V. Every capacity for labor being, like every instrument of labor, an

accumulated capital, and a collective property, inequality of wages

and fortunes (on the ground of inequality of capacities) is, therefore,

injustice and robbery.

VI. The necessary conditions of commerce are the liberty of the

contracting parties and the equivalence of the products exchanged.

Now, value being expressed by the amount of time and outlay which each

product costs, and liberty being inviolable, the wages of laborers (like

their rights and duties) should be equal.

VII. Products are bought only by products. Now, the condition of all

exchange being equivalence of products, profit is impossible and unjust.

Observe this elementary principle of economy, and pauperism, luxury,

oppression, vice, crime, and hunger will disappear from our midst.

VIII. Men are associated by the physical and mathematical law of

production, before they are voluntarily associated by choice. Therefore,

equality of conditions is demanded by justice; that is, by strict social

law: esteem, friendship, gratitude, admiration, all fall within the

domain of EQUITABLE or PROPORTIONAL law only.

IX. Free association, liberty--whose sole function is to maintain

equality in the means of production and equivalence in exchanges--is the

only possible, the only just, the only true form of society.

X. Politics is the science of liberty. The government of man by man

(under whatever name it be disguised) is oppression. Society finds its

highest perfection in the union of order with anarchy.

The old civilization has run its race; a new sun is rising, and will

soon renew the face of the earth. Let the present generation perish, let

the old prevaricators die in the desert! the holy earth shall not cover

their bones. Young man, exasperated by the corruption of the age, and

absorbed in your zeal for justice!--if your country is dear to you,

and if you have the interests of humanity at heart, have the courage to

espouse the cause of liberty! Cast off your old selfishness, and plunge

into the rising flood of popular equality! There your regenerate soul

will acquire new life and vigor; your enervated genius will recover

unconquerable energy; and your heart, perhaps already withered, will be

rejuvenated! Every thing will wear a different look to your illuminated

vision; new sentiments will engender new ideas within you; religion,

morality, poetry, art, language will appear before you in nobler and

fairer forms; and thenceforth, sure of your faith, and thoughtfully

enthusiastic, you will hail the dawn of universal regeneration!

And you, sad victims of an odious law!--you, whom a jesting world

despoils and outrages!--you, whose labor has always been fruitless,

and whose rest has been without hope,--take courage! your tears are

numbered! The fathers have sown in affliction, the children shall reap

in rejoicings!

O God of liberty! God of equality! Thou who didst place in my heart

the sentiment of justice, before my reason could comprehend it, hear

my ardent prayer! Thou hast dictated all that I have written; Thou hast

shaped my thought; Thou hast directed my studies; Thou hast weaned my

mind from curiosity and my heart from attachment, that I might publish

Thy truth to the master and the slave. I have spoken with what force and

talent Thou hast given me: it is Thine to finish the work. Thou knowest

whether I seek my welfare or Thy glory, O God of liberty! Ah! perish

my memory, and let humanity be free! Let me see from my obscurity

the people at last instructed; let noble teachers enlighten them; let

generous spirits guide them! Abridge, if possible, the time of our

trial; stifle pride and avarice in equality; annihilate this love of

glory which enslaves us; teach these poor children that in the bosom

of liberty there are neither heroes nor great men! Inspire the powerful

man, the rich man, him whose name my lips shall never pronounce in Thy

presence, with a horror of his crimes; let him be the first to apply for

admission to the redeemed society; let the promptness of his repentance

be the ground of his forgiveness! Then, great and small, wise and

foolish, rich and poor, will unite in an ineffable fraternity; and,

singing in unison a new hymn, will rebuild Thy altar, O God of liberty

and equality!

END OF FIRST MEMOIR.

WHAT IS PROPERTY? SECOND MEMOIR

A LETTER TO M. BLANQUI.

SECOND MEMOIR.

PARIS, April 1, 1841.

MONSIEUR,--

Before resuming my "Inquiries into Government and Property," it is

fitting, for the satisfaction of some worthy people, and also in the

interest of order, that I should make to you a plain, straightforward

explanation. In a much-governed State, no one would be allowed to

attack the external form of the society, and the groundwork of its

institutions, until he had established his right to do so,--first, by

his morality; second, by his capacity; and, third, by the purity of

his intentions. Any one who, wishing to publish a treatise upon the

constitution of the country, could not satisfy this threefold condition,

would be obliged to procure the endorsement of a responsible patron

possessing the requisite qualifications.

But we Frenchmen have the liberty of the press. This grand right--the

sword of thought, which elevates the virtuous citizen to the rank of

legislator, and makes the malicious citizen an agent of discord--frees

us from all preliminary responsibility to the law; but it does not

release us from our internal obligation to render a public account

of our sentiments and thoughts. I have used, in all its fulness, and

concerning an important question, the right which the charter grants

us. I come to-day, sir, to submit my conscience to your judgment, and my

feeble insight to your discriminating reason. You have criticised in a

kindly spirit--I had almost said with partiality for the writer--a work

which teaches a doctrine that you thought it your duty to condemn. "The

Academy of Moral and Political Sciences," said you in your report, "can

accept the conclusions of the author only as far as it likes." I venture

to hope, sir, that, after you have read this letter, if your prudence

still restrains you, your fairness will induce you to do me justice.

MEN, EQUAL IN THE DIGNITY OF THEIR PERSONS AND EQUAL BEFORE THE LAW,

SHOULD BE EQUAL IN THEIR CONDITIONS,--such is the thesis which I

maintained and developed in a memoir bearing the title, "What is

Property? or, An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government."

The idea of social equality, even in individual fortunes, has in all

ages besieged, like a vague presentiment, the human imagination. Poets

have sung of it in their hymns; philosophers have dreamed of it in their

Utopias; priests teach it, but only for the spiritual world. The people,

governed by it, never have had faith in it; and the civil power is never

more disturbed than by the fables of the age of gold and the reign

of Astrea. A year ago, however, this idea received a scientific

demonstration, which has not yet been satisfactorily answered, and,

permit me to add, never will be. This demonstration, owing to its

slightly impassioned style, its method of reasoning,--which was so

at variance with that employed by the generally recognized

authorities,--and the importance and novelty of its conclusions, was of

a nature to cause some alarm; and might have been dangerous, had it not

been--as you, sir, so well said--a sealed letter, so far as the general

public was concerned, addressed only to men of intelligence. I was

glad to see that through its metaphysical dress you recognized the wise

foresight of the author; and I thank you for it. May God grant that my

intentions, which are wholly peaceful, may never be charged upon me as

treasonable!

Like a stone thrown into a mass of serpents, the First Memoir on

Property excited intense animosity, and aroused the passions of many.

But, while some wished the author and his work to be publicly denounced,

others found in them simply the solution of the fundamental problems of

society; a few even basing evil speculations upon the new light which

they had obtained. It was not to be expected that a system of inductions

abstractly gathered together, and still more abstractly expressed, would

be understood with equal accuracy in its ensemble and in each of its

parts.

To find the law of equality, no longer in charity and self-sacrifice

(which are not binding in their nature), but in justice; to base

equality of functions upon equality of persons; to determine the

absolute principle of exchange; to neutralize the inequality of

individual faculties by collective force; to establish an equation

between property and robbery; to change the law of succession without

destroying the principle; to maintain the human personality in a

system of absolute association, and to save liberty from the chains

of communism; to synthetize the monarchical and democratic forms of

government; to reverse the division of powers; to give the executive

power to the nation, and to make legislation a positive, fixed,

and absolute science,--what a series of paradoxes! what a string of

delusions! if I may not say, what a chain of truths! But it is not

my purpose here to pass upon the theory of the right of possession. I

discuss no dogmas. My only object is to justify my views, and to show

that, in writing as I did, I not only exercised a right, but performed a

duty.

Yes, I have attacked property, and shall attack it again; but, sir,

before demanding that I shall make the amende honorable for having

obeyed my conscience and spoken the exact truth, condescend, I beg of

you, to cast a glance at the events which are happening around us; look

at our deputies, our magistrates, our philosophers, our ministers, our

professors, and our publicists; examine their methods of dealing with

the matter of property; count up with me the restrictions placed upon

it every day in the name of the public welfare; measure the breaches

already made; estimate those which society thinks of making hereafter;

add the ideas concerning property held by all theories in common;

interrogate history, and then tell me what will be left, half a century

hence, of this old right of property; and, thus perceiving that I have

so many accomplices, you will immediately declare me innocent.

What is the law of expropriation on the ground of public utility, which

everybody favors, and which is even thought too lenient? [36]

A flagrant violation of the right of property. Society indemnifies,

it is said, the dispossessed proprietor; but does it return to him the

traditional associations, the poetic charm, and the family pride which

accompany property? Naboth, and the miller of Sans-Souci, would have

protested against French law, as they protested against the caprice of

their kings. "It is the field of our fathers," they would have cried,

"and we will not sell it!" Among the ancients, the refusal of the

individual limited the powers of the State. The Roman law bowed to

the will of the citizen, and an emperor--Commodus, if I remember

rightly--abandoned the project of enlarging the forum out of respect for

the rights of the occupants who refused to abdicate. Property is a

real right, _jus_ _in re_,--a right inherent in the thing, and whose

principle lies in the external manifestation of man's will. Man leaves

his imprint, stamps his character, upon the objects of his handiwork.

This plastic force of man, as the modern jurists say, is the seal which,

set upon matter, makes it holy. Whoever lays hands upon it, against the

proprietor's will, does violence to the latter's personality. And yet,

when an administrative committee saw fit to declare that public utility

required it, property had to give way to the general will. Soon, in

the name of public utility, methods of cultivation and conditions of

enjoyment will be prescribed; inspectors of agriculture and manufactures

will be appointed; property will be taken away from unskilful hands,

and entrusted to laborers who are more deserving of it; and a general

superintendence of production will be established. It is not two years

since I saw a proprietor destroy a forest more than five hundred acres

in extent. If public utility had interfered, that forest--the only one

for miles around--would still be standing.

But, it is said, expropriation on the ground of public utility is only

an exception which confirms the principle, and bears testimony in

favor of the right. Very well; but from this exception we will pass to

another, from that to a third, and so on from exceptions to exceptions,

until we have reduced the rule to a pure abstraction.

How many supporters do you think, sir, can be claimed for the project

of the conversion of the public funds? I venture to say that everybody

favors it, except the fund-holders. Now, this so-called conversion is

an extensive expropriation, and in this case with no indemnity whatever.

The public funds are so much real estate, the income from which the

proprietor counts upon with perfect safety, and which owes its value

to the tacit promise of the government to pay interest upon it at the

established rate, until the fund-holder applies for redemption. For,

if the income is liable to diminution, it is less profitable than

house-rent or farm-rent, whose rates may rise or fall according to the

fluctuations in the market; and in that case, what inducement has the

capitalist to invest his money in the State? When, then, you force the

fund-holder to submit to a diminution of interest, you make him bankrupt

to the extent of the diminution; and since, in consequence of the

conversion, an equally profitable investment becomes impossible, you

depreciate his property.

That such a measure may be justly executed, it must be generalized; that

is, the law which provides for it must decree also that interest on sums

lent on deposit or on mortgage throughout the realm, as well as house

and farm-rents, shall be reduced to three per cent. This simultaneous

reduction of all kinds of income would be not a whit more difficult to

accomplish than the proposed conversion; and, further, it would offer

the advantage of forestalling at one blow all objections to it, at the

same time that it would insure a just assessment of the land-tax. See!

If at the moment of conversion a piece of real estate yields an income

of one thousand francs, after the new law takes effect it will yield

only six hundred francs. Now, allowing the tax to be an aliquot

part--one-fourth for example--of the income derived from each piece of

property, it is clear on the one hand that the proprietor would not, in

order to lighten his share of the tax, underestimate the value of his

property; since, house and farm-rents being fixed by the value of the

capital, and the latter being measured by the tax, to depreciate his

real estate would be to reduce his revenue. On the other hand, it is

equally evident that the same proprietors could not overestimate the

value of their property, in order to increase their incomes beyond the

limits of the law, since the tenants and farmers, with their old leases

in their hands, would enter a protest.

Such, sir, must be the result sooner or later of the conversion which

has been so long demanded; otherwise, the financial operation of which

we are speaking would be a crying injustice, unless intended as a

stepping-stone. This last motive seems the most plausible one; for in

spite of the clamors of interested parties, and the flagrant violation

of certain rights, the public conscience is bound to fulfil its desire,

and is no more affected when charged with attacking property, than

when listening to the complaints of the bondholders. In this case,

instinctive justice belies legal justice.

Who has not heard of the inextricable confusion into which the Chamber

of Deputies was thrown last year, while discussing the question of

colonial and native sugars? Did they leave these two industries to

themselves? The native manufacturer was ruined by the colonist. To

maintain the beet-root, the cane had to be taxed. To protect the

property of the one, it became necessary to violate the property of the

other. The most remarkable feature of this business was precisely that

to which the least attention was paid; namely, that, in one way or

another, property had to be violated. Did they impose on each industry

a proportional tax, so as to preserve a balance in the market? They

created a maximum PRICE for each variety of sugar; and, as this maximum

PRICE was not the same, they attacked property in two ways,--on the one

hand, interfering with the liberty of trade; on the other, disregarding

the equality of proprietors. Did they suppress the beet-root by granting

an indemnity to the manufacturer? They sacrificed the property of the

tax-payer. Finally, did they prefer to cultivate the two varieties of

sugar at the nation's expense, just as different varieties of tobacco

are cultivated? They abolished, so far as the sugar industry was

concerned, the right of property. This last course, being the most

social, would have been certainly the best; but, if property is the

necessary basis of civilization, how is this deep-seated antagonism to

be explained? [37]

Not satisfied with the power of dispossessing a citizen on the ground

of public utility, they want also to dispossess him on the ground of

PRIVATE UTILITY. For a long time, a revision of the law concerning

mortgages was clamored for; a process was demanded, in behalf of all

kinds of credit and in the interest of even the debtors themselves,

which would render the expropriation of real estate as prompt, as easy,

and as effective as that which follows a commercial protest. The Chamber

of Deputies, in the early part of this year, 1841, discussed this

project, and the law was passed almost unanimously. There is nothing

more just, nothing more reasonable, nothing more philosophical

apparently, than the motives which gave rise to this reform.

I. Formerly, the small proprietor whose obligation had arrived at

maturity, and who found himself unable to meet it, had to employ all

that he had left, after being released from his debt, in defraying the

legal costs. Henceforth, the promptness of expropriation will save him

from total ruin. 2. The difficulties in the way of payment arrested

credit, and prevented the employment of capital in agricultural

enterprises. This cause of distrust no longer existing, capitalists will

find new markets, agriculture will rapidly develop, and farmers will

be the first to enjoy the benefit of the new law. 3. Finally, it was

iniquitous and absurd, that, on account of a protested note, a poor

manufacturer should see in twenty-four hours his business arrested, his

labor suspended, his merchandise seized, his machinery sold at auction,

and finally himself led off to prison, while two years were sometimes

necessary to expropriate the most miserable piece of real estate.

These arguments, and others besides, you clearly stated, sir, in your

first lectures of this academic year.

But, when stating these excellent arguments, did you ask yourself, sir,

whither would tend such a transformation of our system of mortgages?...

To monetize, if I may say so, landed property; to accumulate it within

portfolios; to separate the laborer from the soil, man from Nature; to

make him a wanderer over the face of the earth; to eradicate from

his heart every trace of family feeling, national pride, and love of

country; to isolate him more and more; to render him indifferent to

all around him; to concentrate his love upon one object,--money; and,

finally, by the dishonest practices of usury, to monopolize the land

to the profit of a financial aristocracy,--a worthy auxiliary of that

industrial feudality whose pernicious influence we begin to feel so

bitterly. Thus, little by little, the subordination of the laborer to

the idler, the restoration of abolished castes, and the distinction

between patrician and plebeian, would be effected; thus, thanks to the

new privileges granted to the property of the capitalists, that of the

small and intermediate proprietors would gradually disappear, and with

it the whole class of free and honest laborers. This certainly is not

my plan for the abolition of property. Far from mobilizing the soil, I

would, if possible, immobilize even the functions of pure intelligence,

so that society might be the fulfilment of the intentions of Nature,

who gave us our first possession, the land. For, if the instrument

or capital of production is the mark of the laborer, it is also his

pedestal, his support, his country, and, as the Psalmist says, THE PLACE

OF HIS ACTIVITY AND HIS REST. [38]

Let us examine more closely still the inevitable and approaching result

of the last law concerning judicial sales and mortgages. Under

the system of competition which is killing us, and whose necessary

expression is a plundering and tyrannical government, the farmer will

need always capital in order to repair his losses, and will be forced to

contract loans. Always depending upon the future for the payment of his

debts, he will be deceived in his hope, and surprised by maturity. For

what is there more prompt, more unexpected, more abbreviatory of space

and time, than the maturity of an obligation? I address this question

to all whom this pitiless Nemesis pursues, and even troubles in their

dreams. Now, under the new law, the expropriation of a debtor will be

effected a hundred times more rapidly; then, also, spoliation will be

a hundred times surer, and the free laborer will pass a hundred times

sooner from his present condition to that of a serf attached to the

soil. Formerly, the length of time required to effect the seizure

curbed the usurer's avidity, gave the borrower an opportunity to recover

himself, and gave rise to a transaction between him and his creditor

which might result finally in a complete release. Now, the debtor's

sentence is irrevocable: he has but a few days of grace.

And what advantages are promised by this law as an offset to this sword

of Damocles, suspended by a single hair over the head of the unfortunate

husbandman? The expenses of seizure will be much less, it is said; but

will the interest on the borrowed capital be less exorbitant? For, after

all, it is interest which impoverishes the peasant and leads to his

expropriation. That the law may be in harmony with its principle, that

it may be truly inspired by that spirit of justice for which it is

commended, it must--while facilitating expropriation--lower the legal

price of money. Otherwise, the reform concerning mortgages is but a trap

set for small proprietors,--a legislative trick.

Lower interest on money! But, as we have just seen, that is to limit

property. Here, sir, you shall make your own defence. More than once, in

your learned lectures, I have heard you deplore the precipitancy of the

Chambers, who, without previous study and without profound knowledge

of the subject, voted almost unanimously to maintain the statutes and

privileges of the Bank. Now these privileges, these statutes, this vote

of the Chambers, mean simply this,--that the market price of specie,

at five or six per cent., is not too high, and that the conditions

of exchange, discount, and circulation, which generally double this

interest, are none too severe. So the government thinks. M. Blanqui--a

professor of political economy, paid by the State--maintains the

contrary, and pretends to demonstrate, by decisive arguments, the

necessity of a reform. Who, then, best understands the interests of

property,--the State, or M. Blanqui?

If specie could be borrowed at half the present rate, the revenues from

all sorts of property would soon be reduced one-half also. For example:

when it costs less to build a house than to hire one, when it is cheaper

to clear a field than to procure one already cleared, competition

inevitably leads to a reduction of house and farm-rents, since the

surest way to depreciate active capital is to increase its amount. But

it is a law of political economy that an increase of production augments

the mass of available capital, consequently tends to raise wages, and

finally to annihilate interest. Then, proprietors are interested in

maintaining the statutes and privileges of the Bank; then, a reform in

this matter would compromise the right of increase; then, the peers and

deputies are better informed than Professor Blanqui.

But these same deputies,--so jealous of their privileges whenever

the equalizing effects of a reform are within their intellectual

horizon,--what did they do a few days before they passed the law

concerning judicial sales? They formed a conspiracy against property!

Their law to regulate the labor of children in factories will, without

doubt, prevent the manufacturer from compelling a child to labor more

than so many hours a day; but it will not force him to increase the pay

of the child, nor that of its father. To-day, in the interest of health,

we diminish the subsistence of the poor; to-morrow it will be necessary

to protect them by fixing their MINIMUM wages. But to fix their minimum

wages is to compel the proprietor, is to force the master to accept his

workman as an associate, which interferes with freedom and makes mutual

insurance obligatory. Once entered upon this path, we never shall

stop. Little by little the government will become manufacturer,

commission-merchant, and retail dealer.

It will be the sole proprietor. Why, at all epochs, have the ministers

of State been so reluctant to meddle with the question of wages?

Why have they always refused to interfere between the master and the

workman? Because they knew the touchy and jealous nature of property,

and, regarding it as the principle of all civilization, felt that to

meddle with it would be to unsettle the very foundations of society.

Sad condition of the proprietary regime,--one of inability to exercise

charity without violating justice! [39]

And, sir, this fatal consequence which necessity forces upon the State

is no mere imagination. Even now the legislative power is asked, no

longer simply to regulate the government of factories, but to create

factories itself. Listen to the millions of voices shouting on all hands

for THE ORGANISATION OF LABOR, THE CREATION OF NATIONAL WORKSHOPS!

The whole laboring class is agitated: it has its journals, organs,

and representatives. To guarantee labor to the workingman, to balance

production with sale, to harmonize industrial proprietors, it advocates

to-day--as a sovereign remedy--one sole head, one national wardenship,

one huge manufacturing company. For, sir, all this is included in the

idea of national workshops. On this subject I wish to quote, as proof,

the views of an illustrious economist, a brilliant mind, a progressive

intellect, an enthusiastic soul, a true patriot, and yet an official

defender of the right of property. [40]

The honorable professor of the Conservatory proposes then,--

1. TO CHECK THE CONTINUAL EMIGRATION OF LABORERS FROM THE COUNTRY INTO

THE CITIES.

But, to keep the peasant in his village, his residence there must be

made endurable: to be just to all, the proletaire of the country must be

treated as well as the proletaire of the city. Reform is needed, then,

on farms as well as in factories; and, when the government enters the

workshop, the government must seize the plough! What becomes, during

this progressive invasion, of independent cultivation, exclusive domain,

property?

2. TO FIX FOR EACH PROFESSION A MODERATE SALARY, VARYING WITH TIME AND

PLACE AND BASED UPON CERTAIN DATA.

The object of this measure would be to secure to laborers their

subsistence, and to proprietors their profits, while obliging the latter

to sacrifice from motives of prudence, if for no other reason, a portion

of their income. Now, I say, that this portion, in the long run, would

swell until at last there would be an equality of enjoyment between the

proletaire and the proprietor. For, as we have had occasion to remark

several times already, the interest of the capitalist--in other words

the increase of the idler--tends, on account of the power of labor, the

multiplication of products and exchanges, to continually diminish, and,

by constant reduction, to disappear. So that, in the society proposed

by M. Blanqui, equality would not be realized at first, but would exist

potentially; since property, though outwardly seeming to be industrial

feudality, being no longer a principle of exclusion and encroachment,

but only a privilege of division, would not be slow, thanks to the

intellectual and political emancipation of the proletariat, in passing

into absolute equality,--as absolute at least as any thing can be on

this earth.

I omit, for the sake of brevity, the numerous considerations which

the professor adduces in support of what he calls, too modestly in my

opinion, his Utopia. They would serve only to prove beyond all question

that, of all the charlatans of radicalism who fatigue the public ear,

no one approaches, for depth and clearness of thought, the audacious M.

Blanqui.

3. NATIONAL WORKSHOPS SHOULD BE IN OPERATION ONLY DURING PERIODS OF

STAGNATION IN ORDINARY INDUSTRIES; AT SUCH TIMES THEY SHOULD BE OPENED

AS VAST OUTLETS TO THE FLOOD OF THE LABORING POPULATION.

But, sir, the stoppage of private industry is the result of

over-production, and insufficient markets. If, then, production

continues in the national workshops, how will the crisis be terminated?

Undoubtedly, by the general depreciation of merchandise, and, in the

last analysis, by the conversion of private workshops into national

workshops. On the other hand, the government will need capital with

which to pay its workmen; now, how will this capital be obtained? By

taxation. And upon what will the tax be levied? Upon property. Then you

will have proprietary industry sustaining against itself, and at its own

expense, another industry with which it cannot compete. What, think you,

will become, in this fatal circle, of the possibility of profit,--in a

word, of property?

Thank Heaven! equality of conditions is taught in the public schools;

let us fear revolutions no longer. The most implacable enemy of property

could not, if he wished to destroy it, go to work in a wiser and more

effective way. Courage, then, ministers, deputies, economists! make

haste to seize this glorious initiative; let the watchwords of equality,

uttered from the heights of science and power, be repeated in the midst

of the people; let them thrill the breasts of the proletaires, and carry

dismay into the ranks of the last representatives of privilege!

The tendency of society in favor of compelling proprietors to support

national workshops and public manufactories is so strong that for

several years, under the name of ELECTORAL REFORM, it has been

exclusively the question of the day. What is, after all, this electoral

reform which the people grasp at, as if it were a bait, and which

so many ambitious persons either call for or denounce? It is the

acknowledgment of the right of the masses to a voice in the assessment

of taxes, and the making of the laws; which laws, aiming always at the

protection of material interests, affect, in a greater or less degree,

all questions of taxation or wages. Now the people, instructed long

since by their journals, their dramas, [41] and their songs, [42] know

to-day that taxation, to be equitably divided, must be graduated, and

must be borne mainly by the rich,--that it must be levied upon luxuries,

&c. And be sure that the people, once in the majority in the Chamber,

will not fail to apply these lessons. Already we have a minister

of public works. National workshops will follow; and soon, as

a consequence, the excess of the proprietor's revenue over the

workingman's wages will be swallowed up in the coffers of the laborers

of the State. Do you not see that in this way property is gradually

reduced, as nobility was formerly, to a nominal title, to a distinction

purely honorary in its nature?

Either the electoral reform will fail to accomplish that which is hoped

from it, and will disappoint its innumerable partisans, or else it will

inevitably result in a transformation of the absolute right under which

we live into a right of possession; that is, that while, at present,

property makes the elector, after this reform is accomplished, the

citizen, the producer will be the possessor. [43] Consequently, the

radicals are right in saying that the electoral reform is in their eyes

only a means; but, when they are silent as to the end, they show either

profound ignorance, or useless dissimulation. There should be no secrets

or reservations from peoples and powers. He disgraces himself and fails

in respect for his fellows, who, in publishing his opinions, employs

evasion and cunning. Before the people act, they need to know the whole

truth. Unhappy he who shall dare to trifle with them! For the people are

credulous, but they are strong. Let us tell them, then, that this reform

which is proposed is only a means,--a means often tried, and hitherto

without effect,--but that the logical object of the electoral reform is

equality of fortunes; and that this equality itself is only a new means

having in view the superior and definitive object of the salvation of

society, the restoration of morals and religion, and the revival of

poetry and art.

This assertion of M. Rossi is not borne out by history. Property is the

cause of the electoral right, not as a PRESUMPTION OF CAPACITY,--an idea

which never prevailed until lately, and which is extremely absurd,--but

as a GUARANTEE OF DEVOTION TO THE ESTABLISHED ORDER. The electoral body

is a league of those interested in the maintenance of property, against

those not interested. There are thousands of documents, even official

documents, to prove this, if necessary. For the rest, the present system

is only a continuation of the municipal system, which, in the

middle ages, sprang up in connection with feudalism,--an oppressive,

mischief-making system, full of petty passions and base intrigues.

It would be an abuse of the reader's patience to insist further upon

the tendency of our time towards equality. There are, moreover, so many

people who denounce the present age, that nothing is gained by exposing

to their view the popular, scientific, and representative tendencies of

the nation.

Prompt to recognize the accuracy of the inferences drawn from

observation, they confine themselves to a general censure of the facts,

and an absolute denial of their legitimacy. "What wonder," they say,

"that this atmosphere of equality intoxicates us, considering all that

has been said and done during the past ten years!... Do you not see that

society is dissolving, that a spirit of infatuation is carrying us away?

All these hopes of regeneration are but forebodings of death; your songs

of triumph are like the prayers of the departing, your trumpet peals

announce the baptism of a dying man. Civilization is falling in ruin:

_Imus, imus, praecipites_!"

Such people deny God. I might content myself with the reply that

the spirit of 1830 was the result of the maintenance of the violated

charter; that this charter arose from the Revolution of '89; that

'89 implies the States-General's right of remonstrance, and the

enfranchisement of the communes; that the communes suppose feudalism,

which in its turn supposes invasion, Roman law, Christianity, &c.

But it is necessary to look further. We must penetrate to the very heart

of ancient institutions, plunge into the social depths, and uncover this

indestructible leaven of equality which the God of justice breathed into

our souls, and which manifests itself in all our works.

Labor is man's contemporary; it is a duty, since it is a condition of

existence: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." It is more

than a duty, it is a mission: "God put the man into the garden to dress

it." I add that labor is the cause and means of equality.

Cast away upon a desert island two men: one large, strong, and active;

the other weak, timid, and domestic. The latter will die of hunger;

while the other, a skilful hunter, an expert fisherman, and an

indefatigable husbandman, will overstock himself with provisions. What

greater inequality, in this state of Nature so dear to the heart of Jean

Jacques, could be imagined! But let these two men meet and associate

themselves: the second immediately attends to the cooking, takes charge

of the household affairs, and sees to the provisions, beds, and clothes;

provided the stronger does not abuse his superiority by enslaving and

ill-treating his companion, their social condition will be perfectly

equal. Thus, through exchange of services, the inequalities of Nature

neutralize each other, talents associate, and forces balance. Violence

and inertia are found only among the poor and the aristocratic. And

in that lies the philosophy of political economy, the mystery of human

brotherhood. _Hic est sapientia_. Let us pass from the hypothetical

state of pure Nature into civilization.

The proprietor of the soil, who produces, I will suppose with the

economists, by lending his instrument, receives at the foundation of a

society so many bushels of grain for each acre of arable land. As long

as labor is weak, and the variety of its products small, the proprietor

is powerful in comparison with the laborers; he has ten times,

one hundred times, the portion of an honest man. But let labor, by

multiplying its inventions, multiply its enjoyments and wants, and the

proprietor, if he wishes to enjoy the new products, will be obliged to

reduce his income every day; and since the first products tend rather

to depreciate than to rise in value,--in consequence of the continual

addition of the new ones, which may be regarded as supplements of the

first ones,--it follows that the idle proprietor grows poor as fast

as public prosperity increases. "Incomes" (I like to quote you, sir,

because it is impossible to give too good an authority for these

elementary principles of economy, and because I cannot express them

better myself), "incomes," you have said, "tend to disappear as capital

increases. He who possesses to-day an income of twenty thousand pounds

is not nearly as rich as he who possessed the same amount fifty years

ago. The time is coming when all property will be a burden to the idle,

and will necessarily pass into the hands of the able and industrious.

[44]..."

In order to live as a proprietor, or to consume without producing, it is

necessary, then, to live upon the labor of another; in other words,

it is necessary to kill the laborer. It is upon this principle that

proprietors of those varieties of capital which are of primary necessity

increase their farm-rents as fast as industry develops, much more

careful of their privileges in that respect, than those economists who,

in order to strengthen property, advocate a reduction of interest.

But the crime is unavailing: labor and production increase; soon the

proprietor will be forced to labor, and then property is lost.

The proprietor is a man who, having absolute control of an instrument

of production, claims the right to enjoy the product of the instrument

without using it himself. To this end he lends it; and we have just

seen that from this loan the laborer derives a power of exchange, which

sooner or later will destroy the right of increase. In the first place,

the proprietor is obliged to allow the laborer a portion of the product,

for without it the laborer could not live. Soon the latter, through

the development of his industry, finds a means of regaining the greater

portion of that which he gives to the proprietor; so that at last, the

objects of enjoyment increasing continually, while the income of the

idler remains the same, the proprietor, having exhausted his resources,

begins to think of going to work himself. Then the victory of the

producer is certain. Labor commences to tip the balance towards its own

side, and commerce leads to equilibrium.

Man's instinct cannot err; as, in liberty, exchange of functions leads

inevitably to equality among men, so commerce--or exchange of products,

which is identical with exchange of functions--is a new cause of

equality. As long as the proprietor does not labor, however small his

income, he enjoys a privilege; the laborer's welfare may be equal to

his, but equality of conditions does not exist. But as soon as the

proprietor becomes a producer,--since he can exchange his special

product only with his tenant or his _commandite_,--sooner or later this

tenant, this _exploited_ man, if violence is not done him, will make

a profit out of the proprietor, and will oblige him to restore--in the

exchange of their respective products--the interest on his capital. So

that, balancing one injustice by another, the contracting parties will

be equal. Labor and exchange, when liberty prevails, lead, then, to

equality of fortunes; mutuality of services neutralizes privilege.

That is why despots in all ages and countries have assumed control

of commerce; they wished to prevent the labor of their subjects from

becoming an obstacle to the rapacity of tyrants.

Up to this point, all takes place in the natural order; there is no

premeditation, no artifice. The whole proceeding is governed by the laws

of necessity alone. Proprietors and laborers act only in obedience to

their wants. Thus, the exercise of the right of increase, the art

of robbing the producer, depends--during this first period of

civilization--upon physical violence, murder, and war.

But at this point a gigantic and complicated conspiracy is hatched

against the capitalists. The weapon of the EXPLOITERS is met by the

EXPLOITED with the instrument of commerce,--a marvellous invention,

denounced at its origin by the moralists who favored property, but

inspired without doubt by the genius of labor, by the Minerva of the

proletaires.

The principal cause of the evil lay in the accumulation and immobility

of capital of all sorts,--an immobility which prevented labor, enslaved

and subalternized by haughty idleness, from ever acquiring it. The

necessity was felt of dividing and mobilizing wealth, of rendering it

portable, of making it pass from the hands of the possessor into those

of the worker. Labor invented MONEY. Afterwards, this invention was

revived and developed by the BILL OF EXCHANGE and the BANK. For all

these things are substantially the same, and proceed from the same mind.

The first man who conceived the idea of representing a value by a shell,

a precious stone, or a certain weight of metal, was the real inventor

of the Bank. What is a piece of money, in fact? It is a bill of exchange

written upon solid and durable material, and carrying with it its own

redemption. By this means, oppressed equality was enabled to laugh at

the efforts of the proprietors, and the balance of justice was adjusted

for the first time in the tradesman's shop. The trap was cunningly set,

and accomplished its purpose so thoroughly that in idle hands money

became only dissolving wealth, a false symbol, a shadow of riches. An

excellent economist and profound philosopher was that miser who took

as his motto, "WHEN A GUINEA IS EXCHANGED, IT EVAPORATES." So it may

be said, "When real estate is converted into money, it is lost." This

explains the constant fact of history, that the nobles--the unproductive

proprietors of the soil--have every where been dispossessed by

industrial and commercial plebeians. Such was especially the case in the

formation of the Italian republics, born, during the middle ages, of

the impoverishment of the seigniors. I will not pursue the interesting

considerations which this matter suggests; I could only repeat the

testimony of historians, and present economical demonstrations in an

altered form.

The greatest enemy of the landed and industrial aristocracy to-day, the

incessant promoter of equality of fortunes, is the BANKER. Through him

immense plains are divided, mountains change their positions, forests

are grown upon the public squares, one hemisphere produces for another,

and every corner of the globe has its usufructuaries. By means of the

Bank new wealth is continually created, the use of which (soon becoming

indispensable to selfishness) wrests the dormant capital from the hands

of the jealous proprietor. The banker is at once the most potent creator

of wealth, and the main distributor of the products of art and Nature.

And yet, by the strangest antinomy, this same banker is the most

relentless collector of profits, increase, and usury ever inspired by

the demon of property. The importance of the services which he renders

leads us to endure, though not without complaint, the taxes which he

imposes. Nevertheless, since nothing can avoid its providential mission,

since nothing which exists can escape the end for which it exists

the banker (the modern Croesus) must some day become the restorer of

equality. And following in your footsteps, sir, I have already given the

reason; namely, that profit decreases as capital multiplies, since an

increase of capital--calling for more laborers, without whom it remains

unproductive--always causes an increase of wages. Whence it follows that

the Bank, to-day the suction-pump of wealth, is destined to become the

steward of the human race.

The phrase EQUALITY OF FORTUNES chafes people, as if it referred to

a condition of the other world, unknown here below. There are some

persons, radicals as well as moderates, whom the very mention of this

idea fills with indignation. Let, then, these silly aristocrats abolish

mercantile societies and insurance companies, which are founded

by prudence for mutual assistance. For all these social facts, so

spontaneous and free from all levelling intentions, are the legitimate

fruits of the instinct of equality.

When the legislator makes a law, properly speaking he does not MAKE

it,--he does not CREATE it: he DESCRIBES it. In legislating upon the

moral, civil, and political relations of citizens, he does not express

an arbitrary notion: he states the general idea,--the higher principle

which governs the matter which he is considering; in a word, he is the

proclaimer, not the inventor, of the law. So, when two or more men

form among themselves, by synallagmatic contract, an industrial or an

insurance association, they recognize that their interests, formerly

isolated by a false spirit of selfishness and independence, are

firmly connected by their inner natures, and by the mutuality of their

relations. They do not really bind themselves by an act of their private

will: they swear to conform henceforth to a previously existing social

law hitherto disregarded by them. And this is proved by the fact that

these same men, could they avoid association, would not associate.

Before they can be induced to unite their interests, they must acquire

full knowledge of the dangers of competition and isolation; hence the

experience of evil is the only thing which leads them into society.

Now I say that, to establish equality among men, it is only necessary

to generalize the principle upon which insurance, agricultural, and

commercial associations are based. I say that competition, isolation

of interests, monopoly, privilege, accumulation of capital, exclusive

enjoyment, subordination of functions, individual production, the right

of profit or increase, the exploitation of man by man, and, to sum up

all these species under one head, that PROPERTY is the principal cause

of misery and crime. And, for having arrived at this offensive and

anti-proprietary conclusion, I am an abhorred monster; radicals and

conservatives alike point me out as a fit subject for prosecution; the

academies shower their censures upon me; the most worthy people regard

me as mad; and those are excessively tolerant who content themselves

with the assertion that I am a fool. Oh, unhappy the writer who

publishes the truth otherwise than as a performance of a duty! If he has

counted upon the applause of the crowd; if he has supposed that avarice

and self-interest would forget themselves in admiration of him; if he

has neglected to encase himself within three thicknesses of brass,--he

will fail, as he ought, in his selfish undertaking. The unjust

criticisms, the sad disappointments, the despair of his mistaken

ambition, will kill him.

But, if I am no longer permitted to express my own personal opinion

concerning this interesting question of social equilibrium, let me, at

least, make known the thought of my masters, and develop the doctrines

advocated in the name of the government.

It never has been my intention, sir, in spite of the vigorous censure

which you, in behalf of your academy, have pronounced upon the doctrine

of equality of fortunes, to contradict and cope with you. In listening

to you, I have felt my inferiority too keenly to permit me to enter upon

such a discussion. And then,--if it must be said,--however different

your language is from mine, we believe in the same principles; you share

all my opinions. I do not mean to insinuate thereby, sir, that you have

(to use the phraseology of the schools) an ESOTERIC and an EXOTERIC

doctrine,--that, secretly believing in equality, you defend property

only from motives of prudence and by command. I am not rash enough to

regard you as my colleague in my revolutionary projects; and I esteem

you too highly, moreover, to suspect you of dissimulation. I only

mean that the truths which methodical investigation and laborious

metaphysical speculation have painfully demonstrated to me, a profound

acquaintance with political economy and a long experience reveal to

you. While I have reached my belief in equality by long reflection, and

almost in spite of my desires, you hold yours, sir, with all the zeal of

faith,--with all the spontaneity of genius. That is why your course

of lectures at the Conservatory is a perpetual war upon property and

inequality of fortunes; that is why your most learned investigations,

your most ingenious analyses, and your innumerable observations always

conclude in a formula of progress and equality; that is why, finally,

you are never more admired and applauded than at those moments of

inspiration when, borne upon the wings of science, you ascend to those

lofty truths which cause plebeian hearts to beat with enthusiasm, and

which chill with horror men whose intentions are evil. How many times,

from the place where I eagerly drank in your eloquent words, have I

inwardly thanked Heaven for exempting you from the judgment passed by

St. Paul upon the philosophers of his time,--"They have known the truth,

and have not made it known"! How many times have I rejoiced at finding

my own justification in each of your discourses! No, no; I neither wish

nor ask for any thing which you do not teach yourself. I appeal to your

numerous audience; let it belie me if, in commenting upon you, I pervert

your meaning.

A disciple of Say, what in your eyes is more anti-social than the

custom-houses; or, as you correctly call them, the barriers erected by

monopoly between nations? What is more annoying, more unjust, or more

absurd, than this prohibitory system which compels us to pay forty

sous in France for that which in England or Belgium would bring us but

fifteen? It is the custom-house, you once said, [45] which arrests

the development of civilization by preventing the specialization of

industries; it is the custom-house which enriches a hundred monopolists

by impoverishing millions of citizens; it is the custom-house which

produces famine in the midst of abundance, which makes labor sterile by

prohibiting exchange, and which stifles production in a mortal embrace.

It is the custom-house which renders nations jealous of, and hostile to,

each other; four-fifths of the wars of all ages were caused originally

by the custom-house. And then, at the highest pitch of your enthusiasm,

you shouted: "Yes, if to put an end to this hateful system, it should

become necessary for me to shed the last drop of my blood, I would

joyfully spring into the gap, asking only time enough to give thanks to

God for having judged me worthy of martyrdom!"

And, at that solemn moment, I said to myself: "Place in every department

of France such a professor as that, and the revolution is avoided."

But, sir, by this magnificent theory of liberty of commerce you render

military glory impossible,--you leave nothing for diplomacy to do;

you even take away the desire for conquest, while abolishing profit

altogether. What matters it, indeed, who restores Constantinople,

Alexandria, and Saint Jean d'Acre, if the Syrians, Egyptians, and Turks

are free to choose their masters; free to exchange their products with

whom they please? Why should Europe get into such a turmoil over this

petty Sultan and his old Pasha, if it is only a question whether we or

the English shall civilize the Orient,--shall instruct Egypt and Syria

in the European arts, and shall teach them to construct machines, dig

canals, and build railroads? For, if to national independence free trade

is added, the foreign influence of these two countries is thereafter

exerted only through a voluntary relationship of producer to producer,

or apprentice to journeyman.

Alone among European powers, France cheerfully accepted the task of

civilizing the Orient, and began an invasion which was quite apostolic

in its character,--so joyful and high-minded do noble thoughts render

our nation! But diplomatic rivalry, national selfishness, English

avarice, and Russian ambition stood in her way. To consummate a

long-meditated usurpation, it was necessary to crush a too generous

ally: the robbers of the Holy Alliance formed a league against dauntless

and blameless France. Consequently, at the news of this famous treaty,

there arose among us a chorus of curses upon the principle of property,

which at that time was acting under the hypocritical formulas of the old

political system. The last hour of property seemed to have struck by

the side of Syria; from the Alps to the ocean, from the Rhine to the

Pyrenees, the popular conscience was aroused. All France sang songs

of war, and the coalition turned pale at the sound of these shuddering

cries: "War upon the autocrat, who wishes to be proprietor of the

old world! War upon the English perjurer, the devourer of India, the

poisoner of China, the tyrant of Ireland, and the eternal enemy of

France! War upon the allies who have conspired against liberty and

equality! War! war! war upon property!"

By the counsel of Providence the emancipation of the nations is

postponed. France is to conquer, not by arms, but by example. Universal

reason does not yet understand this grand equation, which, commencing

with the abolition of slavery, and advancing over the ruins of

aristocracies and thrones, must end in equality of rights and fortunes;

but the day is not far off when the knowledge of this truth will be as

common as that of equality of origin. Already it seems to be understood

that the Oriental question is only a question of custom-houses. Is it,

then, so difficult for public opinion to generalize this idea, and to

comprehend, finally, that if the suppression of custom-houses involves

the abolition of national property, it involves also, as a consequence,

the abolition of individual property?

In fact, if we suppress the custom-houses, the alliance of the nations

is declared by that very act; their solidarity is recognized, and their

equality proclaimed. If we suppress the custom-houses, the principle of

association will not be slow in reaching from the State to the province,

from the province to the city, and from the city to the workshop. But,

then, what becomes of the privileges of authors and artists? Of what

use are the patents for invention, imagination, amelioration, and

improvement? When our deputies write a law of literary property by

the side of a law which opens a large breach in the custom-house they

contradict themselves, indeed, and pull down with one hand what they

build up with the other. Without the custom-house, literary property

does not exist, and the hopes of our starving authors are frustrated.

For, certainly you do not expect, with the good man Fourier, that

literary property will exercise itself in China to the profit of a

French writer; and that an ode of Lamartine, sold by privilege all over

the world, will bring in millions to its author! The poet's work

is peculiar to the climate in which he lives; every where else the

reproduction of his works, having no market value, should be frank and

free. But what! will it be necessary for nations to put themselves under

mutual surveillance for the sake of verses, statues, and elixirs? We

shall always have, then, an excise, a city-toll, rights of entrance

and transit, custom-houses finally; and then, as a reaction against

privilege, smuggling.

Smuggling! That word reminds me of one of the most horrible forms

of property. "Smuggling," you have said, sir, [46] "is an offence of

political creation; it is the exercise of natural liberty, defined as a

crime in certain cases by the will of the sovereign. The smuggler is a

gallant man,--a man of spirit, who gaily busies himself in procuring for

his neighbor, at a very low price, a jewel, a shawl, or any other object

of necessity or luxury, which domestic monopoly renders excessively

dear." Then, to a very poetical monograph of the smuggler, you add this

dismal conclusion,--that the smuggler belongs to the family of Mandrin,

and that the galleys should be his home!

But, sir, you have not called attention to the horrible exploitation

which is carried on in this way in the name of property.

It is said,--and I give this report only as an hypothesis and an

illustration, for I do not believe it,--it is said that the present

minister of finances owes his fortune to smuggling. M. Humann, of

Strasbourg, sent out of France, it is said, enormous quantities of

sugar, for which he received the bounty on exportation promised by

the State; then, smuggling this sugar back again, he exported it anew,

receiving the bounty on exportation a second time, and so on. Notice,

sir, that I do not state this as a fact; I give it only as it is told,

not endorsing or even believing it. My sole design is to fix the idea in

the mind by an example. If I believed that a minister had committed such

a crime, that is, if I had personal and authentic knowledge that he had,

I would denounce M. Humann, the minister of finances, to the Chamber of

Deputies, and would loudly demand his expulsion from the ministry.

But that which is undoubtedly false of M. Humann is true of many others,

as rich and no less honorable than he. Smuggling, organized on a large

scale by the eaters of human flesh, is carried on to the profit of a few

pashas at the risk and peril of their imprudent victims. The inactive

proprietor offers his merchandise for sale; the actual smuggler risks

his liberty, his honor, and his life. If success crowns the enterprise,

the courageous servant gets paid for his journey; the profit goes to

the coward. If fortune or treachery delivers the instrument of this

execrable traffic into the hands of the custom-house officer, the

master-smuggler suffers a loss which a more fortunate voyage will soon

repair. The agent, pronounced a scoundrel, is thrown into prison in

company with robbers; while his glorious patron, a juror, elector,

deputy, or minister, makes laws concerning expropriation, monopoly, and

custom-houses!

I promised, at the beginning of this letter, that no attack on property

should escape my pen, my only object being to justify myself before the

public by a general recrimination. But I could not refrain from branding

so odious a mode of exploitation, and I trust that this short digression

will be pardoned. Property does not avenge, I hope, the injuries which

smuggling suffers.

The conspiracy against property is general; it is flagrant; it takes

possession of all minds, and inspires all our laws; it lies at the

bottom of all theories. Here the proletaire pursues property in the

street, there the legislator lays an interdict upon it; now, a professor

of political economy or of industrial legislation, [47] paid to defend

it, undermines it with redoubled blows; at another--time, an academy

calls it in question, [48] or inquires as to the progress of its

demolition. [49] To-day there is not an idea, not an opinion, not

a sect, which does not dream of muzzling property. None confess it,

because none are yet conscious of it; there are too few minds capable

of grasping spontaneously this ensemble of causes and effects,

of principles and consequences, by which I try to demonstrate the

approaching disappearance of property; on the other hand, the ideas that

are generally formed of this right are too divergent and too loosely

determined to allow an admission, so soon, of the contrary theory. Thus,

in the middle and lower ranks of literature and philosophy, no less than

among the common people, it is thought that, when property is abolished,

no one will be able to enjoy the fruit of his labor; that no one will

have any thing peculiar to himself, and that tyrannical communism will

be established on the ruins of family and liberty!--chimeras, which are

to support for a little while longer the cause of privilege.

But, before determining precisely the idea of property, before seeking

amid the contradictions of systems for the common element which must

form the basis of the new right, let us cast a rapid glance at

the changes which, at the various periods of history, property has

undergone. The political forms of nations are the expression of their

beliefs. The mobility of these forms, their modification and their

destruction, are solemn experiences which show us the value of ideas,

and gradually eliminate from the infinite variety of customs the

absolute, eternal, and immutable truth. Now, we shall see that every

political institution tends, necessarily, and on pain of death, to

equalize conditions; that every where and always equality of fortunes

(like equality of rights) has been the social aim, whether the plebeian

classes have endeavored to rise to political power by means of property,

or whether--rulers already--they have used political power to overthrow

property. We shall see, in short, by the progress of society, that the

consummation of justice lies in the extinction of individual domain.

For the sake of brevity, I will disregard the testimony of

ecclesiastical history and Christian theology: this subject deserves a

separate treatise, and I propose hereafter to return to it. Moses and

Jesus Christ proscribed, under the names of usury and inequality, [50]

all sorts of profit and increase. The church itself, in its purest

teachings, has always condemned property; and when I attacked, not only

the authority of the church, but also its infidelity to justice, I did

it to the glory of religion. I wanted to provoke a peremptory reply, and

to pave the way for Christianity's triumph, in spite of the innumerable

attacks of which it is at present the object. I hoped that an apologist

would arise forthwith, and, taking his stand upon the Scriptures, the

Fathers, the canons, and the councils and constitutions of the Popes,

would demonstrate that the church always has maintained the doctrine of

equality, and would attribute to temporary necessity the contradictions

of its discipline. Such a labor would serve the cause of religion

as well as that of equality. We must know, sooner or later, whether

Christianity is to be regenerated in the church or out of it, and

whether this church accepts the reproaches cast upon it of hatred to

liberty and antipathy to progress. Until then we will suspend judgment,

and content ourselves with placing before the clergy the teachings of

history.

When Lycurgus undertook to make laws for Sparta, in what condition did

he find this republic? On this point all historians agree. The people

and the nobles were at war. The city was in a confused state, and

divided by two parties,--the party of the poor, and the party of the

rich. Hardly escaped from the barbarism of the heroic ages, society was

rapidly declining. The proletariat made war upon property, which, in its

turn, oppressed the proletariat. What did Lycurgus do? His first measure

was one of general security, at the very idea of which our legislators

would tremble. He abolished all debts; then, employing by turns

persuasion and force, he induced the nobles to renounce their

privileges, and re-established equality.

Lycurgus, in a word, hunted property out of Lacedaemon, seeing no other

way to harmonize liberty, equality, and law. I certainly should not wish

France to follow the example of Sparta; but it is remarkable that the

most ancient of Greek legislators, thoroughly acquainted with the nature

and needs of the people, more capable than any one else of appreciating

the legitimacy of the obligations which he, in the exercise of his

absolute authority, cancelled; who had compared the legislative

systems of his time, and whose wisdom an oracle had proclaimed,--it

is remarkable, I say, that Lycurgus should have judged the right of

property incompatible with free institutions, and should have thought it

his duty to preface his legislation by a coup d'etat which destroyed all

distinctions of fortune.

Lycurgus understood perfectly that the luxury, the love of enjoyments,

and the inequality of fortunes, which property engenders, are the bane

of society; unfortunately the means which he employed to preserve his

republic were suggested to him by false notions of political economy,

and by a superficial knowledge of the human heart. Accordingly,

property, which this legislator wrongly confounded with wealth,

reentered the city together with the swarm of evils which he was

endeavoring to banish; and this time Sparta was hopelessly corrupted.

"The introduction of wealth," says M. Pastoret, "was one of the

principal causes of the misfortunes which they experienced. Against

these, however, the laws had taken extraordinary precautions, the best

among which was the inculcation of morals which tended to suppress

desire."

The best of all precautions would have been the anticipation of desire

by satisfaction. Possession is the sovereign remedy for cupidity,

a remedy which would have been the less perilous to Sparta because

fortunes there were almost equal, and conditions were nearly alike. As a

general thing, fasting and abstinence are bad teachers of moderation.

"There was a law," says M. Pastoret again, "to prohibit the rich from

wearing better clothing than the poor, from eating more delicate food,

and from owning elegant furniture, vases, carpets, fine houses," &c.

Lycurgus hoped, then, to maintain equality by rendering wealth useless.

How much wiser he would have been if, in accordance with his military

discipline, he had organized industry and taught the people to procure

by their own labor the things which he tried in vain to deprive them of.

In that case, enjoying happy thoughts and pleasant feelings, the citizen

would have known no other desire than that with which the legislator

endeavored to inspire him,--love of honor and glory, the triumphs of

talent and virtue.

"Gold and all kinds of ornaments were forbidden the women." Absurd.

After the death of Lycurgus, his institutions became corrupted; and four

centuries before the Christian era not a vestige remained of the former

simplicity. Luxury and the thirst for gold were early developed among

the Spartans in a degree as intense as might have been expected from

their enforced poverty and their inexperience in the arts. Historians

have accused Pausanias, Lysander, Agesilaus, and others of having

corrupted the morals of their country by the introduction of wealth

obtained in war. It is a slander. The morals of the Spartans necessarily

grew corrupt as soon as the Lacedaemonian poverty came in contact with

Persian luxury and Athenian elegance. Lycurgus, then, made a fatal

mistake in attempting to inspire generosity and modesty by enforcing

vain and proud simplicity.

"Lycurgus was not frightened at idleness! A Lacedemonian, happening to

be in Athens (where idleness was forbidden) during the punishment of

a citizen who had been found guilty, asked to see the Athenian thus

condemned for having exercised the rights of a free man.... It was one

of the principles of Lycurguss, acted upon for several centuries, that

free men should not follow lucrative professions.... The women disdained

domestic labor; they did not spin their wool themselves, as did the

other Greeks [they did not, then, read Homer!]; they left their slaves

to make their clothing for them."--Pastoret: History of Legislation.

Could any thing be more contradictory? Lycurgus proscribed property

among the citizens, and founded the means of subsistence on the worst

form of property,--on property obtained by force. What wonder, after

that, that a lazy city, where no industry was carried on, became a den

of avarice? The Spartans succumbed the more easily to the allurements of

luxury and Asiatic voluptuousness, being placed entirely at their mercy

by their own coarseness. The same thing happened to the Romans, when

military success took them out of Italy,--a thing which the author

of the prosopopoeia of Fabricius could not explain. It is not the

cultivation of the arts which corrupts morals, but their degradation,

induced by inactive and luxurious opulence. The instinct of property

is to make the industry of Daedalus, as well as the talent of Phidias,

subservient to its own fantastic whims and disgraceful pleasures.

Property, not wealth, ruined the Spartans.

When Solon appeared, the anarchy caused by property was at its height

in the Athenian republic. "The inhabitants of Attica were divided

among themselves as to the form of government. Those who lived on the

mountains (the poor) preferred the popular form; those of the plain

(the middle class), the oligarchs; those by the sea coast, a mixture

of oligarchy and democracy. Other dissensions were arising from the

inequality of fortunes. The mutual antagonism of the rich and poor had

become so violent, that the one-man power seemed the only safe-guard

against the revolution with which the republic was threatened."

(Pastoret: History of Legislation.)

Quarrels between the rich and the poor, which seldom occur in

monarchies, because a well established power suppresses dissensions,

seem to be the life of popular governments. Aristotle had noticed this.

The oppression of wealth submitted to agrarian laws, or to excessive

taxation; the hatred of the lower classes for the upper class, which

is exposed always to libellous charges made in hopes of

confiscation,--these were the features of the Athenian government which

were especially revolting to Aristotle, and which caused him to favor

a limited monarchy. Aristotle, if he had lived in our day, would have

supported the constitutional government. But, with all deference to the

Stagirite, a government which sacrifices the life of the proletaire to

that of the proprietor is quite as irrational as one which supports the

former by robbing the latter; neither of them deserve the support of a

free man, much less of a philosopher.

Solon followed the example of Lycurgus. He celebrated his legislative

inauguration by the abolition of debts,--that is, by bankruptcy. In

other words, Solon wound up the governmental machine for a longer or

shorter time depending upon the rate of interest. Consequently, when the

spring relaxed and the chain became unwound, the republic had either

to perish, or to recover itself by a second bankruptcy. This singular

policy was pursued by all the ancients. After the captivity of Babylon,

Nehemiah, the chief of the Jewish nation, abolished debts; Lycurgus

abolished debts; Solon abolished debts; the Roman people, after the

expulsion of the kings until the accession of the Caesars, struggled

with the Senate for the abolition of debts. Afterwards, towards the

end of the republic, and long after the establishment of the empire,

agriculture being abandoned, and the provinces becoming depopulated

in consequence of the excessive rates of interest, the emperors freely

granted the lands to whoever would cultivate them,--that is, they

abolished debts. No one, except Lycurgus, who went to the other extreme,

ever perceived that the great point was, not to release debtors by a

coup d'etat, but to prevent the contraction of debts in future.

On the contrary, the most democratic governments were always exclusively

based upon individual property; so that the social element of all these

republics was war between the citizens.

Solon decreed that a census should be taken of all fortunes, regulated

political rights by the result, granted to the larger proprietors more

influence, established the balance of powers,--in a word, inserted in

the constitution the most active leaven of discord; as if, instead of a

legislator chosen by the people, he had been their greatest enemy. Is

it not, indeed, the height of imprudence to grant equality of political

rights to men of unequal conditions? If a manufacturer, uniting all

his workmen in a joint-stock company, should give to each of them a

consultative and deliberative voice,--that is, should make all of them

masters,--would this equality of mastership secure continued inequality

of wages? That is the whole political system of Solon, reduced to its

simplest expression.

"In giving property a just preponderance," says M. Pastoret, "Solon

repaired, as far as he was able, his first official act,--the abolition

of debts.... He thought he owed it to public peace to make this great

sacrifice of acquired rights and natural equity. But the violation of

individual property and written contracts is a bad preface to a public

code."

In fact, such violations are always cruelly punished. In '89 and '93,

the possessions of the nobility and the clergy were confiscated, the

clever proletaires were enriched; and to-day the latter, having become

aristocrats, are making us pay dearly for our fathers' robbery. What,

therefore, is to be done now? It is not for us to violate right, but to

restore it. Now, it would be a violation of justice to dispossess some

and endow others, and then stop there. We must gradually lower the rate

of interest, organize industry, associate laborers and their functions,

and take a census of the large fortunes, not for the purpose of granting

privileges, but that we may effect their redemption by settling a

life-annuity upon their proprietors. We must apply on a large scale the

principle of collective production, give the State eminent domain over

all capital! make each producer responsible, abolish the custom-house,

and transform every profession and trade into a public function. Thereby

large fortunes will vanish without confiscation or violence; individual

possession will establish itself, without communism, under the

inspection of the republic; and equality of conditions will no longer

depend simply on the will of citizens.

Of the authors who have written upon the Romans, Bossuet and Montesquieu

occupy prominent positions in the first rank; the first being generally

regarded as the father of the philosophy of history, and the second as

the most profound writer upon law and politics. Nevertheless, it could

be shown that these two great writers, each of them imbued with the

prejudices of their century and their cloth, have left the question of

the causes of the rise and fall of the Romans precisely where they found

it.

Bossuet is admirable as long as he confines himself to description:

witness, among other passages, the picture which he has given us

of Greece before the Persian War, and which seems to have inspired

"Telemachus;" the parallel between Athens and Sparta, drawn twenty

times since Bossuet; the description of the character and morals of

the ancient Romans; and, finally, the sublime peroration which ends the

"Discourse on Universal History." But when the famous historian deals

with causes, his philosophy is at fault.

"The tribunes always favored the division of captured lands, or the

proceeds of their sale, among the citizens. The Senate steadfastly

opposed those laws which were damaging to the State, and wanted the

price of lands to be awarded to the public treasury."

Thus, according to Bossuet, the first and greatest wrong of civil wars

was inflicted upon the people, who, dying of hunger, demanded that the

lands, which they had shed their blood to conquer, should be given to

them for cultivation. The patricians, who bought them to deliver to

their slaves, had more regard for justice and the public interests.

How little affects the opinions of men! If the roles of Cicero and the

Gracchi had been inverted, Bossuet, whose sympathies were aroused by the

eloquence of the great orator more than by the clamors of the tribunes,

would have viewed the agrarian laws in quite a different light. He

then would have understood that the interest of the treasury was only

a pretext; that, when the captured lands were put up at auction, the

patricians hastened to buy them, in order to profit by the revenues from

them,--certain, moreover, that the price paid would come back to them

sooner or later, in exchange either for supplies furnished by them to

the republic, or for the subsistence of the multitude, who could buy

only of them, and whose services at one time, and poverty at another,

were rewarded by the State. For a State does not hoard; on the contrary,

the public funds always return to the people. If, then, a certain number

of men are the sole dealers in articles of primary necessity, it follows

that the public treasury, in passing and repassing through their hands,

deposits and accumulates real property there.

When Menenius related to the people his fable of the limbs and the

stomach, if any one had remarked to this story-teller that the stomach

freely gives to the limbs the nourishment which it freely receives, but

that the patricians gave to the plebeians only for cash, and lent to

them only at usury, he undoubtedly would have silenced the wily senator,

and saved the people from a great imposition. The Conscript Fathers

were fathers only of their own line. As for the common people, they were

regarded as an impure race, exploitable, taxable, and workable at the

discretion and mercy of their masters.

As a general thing, Bossuet shows little regard for the people. His

monarchical and theological instincts know nothing but authority,

obedience, and alms-giving, under the name of charity.

This unfortunate disposition constantly leads him to mistake symptoms

for causes; and his depth, which is so much admired, is borrowed from

his authors, and amounts to very little, after all.

When he says, for instance, that "the dissensions in the republic, and

finally its fall, were caused by the jealousies of its citizens, and

their love of liberty carried to an extreme and intolerable extent," are

we not tempted to ask him what caused those JEALOUSIES?--what inspired

the people with that LOVE OF LIBERTY, EXTREME AND INTOLERABLE? It would

be useless to reply, The corruption of morals; the disregard for the

ancient poverty; the debaucheries, luxury, and class jealousies; the

seditious character of the Gracchi, &c. Why did the morals become

corrupt, and whence arose those eternal dissensions between the

patricians and the plebeians?

In Rome, as in all other places, the dissension between the rich and

the poor was not caused directly by the desire for wealth (people, as

a general thing, do not covet that which they deem it illegitimate to

acquire), but by a natural instinct of the plebeians, which led them to

seek the cause of their adversity in the constitution of the republic.

So we are doing to-day; instead of altering our public economy, we

demand an electoral reform. The Roman people wished to return to the

social compact; they asked for reforms, and demanded a revision of

the laws, and a creation of new magistracies. The patricians, who had

nothing to complain of, opposed every innovation. Wealth always has been

conservative. Nevertheless, the people overcame the resistance of the

Senate; the electoral right was greatly extended; the privileges of

the plebeians were increased,--they had their representatives, their

tribunes, and their consuls; but, notwithstanding these reforms, the

republic could not be saved. When all political expedients had been

exhausted, when civil war had depleted the population, when the Caesars

had thrown their bloody mantle over the cancer which was consuming the

empire,--inasmuch as accumulated property always was respected, and

since the fire never stopped, the nation had to perish in the flames.

The imperial power was a compromise which protected the property of the

rich, and nourished the proletaires with wheat from Africa and Sicily:

a double error, which destroyed the aristocrats by plethora and

the commoners by famine. At last there was but one real proprietor

left,--the emperor,--whose dependent, flatterer, parasite, or slave,

each citizen became; and when this proprietor was ruined, those who

gathered the crumbs from under his table, and laughed when he cracked

his jokes, perished also.

Montesquieu succeeded no better than Bossuet in fathoming the causes of

the Roman decline; indeed, it may be said that the president has only

developed the ideas of the bishop. If the Romans had been more moderate

in their conquests, more just to their allies, more humane to the

vanquished; if the nobles had been less covetous, the emperors less

lawless, the people less violent, and all classes less corrupt; if...

&c.,--perhaps the dignity of the empire might have been preserved, and

Rome might have retained the sceptre of the world! That is all that can

be gathered from the teachings of Montesquieu. But the truth of history

does not lie there; the destinies of the world are not dependent upon

such trivial causes. The passions of men, like the contingencies of time

and the varieties of climate, serve to maintain the forces which move

humanity and produce all historical changes; but they do not explain

them. The grain of sand of which Pascal speaks would have caused the

death of one man only, had not prior action ordered the events of which

this death was the precursor.

Montesquieu has read extensively; he knows Roman history thoroughly, is

perfectly well acquainted with the people of whom he speaks, and sees

very clearly why they were able to conquer their rivals and govern the

world. While reading him we admire the Romans, but we do not like them;

we witness their triumphs without pleasure, and we watch their fall

without sorrow. Montesquieu's work, like the works of all French

writers, is skilfully composed,--spirited, witty, and filled with wise

observations. He pleases, interests, instructs, but leads to little

reflection; he does not conquer by depth of thought; he does not exalt

the mind by elevated reason or earnest feeling. In vain should we search

his writings for knowledge of antiquity, the character of primitive

society, or a description of the heroic ages, whose morals and

prejudices lived until the last days of the republic. Vico, painting the

Romans with their horrible traits, represents them as excusable, because

he shows that all their conduct was governed by preexisting ideas and

customs, and that they were informed, so to speak, by a superior genius

of which they were unconscious; in Montesquieu, the Roman atrocity

revolts, but is not explained. Therefore, as a writer, Montesquieu

brings greater credit upon French literature; as a philosopher, Vico

bears away the palm.

Originally, property in Rome was national, not private. Numa was

the first to establish individual property by distributing the lands

captured by Romulus. What was the dividend of this distribution effected

by Numa? What conditions were imposed upon individuals, what powers

reserved to the State? None whatever. Inequality of fortunes, absolute

abdication by the republic of its right of eminent domain over the

property of citizens,--such were the first results of the division of

Numa, who justly may be regarded as the originator of Roman revolutions.

He it was who instituted the worship of the god Terminus,--the guardian

of private possession, and one of the most ancient gods of Italy. It

was Numa who placed property under the protection of Jupiter; who,

in imitation of the Etrurians, wished to make priests of the

land-surveyors; who invented a liturgy for cadastral operations, and

ceremonies of consecration for the marking of boundaries,--who, in

short, made a religion of property. [51] All these fancies would have

been more beneficial than dangerous, if the holy king had not forgotten

one essential thing; namely, to fix the amount that each citizen could

possess, and on what conditions he could possess it. For, since it is

the essence of property to continually increase by accession and profit,

and since the lender will take advantage of every opportunity to apply

this principle inherent in property, it follows that properties tend, by

means of their natural energy and the religious respect which protects

them, to absorb each other, and fortunes to increase or diminish to an

indefinite extent,--a process which necessarily results in the ruin

of the people, and the fall of the republic. Roman history is but the

development of this law.

Scarcely had the Tarquins been banished from Rome and the monarchy

abolished, when quarrels commenced between the orders. In the year

494 B.C., the secession of the commonalty to the Mons Sacer led to the

establishment of the tribunate. Of what did the plebeians complain?

That they were poor, exhausted by the interest which they paid to the

proprietors,--_foeneratoribus;_ that the republic, administered for the

benefit of the nobles, did nothing for the people; that, delivered over

to the mercy of their creditors, who could sell them and their children,

and having neither hearth nor home, they were refused the means of

subsistence, while the rate of interest was kept at its highest point,

&c. For five centuries, the sole policy of the Senate was to evade

these just complaints; and, notwithstanding the energy of the tribunes,

notwithstanding the eloquence of the Gracchi, the violence of Marius,

and the triumph of Caesar, this execrable policy succeeded only too

well. The Senate always temporized; the measures proposed by the

tribunes might be good, but they were inopportune. It admitted that

something should be done; but first it was necessary that the people

should resume the performance of their duties, because the Senate could

not yield to violence, and force must be employed only by the law. If

the people--out of respect for legality--took this beautiful advice, the

Senate conjured up a difficulty; the reform was postponed, and that was

the end of it. On the contrary, if the demands of the proletaires became

too pressing, it declared a foreign war, and neighboring nations were

deprived of their liberty, to maintain the Roman aristocracy.

But the toils of war were only a halt for the plebeians in their onward

march towards pauperism. The lands confiscated from the conquered

nations were immediately added to the domain of the State, to the ager

publicus; and, as such, cultivated for the benefit of the treasury; or,

as was more often the case, they were sold at auction. None of them were

granted to the proletaires, who, unlike the patricians and knights, were

not supplied by the victory with the means of buying them. War never

enriched the soldier; the extensive plundering has been done always by

the generals. The vans of Augereau, and of twenty others, are famous in

our armies; but no one ever heard of a private getting rich. Nothing was

more common in Rome than charges of peculation, extortion, embezzlement,

and brigandage, carried on in the provinces at the head of armies, and

in other public capacities. All these charges were quieted by intrigue,

bribery of the judges, or desistance of the accuser. The culprit was

allowed always in the end to enjoy his spoils in peace; his son was only

the more respected on account of his father's crimes. And, in fact, it

could not be otherwise. What would become of us, if every deputy, peer,

or public functionary should be called upon to show his title to his

fortune!

"The patricians arrogated the exclusive enjoyment of the ager publicus;

and, like the feudal seigniors, granted some portions of their lands to

their dependants,--a wholly precarious concession, revocable at the will

of the grantor. The plebeians, on the contrary, were entitled to the

enjoyment of only a little pasture-land left to them in common:

an utterly unjust state of things, since, in consequence of it,

taxation--_census_--weighed more heavily upon the poor than upon the

rich. The patrician, in fact, always exempted himself from the tithe

which he owed as the price and as the acknowledgment of the concession

of domain; and, on the other hand, paid no taxes on his POSSESSIONS,

if, as there is good reason to believe, only citizens' property was

taxed."--Laboulaye: History of Property.

In order thoroughly to understand the preceding quotation, we must know

that the estates of CITIZENS--that is, estates independent of the public

domain, whether they were obtained in the division of Numa, or had since

been sold by the questors--were alone regarded as PROPERTY; upon these

a tax, or _cense_, was imposed. On the contrary, the estates obtained

by concessions of the public domain, of the ager publicus (for which a

light rent was paid), were called POSSESSIONS. Thus, among the Romans,

there was a RIGHT OF PROPERTY and a RIGHT OF POSSESSION regulating the

administration of all estates. Now, what did the proletaires wish? That

the jus possessionis--the simple right of possession--should be extended

to them at the expense, as is evident, not of private property, but of

the public domain,--agri publici. The proletaires, in short, demanded

that they should be tenants of the land which they had conquered. This

demand, the patricians in their avarice never would accede to. Buying

as much of this land as they could, they afterwards found means of

obtaining the rest as POSSESSIONS. Upon this land they employed their

slaves. The people, who could not buy, on account of the competition

of the rich, nor hire, because--cultivating with their own hands--they

could not promise a rent equal to the revenue which the land would

yield when cultivated by slaves, were always deprived of possession and

property.

Civil wars relieved, to some extent, the sufferings of the multitude.

"The people enrolled themselves under the banners of the ambitious, in

order to obtain by force that which the law refused them,--property. A

colony was the reward of a victorious legion. But it was no longer

the ager publicus only; it was all Italy that lay at the mercy of the

legions. The ager publicus disappeared almost entirely,... but the

cause of the evil--accumulated property--became more potent than ever."

(Laboulaye: History of Property.)

The author whom I quote does not tell us why this division of

territory which followed civil wars did not arrest the encroachments of

accumulated property; the omission is easily supplied. Land is not

the only requisite for cultivation; a working-stock is also

necessary,--animals, tools, harnesses, a house, an advance, &c. Where

did the colonists, discharged by the dictator who rewarded them, obtain

these things? From the purse of the usurers; that is, of the patricians,

to whom all these lands finally returned, in consequence of the rapid

increase of usury, and the seizure of estates. Sallust, in his account

of the conspiracy of Catiline, tells us of this fact. The conspirators

were old soldiers of Sylla, who, as a reward for their services, had

received from him lands in Cisalpine Gaul, Tuscany, and other parts of

the peninsula Less than twenty years had elapsed since these colonists,

free of debt, had left the service and commenced farming; and already

they were crippled by usury, and almost ruined. The poverty caused

by the exactions of creditors was the life of this conspiracy which

well-nigh inflamed all Italy, and which, with a worthier chief and

fairer means, possibly would have succeeded. In Rome, the mass of the

people were favorable to the conspirators--_cuncta plebes Catilinae

incepta probabat;_ the allies were weary of the patricians' robberies;

deputies from the Allobroges (the Savoyards) had come to Rome to appeal

to the Senate in behalf of their fellow-citizens involved in debt; in

short, the complaint against the large proprietors was universal. "We

call men and gods to witness," said the soldiers of Catiline, who were

Roman citizens with not a slave among them, "that we have taken arms

neither against the country, nor to attack any one, but in defence of

our lives and liberties. Wretched, poor, most of us deprived of country,

all of us of fame and fortune, by the violence and cruelty of usurers,

we have no rights, no property, no liberty." [52]

The bad reputation of Catiline, and his atrocious designs, the

imprudence of his accomplices, the treason of several, the strategy

of Cicero, the angry outbursts of Cato, and the terror of the

Senate, baffled this enterprise, which, in furnishing a precedent for

expeditions against the rich, would perhaps have saved the republic, and

given peace to the world. But Rome could not evade her destiny; the end

of her expiations had not come. A nation never was known to anticipate

its punishment by a sudden and unexpected conversion. Now, the

long-continued crimes of the Eternal City could not be atoned for by

the massacre of a few hundred patricians. Catiline came to stay divine

vengeance; therefore his conspiracy failed.

The encroachment of large proprietors upon small proprietors, by the aid

of usury, farm-rent, and profits of all sorts, was common throughout the

empire. The most honest citizens invested their money at high rates of

interest. [53] Cato, Cicero, Brutus, all the stoics so noted for

their frugality, _viri frugi_,--Seneca, the teacher of virtue,--levied

enormous taxes in the provinces, under the name of usury; and it is

something remarkable, that the last defenders of the republic, the proud

Pompeys, were all usurious aristocrats, and oppressors of the poor.

But the battle of Pharsalus, having killed men only, without touching

institutions, the encroachments of the large domains became every day

more active. Ever since the birth of Christianity, the Fathers have

opposed this invasion with all their might. Their writings are filled

with burning curses upon this crime of usury, of which Christians are

not always innocent.

St. Cyprian complains of certain bishops of his time, who, absorbed in

disgraceful stock-jobbing operations, abandoned their churches, and went

about the provinces appropriating lands by artifice and fraud, while

lending money and piling up interests upon interests. [54] Why, in the

midst of this passion for accumulation, did not the possession of the

public land, like private property, become concentrated in a few hands?

By law, the domain of the State was inalienable, and consequently

possession was always revocable; but the edict of the praetor continued

it indefinitely, so that finally the possessions of the patricians were

transformed into absolute property, though the name, possessions,

was still applied to them. This conversion, instigated by senatorial

avarice; owed its accomplishment to the most deplorable and indiscreet

policy. If, in the time of Tiberius Gracchus, who wished to limit each

citizen's possession of the ager publicus to five hundred acres, the

amount of this possession had been fixed at as much as one family could

cultivate, and granted on the express condition that the possessor

should cultivate it himself, and should lease it to no one, the empire

never would have been desolated by large estates; and possession,

instead of increasing property, would have absorbed it. On what, then,

depended the establishment and maintenance of equality in conditions

and fortunes? On a more equitable division of the ager publicus, a wiser

distribution of the right of possession.

I insist upon this point, which is of the utmost importance, because

it gives us an opportunity to examine the history of this individual

possession, of which I said so much in my first memoir, and which so few

of my readers seem to have understood. The Roman republic--having, as

it did, the power to dispose absolutely of its territory, and to impose

conditions upon possessors--was nearer to liberty and equality than any

nation has been since. If the Senate had been intelligent and just,--if,

at the time of the retreat to the Mons Sacer, instead of the ridiculous

farce enacted by Menenius Agrippa, a solemn renunciation of the right

to acquire had been made by each citizen on attaining his share of

possessions,--the republic, based upon equality of possessions and the

duty of labor, would not, in attaining its wealth, have degenerated

in morals; Fabricius would have enjoyed the arts without controlling

artists; and the conquests of the ancient Romans would have been the

means of spreading civilization, instead of the series of murders and

robberies that they were.

But property, having unlimited power to amass and to lease, was daily

increased by the addition of new possessions. From the time of Nero, six

individuals were the sole proprietors of one-half of Roman Africa. In

the fifth century, the wealthy families had incomes of no less than

two millions: some possessed as many as twenty thousand slaves. All

the authors who have written upon the causes of the fall of the Roman

republic concur.

M. Giraud of Aix [55] quotes the testimony of Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch,

Olympiodorus, and Photius. Under Vespasian and Titus, Pliny, the

naturalist, exclaimed: "Large estates have ruined Italy, and are ruining

the provinces."

But it never has been understood that the extension of property was

effected then, as it is to-day, under the aegis of the law, and by

virtue of the constitution. When the Senate sold captured lands at

auction, it was in the interest of the treasury and of public welfare.

When the patricians bought up possessions and property, they realized

the purpose of the Senate's decrees; when they lent at high rates of

interest, they took advantage of a legal privilege. "Property," said the

lender, "is the right to enjoy even to the extent of abuse, _jus utendi

et abutendi_; that is, the right to lend at interest,--to lease, to

acquire, and then to lease and lend again." But property is also the

right to exchange, to transfer, and to sell. If, then, the social

condition is such that the proprietor, ruined by usury, may be compelled

to sell his possession, the means of his subsistence, he will sell

it; and, thanks to the law, accumulated property--devouring and

anthropophagous property--will be established.[56]

The immediate and secondary cause of the decline of the Romans

was, then, the internal dissensions between the two orders of the

republic,--the patricians and the plebeians,--dissensions which gave

rise to civil wars, proscriptions, and loss of liberty, and finally led

to the empire; but the primary and mediate cause of their decline was

the establishment by Numa of the institution of property.

I end with an extract from a work which I have quoted several times

already, and which has recently received a prize from the Academy of

Moral and Political Sciences:--

"The concentration of property," says M. Laboulaye, "while causing

extreme poverty, forced the emperors to feed and amuse the people, that

they might forget their misery. _Panem et circenses:_ that was the Roman

law in regard to the poor; a dire and perhaps a necessary evil wherever

a landed aristocracy exists.

"To feed these hungry mouths, grain was brought from Africa and the

provinces, and distributed gratuitously among the needy. In the time of

Caesar, three hundred and twenty thousand people were thus fed. Augustus

saw that such a measure led directly to the destruction of husbandry;

but to abolish these distributions was to put a weapon within the reach

of the first aspirant for power.

"The emperor shrank at the thought.

"While grain was gratuitous, agriculture was impossible. Tillage gave

way to pasturage, another cause of depopulation, even among slaves.

"Finally, luxury, carried further and further every day, covered the

soil of Italy with elegant villas, which occupied whole cantons. Gardens

and groves replaced the fields, and the free population fled to the

towns. Husbandry disappeared almost entirely, and with husbandry the

husbandman. Africa furnished the wheat, and Greece the wine. Tiberius

complained bitterly of this evil, which placed the lives of the Roman

people at the mercy of the winds and waves: that was his anxiety. One

day later, and three hundred thousand starving men walked the streets of

Rome: that was a revolution.

"This decline of Italy and the provinces did not stop. After the

reign of Nero, depopulation commenced in towns as noted as Antium and

Tarentum. Under the reign of Pertinax, there was so much desert land

that the emperor abandoned it, even that which belonged to the treasury,

to whoever would cultivate it, besides exempting the farmers from

taxation for a period of ten years. Senators were compelled to invest

one-third of their fortunes in real estate in Italy; but this measure

served only to increase the evil which they wished to cure. To force

the rich to possess in Italy was to increase the large estates which

had ruined the country. And must I say, finally, that Aurelian wished to

send the captives into the desert lands of Etruria, and that Valentinian

was forced to settle the Alamanni on the fertile banks of the Po?"

If the reader, in running through this book, should complain of meeting

with nothing but quotations from other works, extracts from journals

and public lectures, comments upon laws, and interpretations of them, I

would remind him that the very object of this memoir is to establish the

conformity of my opinion concerning property with that universally held;

that, far from aiming at a paradox, it has been my main study to follow

the advice of the world; and, finally, that my sole pretension is to

clearly formulate the general belief. I cannot repeat it too often,--and

I confess it with pride,--I teach absolutely nothing that is new; and I

should regard the doctrine which I advocate as radically erroneous, if a

single witness should testify against it.

Let us now trace the revolutions in property among the Barbarians.

As long as the German tribes dwelt in their forests, it did not occur

to them to divide and appropriate the soil. The land was held in common:

each individual could plow, sow, and reap. But, when the empire was once

invaded, they bethought themselves of sharing the land, just as

they shared spoils after a victory. "Hence," says M. Laboulaye, "the

expressions _sortes Burgundiorum Gothorum_ and {GREEK, ' k }; hence the

German words _allod_, allodium, and _loos_, lot, which are used in all

modern languages to designate the gifts of chance."

Allodial property, at least with the mass of coparceners, was originally

held, then, in equal shares; for all of the prizes were equal, or, at

least, equivalent. This property, like that of the Romans, was wholly

individual, independent, exclusive, transferable, and consequently

susceptible of accumulation and invasion. But, instead of its being, as

was the case among the Romans, the large estate which, through

increase and usury, subordinated and absorbed the small one, among

the Barbarians--fonder of war than of wealth, more eager to dispose

of persons than to appropriate things--it was the warrior who, through

superiority of arms, enslaved his adversary. The Roman wanted matter;

the Barbarian wanted man. Consequently, in the feudal ages, rents were

almost nothing,--simply a hare, a partridge, a pie, a few pints of wine

brought by a little girl, or a Maypole set up within the suzerain's

reach. In return, the vassal or incumbent had to follow the seignior

to battle (a thing which happened almost every day), and equip and feed

himself at his own expense. "This spirit of the German tribes--this

spirit of companionship and association--governed the territory as it

governed individuals. The lands, like the men, were secured to a chief

or seignior by a bond of mutual protection and fidelity. This subjection

was the labor of the German epoch which gave birth to feudalism. By fair

means or foul, every proprietor who could not be a chief was forced to

be a vassal." (Laboulaye: History of Property.)

By fair means or foul, every mechanic who cannot be a master has to be

a journeyman; every proprietor who is not an invader will be invaded;

every producer who cannot, by the exploitation of other men, furnish

products at less than their proper value, will lose his labor.

Corporations and masterships, which are hated so bitterly, but which

will reappear if we are not careful, are the necessary results of

the principle of competition which is inherent in property; their

organization was patterned formerly after that of the feudal hierarchy,

which was the result of the subordination of men and possessions.

The times which paved the way for the advent of feudalism and the

reappearance of large proprietors were times of carnage and the most

frightful anarchy. Never before had murder and violence made such havoc

with the human race. The tenth century, among others, if my memory

serves me rightly, was called the CENTURY OF IRON. His property, his

life, and the honor of his wife and children always in danger the

small proprietor made haste to do homage to his seignior, and to

bestow something on the church of his freehold, that he might receive

protection and security.

"Both facts and laws bear witness that from the sixth to the tenth

century the proprietors of small freeholds were gradually plundered,

or reduced by the encroachments of large proprietors and counts to the

condition of either vassals or tributaries. The Capitularies are full

of repressive provisions; but the incessant reiteration of these

threats only shows the perseverance of the evil and the impotency of the

government. Oppression, moreover, varies but little in its methods. The

complaints of the free proprietors, and the groans of the plebeians

at the time of the Gracchi, were one and the same. It is said that,

whenever a poor man refused to give his estate to the bishop, the

curate, the count, the judge, or the centurion, these immediately sought

an opportunity to ruin him. They made him serve in the army until,

completely ruined, he was induced, by fair means or foul, to give up his

freehold."--Laboulaye: History of Property.

How many small proprietors and manufacturers have not been ruined by

large ones through chicanery, law-suits, and competition? Strategy,

violence, and usury,--such are the proprietor's methods of plundering

the laborer.

Thus we see property, at all ages and in all its forms, oscillating by

virtue of its principle between two opposite terms,--extreme division

and extreme accumulation.

Property, at its first term, is almost null. Reduced to personal

exploitation, it is property only potentially. At its second term, it

exists in its perfection; then it is truly property.

When property is widely distributed, society thrives, progresses, grows,

and rises quickly to the zenith of its power. Thus, the Jews, after

leaving Babylon with Esdras and Nehemiah, soon became richer and more

powerful than they had been under their kings. Sparta was in a strong

and prosperous condition during the two or three centuries which

followed the death of Lycurgus. The best days of Athens were those of

the Persian war; Rome, whose inhabitants were divided from the beginning

into two classes,--the exploiters and the exploited,--knew no such thing

as peace.

When property is concentrated, society, abusing itself, polluted, so

to speak, grows corrupt, wears itself out--how shall I express this

horrible idea?--plunges into long-continued and fatal luxury.

When feudalism was established, society had to die of the same disease

which killed it under the Caesars,--I mean accumulated property. But

humanity, created for an immortal destiny, is deathless; the revolutions

which disturb it are purifying crises, invariably followed by more

vigorous health. In the fifth century, the invasion of the Barbarians

partially restored the world to a state of natural equality. In the

twelfth century, a new spirit pervading all society gave the slave his

rights, and through justice breathed new life into the heart of nations.

It has been said, and often repeated, that Christianity regenerated the

world. That is true; but it seems to me that there is a mistake in

the date. Christianity had no influence upon Roman society; when the

Barbarians came, that society had disappeared. For such is God's curse

upon property; every political organization based upon the exploitation

of man, shall perish: slave-labor is death to the race of tyrants. The

patrician families became extinct, as the feudal families did, and as

all aristocracies must.

It was in the middle ages, when a reactionary movement was beginning

to secretly undermine accumulated property, that the influence of

Christianity was first exercised to its full extent.

The destruction of feudalism, the conversion of the serf into the

commoner, the emancipation of the communes, and the admission of the

Third Estate to political power, were deeds accomplished by Christianity

exclusively. I say Christianity, not ecclesiasticism; for the priests

and bishops were themselves large proprietors, and as such often

persecuted the villeins. Without the Christianity of the middle ages,

the existence of modern society could not be explained, and would not be

possible.

The truth of this assertion is shown by the very facts which M.

Laboulaye quotes, although this author inclines to the opposite opinion.

[57]

Now, we did not commence to love God and to think of our salvation until

after the promulgation of the Gospel.

1. Slavery among the Romans.--"The Roman slave was, in the eyes of

the law, only a thing,--no more than an ox or a horse. He had neither

property, family, nor personality; he was defenceless against his

master's cruelty, folly, or cupidity. 'Sell your oxen that are past

use,' said Cato, 'sell your calves, your lambs, your wool, your hides,

your old ploughs, your old iron, your old slave, and your sick slave,

and all that is of no use to you.' When no market could be found for the

slaves that were worn out by sickness or old age, they were abandoned to

starvation. Claudius was the first defender of this shameful practice."

"Discharge your old workman," says the economist of the proprietary

school; "turn off that sick domestic, that toothless and worn-out

servant. Put away the unserviceable beauty; to the hospital with the

useless mouths!"

"The condition of these wretched beings improved but little under the

emperors; and the best that can be said of the goodness of Antoninus

is that he prohibited intolerable cruelty, as an ABUSE OF PROPERTY.

_Expedit enim reipublicae ne quis re re sua male utatur_, says Gaius.

"As soon as the Church met in council, it launched an anathema against

the masters who had exercised over their slaves this terrible right of

life and death. Were not the slaves, thanks to the right of sanctuary

and to their poverty, the dearest proteges of religion? Constantine, who

embodied in the laws the grand ideas of Christianity, valued the life of

a slave as highly as that of a freeman, and declared the master, who had

intentionally brought death upon his slave, guilty of murder. Between

this law and that of Antoninus there is a complete revolution in moral

ideas: the slave was a thing; religion has made him a man."

Note the last words: "Between the law of the Gospel and that of

Antoninus there is a complete revolution in moral ideas: the slave was

a thing; religion has made him a man." The moral revolution which

transformed the slave into a citizen was effected, then, by Christianity

before the Barbarians set foot upon the soil of the empire. We have

only to trace the progress of this MORAL revolution in the PERSONNEL

of society. "But," M. Laboulaye rightly says, "it did not change the

condition of men in a moment, any more than that of things; between

slavery and liberty there was an abyss which could not be filled in a

day; the transitional step was servitude."

Now, what was servitude? In what did it differ from Roman slavery, and

whence came this difference? Let the same author answer.

2. Of servitude.--"I see, in the lord's manor, slaves charged with

domestic duties. Some are employed in the personal service of the

master; others are charged with household cares. The women spin the

wool; the men grind the grain, make the bread, or practise, in the

interest of the seignior, what little they know of the industrial arts.

The master punishes them when he chooses, kills them with impunity, and

sells them and theirs like so many cattle. The slave has no personality,

and consequently no _wehrgeld_ [59] peculiar to himself: he is a thing.

The _wehrgeld_ belongs to the master as a compensation for the loss of

his property. Whether the slave is killed or stolen, the indemnity does

not change, for the injury is the same; but the indemnity increases or

diminishes according to the value of the serf. In all these particulars

Germanic slavery and Roman servitude are alike."

This similarity is worthy of notice. Slavery is always the same, whether

in a Roman villa or on a Barbarian farm. The man, like the ox and the

ass, is a part of the live-stock; a price is set upon his head; he is a

tool without a conscience, a chattel without personality, an impeccable,

irresponsible being, who has neither rights nor duties.

Why did his condition improve?

"In good season..." [when?] "the serf began to be regarded as a man;

and, as such, the law of the Visigoths, under the influence of Christian

ideas, punished with fine or banishment any one who maimed or killed

him."

Always Christianity, always religion, though we should like to speak

of the laws only. Did the philanthropy of the Visigoths make its first

appearance before or after the preaching of the Gospel? This point must

be cleared up.