must content myself with
thanking you for the kind words in which you have seen fit to speak of
me. We each possess the merit of sincerity; I desire also the merit
of prudence. You know how deep-seated is the disease under which the
working-people are suffering; I know how many noble hearts beat under
those rude garments, and I feel an irresistible and fraternal sympathy
with the thousands of brave people who rise early in the morning to
labor, to pay their taxes, and to make our country strong. I try to
serve and enlighten them, whereas some endeavor to mislead them. You
have not written directly for them. You have issued two magnificent
manifestoes, the second more guarded than the first; issue a third more
guarded than the second, and you will take high rank in science, whose
first precept is calmness and impartiality.

"Farewell, sir! No man's esteem for another can exceed mine for you.

"BLANQUI."

I should certainly take some exceptions to this noble and eloquent
letter; but I confess that I am more inclined to realize the prediction
with which it terminates than to augment needlessly the number of
my antagonists. So much controversy fatigues and wearies me. The
intelligence expended in the warfare of words is like that employed in
battle: it is intelligence wasted. M. Blanqui acknowledges that property
is abused in many harmful ways; I call PROPERTY the sum these abuses
exclusively. To each of us property seems a polygon whose angles need
knocking off; but, the operation performed, M. Blanqui maintains
that the figure will still be a polygon (an hypothesis admitted in
mathematics, although not proven), while I consider that this figure
will be a circle. Honest people can at least understand one another.

For the rest, I allow that, in the present state of the question, the
mind may legitimately hesitate before deciding in favor of the abolition
of property. To gain the victory for one's cause, it does not suffice
simply to overthrow a principle generally recognized, which has the
indisputable merit of systematically recapitulating our political
theories; it is also necessary to establish the opposite principle, and
to formulate the system which must proceed from it. Still further, it
is necessary to show the method by which the new system will satisfy
all the moral and political needs which induced the establishment of
the first. On the following conditions, then, of subsequent evidence,
depends the correct