Proudhon - A Biography

THE EXILE
One begins to suspect that by this time the demands o f necessity
were supported by a certain perverse obstinacy, and that the very
fact that the Bonapartes seemed anxious for his return, so that
they could point to it as evidence of their new democratic policy,
may have seemed an excellent additional reason for staying in
exile, despite his own continued sickness and his wife’s rheuma­
tism in the damp Brussels climate. He was even reluctant to make
a short visit to France, which he could have afforded without
great difficulty, and the summer saw him travelling, not with
Euphrasie to Paris, but with Delhasse to Spa, there to watch with
delighted horror the antics o f the haut moncle. ‘All those who come
to Spa are either aristocrats or exploiters, swindlers or courtesans,’
he told Euphrasie when she expressed a desire to join him. ‘It is a
brazen luxury beside which a modest household would be out
o f place. As for me, with my flat hat, my thick shoes and my
turned-down collar, I pass everywhere because I am 5 3 and I am
M. Proudhon. But a woman and two misses are different.’
Fie returned during the third week o f August, feeling renewed
in health and able to resume his writing. But he was not left long
in peace, for within a month his outspoken pen had again in­
volved him in trouble. During the summer of 1862 he was dis­
turbed by a number o f trends in the international situation, and
particularly by the issue of Italian unity. Mazzini, Garibaldi and
the majority o f Italian revolutionaries wished to construct a
centralised national state out o f the freedom that at last seemed
within their grasp. They were supported by most of the French
democrats, but, in Proudhon’s view, this policy was suicidal; with
an eye that events have since proved prophetic, he saw that a
strong Italian state would not only lead to the oppression o f the
people by internal Caesarism, but would also form a new dis­
ruptive element in international politics. His own solution was
federalism, favoured in Italy by the existing pattern of small
principalities; this would prevent either the rise o f Italian chauvin­
ism or the appearance of a central government hostile to social
progress.
On the 13th July, 1862, he published in L e a g u e ’s paper,
U Office de la Puhlicite, an article entitled “ Mazzini and Italian Unity,”
in which he criticised sharply the policy o f the Italian leader and
his French supporters. His essay aroused the anger o f Jacobins
throughout Europe, but the criticism he provoked made him