerated when he described his popular
following, but it is true that, in August, the circulation o f Le
Representant du Peuple rose to a peak o f 40,000, a very high figure
for the Paris o f a century ago, particularly when one considers
the high proportion o f illiteracy at that time. When the paper
reappeared on the 9th August, after its month of silence, Proud
hon was in a more truculent mood than ever, and the motto on
the head o f the first page was significantly enlarged by the words:
‘What is the capitalist? Everything! What should he be? Nothing!’
He was not allowed to continue long in this vein, and Le
Representant du Peuple had reappeared for little more than a week
when it was seized on three consecutive days. The excuses for
suppression were in each case flimsy. On the 16th August it was an
alleged attack on property contained in a letter from the politically
radical but artistically conservative sculptor, Antoine Etex. The
next day it was a letter from a prisoner in the Conciergerie which
was construed as a provocation o f hatred between classes, and
on the 18th it was an ‘enquiry into the events o f June’ which
the editors had begun.
Proudhon did not take these attacks passively. On the 21st
THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE