"Petition," which was deposited with the first in the office of
the Secretary of the Assembly, the guardian and guarantee,
according to the constitution of 1852, of the principles of '89.
On the 2d of June, the two processes being united, Proudhon
appeared at the bar with his publisher, the printer of the
book, and the printer of the petition, to receive the sentence of
the police magistrate, which condemned him to three years'
imprisonment, a fine of four thousand francs, and the suppression
of his work. It is needless to say that the publisher and
printers were also condemned by the sixth chamber.

Proudhon lodged an appeal; he wrote a memoir which the law of
1819, in the absence of which he would have been liable to a new
prosecution, gave him the power to publish previous to the
hearing. Having decided to make use of the means which the law
permitted, he urged in vain the printers who were prosecuted with
him to lend him their aid. He then demanded of Attorney-General
Chaix d'Est Ange a statement to the effect that the twenty-third
article of the law of the 17th of May, 1819, allows a written
defence, and that a printer runs no risk in printing it. The
attorney-general flatly refused. Proudhon then started for
Belgium, where he printed his defence, which could not, of
course, cross the French frontier. This memoir is entitled to
rank with the best of Beaumarchais's; it is entitled: "Justice
prosecuted by the Church; An Appeal from the Sentence passed upon
P. J. Proudhon by the Police Magistrate of the Seine, on the 2d
of June, 1858." A very close discussion of the grounds of the
judgment of the sixth chamber, it was at the same time an
excellent resume of his great work.