political career finished in a way unworthy of those principles. It should be remembered, however, that he never grasped the great truth that only through the class struggle can the regeneration of society be accomplished. He was born in 1813, of a middle-class family which, on the maternal side, was Corsican, and an incident of the relations between him and his brother Charles is said to have suggested to Dumas 227 his famous novelette and play of the Corsican Brothers.
In 1838 he quarrelled with the proprietors of the journal of which he was editor, Le Bonsens, on the subject of the railways then being projected, he maintaining that these ought to be owned and managed by the State, and retired from the editorship in consequence.
In 1840 he published his Organisation of Labour, the ideas of which he attempted to realise in the famous “National Workshops,” by which he is best known. * In this work he put forward the genuine Socialistic maxim of “From each according to his capacity; to each according to his needs” as the basis of the production of a true society.