hus: "A lease
is a contract by which real estate is bought, at a high price and on
credit, to be again sold, at the expiration of a certain time, to the
same person, at a lower price; only, to simplify the transaction, the
buyer is content to pay the difference between the first sale and the
second. Either deny the identity of the lease and the contract Mohatra,
and then I will annihilate you in a moment; or, if you admit the
similarity, admit also the soundness of my doctrine: otherwise you
proscribe both interest and rent at one blow"?

In reply to this overwhelming argument of the Jesuit, the sire of
Montalte would have sounded the tocsin, and would have shouted
that society was in peril,--that the Jesuits were sapping its very
foundations.

We rob,--14. By commerce, when the profit of the merchant exceeds his
legitimate salary.

Everybody knows the definition of commerce--THE ART OF BUYING FOR THREE
FRANCS THAT WHICH IS WORTH SIX, AND OF SELLING FOR SIX THAT WHICH IS
WORTH THREE. Between commerce thus defined and _vol a l'americaine_,
the only difference is in the relative proportion of the values
exchanged,--in short, in the amount of the profit.

We rob,--15. By making profit on our product, by accepting sinecures,
and by exacting exorbitant wages.

The farmer, who sells a certain amount of corn to the consumer, and who
during the measurement thrusts his hand into the bushel and takes out a
handful of grains, robs; the professor, whose lectures are paid for by
the State, and who through the intervention of a bookseller sells them
to the public a second time, robs; the sinecurist, who receives an
enormous product in exchange for his vanity, robs; the functionary, the
laborer, whatever he may be, who produces only one and gets paid four,
one hundred, or one thousand, robs; the publisher of this book, and I,
its author,--we rob, by charging for it twice as much as it is worth.

In recapitulation:--

Justice, after passing through the state of negative communism, called
by the ancient poets the AGE OF GOLD, commences as the right of the
strongest. In a society which is trying to organize itself, inequality
of faculties calls up the idea of merit; equite suggests the plan of
proportioning not only esteem, but also material comforts, to personal
merit; and since the highest and almost the only merit then recognized
is physical strength, the strongest, {GREEK ' eg }, and consequently
the best, {GREEK ' eg }, is