etaires, and carry
dismay into the ranks of the last representatives of privilege!

The tendency of society in favor of compelling proprietors to support
national workshops and public manufactories is so strong that for
several years, under the name of ELECTORAL REFORM, it has been
exclusively the question of the day. What is, after all, this electoral
reform which the people grasp at, as if it were a bait, and which
so many ambitious persons either call for or denounce? It is the
acknowledgment of the right of the masses to a voice in the assessment
of taxes, and the making of the laws; which laws, aiming always at the
protection of material interests, affect, in a greater or less degree,
all questions of taxation or wages. Now the people, instructed long
since by their journals, their dramas, [41] and their songs, [42] know
to-day that taxation, to be equitably divided, must be graduated, and
must be borne mainly by the rich,--that it must be levied upon luxuries,
&c. And be sure that the people, once in the majority in the Chamber,
will not fail to apply these lessons. Already we have a minister
of public works. National workshops will follow; and soon, as
a consequence, the excess of the proprietor's revenue over the
workingman's wages will be swallowed up in the coffers of the laborers
of the State. Do you not see that in this way property is gradually
reduced, as nobility was formerly, to a nominal title, to a distinction
purely honorary in its nature?

Either the electoral reform will fail to accomplish that which is hoped
from it, and will disappoint its innumerable partisans, or else it will
inevitably result in a transformation of the absolute right under which
we live into a right of possession; that is, that while, at present,
property makes the elector, after this reform is accomplished, the
citizen, the producer will be the possessor. [43] Consequently, the
radicals are right in saying that the electoral reform is in their eyes
only a means; but, when they are silent as to the end, they show either
profound ignorance, or useless dissimulation. There should be no secrets
or reservations from peoples and powers. He disgraces himself and fails
in respect for his fellows, who, in publishing his opinions, employs
evasion and cunning. Before the people act, they need to know the whole
truth. Unhappy he who shall dare to trifle with them! For the people are
credulous, but they are strong. Let us tell them, the