ere arms are the test of right.

"Who is the liar,--the accused or the accuser?" said our barbarous
ancestors. "Let them fight it out," replied the still more barbarous
judge; "the stronger is right."

Which of us two shall sell spices to our neighbor? "Let each offer them
for sale," cries the economist; "the sharper, or the more cunning, is
the more honest man, and the better merchant."

Such is the exact spirit of the Code Napoleon.

TENTH PROPOSITION.

Property is impossible, because it is the Negation of equality.

The development of this proposition will be the resume of the preceding
ones.

1. It is a principle of economical justice, that PRODUCTS ARE BOUGHT
ONLY BY PRODUCTS. Property, being capable of defence only on the ground
that it produces utility, is, since it produces nothing, for ever
condemned.

2. It is an economical law, that LABOR MUST BE BALANCED BY PRODUCT. It
is a fact that, with property, production costs more than it is worth.

3. Another economical law: THE CAPITAL BEING GIVEN, PRODUCTION IS
MEASURED, NOT BY THE AMOUNT OF CAPITAL, BUT BY PRODUCTIVE CAPACITY.
Property, requiring income to be always proportional to capital without
regard to labor, does not recognize this relation of equality between
effect and cause.

4 and 5. Like the insect which spins its silk, the laborer never
produces for himself alone. Property, demanding a double product and
unable to obtain it, robs the laborer, and kills him.

6. Nature has given to every man but one mind, one heart, one will.
Property, granting to one individual a plurality of votes, supposes him
to have a plurality of minds.

7. All consumption which is not reproductive of utility is destruction.
Property, whether it consumes or hoards or capitalizes, is productive of
INUTILITY,--the cause of sterility and death.

8. The satisfaction of a natural right always gives rise to an equation;
in other words, the right to a thing is necessarily balanced by the
possession of the thing. Thus, between the right to liberty and the
condition of a free man there is a balance, an equation; between the
right to be a father and paternity, an equation; between the right to
security and the social guarantee, an equation. But between the right
of increase and the receipt of this increase there is never an equation;
for every new increase carries with it the right to another, the latter
to a third, and so on for ever. Property, never being able to acc