tempter. They go to work;
the charm of society, emulation, joy, and mutual assistance double their
strength; the work can be seen to advance. Singing and laughing, they
subdue Nature. In a short time, the soil is thoroughly changed; the
mellowed earth waits only for the seed. That done, the proprietor pays
his laborers, who, on going away, return him their thanks, and grieve
that the happy days which they have spent with him are over.

Others follow this example, always with the same success. Then, these
installed, the rest disperse,--each one returns to his grubbing. But,
while grubbing, it is necessary to live. While they have been clearing
away for their neighbor, they have done no clearing for themselves. One
year's seed-time and harvest is already gone. They had calculated that
in lending their labor they could not but gain, since they would save
their own provisions; and, while living better, would get still more
money. False calculation! they have created for another the means
wherewith to produce, and have created nothing for themselves. The
difficulties of clearing remain the same; their clothing wears out,
their provisions give out; soon their purse becomes empty for the profit
of the individual for whom they have worked, and who alone can furnish
the provisions which they need, since he alone is in a position to
produce them. Then, when the poor grubber has exhausted his resources,
the man with the provisions (like the wolf in the fable, who scents his
victim from afar) again comes forward. One he offers to employ again by
the day; from another he offers to buy at a favorable price a piece of
his bad land, which is not, and never can be, of any use to him: that
is, he uses the labor of one man to cultivate the field of another
for his own benefit. So that at the end of twenty years, of thirty
individuals originally equal in point of wealth, five or six have
become proprietors of the whole district, while the rest have been
philanthropically dispossessed!

In this century of bourgeoisie morality, in which I have had the honor
to be born, the moral sense is so debased that I should not be at all
surprised if I were asked, by many a worthy proprietor, what I see
in this that is unjust and illegitimate? Debased creature! galvanized
corpse! how can I expect to convince you, if you cannot tell robbery
when I show it to you? A man, by soft and insinuating words, discovers
the secret of taxing others that he may es