It
is our right to maintain our freedom.
is our right to maintain our freedom.
Proudhon - What is Property? An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government
The Gospel should
not be blamed, because the priests, as stupid as the legists, have been
unable either to expound or to understand it. The ignorance of councils
and popes upon all questions of morality is equal to that of the
market-place and the money-changers; and it is this utter ignorance
of right, justice, and society, which is killing the Church, and
discrediting its teachings for ever. The infidelity of the Roman church
and other Christian churches is flagrant; all have disregarded the
precept of Jesus; all have erred in moral and doctrinal points; all
are guilty of teaching false and absurd dogmas, which lead straight to
wickedness and murder. Let it ask pardon of God and men,--this church
which called itself infallible, and which has grown so corrupt in
morals; let its reformed sisters humble themselves,. . . and the people,
undeceived, but still religious and merciful, will begin to think. [29]
One of the main causes of Ireland's poverty to-day is the immense
revenues of the English clergy. So heretics and orthodox--Protestants
and Papists--cannot reproach each other. All have strayed from the path
of justice; all have disobeyed the eighth commandment of the Decalogue:
"Thou shalt not steal. "
The development of right has followed the same order, in its various
expressions, that property has in its forms. Every where we see justice
driving robbery before it and confining it within narrower and narrower
limits. Hitherto the victories of justice over injustice, and of
equality over inequality, have been won by instinct and the simple force
of things; but the final triumph of our social nature will be due to
our reason, or else we shall fall back into feudal chaos. Either this
glorious height is reserved for our intelligence, or this miserable
depth for our baseness.
The second effect of property is despotism. Now, since despotism
is inseparably connected with the idea of legitimate authority, in
explaining the natural causes of the first, the principle of the second
will appear.
What is to be the form of government in the future? hear some of my
younger readers reply: "Why, how can you ask such a question?
"You are a republican. " "A republican! Yes; but that word specifies
nothing. _Res publica;_ that is, the public thing. Now, whoever
is interested in public affairs--no matter under what form
of government--may call himself a republican. Even kings are
republicans. "--
"Well! you are a democrat? "--"No. "--"What! you would have a
monarchy. "--"No. "--"A constitutionalist? "--"God forbid! "--"You are then
an aristocrat? "--"Not at all. "--"You want a mixed government? "--"Still
less. "--"What are you, then? "--"I am an anarchist. "
"Oh! I understand you; you speak satirically. This is a hit at the
government. "--"By no means. I have just given you my serious and
well-considered profession of faith. Although a firm friend of order, I
am (in the full force of the term) an anarchist. Listen to me. "
In all species of sociable animals, "the weakness of the young is the
principle of their obedience to the old," who are strong; and from habit,
which is a kind of conscience with them, the power remains with the
oldest, although he finally becomes the weakest.
Whenever the society is under the control of a chief, this chief is
almost always the oldest of the troop. I say almost always, because
the established order may be disturbed by violent outbreaks. Then the
authority passes to another; and, having been re-established by force,
it is again maintained by habit. Wild horses go in herds: they have a
chief who marches at their head, whom they confidently follow, and who
gives the signal for flight or battle.
"The sheep which we have raised follows us, but it follows in company
with the flock in the midst of which it was born. It regards man AS THE
CHIEF OF ITS FLOCK. . . . Man is regarded by domestic animals as a member
of their society. All that he has to do is to get himself accepted by
them as an associate: he soon becomes their chief, in consequence of his
superior intelligence. He does not, then, change the NATURAL CONDITION
of these animals, as Buffon has said. On the contrary, he uses this
natural condition to his own advantage; in other words, he finds
SOCIABLE animals, and renders them DOMESTIC by becoming their associate
and chief. Thus, the DOMESTICITY of animals is only a special condition,
a simple modification, a definitive consequence of their SOCIABILITY.
All domestic animals are by nature sociable animals. ". . . --Flourens:
Summary of the Observations of F. Cuvier.
Sociable animals follow their chief by INSTINCT; but take notice of the
fact (which F. Cuvier omitted to state), that the function of the chief
is altogether one of INTELLIGENCE. The chief does not teach the others
to associate, to unite under his lead, to reproduce their kind, to
take to flight, or to defend themselves. Concerning each of these
particulars, his subordinates are as well informed as he. But it is the
chief who, by his accumulated experience, provides against accidents; he
it is whose private intelligence supplements, in difficult situations,
the general instinct; he it is who deliberates, decides, and leads; he
it is, in short, whose enlightened prudence regulates the public routine
for the greatest good of all.
Man (naturally a sociable being) naturally follows a chief. Originally,
the chief is the father, the patriarch, the elder; in other words, the
good and wise man, whose functions, consequently, are exclusively of a
reflective and intellectual nature. The human race--like all other
races of sociable animals--has its instincts, its innate faculties, its
general ideas, and its categories of sentiment and reason. Its chiefs,
legislators, or kings have devised nothing, supposed nothing, imagined
nothing. They have only guided society by their accumulated experience,
always however in conformity with opinions and beliefs.
Those philosophers who (carrying into morals and into history their
gloomy and factious whims) affirm that the human race had originally
neither chiefs nor kings, know nothing of the nature of man. Royalty,
and absolute royalty, is--as truly and more truly than democracy--a
primitive form of government. Perceiving that, in the remotest ages,
crowns and kingships were worn by heroes, brigands, and knight-errants,
they confound the two things,--royalty and despotism. But royalty dates
from the creation of man; it existed in the age of negative communism.
Ancient heroism (and the despotism which it engendered) commenced only
with the first manifestation of the idea of justice; that is, with the
reign of force. As soon as the strongest, in the comparison of merits,
was decided to be the best, the oldest had to abandon his position, and
royalty became despotic.
The spontaneous, instinctive, and--so to speak--physiological origin of
royalty gives it, in the beginning, a superhuman character. The
nations connected it with the gods, from whom they said the first kings
descended. This notion was the origin of the divine genealogies of royal
families, the incarnations of gods, and the messianic fables. From it
sprang the doctrine of divine right, which is still championed by a few
singular characters.
Royalty was at first elective, because--at a time when man produced but
little and possessed nothing--property was too weak to establish the
principle of heredity, and secure to the son the throne of his father;
but as soon as fields were cleared, and cities built, each function
was, like every thing else, appropriated, and hereditary kingships and
priesthoods were the result. The principle of heredity was carried into
even the most ordinary professions,--a circumstance which led to class
distinctions, pride of station, and abjection of the common people, and
which confirms my assertion, concerning the principle of patrimonial
succession, that it is a method suggested by Nature of filling vacancies
in business, and completing unfinished tasks.
From time to time, ambition caused usurpers, or SUPPLANTERS of kings,
to start up; and, in consequence, some were called kings by right, or
legitimate kings, and others TYRANTS. But we must not let these names
deceive us. There have been execrable kings, and very tolerable tyrants.
Royalty may always be good, when it is the only possible form of
government; legitimate it is never. Neither heredity, nor election,
nor universal suffrage, nor the excellence of the sovereign, nor the
consecration of religion and of time, can make royalty legitimate.
Whatever form it takes,--monarchic, oligarchic, or democratic,--royalty,
or the government of man by man, is illegitimate and absurd.
Man, in order to procure as speedily as possible the most thorough
satisfaction of his wants, seeks RULE. In the beginning, this rule is
to him living, visible, and tangible. It is his father, his master, his
king. The more ignorant man is, the more obedient he is, and the more
absolute is his confidence in his guide. But, it being a law of man's
nature to conform to rule,--that is, to discover it by his powers of
reflection and reason,--man reasons upon the commands of his chiefs.
Now, such reasoning as that is a protest against authority,--a beginning
of disobedience. At the moment that man inquires into the motives which
govern the will of his sovereign,--at that moment man revolts. If
he obeys no longer because the king commands, but because the king
demonstrates the wisdom of his commands, it may be said that henceforth
he will recognize no authority, and that he has become his own king.
Unhappy he who shall dare to command him, and shall offer, as his
authority, only the vote of the majority; for, sooner or later, the
minority will become the majority, and this imprudent despot will be
overthrown, and all his laws annihilated.
In proportion as society becomes enlightened, royal authority
diminishes. That is a fact to which all history bears witness. At the
birth of nations, men reflect and reason in vain. Without methods,
without principles, not knowing how to use their reason, they cannot
judge of the justice of their conclusions. Then the authority of kings
is immense, no knowledge having been acquired with which to contradict
it. But, little by little, experience produces habits, which develop
into customs; then the customs are formulated in maxims, laid down as
principles,--in short, transformed into laws, to which the king, the
living law, has to bow. There comes a time when customs and laws are so
numerous that the will of the prince is, so to speak, entwined by the
public will; and that, on taking the crown, he is obliged to swear that
he will govern in conformity with established customs and usages; and
that he is but the executive power of a society whose laws are made
independently of him.
Up to this point, all is done instinctively, and, as it were,
unconsciously; but see where this movement must end.
By means of self-instruction and the acquisition of ideas, man finally
acquires the idea of SCIENCE,--that is, of a system of knowledge in
harmony with the reality of things, and inferred from observation.
He searches for the science, or the system, of inanimate bodies,--the
system of organic bodies, the system of the human mind, and the system
of the universe: why should he not also search for the system of
society? But, having reached this height, he comprehends that political
truth, or the science of politics, exists quite independently of
the will of sovereigns, the opinion of majorities, and popular
beliefs,--that kings, ministers, magistrates, and nations, as wills,
have no connection with the science, and are worthy of no consideration.
He comprehends, at the same time, that, if man is born a sociable being,
the authority of his father over him ceases on the day when, his mind
being formed and his education finished, he becomes the associate of his
father; that his true chief and his king is the demonstrated truth; that
politics is a science, not a stratagem; and that the function of the
legislator is reduced, in the last analysis, to the methodical search
for truth.
Thus, in a given society, the authority of man over man is inversely
proportional to the stage of intellectual development which that
society has reached; and the probable duration of that authority can
be calculated from the more or less general desire for a true
government,--that is, for a scientific government. And just as the right
of force and the right of artifice retreat before the steady advance
of justice, and must finally be extinguished in equality, so the
sovereignty of the will yields to the sovereignty of the reason, and
must at last be lost in scientific socialism. Property and royalty
have been crumbling to pieces ever since the world began. As man seeks
justice in equality, so society seeks order in anarchy.
ANARCHY,--the absence of a master, of a sovereign, [30]--such is the
form of government to which we are every day approximating, and which
our accustomed habit of taking man for our rule, and his will for law,
leads us to regard as the height of disorder and the expression of
chaos. The story is told, that a citizen of Paris in the seventeenth
century having heard it said that in Venice there was no king, the
good man could not recover from his astonishment, and nearly died from
laughter at the mere mention of so ridiculous a thing. So strong is our
prejudice. As long as we live, we want a chief or chiefs; and at this
very moment I hold in my hand a brochure, whose author--a zealous
communist--dreams, like a second Marat, of the dictatorship. The most
advanced among us are those who wish the greatest possible number of
sovereigns,--their most ardent wish is for the royalty of the National
Guard. Soon, undoubtedly, some one, jealous of the citizen militia, will
say, "Everybody is king. " But, when he has spoken, I will say, in my
turn, "Nobody is king; we are, whether we will or no, associated. "
Every question of domestic politics must be decided by departmental
statistics; every question of foreign politics is an affair of
international statistics. The science of government rightly belongs
to one of the sections of the Academy of Sciences, whose permanent
secretary is necessarily prime minister; and, since every citizen may
address a memoir to the Academy, every citizen is a legislator. But, as
the opinion of no one is of any value until its truth has been proven,
no one can substitute his will for reason,--nobody is king.
All questions of legislation and politics are matters of science, not of
opinion. The legislative power belongs only to the reason, methodically
recognized and demonstrated. To attribute to any power whatever the
right of veto or of sanction, is the last degree of tyranny. Justice
and legality are two things as independent of our approval as is
mathematical truth. To compel, they need only to be known; to be known,
they need only to be considered and studied. What, then, is the nation,
if it is not the sovereign,--if it is not the source of the legislative
power?
The nation is the guardian of the law--the nation is the EXECUTIVE
POWER. Every citizen may assert: "This is true; that is just;" but his
opinion controls no one but himself. That the truth which he proclaims
may become a law, it must be recognized. Now, what is it to recognize a
law? It is to verify a mathematical or a metaphysical calculation; it is
to repeat an experiment, to observe a phenomenon, to establish a fact.
Only the nation has the right to say, "Be it known and decreed. "
I confess that this is an overturning of received ideas, and that I seem
to be attempting to revolutionize our political system; but I beg the
reader to consider that, having begun with a paradox, I must, if I
reason correctly, meet with paradoxes at every step, and must end with
paradoxes. For the rest, I do not see how the liberty of citizens would
be endangered by entrusting to their hands, instead of the pen of
the legislator, the sword of the law. The executive power, belonging
properly to the will, cannot be confided to too many proxies. That is
the true sovereignty of the nation. [31]
The proprietor, the robber, the hero, the sovereign--for all these
titles are synonymous--imposes his will as law, and suffers neither
contradiction nor control; that is, he pretends to be the legislative
and the executive power at once. Accordingly, the substitution of the
scientific and true law for the royal will is accomplished only by a
terrible struggle; and this constant substitution is, after property,
the most potent element in history, the most prolific source of
political disturbances. Examples are too numerous and too striking to
require enumeration.
Now, property necessarily engenders despotism,--the government of
caprice, the reign of libidinous pleasure. That is so clearly the
essence of property that, to be convinced of it, one need but remember
what it is, and observe what happens around him. Property is the right
to USE and ABUSE. If, then, government is economy,--if its object
is production and consumption, and the distribution of labor and
products,--how is government possible while property exists? And
if goods are property, why should not the proprietors be kings, and
despotic kings--kings in proportion to their _facultes bonitaires_? And
if each proprietor is sovereign lord within the sphere of his property,
absolute king throughout his own domain, how could a government of
proprietors be any thing but chaos and confusion?
% 3. --Determination of the third form of Society. Conclusion.
Then, no government, no public economy, no administration, is possible,
which is based upon property.
Communism seeks EQUALITY and LAW. Property, born of the sovereignty of
the reason, and the sense of personal merit, wishes above all things
INDEPENDENCE and PROPORTIONALITY.
But communism, mistaking uniformity for law, and levelism for
equality, becomes tyrannical and unjust. Property, by its despotism and
encroachments, soon proves itself oppressive and anti-social.
The objects of communism and property are good--their results are bad.
And why? Because both are exclusive, and each disregards two elements
of society. Communism rejects independence and proportionality; property
does not satisfy equality and law.
Now, if we imagine a society based upon these four
principles,--equality, law, independence, and proportionality,--we
find:--
1. That EQUALITY, consisting only in EQUALITY OF CONDITIONS, that is, OF
MEANS, and not in EQUALITY OF COMFORT,--which it is the business of the
laborers to achieve for themselves, when provided with equal means,--in
no way violates justice and equite.
2. That LAW, resulting from the knowledge of facts, and consequently
based upon necessity itself, never clashes with independence.
3. That individual INDEPENDENCE, or the autonomy of the private reason,
originating in the difference in talents and capacities, can exist
without danger within the limits of the law.
4. That PROPORTIONALITY, being admitted only in the sphere of
intelligence and sentiment, and not as regards material objects, may be
observed without violating justice or social equality.
This third form of society, the synthesis of communism and property, we
will call LIBERTY. [32]
In determining the nature of liberty, we do not unite communism and
property indiscriminately; such a process would be absurd eclecticism.
We search by analysis for those elements in each which are true, and
in harmony with the laws of Nature and society, disregarding the rest
altogether; and the result gives us an adequate expression of the
natural form of human society,--in one word, liberty.
Liberty is equality, because liberty exists only in society; and in the
absence of equality there is no society.
Liberty is anarchy, because it does not admit the government of the
will, but only the authority of the law; that is, of necessity.
Liberty is infinite variety, because it respects all wills within the
limits of the law.
Liberty is proportionality, because it allows the utmost latitude to the
ambition for merit, and the emulation of glory.
We can now say, in the words of M. Cousin: "Our principle is true; it is
good, it is social; let us not fear to push it to its ultimate. "
Man's social nature becoming JUSTICE through reflection, EQUITE through
the classification of capacities, and having LIBERTY for its formula,
is the true basis of morality,--the principle and regulator of all our
actions. This is the universal motor, which philosophy is searching for,
which religion strengthens, which egotism supplants, and whose place
pure reason never can fill. DUTY and RIGHT are born of NEED, which, when
considered in connection with others, is a RIGHT, and when considered in
connection with ourselves, a DUTY.
We need to eat and sleep. It is our right to procure those things which
are necessary to rest and nourishment. It is our duty to use them when
Nature requires it.
We need to labor in order to live. To do so is both our right and our
duty.
We need to love our wives and children. It is our duty to protect and
support them. It is our right to be loved in preference to all others.
Conjugal fidelity is justice. Adultery is high treason against society.
We need to exchange our products for other products. It is our right
that this exchange should be one of equivalents; and since we consume
before we produce, it would be our duty, if we could control the matter,
to see to it that our last product shall follow our last consumption.
Suicide is fraudulent bankruptcy.
We need to live our lives according to the dictates of our reason.
It
is our right to maintain our freedom. It is our duty to respect that of
others.
We need to be appreciated by our fellows. It is our duty to deserve
their praise. It is our right to be judged by our works.
Liberty is not opposed to the rights of succession and bequest. It
contents itself with preventing violations of equality. "Choose," it
tells us, "between two legacies, but do not take them both. " All our
legislation concerning transmissions, entailments, adoptions, and, if I
may venture to use such a word, COADJUTORERIES, requires remodelling.
Liberty favors emulation, instead of destroying it. In social equality,
emulation consists in accomplishing under like conditions; it is its own
reward. No one suffers by the victory.
Liberty applauds self-sacrifice, and honors it with its votes, but it
can dispense with it. Justice alone suffices to maintain the social
equilibrium. Self-sacrifice is an act of supererogation. Happy, however,
the man who can say, "I sacrifice myself. " [33]
Liberty is essentially an organizing force. To insure equality between
men and peace among nations, agriculture and industry, and the centres
of education, business, and storage, must be distributed according to
the climate and the geographical position of the country, the nature of
the products, the character and natural talents of the inhabitants, &c. ,
in proportions so just, so wise, so harmonious, that in no place shall
there ever be either an excess or a lack of population, consumption, and
products. There commences the science of public and private right,
the true political economy. It is for the writers on jurisprudence,
henceforth unembarrassed by the false principle of property, to describe
the new laws, and bring peace upon earth. Knowledge and genius they do
not lack; the foundation is now laid for them. [34]
I have accomplished my task; property is conquered, never again to
arise. Wherever this work is read and discussed, there will be deposited
the germ of death to property; there, sooner or later, privilege and
servitude will disappear, and the despotism of will will give place to
the reign of reason. What sophisms, indeed, what prejudices
(however obstinate) can stand before the simplicity of the following
propositions:--
I. Individual POSSESSION [35] is the condition of social life; five
thousand years of property demonstrate it. PROPERTY is the suicide of
society. Possession is a right; property is against right. Suppress
property while maintaining possession, and, by this simple modification
of the principle, you will revolutionize law, government, economy, and
institutions; you will drive evil from the face of the earth.
II. All having an equal right of occupancy, possession varies with the
number of possessors; property cannot establish itself.
III. The effect of labor being the same for all, property is lost in the
common prosperity.
IV. All human labor being the result of collective force, all property
becomes, in consequence, collective and unitary. To speak more exactly,
labor destroys property.
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.
not be blamed, because the priests, as stupid as the legists, have been
unable either to expound or to understand it. The ignorance of councils
and popes upon all questions of morality is equal to that of the
market-place and the money-changers; and it is this utter ignorance
of right, justice, and society, which is killing the Church, and
discrediting its teachings for ever. The infidelity of the Roman church
and other Christian churches is flagrant; all have disregarded the
precept of Jesus; all have erred in moral and doctrinal points; all
are guilty of teaching false and absurd dogmas, which lead straight to
wickedness and murder. Let it ask pardon of God and men,--this church
which called itself infallible, and which has grown so corrupt in
morals; let its reformed sisters humble themselves,. . . and the people,
undeceived, but still religious and merciful, will begin to think. [29]
One of the main causes of Ireland's poverty to-day is the immense
revenues of the English clergy. So heretics and orthodox--Protestants
and Papists--cannot reproach each other. All have strayed from the path
of justice; all have disobeyed the eighth commandment of the Decalogue:
"Thou shalt not steal. "
The development of right has followed the same order, in its various
expressions, that property has in its forms. Every where we see justice
driving robbery before it and confining it within narrower and narrower
limits. Hitherto the victories of justice over injustice, and of
equality over inequality, have been won by instinct and the simple force
of things; but the final triumph of our social nature will be due to
our reason, or else we shall fall back into feudal chaos. Either this
glorious height is reserved for our intelligence, or this miserable
depth for our baseness.
The second effect of property is despotism. Now, since despotism
is inseparably connected with the idea of legitimate authority, in
explaining the natural causes of the first, the principle of the second
will appear.
What is to be the form of government in the future? hear some of my
younger readers reply: "Why, how can you ask such a question?
"You are a republican. " "A republican! Yes; but that word specifies
nothing. _Res publica;_ that is, the public thing. Now, whoever
is interested in public affairs--no matter under what form
of government--may call himself a republican. Even kings are
republicans. "--
"Well! you are a democrat? "--"No. "--"What! you would have a
monarchy. "--"No. "--"A constitutionalist? "--"God forbid! "--"You are then
an aristocrat? "--"Not at all. "--"You want a mixed government? "--"Still
less. "--"What are you, then? "--"I am an anarchist. "
"Oh! I understand you; you speak satirically. This is a hit at the
government. "--"By no means. I have just given you my serious and
well-considered profession of faith. Although a firm friend of order, I
am (in the full force of the term) an anarchist. Listen to me. "
In all species of sociable animals, "the weakness of the young is the
principle of their obedience to the old," who are strong; and from habit,
which is a kind of conscience with them, the power remains with the
oldest, although he finally becomes the weakest.
Whenever the society is under the control of a chief, this chief is
almost always the oldest of the troop. I say almost always, because
the established order may be disturbed by violent outbreaks. Then the
authority passes to another; and, having been re-established by force,
it is again maintained by habit. Wild horses go in herds: they have a
chief who marches at their head, whom they confidently follow, and who
gives the signal for flight or battle.
"The sheep which we have raised follows us, but it follows in company
with the flock in the midst of which it was born. It regards man AS THE
CHIEF OF ITS FLOCK. . . . Man is regarded by domestic animals as a member
of their society. All that he has to do is to get himself accepted by
them as an associate: he soon becomes their chief, in consequence of his
superior intelligence. He does not, then, change the NATURAL CONDITION
of these animals, as Buffon has said. On the contrary, he uses this
natural condition to his own advantage; in other words, he finds
SOCIABLE animals, and renders them DOMESTIC by becoming their associate
and chief. Thus, the DOMESTICITY of animals is only a special condition,
a simple modification, a definitive consequence of their SOCIABILITY.
All domestic animals are by nature sociable animals. ". . . --Flourens:
Summary of the Observations of F. Cuvier.
Sociable animals follow their chief by INSTINCT; but take notice of the
fact (which F. Cuvier omitted to state), that the function of the chief
is altogether one of INTELLIGENCE. The chief does not teach the others
to associate, to unite under his lead, to reproduce their kind, to
take to flight, or to defend themselves. Concerning each of these
particulars, his subordinates are as well informed as he. But it is the
chief who, by his accumulated experience, provides against accidents; he
it is whose private intelligence supplements, in difficult situations,
the general instinct; he it is who deliberates, decides, and leads; he
it is, in short, whose enlightened prudence regulates the public routine
for the greatest good of all.
Man (naturally a sociable being) naturally follows a chief. Originally,
the chief is the father, the patriarch, the elder; in other words, the
good and wise man, whose functions, consequently, are exclusively of a
reflective and intellectual nature. The human race--like all other
races of sociable animals--has its instincts, its innate faculties, its
general ideas, and its categories of sentiment and reason. Its chiefs,
legislators, or kings have devised nothing, supposed nothing, imagined
nothing. They have only guided society by their accumulated experience,
always however in conformity with opinions and beliefs.
Those philosophers who (carrying into morals and into history their
gloomy and factious whims) affirm that the human race had originally
neither chiefs nor kings, know nothing of the nature of man. Royalty,
and absolute royalty, is--as truly and more truly than democracy--a
primitive form of government. Perceiving that, in the remotest ages,
crowns and kingships were worn by heroes, brigands, and knight-errants,
they confound the two things,--royalty and despotism. But royalty dates
from the creation of man; it existed in the age of negative communism.
Ancient heroism (and the despotism which it engendered) commenced only
with the first manifestation of the idea of justice; that is, with the
reign of force. As soon as the strongest, in the comparison of merits,
was decided to be the best, the oldest had to abandon his position, and
royalty became despotic.
The spontaneous, instinctive, and--so to speak--physiological origin of
royalty gives it, in the beginning, a superhuman character. The
nations connected it with the gods, from whom they said the first kings
descended. This notion was the origin of the divine genealogies of royal
families, the incarnations of gods, and the messianic fables. From it
sprang the doctrine of divine right, which is still championed by a few
singular characters.
Royalty was at first elective, because--at a time when man produced but
little and possessed nothing--property was too weak to establish the
principle of heredity, and secure to the son the throne of his father;
but as soon as fields were cleared, and cities built, each function
was, like every thing else, appropriated, and hereditary kingships and
priesthoods were the result. The principle of heredity was carried into
even the most ordinary professions,--a circumstance which led to class
distinctions, pride of station, and abjection of the common people, and
which confirms my assertion, concerning the principle of patrimonial
succession, that it is a method suggested by Nature of filling vacancies
in business, and completing unfinished tasks.
From time to time, ambition caused usurpers, or SUPPLANTERS of kings,
to start up; and, in consequence, some were called kings by right, or
legitimate kings, and others TYRANTS. But we must not let these names
deceive us. There have been execrable kings, and very tolerable tyrants.
Royalty may always be good, when it is the only possible form of
government; legitimate it is never. Neither heredity, nor election,
nor universal suffrage, nor the excellence of the sovereign, nor the
consecration of religion and of time, can make royalty legitimate.
Whatever form it takes,--monarchic, oligarchic, or democratic,--royalty,
or the government of man by man, is illegitimate and absurd.
Man, in order to procure as speedily as possible the most thorough
satisfaction of his wants, seeks RULE. In the beginning, this rule is
to him living, visible, and tangible. It is his father, his master, his
king. The more ignorant man is, the more obedient he is, and the more
absolute is his confidence in his guide. But, it being a law of man's
nature to conform to rule,--that is, to discover it by his powers of
reflection and reason,--man reasons upon the commands of his chiefs.
Now, such reasoning as that is a protest against authority,--a beginning
of disobedience. At the moment that man inquires into the motives which
govern the will of his sovereign,--at that moment man revolts. If
he obeys no longer because the king commands, but because the king
demonstrates the wisdom of his commands, it may be said that henceforth
he will recognize no authority, and that he has become his own king.
Unhappy he who shall dare to command him, and shall offer, as his
authority, only the vote of the majority; for, sooner or later, the
minority will become the majority, and this imprudent despot will be
overthrown, and all his laws annihilated.
In proportion as society becomes enlightened, royal authority
diminishes. That is a fact to which all history bears witness. At the
birth of nations, men reflect and reason in vain. Without methods,
without principles, not knowing how to use their reason, they cannot
judge of the justice of their conclusions. Then the authority of kings
is immense, no knowledge having been acquired with which to contradict
it. But, little by little, experience produces habits, which develop
into customs; then the customs are formulated in maxims, laid down as
principles,--in short, transformed into laws, to which the king, the
living law, has to bow. There comes a time when customs and laws are so
numerous that the will of the prince is, so to speak, entwined by the
public will; and that, on taking the crown, he is obliged to swear that
he will govern in conformity with established customs and usages; and
that he is but the executive power of a society whose laws are made
independently of him.
Up to this point, all is done instinctively, and, as it were,
unconsciously; but see where this movement must end.
By means of self-instruction and the acquisition of ideas, man finally
acquires the idea of SCIENCE,--that is, of a system of knowledge in
harmony with the reality of things, and inferred from observation.
He searches for the science, or the system, of inanimate bodies,--the
system of organic bodies, the system of the human mind, and the system
of the universe: why should he not also search for the system of
society? But, having reached this height, he comprehends that political
truth, or the science of politics, exists quite independently of
the will of sovereigns, the opinion of majorities, and popular
beliefs,--that kings, ministers, magistrates, and nations, as wills,
have no connection with the science, and are worthy of no consideration.
He comprehends, at the same time, that, if man is born a sociable being,
the authority of his father over him ceases on the day when, his mind
being formed and his education finished, he becomes the associate of his
father; that his true chief and his king is the demonstrated truth; that
politics is a science, not a stratagem; and that the function of the
legislator is reduced, in the last analysis, to the methodical search
for truth.
Thus, in a given society, the authority of man over man is inversely
proportional to the stage of intellectual development which that
society has reached; and the probable duration of that authority can
be calculated from the more or less general desire for a true
government,--that is, for a scientific government. And just as the right
of force and the right of artifice retreat before the steady advance
of justice, and must finally be extinguished in equality, so the
sovereignty of the will yields to the sovereignty of the reason, and
must at last be lost in scientific socialism. Property and royalty
have been crumbling to pieces ever since the world began. As man seeks
justice in equality, so society seeks order in anarchy.
ANARCHY,--the absence of a master, of a sovereign, [30]--such is the
form of government to which we are every day approximating, and which
our accustomed habit of taking man for our rule, and his will for law,
leads us to regard as the height of disorder and the expression of
chaos. The story is told, that a citizen of Paris in the seventeenth
century having heard it said that in Venice there was no king, the
good man could not recover from his astonishment, and nearly died from
laughter at the mere mention of so ridiculous a thing. So strong is our
prejudice. As long as we live, we want a chief or chiefs; and at this
very moment I hold in my hand a brochure, whose author--a zealous
communist--dreams, like a second Marat, of the dictatorship. The most
advanced among us are those who wish the greatest possible number of
sovereigns,--their most ardent wish is for the royalty of the National
Guard. Soon, undoubtedly, some one, jealous of the citizen militia, will
say, "Everybody is king. " But, when he has spoken, I will say, in my
turn, "Nobody is king; we are, whether we will or no, associated. "
Every question of domestic politics must be decided by departmental
statistics; every question of foreign politics is an affair of
international statistics. The science of government rightly belongs
to one of the sections of the Academy of Sciences, whose permanent
secretary is necessarily prime minister; and, since every citizen may
address a memoir to the Academy, every citizen is a legislator. But, as
the opinion of no one is of any value until its truth has been proven,
no one can substitute his will for reason,--nobody is king.
All questions of legislation and politics are matters of science, not of
opinion. The legislative power belongs only to the reason, methodically
recognized and demonstrated. To attribute to any power whatever the
right of veto or of sanction, is the last degree of tyranny. Justice
and legality are two things as independent of our approval as is
mathematical truth. To compel, they need only to be known; to be known,
they need only to be considered and studied. What, then, is the nation,
if it is not the sovereign,--if it is not the source of the legislative
power?
The nation is the guardian of the law--the nation is the EXECUTIVE
POWER. Every citizen may assert: "This is true; that is just;" but his
opinion controls no one but himself. That the truth which he proclaims
may become a law, it must be recognized. Now, what is it to recognize a
law? It is to verify a mathematical or a metaphysical calculation; it is
to repeat an experiment, to observe a phenomenon, to establish a fact.
Only the nation has the right to say, "Be it known and decreed. "
I confess that this is an overturning of received ideas, and that I seem
to be attempting to revolutionize our political system; but I beg the
reader to consider that, having begun with a paradox, I must, if I
reason correctly, meet with paradoxes at every step, and must end with
paradoxes. For the rest, I do not see how the liberty of citizens would
be endangered by entrusting to their hands, instead of the pen of
the legislator, the sword of the law. The executive power, belonging
properly to the will, cannot be confided to too many proxies. That is
the true sovereignty of the nation. [31]
The proprietor, the robber, the hero, the sovereign--for all these
titles are synonymous--imposes his will as law, and suffers neither
contradiction nor control; that is, he pretends to be the legislative
and the executive power at once. Accordingly, the substitution of the
scientific and true law for the royal will is accomplished only by a
terrible struggle; and this constant substitution is, after property,
the most potent element in history, the most prolific source of
political disturbances. Examples are too numerous and too striking to
require enumeration.
Now, property necessarily engenders despotism,--the government of
caprice, the reign of libidinous pleasure. That is so clearly the
essence of property that, to be convinced of it, one need but remember
what it is, and observe what happens around him. Property is the right
to USE and ABUSE. If, then, government is economy,--if its object
is production and consumption, and the distribution of labor and
products,--how is government possible while property exists? And
if goods are property, why should not the proprietors be kings, and
despotic kings--kings in proportion to their _facultes bonitaires_? And
if each proprietor is sovereign lord within the sphere of his property,
absolute king throughout his own domain, how could a government of
proprietors be any thing but chaos and confusion?
% 3. --Determination of the third form of Society. Conclusion.
Then, no government, no public economy, no administration, is possible,
which is based upon property.
Communism seeks EQUALITY and LAW. Property, born of the sovereignty of
the reason, and the sense of personal merit, wishes above all things
INDEPENDENCE and PROPORTIONALITY.
But communism, mistaking uniformity for law, and levelism for
equality, becomes tyrannical and unjust. Property, by its despotism and
encroachments, soon proves itself oppressive and anti-social.
The objects of communism and property are good--their results are bad.
And why? Because both are exclusive, and each disregards two elements
of society. Communism rejects independence and proportionality; property
does not satisfy equality and law.
Now, if we imagine a society based upon these four
principles,--equality, law, independence, and proportionality,--we
find:--
1. That EQUALITY, consisting only in EQUALITY OF CONDITIONS, that is, OF
MEANS, and not in EQUALITY OF COMFORT,--which it is the business of the
laborers to achieve for themselves, when provided with equal means,--in
no way violates justice and equite.
2. That LAW, resulting from the knowledge of facts, and consequently
based upon necessity itself, never clashes with independence.
3. That individual INDEPENDENCE, or the autonomy of the private reason,
originating in the difference in talents and capacities, can exist
without danger within the limits of the law.
4. That PROPORTIONALITY, being admitted only in the sphere of
intelligence and sentiment, and not as regards material objects, may be
observed without violating justice or social equality.
This third form of society, the synthesis of communism and property, we
will call LIBERTY. [32]
In determining the nature of liberty, we do not unite communism and
property indiscriminately; such a process would be absurd eclecticism.
We search by analysis for those elements in each which are true, and
in harmony with the laws of Nature and society, disregarding the rest
altogether; and the result gives us an adequate expression of the
natural form of human society,--in one word, liberty.
Liberty is equality, because liberty exists only in society; and in the
absence of equality there is no society.
Liberty is anarchy, because it does not admit the government of the
will, but only the authority of the law; that is, of necessity.
Liberty is infinite variety, because it respects all wills within the
limits of the law.
Liberty is proportionality, because it allows the utmost latitude to the
ambition for merit, and the emulation of glory.
We can now say, in the words of M. Cousin: "Our principle is true; it is
good, it is social; let us not fear to push it to its ultimate. "
Man's social nature becoming JUSTICE through reflection, EQUITE through
the classification of capacities, and having LIBERTY for its formula,
is the true basis of morality,--the principle and regulator of all our
actions. This is the universal motor, which philosophy is searching for,
which religion strengthens, which egotism supplants, and whose place
pure reason never can fill. DUTY and RIGHT are born of NEED, which, when
considered in connection with others, is a RIGHT, and when considered in
connection with ourselves, a DUTY.
We need to eat and sleep. It is our right to procure those things which
are necessary to rest and nourishment. It is our duty to use them when
Nature requires it.
We need to labor in order to live. To do so is both our right and our
duty.
We need to love our wives and children. It is our duty to protect and
support them. It is our right to be loved in preference to all others.
Conjugal fidelity is justice. Adultery is high treason against society.
We need to exchange our products for other products. It is our right
that this exchange should be one of equivalents; and since we consume
before we produce, it would be our duty, if we could control the matter,
to see to it that our last product shall follow our last consumption.
Suicide is fraudulent bankruptcy.
We need to live our lives according to the dictates of our reason.
It
is our right to maintain our freedom. It is our duty to respect that of
others.
We need to be appreciated by our fellows. It is our duty to deserve
their praise. It is our right to be judged by our works.
Liberty is not opposed to the rights of succession and bequest. It
contents itself with preventing violations of equality. "Choose," it
tells us, "between two legacies, but do not take them both. " All our
legislation concerning transmissions, entailments, adoptions, and, if I
may venture to use such a word, COADJUTORERIES, requires remodelling.
Liberty favors emulation, instead of destroying it. In social equality,
emulation consists in accomplishing under like conditions; it is its own
reward. No one suffers by the victory.
Liberty applauds self-sacrifice, and honors it with its votes, but it
can dispense with it. Justice alone suffices to maintain the social
equilibrium. Self-sacrifice is an act of supererogation. Happy, however,
the man who can say, "I sacrifice myself. " [33]
Liberty is essentially an organizing force. To insure equality between
men and peace among nations, agriculture and industry, and the centres
of education, business, and storage, must be distributed according to
the climate and the geographical position of the country, the nature of
the products, the character and natural talents of the inhabitants, &c. ,
in proportions so just, so wise, so harmonious, that in no place shall
there ever be either an excess or a lack of population, consumption, and
products. There commences the science of public and private right,
the true political economy. It is for the writers on jurisprudence,
henceforth unembarrassed by the false principle of property, to describe
the new laws, and bring peace upon earth. Knowledge and genius they do
not lack; the foundation is now laid for them. [34]
I have accomplished my task; property is conquered, never again to
arise. Wherever this work is read and discussed, there will be deposited
the germ of death to property; there, sooner or later, privilege and
servitude will disappear, and the despotism of will will give place to
the reign of reason. What sophisms, indeed, what prejudices
(however obstinate) can stand before the simplicity of the following
propositions:--
I. Individual POSSESSION [35] is the condition of social life; five
thousand years of property demonstrate it. PROPERTY is the suicide of
society. Possession is a right; property is against right. Suppress
property while maintaining possession, and, by this simple modification
of the principle, you will revolutionize law, government, economy, and
institutions; you will drive evil from the face of the earth.
II. All having an equal right of occupancy, possession varies with the
number of possessors; property cannot establish itself.
III. The effect of labor being the same for all, property is lost in the
common prosperity.
IV. All human labor being the result of collective force, all property
becomes, in consequence, collective and unitary. To speak more exactly,
labor destroys property.
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.
