Proudhon - A Biography

THE CRITIC OF PROPERTY
However, towards the end o f the summer his position began to
improve markedly. What is Property? was at last arousing interest
in Paris; it was mentioned in Louis Blanc’s Revue du Progres and
other papers, and a Parisian publisher, Prevot, had offered to
bring out a second edition o f 3,550 copies.
A t the same time, a group o f academicians including, to Proud­
hon’s surprise, the prefect of the department and the bankers and
business men, had shown themselves inclined to support him
against the hostility o f ‘the devotees, the lawyers and the pure
men of letters’. The result of this division had been a number of
angry sessions; ‘finally, it was resolved to do nothing until I had
been heard, and I am summoned to appear before our academic
Senate during next December, to justify myself and to hear myself
reproached for having written an antisocial book, contrary to all the
proprieties in form as well as substance.’
He fingered in Besangon until the autumn, unable to make up
his mind whether to stay and try to re-establish his printing shop.
Then, having learnt that Bergmann was in Paris and would leave
for Strasbourg on the 15 th October, he decided to go back to the
capital in the hope of intercepting his friend, with whom he was
anxious to discuss the repubfication o f What is Property? and the
sequel he had in mind. ‘Try to prolong your stay from the 15 th to
the 20th,’ he begged, ‘so that I can see you... It is for you that I
am going to break my legs.’ He left Besangon on the 1 ith October
and tramped wearily into Paris on the 17th; Bergmann had been
unable to wait for him, and the six days o f effort his poverty
forced upon him had been in vain.
In Paris he discovered that the prospect of losing the Suard
Pension had not been the worst danger incurred in publishing
What is Property? Its appearance had coincided with a spate of
pamphlets directed against the July Monarchy, and the public
prosecutor sent it to Vivien, the Minister of Justice, with a recom­
mendation that a case should be launched against its author.
Proudhon was saved by a fortunate chance. He had sent a copy
to the Academy o f Political and Moral Sciences, and it had been
assigned for review to the economist Jerome-Adolphe Blanqui,
brother of the celebrated conspirator. Blanqui prepared a long
report, in which he criticised what he regarded as the exaggera-
v -tions of Proudhon’s viewpoint. He claimed that to suggest the
abolition o f property because o f its abuses was as foolish as to