, and it being settled that the former, for the reasons
which I have just given, must necessarily disappear, is it best, for the
slight advantage of restoring an etymology, to retain the word PROPERTY?
My opinion is that it would be very unwise to do so, and I will tell
why. I quote from the "Journal du Peuple:"--

"To the legislative power belongs the right to regulate property, to
prescribe the conditions of acquiring, possessing, and transmitting
it... It cannot be denied that inheritance, assessment, commerce,
industry, labor, and wages require the most important modifications."

You wish, proletaires, to REGULATE PROPERTY; that is, you wish to
destroy it and reduce it to the right of possession. For to regulate
property without the consent of the proprietors is to deny the right
OF DOMAIN; to associate employees with proprietors is to destroy
the EMINENT right; to suppress or even reduce farm-rent, house-rent,
revenue, and increase generally, is to annihilate PERFECT property. Why,
then, while laboring with such laudable enthusiasm for the establishment
of equality, should you retain an expression whose equivocal meaning
will always be an obstacle in the way of your success?

There you have the first reason--a wholly philosophical one--for
rejecting not only the thing, but the name, property. Here now is the
political, the highest reason.

Every social revolution--M. Cousin will tell you--is effected only by
the realization of an idea, either political, moral, or religious. When
Alexander conquered Asia, his idea was to avenge Greek liberty against
the insults of Oriental despotism; when Marius and Caesar overthrew
the Roman patricians, their idea was to give bread to the people;
when Christianity revolutionized the world, its idea was to emancipate
mankind, and to substitute the worship of one God for the deities of
Epicurus and Homer; when France rose in '89, her idea was liberty and
equality before the law. There has been no true revolution, says M.
Cousin, with out its idea; so that where an idea does not exist, or even
fails of a formal expression, revolution is impossible. There are mobs,
conspirators, rioters, regicides. There are no revolutionists. Society,
devoid of ideas, twists and tosses about, and dies in the midst of its
fruitless labor.

Nevertheless, you all feel that a revolution is to come, and that you
alone can accomplish it. What, then, is the idea which governs you,
proletaires of the