THE EXILEshe would be cared for. A man who would so increase his burdens
to help his relatives was little deserving o f the reproaches o f
neglect he heaped upon himself.
On the whole, he surveyed with admiration the way his
brother had endured a life whose latter part had been ‘condemned
to idleness’ through constant sickness. ‘In all, his last years were
the most courageous and the most honourable.’ Cousin Melchior’s
end, however, was bitterly disappointing, for that old Jacobin
finally gave in to the priests and died within the Church. ‘Is not
this to be outraged in my body and soul ?’ Proudhon lamented,
and he drew a comparison between the unworthy end o f the late
Orator of the Orient Lodge of Besan$on and the stoical departure
of brother Charles. ‘Decrepitude got the better o f the old philo
sopher in the end; he confessed, he communicated; in brief, he
died with edification. My poor blacksmith o f Burgille was more
solid; like my father, he died without fear and without reproach,
though not without regret. He regretted leaving nothing to his
children.’
7
Through i860 Proudhon worked ‘like a galley slave,’ not
merely preparing the new edition o f Justice and completing his
treatise on war, but also writing an essay on taxation for a
competition which the Swiss canton o f Vaud had announced
during the summer. The subject, as well as the chance o f a prize
of 1,200 francs, appealed to him, and in September he submitted
a monograph equal to 180 pages. ‘It is the first time to my know
ledge,’ he remarked complacently to the Swiss journalist
Delarageaz, ‘that a complete and rigorously deduced theory of
taxation has been produced.’
The Lausanne jury was slow in considering the forty-four
competing works, and by the following January Proudhon had
become resigned to failure. It was therefore with surprise and
delight that he finally heard, in May, 1861, o f the award granting
the first prize to his essay. It was the recognition rather than the
cash that gave him the greater pleasure. ‘M. Proudhon crowned
for a work o f political economy by the State council o f a sovereign
state!’ he crowed to Delarageaz. ‘This moment will one day be
notable in the history o f the Revolution in the nineteenth century!’
There is something extremely pathetic in this anarchist’s delight