Proudhon’s doubts were largely justified. For all his efforts,
The Federal Principal remained an awkward compromise between
a constructive political treatise and a collection o f topical wrangles.
Its form was diffuse, and o f the three parts into which it was
divided only the first is permanently important. The second
regurgitates the Italian question, the third replies at length to
‘the unitary press,’ and even the first is more capable than original,
since it consists o f a systematic recapitulation o f the ideas on
anarchy and federalism which had already appeared elsewhere in
various tentative forms. Perhaps, indeed, Proudhon himself made
his own best summary of the social conception he was aiming at
in a letter written to his old workmate Milliet while the book was
still being constructed.
‘If in 1840 I began with anarchy, the conclusion of my critique
o f the governmental idea, I had to finish with federation, the
necessary basis of the rights of European peoples and, later, of
the organisation o f all states... Public order resting directly on
the liberty and conscience o f the citizen, anarchy, the absence o f all
constraint, police, authority, magistrature, regimentation, etc.,
will be the correlative o f the highest social virtue— and, beyond
that, the ideal o f human government. O f course we are not there,
and centuries will pass before that ideal may be attained, but our
law is to go in that direction, to grow unceasingly nearer to that
end, and it is thus that I uphold the principle o f federation.’
It must be emphasised that by federation Proudhon does not
mean a world government or a confederation o f states. For him
the principle of confederation begins from the simplest level of
society. The organs o f administration are local and lie as near the
direct control of the people as possible. Above that primary level
the confederal organisation becomes progressively less an organ
o f administration than o f co-ordination among local units. Thus
the nation itself will be a confederation o f regions, and Europe
a confederation o f confederations in which the interest o f the
smallest province will have as much expression as that o f the
largest, since all affairs will be settled by mutual agreement,
contract and arbitration.
The Federal Principle finally appeared on the 14th February, 1863,
and was immediately successful; less than three weeks after pub
lication six thousand copies had been bought, and new impres
sions were being made. Proudhon, however, was not content that
THE STRICKEN YEARS