Proudhon - A Biography

THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE
out of its weakness into taking the lead in a national war against
dictatorship.
On the 25 th January Le Peuple published an article entitled La
Guerre, not written by Proudhon himself, but clearly inspired by
him, in which Napoleon, ‘personification of all reactionary ideas,’
was accused of ‘conspiring with all the monarchical cliques, with
the Jesuits, with the absolutists, for the enslavement o f the people
and the return o f every abuse.’ Napoleon, the article went on,
was violating the right o f association, the right o f meeting, the
freedom of the press, the freedom of speech and thought. The
article ended by declaring ‘the president— that is to say, the
monarchy, corruption, lies, privilege, arbitrariness, capitalist ex­
ploitation— is impossible.’
On the next day, the 26th January, Proudhon himself published
a further article on the same theme, called ‘The President of the
Republic is Responsible.’ After exposing the evidence of Napo­
leon’s imperialist ambitions, he concluded: ‘Bonaparte, elected by
the reaction, instrument o f the reaction, personification of the
reaction, Bonaparte at this moment is the whole reaction, to such a
point that, if Bonaparte falls, all the doctrinaire, legitimist,
Orleanist, imperialist, capitalist and Jesuitical conspiracies will go
down with him.’
However much the Assembly and the President may have
squabbled among themselves, they were united in detesting
Proudhon, and in treating his article as a God-given excuse to
suppress him. The legal officers lost no time; on the 28th January
the Procurator of the Republic brought charges o f sedition, and
on the 14th February the National Assembly, with only forty
members o f the Mountain protesting, passed a resolution with­
drawing Proudhon’s immunity. Already, on the 2nd February,
he had said to Maguet, ‘I am in a political duel with Bona­
parte.’ On the day after the Assembly deserted him, he wrote to
Maurice: ‘You see my life is a struggle, a terrible struggle. I have
a hundred letters threatening to shoot me, to hang me, and I still
live.’
On the 28th March he appeared before the Seine Assizes. He
assumed responsibility for both the offending articles, pretending
that he had merely forgotten to sign that which he had not
written, and, in spite of a Jong speech in his own defence, he was
condemned to three years’ imprisonment and a fine o f three