THE STRICKEN YEARSstimulate any great uprising o f public opinion, and the active mass
following from which Proudhon had expected to mould his new
revolutionary party seems as yet to have been almost non-existent.
On the other hand, if the circumstances in favour o f the absten-
tionists were slight, the difficulties they had to endure were con
siderable. The authorities wisely decided not to interfere directly
with Proudhon’s activities, for any action on their part that re
motely savoured o f martyrdom would have increased his influ
ence at this time o f delicate balance between social forces. But the
newspapers of the parliamentary opposition attacked him bitterly.
Girardin was particularly insulting in La Presse, but when Proud
hon sent a reply he refused to print it, sheltering under the excuse
that some o f its arguments constituted offences against the Press
laws. This policy o f suppressing the propaganda o f the absten-
tionists by turning against them their own method o f boycott
was not restricted to the newspapers. When the Committee pub
lished a manifesto prepared by Buzon, not only did the bookshops
refuse it, but the newsvendors in the streets were warned by the
police against selling it.
Proudhon gained some consolation from the results o f the
elections, which he hailed as a moral victory for abstention,
although in fact the number o f non-voters was much lower than
in 1857. In Paris, out of 3x7,000 electors, 85,000 abstained, while
150,000 voted against the Bonapartist candidates. The proportion
o f abstentions had been high in Bordeaux, Lyons and Rouen, the
three other areas in which the propaganda o f the Committee had
been effectively carried out. The result, Proudhon thought,
augured well for the future. ‘Do not let us ask too much,’ he told
Bastide. ‘N ow it is a question o f not allowing that victory to
vanish like a show o f fireworks.’
But the component elements o f the Committee o f Abstention
were too disparate to agree on any wide or sustained programme,
and once the electoral campaign had passed, it disintegrated rapidly.
Yet it bequeathed to the movements that followed it, and par
ticularly to anarchism and syndicalism, at least two important
elements— the rejection o f expediency as a dominant element in
political behaviour, and the rejection o f the democratic myth of
the vote as a universal political panacea.