Proudhon - A Biography

THE PRISONER
devolved in his intermediaries, Edmond and Sazonov. Edmond
remained a loyal collaborator with Proudhon until the end of the
latter’s j ournalistic career in 18 5 o, but the more ambitious Sazonov
found it, as he remarked to Ogarev, ‘difficult to get on with the
boss and his Darimon,’ and eventually retired to a more remu­
nerative and perhaps more personally satisfying position on La
Reforme.
Once the future of La V oix du Peuple had been assured, Proud­
hon and his friends went quickly to work on its preparation, the
first daily issues appearing at the end o f September, 1849. In the
interval Proudhon had been moved back to Sainte-Pelagie, where
he was given an excellent room with two great windows looking
out over the Jardin des Plantes; in authorising this change of
prison, the chief o f police had asked him to make clear the part he
was playing in the new paper. Proudhon complied, at least nom­
inally, by writing a letter in the opening number o f the 30th
September. ‘In your specimen number of the 25th instant,’ he told
the acting editors, ‘you announce that La V oix du Peuple counts
me among its collaborators. My position as a convicted man, the
conventions o f every kind which it obliges me to respect, my
forced separation from you in these difficult times, and the con­
sequent impossibility o f my fulfilling, from evening until next
morning, a direction whose consequences may become at any
given moment excessively grave, oblige me to recall to your
readers and to whomever it may concern that, whatever influence
I may exercise by my communications and advice to the editorship
o f La V oix du Peuple, I neither can nor should accept any other
responsibility than for the articles signed by me.’
Whether the government was hoodwinked by this statement
we do not know, but it is certain that none o f Proudhon’s friends
ever doubted his role as effective editor o f La V oix du Peuple. As
Herzen said: ‘Proudhon from his prison cell conducted his orches­
tra in masterly fashion. His articles were full o f originality, fire,
and that irritability which prison inflames.’ According to Herzen,
the demand for the new paper was greater than ever; 40,000 copies
would normally circulate, but whenever Proudhon wrote a special
article, 50,000 to 60,000 were printed, and sold so quickly that
‘often on the following day copies were being sold for a franc
instead o f a sou.’ Clearly, imprisonment had only enhanced
Proudhon’s reputation as a journalistic dissenter.