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Title: Letter to Bergmann Author: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Date: February 8, 1842 Language: en Topics: letter, trial, Libertarian Labyrinth Source: Retrieved on April 8, 2016 from https://web.archive.org/web/20160407220138/http://library.libertarian-labyrinth.org/items/show/3161
Besanon, February 8, 1842.
To Frédéric-Guillaume Bergmann
My dear Bergmann, I have just been judged, and have been absolved by the
jury, on the four charges formulated against me. I have presented a
written defense, the reading of which lasted more than an hour. As I
intend to print it, you will judge its worth. It is a sort of general
prospectus of my studies, by past and to come, and of their object. I
win and I lose all at once, as a result of this trial. I win a small
moment of celebrity, which does not even extend very far, for, as you
know, I don’t have the sympathies of the press; I win, which is more
important to me, and which no one realizes, the advantage of being able
to innovate, to analyze and reestablish at my leisure principles,
rights, beliefs and institutions. For that judgment, acknowledging that
I am a man of meditation, not of revolution, aneconomist, not an
anarchist, and that I wish, according to the president’s expression, to
convert the government and the proprietors, it follows that I can say
everything, like a teach or a friend, and I am declared outside the
ranks of the conspirators. It is up to me to preserve that magnificent
position.
But I lose, in the sense that, in order to defend myself, I have been
forced to expose views and ideas that I only wanted to give at an
appropriate time; for example, that as equality and non-property from
the legislative metaphysics, from economy and history, all the same that
are a necessary consequence of the Charter, and of all the institutions
that accompany it; so much, as I declared elsewhere, that it is today
only a question of developing, not of destroying. That is magnificent
for those who are sympathetic and are in the habit of linking together
their ideas; but for the multitude of sots who make and unmake
reputations in an instant, it is excessively dangerous: for several of
them have already concluded that I have won over power and that I have
made so much noise only in order to be paid more. To begin with equality
and the abolition of Property, in order to end with the acceptance and
development of the Charter, that routs all our democrats, as in the
audience it defeated the public minister.
Yet is it as beautiful, as fruitful, as true; you will understand it, I
hope.
It remains for me to ask you for some news of a Mr. Ferrari, a professor
of political economy at your Strasbourg Academy, who has just, I am
told, been suspended by order of the minister. I would like to know who
the man is, what he thinks, and what you think of him. Write to me as
soon as possible.
I remain at Besançon; I believe that I have written that our mayor and
his municipal council think to accommodate me in order to assure me the
rest and independence necessary for study; I can do no better, I
believe, than to go along with these good arrangements. I have a hard
year to get through; but, I repeat, I think that it will be the last, as
to needs of the first order. I gain friends every day; I nearly have
them in the public prosecutor’s office; I hope that soon the
powers-that-be, without accepting me, will tolerate me. I know that they
already respect and honor me.
Farewell, my friend; I have just passed a phantasmagoric day, as vain as
all the others. All is vanity, said Salomon, except to love God; let us
add, and to understand him.
Would it be an indiscretion to beg you to offer my respectful regards to
your young wife? You shall do it, or not, at your pleasure.
All my best,
P.-J. Proudhon.