inued; but if the labor is not continued,
the right ceases. Thus is the right of possession, founded on personal
labor, recognized by M. Wolowski.

M. Wolowski decides in favor of granting to authors property in their
works for a certain number of years, dating from the day of their first
publication.

The succeeding lectures on patents on inventions were no less
instructive, although intermingled with shocking contradictions inserted
with a view to make the useful truths more palatable. The necessity
for brevity compels me to terminate this examination here, not without
regret.

Thus, of two eclectic jurists, who attempt a defence of property, one
is entangled in a set of dogmas without principle or method, and is
constantly talking nonsense; and the other designedly abandons the
cause of property, in order to present under the same name the theory
of individual possession. Was I wrong in claiming that confusion reigned
among legists, and ought I to be legally prosecuted for having said
that their science henceforth stood convicted of falsehood, its glory
eclipsed?

The ordinary resources of the law no longer sufficing, philosophy,
political economy, and the framers of systems have been consulted. All
the oracles appealed to have been discouraging.

The philosophers are no clearer to-day than at the time of the eclectic
efflorescence; nevertheless, through their mystical apothegms, we
can distinguish the words PROGRESS, UNITY, ASSOCIATION, SOLIDARITY,
FRATERNITY, which are certainly not reassuring to proprietors. One of
these philosophers, M. Pierre Leroux, has written two large books, in
which he claims to show by all religious, legislative, and philosophical
systems that, since men are responsible to each other, equality of
conditions is the final law of society. It is true that this philosopher
admits a kind of property; but as he leaves us to imagine what property
would become in presence of equality, we may boldly class him with the
opponents of the right of increase.

I must here declare freely--in order that I may not be suspected of
secret connivance, which is foreign to my nature--that M. Leroux has
my full sympathy. Not that I am a believer in his quasi-Pythagorean
philosophy (upon this subject I should have more than one observation to
submit to him, provided a veteran covered with stripes would not despise
the remarks of a conscript); not that I feel bound to this author by any
special consideration