Humann, of Strasbourg, sent out of France, it is said, enormous quantities of sugar, for which he received the bounty on exportation promised by the State; then, smuggling this sugar back again, he exported it anew, receiving the bounty on exportation a second time, and so on.Notice, sir, that I do not state this as a fact; I give it only as it is told, not endorsing or even believing it.My sole design is to fix the idea in the mind by an example.If I believed that a minister had committed such a crime, that is, if I had personal and authentic knowledge that he had, I would denounce M.Humann, the minister of finances, to the Chamber of Deputies, and would loudly demand his expulsion from the ministry.
But that which is undoubtedly false of M.Humann is true of many others, as rich and no less honorable than he.Smuggling, organized on a large scale by the eaters of human flesh, is carried on to the profit of a few pashas at the risk and peril of their imprudent victims.The inactive proprietor offers his merchandise for sale; the actual smuggler risks his liberty, his honor, and his life.If success crowns the enterprise, the courageous servant gets paid for his journey; the profit goes to the coward.If fortune or treachery delivers the instrument of this execrable traffic into the hands of the custom-house officer, the master-smuggler suffers a loss which a more fortunate voyage will soon repair.The agent, pronounced a scoundrel, is thrown into prison in company with robbers; while his glorious patron, a juror, elector, deputy, or minister, makes laws concerning expropriation, monopoly, and custom-houses!
I promised, at the beginning of this letter, that no attack on property should escape my pen, my only object being to justify myself before the public by a general recrimination.But I could not refrain from branding so odious a mode of exploitation, and Itrust that this short digression will be pardoned.Property does not avenge, I hope, the injuries which smuggling suffers.
The conspiracy against property is general; it is flagrant; it takes possession of all minds, and inspires all our laws; it lies at the bottom of all theories.Here the proletaire pursues property in the street, there the legislator lays an interdict upon it; now, a professor of political economy or of industrial legislation, paid to defend it, undermines it with redoubled blows; at another--time, an academy calls it in question, or inquires as to the progress of its demolition.To-day there is not an idea, not an opinion, not a sect, which does not dream of muzzling property.None confess it, because none are yet conscious of it; there are too few minds capable of grasping spontaneously this ensemble of causes and effects, of principles and consequences, by which I try to demonstrate the approaching disappearance of property; on the other hand, the ideas that are generally formed of this right are too divergent and too loosely determined to allow an admission, so soon, of the contrary theory.Thus, in the middle and lower ranks of literature and philosophy, no less than among the common people, it is thought that, when property is abolished, no one will be able to enjoy the fruit of his labor; that no one will have any thing peculiar to himself, and that tyrannical communism will be established on the ruins of family and liberty!--chimeras, which are to support for a little while longer the cause of privilege.
MM.Blanqui and Wolowski.
Subject proposed by the Fourth Class of the Institute, the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences: "What would be the effect upon the working-class of the organization of labor, according to the modern ideas of association?" Subject proposed by the Academy of Besancon: "The economical and moral consequences in France, up to the present time, and those which seem likely to appear in future, of the law concerning the equal division of hereditary property between the children."But, before determining precisely the idea of property, before seeking amid the contradictions of systems for the common element which must form the basis of the new right, let us cast a rapid glance at the changes which, at the various periods of history, property has undergone.The political forms of nations are the expression of their beliefs.The mobility of these forms, their modification and their destruction, are solemn experiences which show us the value of ideas, and gradually eliminate from the infinite variety of customs the absolute, eternal, and immutable truth.Now, we shall see that every political institution tends, necessarily, and on pain of death, to equalize conditions; that every where and always equality of fortunes (like equality of rights) has been the social aim, whether the plebeian classes have endeavored to rise to political power by means of property, or whether--rulers already--they have used political power to overthrow property.We shall see, in short, by the progress of society, that the consummation of justice lies in the extinction of individual domain.
