ight to
instruments of labour, gratuity of credit, &c., &c. And it is all these
plans, taken as a whole, with what they have in common, legal, plunder,
which takes the name of socialism.

Now socialism, thus defined, and forming a doctrinal body, what other
war would you make against it than a war of doctrine? You find this
doctrine false, absurd, abominable. Refute it. This will be all the more
easy, the more false, the more absurd and the more abominable it is.
Above all, if you wish to be strong, begin by rooting out of your
legislation every particle of socialism which may have crept into
it,--and this will be no light work.

M. Montalembert has been reproached with wishing to turn brute force
against socialism. He ought to be exonerated from this reproach, for he
has plainly said:--"The war which we must make against socialism must be
one which is compatible with the law, honour, and justice."

But how is it that M. Montalembert does not see that he is placing
himself in a vicious circle? You would oppose law to socialism. But it
is the law which socialism invokes. It aspires to legal, not extra-legal
plunder. It is of the law itself, like monopolists of all kinds, that it
wants to make an instrument; and when once it has the law on its side,
how will you be able to turn the law against it? How will you place it
under the power of your tribunals, your gendarmes, and of your prisons?
What will you do then? You wish to prevent it from taking any part in
the making of laws. You would keep it outside the Legislative Palace. In
this you will not succeed, I venture to prophesy, so long as legal
plunder is the basis of the legislation within.

It is absolutely necessary that this question of legal plunder should be
determined, and there are only three solutions of it:--

1. When the few plunder the many.

2. When everybody plunders everybody else.

3. When nobody plunders anybody.

Partial plunder, universal plunder, absence of plunder, amongst these we
have to make our choice. The law can only produce one of these results.

_Partial_ plunder.--This is the system which prevailed so long as the
elective privilege was _partial_--a system which is resorted to to avoid
the invasion of socialism.

_Universal_ plunder.--We have been threatened by this system when the
elective privilege has become universal; the masses having conceived the
idea of making law, on the principle of legislators who had prec