THE STRICKEN YEARS
tinue to regard me as a French agent, or they would be humiliated
by my presence. When two people have mutually hurt each
other, they can no longer live together; it is the same between
the inhabitants o f a country and the stranger who lives in their
midst.’
Early in October Proudhon was able to take to the printers a
volume entitled La Federation et ’Unite en Italie, which formed
his reply to the Belgian Press. Though primarily polemical, aimed
at showing the flaws in the actions o f the Italian nationalists, it
also put forward a positive vision o f a ‘confederation o f free
cities’ in which men would be able to live more fully and happily
than in the unity of ‘empires of forty million men.’ ‘In a little
state, there is nothing for the bourgeoisie to profit from...
Civilisation progresses, and services are rendered to the world,
in inverse proportion to the immensity o f empires... Any
agglomeration o f men, comprised within a clearly circumscribed
territory and able to live an independent life in that spot, is meant
for autonomy. The principle of federation, corollary to that of
the separation o f powers, is opposed to the disastrous principles
o f the agglomeration o f peoples and o f administrative centralisa
tion.’
The most controversial passage was that in which Proudhon
denounced Mazzini’s form of anti-papalism. Proudhon’s critics
tried to make this an excuse to represent the author o f Justice in the
Revolution and the Church as a supporter o f the Papacy. The in
justice o f this accusation is evident from a careful reading o f the
following crucial passage: ‘Whatever may be the opinion o f a
statesman in matters of faith, unless he serves a government of the
revolution, armed for revolutionary propaganda, it is not per-
missable for him to act against religious thought and institutions.... The idea which the Pope represents, says Mazzini, is exhausted;
it must be sacrificed with the rest. Capital! But at the same time
something must be put in the place o f that idea, and for that we
need... something more than the motto Dio e popolo, adopted
by Mazzini.’
Clearly, what Proudhon argues is that it was unjustifiable to
destroy the traditional ways o f thought o f the Italian people in
the name of some nebulous liberal creed, or to suppress the States
o f the Church merely to incorporate them in an Italian kingdom.
The Papacy, he suggests, can only be overthrown with profit