d that property is the result of a perpetual Machiavelianism on
the part of the governors against the governed,--a deplorable error of
which my book itself is the best refutation. I devoted two chapters to
showing how property springs from human personality and the comparison
of individuals. Then I explained its perpetual limitation; and,
following out the same idea, I predicted its approaching disappearance.
How, then, could the editors of the "Revue Democratique," after
having borrowed from me nearly the whole substance of their economical
articles, dare to say: "The holders of the soil, and other productive
capital, are more or less wilful accomplices in a vast robbery, they
being the exclusive receivers and sharers of the stolen goods"?

The proprietors WILFULLY guilty of the crime of robbery! Never did
that homicidal phrase escape my pen; never did my heart conceive the
frightful thought. Thank Heaven! I know not how to calumniate my kind;
and I have too strong a desire to seek for the reason of things to be
willing to believe in criminal conspiracies. The millionnaire is no more
tainted by property than the journeyman who works for thirty sous per
day. On both sides the error is equal, as well as the intention. The
effect is also the same, though positive in the former, and negative
in the latter. I accused property; I did not denounce the proprietors,
which would have been absurd: and I am sorry that there are among us
wills so perverse and minds so shattered that they care for only so much
of the truth as will aid them in their evil designs. Such is the
only regret which I feel on account of my indignation, which, though
expressed perhaps too bitterly, was at least honest, and legitimate in
its source.

However, what did I do in this essay which I voluntarily submitted
to the Academy of Moral Sciences? Seeking a fixed axiom amid social
uncertainties, I traced back to one fundamental question all the
secondary questions over which, at present, so keen and diversified
a conflict is raging This question was the right of property. Then,
comparing all existing theories with each other, and extracting from
them that which is common to them all, I endeavored to discover that
element in the idea of property which is necessary, immutable, and
absolute; and asserted, after authentic verification, that this idea
is reducible to that of INDIVIDUAL AND TRANSMISSIBLE POSSESSION;
SUSCEPTIBLE OF EXCHANGE, BUT NOT OF ALIENATION