sums up in a few pages his idea of economical progress: a gradual reduction of interest, profit, rent, taxes, and wages. All progress hitherto has been made in this manner; in this manner it must continue to be made. Those workingmen who favor a nominal increase of wages are, unconsciously, following a back-track, opposed to all their interests.
After having published in “Le Représentant du Peuple,” the statutes of the Bank of Exchange,—a bank which was to make no profits, since it was to have no stockholders, and which, consequently, was to discount commercial paper with out interest, charging only a commission sufficient to defray its running expenses,—Proudhon endeavored, in a number of articles, to explain its mechanism and necessity. These articles have been collected in one volume, under the double title, “Résumé of the Social Question; Bank of Exchange.” His other articles, those which up to December, 1848, were inspired by the progress of events, have been collected in another volume,—“Revolutionary Ideas.”
Almost unknown in March, 1848, and struck off in April from the list of candidates for the Constituent Assembly by the delegation of workingmen which sat at the Luxembourg, Proudhon had but a very small number of votes at the general elections of April. At the complementary elections, which were held in the early days of June, he was elected in Paris by seventy-seven thousand votes.
After the fatal days of June, he published an article on le terme, which caused the first suspension of “Le Représentant du Peuple.” It was at that time that he introduced a bill into the Assembly, which, being referred to the Committee on the Finances, drew forth, first, the report of M. Thiers, and then
