The first co-operative movement inspired by the ideas of Louis Blanc was of short duration. The National Assembly took good care to place the new societies under Ministerial control by appointing a _Conseil d’Encouragement_, nominated by the Ministry to fix the conditions under which loans should be granted. The Conseil hastened to publish model regulations which left the associations little scope for internal organisation. So stringent were the rules that several of them were immediately jeopardised, and every society which failed to conform to one of the three models outlined in Article 19 of the Commercial Code was obliged to dissolve. This meant every society which was not nominally a collective society, a joint stock or a limited liability company. By 1855, according to the testimony of Reybaud, there remained only nine out of those subsidised in 1848. Consumers’ co-operative societies, that is, the societies which aimed at securing cheap commodities, established at Paris, Lille, Nantes, and Grenoble, were also dissolved. And so all these experiments—the only ones that had not already brought reformers into discredit—were destined to fail in their turn. Their extinction was partly due to political causes, partly to their founders, who had not yet been trained in the difficult task of building up such associations. The social experiments of 1848 one after another foundered, bringing a distrust of theories in their train. There still remained one other experiment connected with Proudhon’s name—that of free credit. But it also was destined to fail like the rest. III: THE EXCHANGE BANK THEORY The Revolution of 1848 did not take Proudhon quite unawares, although he considered the outbreak was rather sudden. He was soon convinced that the real problem to be determined was economic rather than political, but he also realised that the education of the masses was too backward to permit of a peaceful solution. Proudhon, in this matter at one with his French _confrères_, had hoped for such a solution.[662] He thought the February Revolution was a child prematurely born.[663] In a striking article in the columns of _Le Peuple_ he gave wistful expression to his fears as he foresaw the Revolution impending. Its solution had been delivered to none and its interpretation baffled the ingenuity of all.