THE EXILE5
In March, i860, Proudhon began to publish the second edition
of Justice-, it appeared in a series of twelve parts, each embellished
with an appendix called News of the Revolution, which acted as a
kind of international review o f current affairs. It was a device
that allowed him to dilate on the contemporary political situation,
which his accurate insight told him was leading, after the long
stagnation since June, 1848, to a further period of unrest among
the poorer classes. In this way his long-frustrated desire to edit
a new radical periodical was partly fulfilled, and he hoped that
such a regular survey of current affairs might finally grow into a
magazine with international ramifications. Indeed, when the first
section appeared he wrote to Herzen, who was then editing The
Bell, suggesting that they might start a collaboration, and from
this’slight beginning he saw the possibility of drawing in a whole
school of like-minded correspondents in all countries. ‘With a
little zeal,’ he declared, ‘we should have Europe in our net
within six months.’
Such high hopes went unrealised, yet the reappearance of
Justice in its new form, and Proudhon’s re-emergence as a
commentator on current affairs, undoubtedly contributed a great
deal towards the increase of his influence which became evident
during i860. Since 1851, he had lived mostly in the shadows,
rarely able to publish the books he would have liked to write,
and, when he did so, condemned largely to a success of scandal.
From i860 onwards, however, the interest in him became less a
matter of sensation, and was increasingly based on a genuine
sympathy among people of widely divergent classes and nations.
This was due, not merely to the intrinsic value of the ideas he
expressed, but also to a general shift in radical circles away from
political and towards social conceptions. Proudhon was never to
encounter that circle o f international correspondence which he
had envisaged in his letter to Herzen (though his followers were
to build it up a few years later in the International Workingmen s
Association), but in an unorganised way the influence of Justice
was a means of linking him with a steadily widening movement
of thought...
By the end of 1859 he was aware of a growing international
prestige. ‘The more I advance,’ he declared, ‘the more cosmo-