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.Ihave 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 THELAW, 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.
