Considérant, VICTOR-PROSPER

Considérant, VICTOR-PROSPER, a French Socialist, was born in 1808 at Salins, in the department of Jura. After being educated at the Polytechnic School of Paris, he entered the army, which, however, he soon left to promulgate the doctrines of the socialist Fourier. On the death of his master (1837), Considérant became the head of his school, and undertook the management of the Phalange, a review devoted to the spread of their opinions. Having gained the support of a young Englishman, Mr Young, who advanced the required sum of money, Considérant established, on a large estate in the department Eure et Loire, a socialist colony or Phalanstère; but the experiment failed, and the Phalange fell to the ground. Thereafter he continued to promote his views in the Démocratie Pacifique. Among his numerous writings, the chief is the Destinée Sociale, dedicated to Louis-Philippe. In 1849 Considérant was accused of high treason, and fled from France. In Texas he founded a socialist community, La Réunion, which flourished for a time, but has since come to nothing. He returned to France in 1869, wrote occasional political pamphlets, and died 27th Dec. 1893. See Life by Coignet (1895).