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Collection: The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill

Appendix C: ENFANTIN’S FAREWELL ADDRESS MORNING CHRONICLE, 27 APR., 1832, P. 1 - John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXV - Newspaper Writings December 1847 - July 1873 Part IV [1847]

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The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, XXV - Newspaper Writings December 1847 - July 1873 Part IV, ed. Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson, Introduction by Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986).

Part of: Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, in 33 vols.

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Appendix C

ENFANTIN’S FAREWELL ADDRESS

MORNING CHRONICLE, 27 APR., 1832, P. 1

After the Saint Simonians had given up Le Globe (see No. 158) and their attempts at proselytism as a result of government hostility, their leader Enfantin, with some forty disciples, retired to a semi-monastic existence at Ménilmontant outside Paris. His farewell address, which appeared translated in the Morning Chronicle, headed “St. Simonianism—Parting Address to the Public,” is not mentioned in Mill’s bibliography. However, it is identified as Mill’s translation in a letter to d’Eichthal and Duveyrier: “I did as d’Eichthal wished in regard to Father Enfantin’s parting address: after ascertaining that Black would print it, I translated it for him & it appeared in the Morning Chronicle (it was however very incorrectly printed)” (EL, CW, Vol. XII, p. 109).

i, the father of the new Family—

Before I impose silence on the voice, which every day announces to the world what we are, design that it should tell what I am.

God has given me a mission to call the poor, and women, to a new destiny;

To give admittance into the sacred Family of Man, to all those who have hitherto been excluded from it, or treated only as minors therein;

To realise that Universal Association, which the cries of liberty uttered by all the enslaved classes have been calling for, ever since the beginning of the world.

I have first addressed myself to the poor.

In the name of my Master, Saint Simon, I have announced to them the destruction of all the privileges of birth, by which the industrious are weighed down, and delivered up to the will and pleasure of the idle;

The termination of the wars which decimate them, and water with their blood that earth which is already bathed in their tears, and in the sweat of their brows;

The end of that hostile competition, which brings forth bankruptcy and indigence, crime, and the scaffold.

I spoke these things; but I spoke them in order to be heard, especially by those who ought to be the first to hear; by those who have the power to enfranchise, and who domineer; who have the power to unite, and who divide; who have the power to purify, and who corrupt.

I spoke to them, and they endeavoured not to listen; but my word has entered into their ears in spite of themselves, and they are now pouring it forth from their lips, though they know it not.

I may, therefore, now leave to them the task of propagating it.

Men of all parties! I have drawn you into a new field of discussion; I leave you there. It is good for you that you should there see each other face to face, and seek in vain for the guide who has led you thither.

I affirm to you, that from this day forward there are no politics for you but that which was taught to us by our Master, and which, for the last seven years, we have unintermittingly proclaimed.

Parliamentary Government, and its bourgeois mysticism, are expiring;

Republicanism, and its popular anarchy, are unable to struggle into existence;

Legitimacy, and its privilégiés de château will not be resuscitated.

All social institutions must have for their end the improvement of the condition, moral, physical, and intellectual, of the poorest and most numerous class;

To each, labour according to his vocation, and recompence according to his works.

This is the Charter of Equality and Subordination of the time to come.

This, I say, is henceforth the only politics. For, from the moment when I shall have ceased to place every day under your eyes that Journal, in which, for sixteen months past, I have caused the Charter of the time to come to be engraven in characters ever new; from the moment when The Globe, which I have compelled you to read by giving it to you gratuitously, shall have ceased to appear, each of you will find in himself some fragments of that Paper which he will recite aloud as his own.

Once more, I affirm to you that ours is henceforth the only politics. For the inheritance we leave behind us is an arsenal, where those who wish to destroy will find weapons more potent than all those which they have employed up to this time; and it is also a treasure of strength and riches, when those who wish to preserve and to construct will find materials finer than the finest débris of the past, more solid than the gingerbread patchings-up of our own times.

I have next addressed myself to Woman.

I have called upon her to listen, with good-will and respect, to the man whose life is devoted to the destruction of prostitution;

To receive with kindness and affection the word of the man who also seeks to deliver the world from adultery;

To listen to me and sympathise with me, who have undertaken the sacred task of saving the feeble from oppression, because I am strong, and the strong from fraud, because I am sincere.

Now, there are still many men who consider slaves, servants, and the poor, as their property, and who claim fidelity and devotedness from that living property, in exchange for the imperious protection and the contemptuous patronage which they extend to it. However, the number of these men has been diminished every day by the preaching of Christian paternity.

But, from the daughter of Kings to the daughter of the Pauper, I know not that there exists so much as one woman from whom man does not think himself entitled to exact fidelity, devotedness, obedience, in exchange for the insulting guardianship which his haughty reason and his brute strength deign to grant to the being whom he regards as a child, destitute of strength and destitute of reason.

Had I cause, then, to be astonished, that the call to freedom and equality which I addressed to woman should be stifled by shouts of outrage?—No! I relied more on the effect of the reproaches which would be cast by man upon the liberation of woman, than on the power of my own words.

I leave to woman this inheritance of liberty. I know how great has hitherto been the power of destruction residing in this word liberty, when flung into the midst of slaves, fettered and gagged; but, thanks be to God, the slave in this case is woman: and it is not by disorder and brutality that she achieves her triumphs.

One phasis of my life is now accomplished: I have spoken: I will now act. But I have need for some time of repose and silence.

A numerous family surrounds me, the Apostolate is now founded.

I take forty of my sons with me: I confide to my other children the task of continuing our labours in the world; and I retire.

I retire to the place where my childhood was passed, on one of the heights which overlook Paris: for I wish still to hear and see that cradle of the New World, and I love also to renew the recollections of my past life; they are good and pleasant to look back upon.

He who speaks to you has lived in the midst of you; his life has not been solitary; he has been known to many of you, and among these he is not aware of one who has not loved him: and yet he is now handed over to the laughter and calumny of the world.

His mother gave him a name of good omen—Prosper—because he smiled in coming into the world; God surrounded his young years with pleasures and riches; his brother, a child of poetry, fed him with harmony and light; his infancy and youth were happy, in the midst of children and young men who cherished his friendship: this man, however, you now overwhelm with sarcasm and outrage.

He has known what your men of science know; he has seen and done what your men of industry do; he has appeared in your meetings and your fêtes, and even on your battle-fields, with his brother-scholars of your Grande Ecole (the Polytechnic School): you all came to him with affection, because you felt that he loved you; you all had confidence in him, because you could read in his heart. And now, because this man takes upon himself in the name of God to moralise your lives, you fling scorn and reproach upon him.

He who has been loved by you will not call you to account for your inconsistencies; he will bide his time and act.

Consider, that one who announces to the world such promises as mine, and who yet, in so short a time, has caused his word to be everywhere re-echoed, cannot be accused of insanity; for his accusers would confess their own madness in having paid so much attention to him. Listen then, once more, before I withdraw from among you.

Your altars are no more, your thrones are shaken, your families are torn by dissension: God, Kings, and love, are no more to be seen in the world. A new religion, a new politics, a new morality, are what I bring you.

The man who dares to speak thus, must be heard, for he has already proved that he could make himself heard.

You have his word; you shall soon have his acting.

But, I repeat to you, I will now rest and hold my peace: for you have need of my silence, that yourselves may speak.

I retire then, with my children—glory to them! who so powerfully aid their father to accomplish the will of God.

My dear Children—This day has been glorious in the world for eighteen centuries: this day died the Divine Liberator of the slave.

To commemorate the anniversary, let our retirement commence this day; and let the last trace of servitude, the condition of a menial, disappear from amongst us.

Enfantin