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?
"What is Property?" Chap.IV., Ninth Proposition.
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 PLACEOF HIS ACTIVITY AND HIS REST.
_Tu cognovisti sessionem meam et resurrectionem meam_.
Psalm 139.
Let us examine more closely still the inevitable and approaching result of the last law concerning judicial sales and mortgages.
