Proudhon - A Biography

THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE
From this time onwards he had little use for the Assembly;
a few days later he told his old employer, Javel, that the spirit o f
the Revolution must not be sought there, but in the ‘subterranean
movement o f ideas.’ However, he continued to attend its sessions
with comparative regularity, and before the year was ended his
parliamentary activities had involved him in a further series of
disputes, this time with his neighbours on the left.
After the debate o f the 31st July, he had patched up his
differences with the Mountain, and particularly with the Demo­
cratic Socialists. When elections were held on the 17th September
to choose a further thirty members o f the Assembly, he served
on the electoral committee which upheld the candidature o f the
imprisoned Raspail. But the break in this uneasy harmony began
barely a month later with an incident that reflects not only
Proudhon’s peculiar individualism, which made it hard for him
to accept party discipline, but also the rigidly Jacobinical spirit
that reigned on the Mountain.
A Banquet of the Republic had been organised in Montmartre
for the 15 th October and the organisers had chosen Proudhon as
their leading speaker, while the leaders o f the Mountain, including
Ledru-Rollin and Lamennais, agreed to support it by their
presence. Then, on the eve o f the celebration, the precarious
accord was broken.
Cavaignac had decided to drop Senart from his ministry and to
appoint in his place the even more conservative Dufaure-Vivien.
The Mountain made this a pretext for an attack on the govern­
ment, in which Proudhon refused to join. He remembered how
Senart had stigmatised him after the June days, while Vivien was
the minister who, in 1840, had shown unexpected tolerance by
deciding not to proceed against What is Property? Accordingly,
he abstained from voting, and in retaliation the representatives
o f the Mountain, except for Pierre Leroux and the faithful
Greppo, absented themselves from the Banquet o f the Republic.
Despite their defection, it was something o f a triumph for
Proudhon, who made his one great speech when he proposed
the Toast o f the Revolution before an audience o f two thousand
Parisians. This oration has some lasting interest, since it defined
Proudhon’s ideas on the nature o f revolutions. He divided their
history into four stages. The Christian revolution proclaimed the
equality o f man before God. The Renaissance proclaimed equality