This is exactly what happens when a peasant pays twelve francs to
a lawyer for a document which it takes him an hour to prepare;
and this inequality, this iniquity in exchanges, is the most
potent cause of misery that the socialists have unveiled,--as the
economists confess in secret while awaiting a sign from the
master that shall permit them to acknowledge it openly.
Every error in commutative justice is an immolation of the
laborer, a transfusion of the blood of one man into the body of
another. . . . . Let no one be frightened; I have no intention
of fulminating against property an irritating philippic;
especially as I think that, according to my principles, humanity
is never mistaken; that, in establishing itself at first upon the
right of property, it only laid down one of the principles of its
future organization; and that, the preponderance of property once
destroyed, it remains only to reduce this famous antithesis to
unity. All the objections that can be offered in favor of
property I am as well acquainted with as any of my critics, whom
I ask as a favor to show their hearts when logic fails them.
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