ts own money in order again to re-establish equilibrium.

From this process of compensation carried on by the company, which was
to be applied in like manner to all products, raw materials and food
stuffs, and so on, Proudhon hoped for that much talked of and much
promising fixity of values, since all products would (so to speak) be
monetised and made into money, and would maintain the highest degree
of circulating power. Branches of the company over all France and a
complete public administration were to complete the system, which
should have as its object the organisation and centralisation of
exchange of products in return for products, according to the formulae
of J. B. Say, with as little money as possible, as few intermediaries
as possible, with the least possible expense, and for the exclusive
benefit of producers and consumers.

It hardly need be observed that the rise and prosperity of these
institutions must stand or fall by the correctness of the assumption
of fixed values and of the monetisation of all products. Proudhon's
opponents wished to make out, that in view of this knowledge his
sudden arrest and imprisonment in Saint Pelagie, by which he was
divested of all responsibility for the liquidation of the company, was
not altogether unwished for by him. But this is contradicted by the
attempt which was renewed later on to realise the project of the
People's Bank. We have, indeed, no cause to suspect Proudhon's good
faith in the matter; on the other hand, the supposed originality of
this idea of his is all the more open to suspicion, because in all
essential particulars it reminds us too closely of the "labour paper
money" of Rodbertus that was to be issued by the State after the
determination of values, an idea with which Proudhon's economics had
many points in common. There is a still greater similarity between
Proudhon's projects and the Boards of Trade thought of by Bray ten
years before the beginning of the People's Bank; and it is also like
John Gray's Central Bank.

* * * * *

In later years Proudhon not only outwardly, owing either to compulsion
or prudence, renounced all immediate realisation of his intentions,
but even became convinced and expressed his conviction in his work
upon the federative principle (_Du Principe Federatif_, 1852), that
ordered anarchy was an ideal, and as such could never be realised, but
that nevertheless human society should strive to at