The landed proprietor, the purchaser
or farmer of the communal lands, will alone thereafter sell, with
his wheat and vegetables, milk and cheese. Instead of weakening
an old monopoly, they create a new one. Even the road- laborers
reserve for themselves the edges of the roads as a meadow
belonging to them, and drive off all non-administrative cattle.
What follows? That the day-laborer, before abandoning his cow,
lets it feed in contravention of the law, becomes a marauder,
commits a thousand depredations, and is punished by fine and
imprisonment: of what use to him are police and agricultural
progress? Last year the mayor of Mulhouse, to prevent
grape-stealing, forbade every individual not an owner of vines to
travel by day or night over roads running by or through
vineyards,--a charitable precaution, since it prevented even
desires and regrets. But if the public highway is nothing but an
accessory of private property; if the communal lands are
converted into private property; if the public domain, in short,
assimilated to private property, is guarded, exploited, leased,
and sold like private property,--what remains for the proletaire?
Of what advantage is it to him that society has left the state of
war to enter the regime of police?
Industry, as well as land, has its privileges,--privileges
consecrated by the law, as always, under conditions and
reservations, but, as always also, to the great disadvantage of
the consumer.
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