In 1847 he went to Paris. In the Revolution of 1848 he showed himself a vigorous controversialist, and was elected Deputy for the Seine. He wrote numerous articles in several journals, mostly criticisms of the progress of the revolution. In the Chamber he proposed a tax of one-third to be levied on all 220 interest and rent, which was, as a matter of course, rejected. He also put forward a scheme for a mutual credit bank, by which he hoped to simplify exchange and reduce interest to a vanishing point; but this scheme was also rejected.
After the failure of the revolution of '48, Proudhon was imprisoned for three years, during which time he married a young woman of the working class.
In 1858 he fully developed his system of “Mutualism” in his last work, entitled Justice in the Revolution and the Church. In consequence of the publication of this book he had to retire to Brussels, but was amnestied in 1860, came back to France, and died at Passy in 1865.
Proudhon’s opinions and works may be broadly divided into two periods: In his What is Property? his position is that of a communist pure and simple; but after this one clear development of a definite thesis, we meet in his writings, and we must add, in his political actions also, with so much paradox that it is next to impossible to formulate in brief any definite Proudhonian doctrine. At 221 one time a communist, at another the vehement opponent of Communism; at one time professing anarchy, at another lending himself to schemes of the crudest State socialism; at one time an enthusiastic theist, at another apparently as strong an atheist; in one passage of his works giving his eager adhesion ta Auguste Comte’s worship of women, in another a decided contemner of the female sex,—it is with a sense of confusion that one rises from the perusal of his productions.
His connection with the revolution of '48 seems to have been the turning-point in his history; in his address to the electors of the Seine, in