food and stores at the expense of the owner,
to hunt down the rich, proscribe "land-owners, leading merchants,
financiers and all men in possession of whatever is superfluous."

Rousseau's dogma that "the fruit belongs to everybody and the soil to
no one" is established at an early date as a maxim of State in the
Convention, while in the deliberations of the sovereign assembly
socialism, openly avowed, becomes ascendant, and, afterwards, supreme.
According to Robespierre,[4205]

"whatever is essential to preserve life is common property to society
at large. It is only the excess which may be given up to individuals and
surrendered to commercial enterprise."

With still greater solemnity, the pontiff of the sect, in the
Declaration of Rights which, unanimously adopted by the all-powerful
Jacobin club, is to serve as the corner-stone of the new institutions,
pens the following formula heavy with their consequences:[4206]

"Society must provide for the support of all its members. The aid
required by indigence is a debt of the rich to the poor. The right of
property is limited, and applies only to that portion which the law
guarantees. Every ownership, any trade, which bears prejudicially on the
existence of our fellow-creatures is necessarily illicit and immoral."

The meaning of this is more than clear: the Jacobin populace, having
decided that the possession of, and trade in, groceries was prejudicial
to its existence, the grocers' monopoly is, therefore, immoral and
illicit, and consequently, it pillages their shops. Under the rule of
the populace and of the "Mountain," the Convention applies the theory,
seizes capital wherever it can be found, and notifies the poor, in its
name,

"that they will find in the pocket-books of the rich whatever they need
to supply their wants."[4207]

Over and above these striking and direct attacks, an indirect and hidden
attack, even more significant, which slowly undermines the basis of all
present and future property. State affairs are everybody's affairs, and,
when the State ruins itself, everybody is ruined along with it. For, it
is the country's greatest debtor and its greatest creditor, while there
is no debtor so free of seizure and no creditor so absorbing, since,
making the laws and possessing the force, it can, firstly, repudiate
indebtedness and send away the fund-holder with empty hands, and next,
increase taxation and empty the taxpayer's pocket of his last
penny. Th