way whatever. Not being a proprietor, how
can it transmit property?

"Suppose some industrious man buys a portion, a large swamp for example.
This would be no usurpation, since the public would receive the exact
value through the hands of the government, and would be as rich after
the sale as before."

How ridiculous! What! because a prodigal, imprudent, incompetent
official sells the State's possessions, while I, a ward of the State,--I
who have neither an advisory nor a deliberative voice in the State
councils,--while I am allowed to make no opposition to the sale,
this sale is right and legal! The guardians of the nation waste its
substance, and it has no redress! I have received, you tell me, through
the hands of the government my share of the proceeds of the sale: but,
in the first place, I did not wish to sell; and, had I wished to, I
could not have sold. I had not the right. And then I do not see that I
am benefited by the sale. My guardians have dressed up some soldiers,
repaired an old fortress, erected in their pride some costly but
worthless monument,--then they have exploded some fireworks and set up a
greased pole! What does all that amount to in comparison with my loss?

The purchaser draws boundaries, fences himself in, and says, "This is
mine; each one by himself, each one for himself." Here, then, is a piece
of land upon which, henceforth, no one has a right to step, save
the proprietor and his friends; which can benefit nobody, save the
proprietor and his servants. Let these sales multiply, and soon the
people--who have been neither able nor willing to sell, and who have
received none of the proceeds of the sale--will have nowhere to rest,
no place of shelter, no ground to till. They will die of hunger at
the proprietor's door, on the edge of that property which was their
birthright; and the proprietor, watching them die, will exclaim, "So
perish idlers and vagrants!"

To reconcile us to the proprietor's usurpation, M. Ch. Comte assumes the
lands to be of little value at the time of sale.

"The importance of these usurpations should not be exaggerated: they
should be measured by the number of men which the occupied land would
support, and by the means which it would furnish them.

"It is evident, for instance, that if a piece of land which is worth
to-day one thousand francs was worth only five centimes when it was
usurped, we really lose only the value of five centimes. A square league
of