THE STRICKEN YEARS
his message should be confided only to the relatively static form
of a book. He wanted to support it with a periodical in which it
could be kept alive by constant adaptation to the changing shape
o f events. Accordingly, almost immediately after his return to
Paris, he revived the project o f a review o f which he would be
controlling editor, and in February, 1863, he wrote to the Minister
o f the Interior asking permission to produce a weekly entitled
Federation. But if the Bonapartists were willing to allow Proudhon
to return to Paris and even to publish his books again, as a sign
of their own tolerance, they regarded without favour the possi
bility of his regaining an influence such as he had wielded through
his journalism in the revolutionary era o f 1848-50, and his
application was rejected. Proudhon could not regard this refusal
as final, and for months he continued to make abortive plans for
a journal at some time in the future, but the authorities remained
adamant, and he was never allowed to resume that profession of
journalism which he often regarded as having been the glory of
his career.
3
While Proudhon was thus prevented from returning to jour
nalism, he was not hindered from entering actively into the field
o f political affairs. A parliamentary election was due to take place
in May, 1863, and even before he had finished work on The
Federal Principle Proudhon began once again to advocate a com
plete abstention from voting. Such a tactic, he contended, had
not merely temporary value; it might lead to the emergence o f a
new movement devoted to the genuine reconstruction o f society
in the direction o f federalism and anarchy. ‘This time,’ he de
clared, ‘I mean to raise boldly the flag o f schism, to break with
that coterie of intriguers and begin a movement of purgation, as
Robespierre said, which might well end in a regeneration of
democratic reason and consciousness.’
Early in February Proudhon and his immediate friends, among
whom Beslay, Massol, Cretin, Langlois "and Chaudey were the
most active, began their campaign for the foundation o f a party
o f ‘Young Democracy,’ which would seek to use abstention from
parliamentary activity as a positive means o f weakening the Bona-
partist regime and precipitating a movement towards federalism.
Committees o f Abstention were set up in Paris and Bordeaux,