Proudhon - A Biography

THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE
subsidise the first costs as well as the first operations o f this enter­
prise... I alone bear the responsibility for the adventure, and
make restitution o f all that I have received.’ Thus he added
another few thousand francs to the debts he already owed and
made his difficult financial position even worse.
Proudhon has been criticised for the arbitrary manner in which
he closed the Bank without consulting his associates, other than
Guillemin and Mathey. In his defence it may be said that without
his active supervision, which would have been difficult from
prison or exile, the Bank might in any case have collapsed from
lack of initiative among its other supporters. But this is not
certain, and it can also be argued that he should have given it at
least a chance to continue. His failure to do so appears to have
been due partly to his distrust o f some o f his collaborators, such
as Jules le Chevalier, for he talked to Maguet o f ‘the clique that
surrounded, tormented and spied on me at the People’s Bank,’
and added, ‘I could not rid myself o f them in the beginning; I
needed this opportunity.’
After the liquidation of the Bank he went into hiding, under
the name o f Leloir, in the Rue Chabrol, near the Gare du Nord.
He thought of travelling up the Rhine to Bale, to see whether he
could find a refuge in Switzerland, but in the meantime he settled
down to work, and to write to his friends under assumed names
and by devious routes. Even from hiding, he continued to write
for Le Peuple and to conduct its policy, and he allowed his name to
be put forward for the elections to the new Legislative Assembly
on the 13th April, 1849. The result was encouraging for, though
he was not elected, the vote in his favour was over 100,000, thirty
thousand more than he had received on his election to the National
Assembly in June, 1848. Despite his condemnation in the courts,
his influence with the people was evidently still growing. Never­
theless, a short time afterwards, in July, he refused to take part in
a further supplementary election, on the grounds that he preferred
‘silence to defeat.’
But as he lurked in his little furnished room, emerging only at
dusk to take his exercise in a working-man’s blouse and sabots,
Proudhon was by no means wholly concerned with business or
politics, for at this time Euphrasie Piegard again makes an appear­
ance in the records o f his life. He must have seen her frequently
during 1848, even though their meetings may have been extremely