still seem to see him making his first round among the journals which had shown themselves favorable to cause of the freedom of commerce.  He had not yet had time to call upon a Parisian tailor or hatter, and in truth it had not occurred to him to do so.  With his long hair and his small hat, his large surtout and his family umbrella, he would naturally be taken for a reputable countryman looking at the sights of the metropolis.  But his countryman’s-face was at the same time roguish and spirituelle, his large black eyes were bright and luminous, and his forehead, of medium breadth but squarely formed, bore the imprint of thought.  At a glance one could see that he was a peasant of the country of Montaigne, and in listening to him one realized that here was a disciple of Franklin.”

He plunged at once into work, and his activity was prodigious.  He contributed to numerous journals, maintained an active correspondence with Cobden, kept up communications with organizations throughout the country, and was always ready to meet his opponents in debate.

The Republic of 1848 was accepted in good faith; but he was strongly impressed by the extravagant schemes which accompanied the Republican movement, as well as by the thirst for peace which animated multitudes.  The Provisional government had made solemn promises:  it must pile on taxes to enable it to keep its promises.  “Poor people!  How they have deceived themselves!  It would have been so easy and so just to have eased matters by reducing the taxes; instead, this is to be done by profusion of expenditure, and people do not see that all this machinery amounts to taking away ten in order to return eight, without counting the fact that liberty will succumb under the operation.”  He tried to stem the tide of extravagance; he published a journal, the Republique Francaise, for the express purpose of promulgating his views; he entered the Constituent and then the Legislative Assembly, as a member for the department of Landes, and spoke eloquently from the tribune.  He was a constitutional “Mugwump”:  he cared for neither parties nor men, but for ideas.  He was equally opposed to the domination of arbitrary power and to the tyranny of Socialism.  He voted with the right against the left on extravagant Utopian schemes, and with the left against the right when he felt that the legitimate complaints of the poor and suffering were unheeded.

In the midst of his activity he was overcome by a trouble in the throat, which induced his physicians to send him to Italy.  The effort for relief was a vain one, however, and he died in Rome December 24th, 1850.  His complete works, mostly composed of occasional essays, were printed in 1855.  Besides those mentioned, the most important are ‘Propriete et Loi’ (Property and Law), ‘Justice et Fraternite,’ ’Protectionisme et Communisme,’ and ‘Harmonies economiques.’  The ‘Harmonies economiques’ and ‘Sophismes economiques’ have been translated and published in English.