favorite tool of falsehood, the stumbling-block of science, the advocate
of crime. The syllogism has produced all the evils which the fabulist
so eloquently condemned, and has done nothing good or useful: it is
as devoid of truth as of justice. We might apply to it these words of
Scripture: "_Celui qui met en lui sa confiance, perira_." Consequently,
the best philosophers long since condemned it; so that now none but the
enemies of reason wish to make the syllogism its weapon.

M. Considerant, then, has built his theory of property upon a syllogism.
Would he be disposed to stake the system of Fourier upon his arguments,
as I am ready to risk the whole doctrine of equality upon my refutation
of that system? Such a duel would be quite in keeping with the warlike
and chivalric tastes of M. Considerant, and the public would profit by
it; for, one of the two adversaries falling, no more would be said about
him, and there would be one grumbler less in the world.

The theory of M. Considerant has this remarkable feature, that, in
attempting to satisfy at the same time the claims of both laborers and
proprietors, it infringes alike upon the rights of the former and the
privileges of the latter. In the first place, the author lays it down as
a principle: "1. That the use of the land belongs to each member of the
race; that it is a natural and imprescriptible right, similar in all
respects to the right to the air and the sunshine. 2. That the right
to labor is equally fundamental, natural, and imprescriptible." I have
shown that the recognition of this double right would be the death of
property. I denounce M. Considerant to the proprietors!

But M. Considerant maintains that the right to labor creates the right
of property, and this is the way he reasons:--

Major Premise.--"Every man legitimately possesses the thing which his
labor, his skill,--or, in more general terms, his action,--has created."

To which M. Considerant adds, by way of comment: "Indeed, the land not
having been created by man, it follows from the fundamental principle
of property, that the land, being given to the race in common, can in
no wise be the exclusive and legitimate property of such and such
individuals, who were not the creators of this value."

If I am not mistaken, there is no one to whom this proposition, at first
sight and in its entirety, does not seem utterly irrefutable. Reader,
distrust the syllogism.

First, I observe that the