The Assembly, elected on the principle of universal suffrage, which met in May, showed that the peasantry and the mass of the French people were not in accord with the working classes of Paris and of the industrial centres. It did not approve of the social-democratic activity urged by a section of the Provisional Government. The national workshops also were closed, and the proletariat of Paris rose in armed insurrection, which was overthrown by Cavaignac in the sanguinary days of June. Louis Blanc was in no way responsible for the revolt, which can be called socialistic only in the sense that the proletariat was engaged in it, the class of which socialism claims to be the special champion. ----- [1] _Organisation du travail._ Fifth edition. 1848. [2] Preface to fifth edition, _Organisation du travail_. [3] _Organisation du travail_, p. 103. [4] Lassalle, _Die französischen Nationalwerkstätten von 1848_. _PROUDHON_ Pierre Joseph Proudhon was born in 1809 at Besançon, France, the native place also of the socialist Fourier. His origin was of the humblest, his father being a brewer’s cooper, and the boy herded cows and did such other work as came in his way. But he was not entirely self-educated; at sixteen he entered the college of his native place, though his family was so poor that he could not procure the necessary books, and had to borrow them from his mates in order to copy the lessons. There is a story of the young Proudhon returning home laden with prizes, but to find that there was no dinner for him. At nineteen he became a working compositor, and was afterwards promoted to be a corrector for the press, reading proofs of ecclesiastical works, and thereby acquiring a considerable knowledge of theology. In this way he also came to learn Hebrew, and to compare it with Greek, Latin, and French. It was the first proof of his intellectual audacity that on the strength of this he wrote an _Essai de grammaire générale_. As Proudhon knew nothing whatever of the true principles of philology, his treatise was of no value. In 1838 he obtained the _pension Suard_, a bursary of 1500 francs a year for three years, for the encouragement of young men of promise, which was in the gift of the Academy of Besançon. Next year he wrote a treatise _On the Utility of Keeping the Sunday_, which contained the germs of his revolutionary ideas. About this time he went to Paris, where he lived a poor, ascetic, and studious life, making acquaintance, however, with the socialistic ideas which were then fermenting in the capital. In 1840 he published his first work, _Qu’est-ce que la propriété?_ (What is Property?) His famous answer to this question, _La propriété c’est le vol_ (Property is theft), naturally did not please the academy of Besançon, and there was some talk of withdrawing his pension; but he held it for the regular period.[1]