adventurers (great God!) think to make themselves tolerable by protesting that they are not like me! I give the formula by which the whole social edifice may be scientifically reconstructed, and the strongest minds reproach me for being able only to destroy. The rest despise me, because I am unknown. When the “Essay on Property” fell into the reformatory camp, some asked: “Who has spoken? Is it Arago? Is it Lamennais? Michel de Bourges or Garnier-Pagès?” And when they heard the name of a new man: “We do not know him,” they would reply. Thus, the monopoly of thought, property in reason, oppresses the proletariat as well as the bourgeoisie. The worship of the infamous prevails even on the steps of the tabernacle.
But what am I saying? May evil befall me, if I blame the poor creatures! Oh! let us not despise those generous souls, who in the excitement of their patriotism are always prompt to identify the voice of their chiefs with the truth. Let us encourage rather their simple credulity, enlighten complacently and tenderly their precious sincerity, and reserve our shafts for those vain-glorious spirits who are always admiring their genius, and, in different tongues, caressing the people in order to govern them.
These considerations alone oblige me to reply to the strange and superficial conclusions of the “Journal du Peuple” (issue of Oct. 11, 1840), on the question of property. I leave, therefore, the journalist to address myself only to his readers. I hope that the self-love of the writer will not be offended, if, in the presence of the masses, I ignore an individual.
You say, proletaires of the “Peuple,” “For the very reason that men and things exist, there always will be men who will possess things; nothing, therefore, can destroy property.”
In speaking thus, you unconsciously argue exactly after the
