. Finally, all these operations completed, I had to give a
judicial decision.

I therefore declared, my hand upon my heart, before God and men, that
the causes of social inequality are three in number: 1. GRATUITOUS
APPROPRIATION OF COLLECTIVE WEALTH; 2. INEQUALITY IN EXCHANGE; 3. THE
RIGHT OF PROFIT OR INCREASE.

And since this threefold method of extortion is the very essence of the
domain of property, I denied the legitimacy of property, and proclaimed
its identity with robbery.

That is my only offence. I have reasoned upon property; I have searched
for the criterion of justice; I have demonstrated, not the possibility,
but the necessity, of equality of fortunes; I have allowed myself no
attack upon persons, no assault upon the government, of which I, more
than any one else, am a provisional adherent. If I have sometimes
used the word PROPRIETOR, I have used it as the abstract name of a
metaphysical being, whose reality breathes in every individual,--not
alone in a privileged few.

Nevertheless, I acknowledge--for I wish my confession to be
sincere--that the general tone of my book has been bitterly censured.
They complain of an atmosphere of passion and invective unworthy of
an honest man, and quite out of place in the treatment of so grave a
subject.

If this reproach is well founded (which it is impossible for me either
to deny or admit, because in my own cause I cannot be judge),--if, I
say, I deserve this charge, I can only humble myself and acknowledge
myself guilty of an involuntary wrong; the only excuse that I could
offer being of such a nature that it ought not to be communicated to the
public. All that I can say is, that I understand better than any one how
the anger which injustice causes may render an author harsh and violent
in his criticisms. When, after twenty years of labor, a man still finds
himself on the brink of starvation, and then suddenly discovers in
an equivocation, an error in calculation, the cause of the evil which
torments him in common with so many millions of his fellows, he can
scarcely restrain a cry of sorrow and dismay.

But, sir, though pride be offended by my rudeness, it is not to pride
that I apologize, but to the proletaires, to the simple-minded, whom I
perhaps have scandalized. My angry dialectics may have produced a bad
effect on some peaceable minds. Some poor workingman--more affected
by my sarcasm than by the strength of my arguments--may, perhaps, have
conclude