he laborer's welfare may be equal to
his, but equality of conditions does not exist. But as soon as the
proprietor becomes a producer,--since he can exchange his special
product only with his tenant or his _commandite_,--sooner or later this
tenant, this _exploited_ man, if violence is not done him, will make
a profit out of the proprietor, and will oblige him to restore--in the
exchange of their respective products--the interest on his capital. So
that, balancing one injustice by another, the contracting parties will
be equal. Labor and exchange, when liberty prevails, lead, then, to
equality of fortunes; mutuality of services neutralizes privilege.
That is why despots in all ages and countries have assumed control
of commerce; they wished to prevent the labor of their subjects from
becoming an obstacle to the rapacity of tyrants.

Up to this point, all takes place in the natural order; there is no
premeditation, no artifice. The whole proceeding is governed by the laws
of necessity alone. Proprietors and laborers act only in obedience to
their wants. Thus, the exercise of the right of increase, the art
of robbing the producer, depends--during this first period of
civilization--upon physical violence, murder, and war.

But at this point a gigantic and complicated conspiracy is hatched
against the capitalists. The weapon of the EXPLOITERS is met by the
EXPLOITED with the instrument of commerce,--a marvellous invention,
denounced at its origin by the moralists who favored property, but
inspired without doubt by the genius of labor, by the Minerva of the
proletaires.

The principal cause of the evil lay in the accumulation and immobility
of capital of all sorts,--an immobility which prevented labor, enslaved
and subalternized by haughty idleness, from ever acquiring it. The
necessity was felt of dividing and mobilizing wealth, of rendering it
portable, of making it pass from the hands of the possessor into those
of the worker. Labor invented MONEY. Afterwards, this invention was
revived and developed by the BILL OF EXCHANGE and the BANK. For all
these things are substantially the same, and proceed from the same mind.
The first man who conceived the idea of representing a value by a shell,
a precious stone, or a certain weight of metal, was the real inventor
of the Bank. What is a piece of money, in fact? It is a bill of exchange
written upon solid and durable material, and carrying with it its own
redemption. By this m