of custom-houses. Is it,
then, so difficult for public opinion to generalize this idea, and to
comprehend, finally, that if the suppression of custom-houses involves
the abolition of national property, it involves also, as a consequence,
the abolition of individual property?

In fact, if we suppress the custom-houses, the alliance of the nations
is declared by that very act; their solidarity is recognized, and their
equality proclaimed. If we suppress the custom-houses, the principle of
association will not be slow in reaching from the State to the province,
from the province to the city, and from the city to the workshop. But,
then, what becomes of the privileges of authors and artists? Of what
use are the patents for invention, imagination, amelioration, and
improvement? When our deputies write a law of literary property by
the side of a law which opens a large breach in the custom-house they
contradict themselves, indeed, and pull down with one hand what they
build up with the other. Without the custom-house, literary property
does not exist, and the hopes of our starving authors are frustrated.
For, certainly you do not expect, with the good man Fourier, that
literary property will exercise itself in China to the profit of a
French writer; and that an ode of Lamartine, sold by privilege all over
the world, will bring in millions to its author! The poet's work
is peculiar to the climate in which he lives; every where else the
reproduction of his works, having no market value, should be frank and
free. But what! will it be necessary for nations to put themselves under
mutual surveillance for the sake of verses, statues, and elixirs? We
shall always have, then, an excise, a city-toll, rights of entrance
and transit, custom-houses finally; and then, as a reaction against
privilege, smuggling.

Smuggling! That word reminds me of one of the most horrible forms
of property. "Smuggling," you have said, sir, [46] "is an offence of
political creation; it is the exercise of natural liberty, defined as a
crime in certain cases by the will of the sovereign. The smuggler is a
gallant man,--a man of spirit, who gaily busies himself in procuring for
his neighbor, at a very low price, a jewel, a shawl, or any other object
of necessity or luxury, which domestic monopoly renders excessively
dear." Then, to a very poetical monograph of the smuggler, you add this
dismal conclusion,--that the smuggler belongs to the family of Mandrin,