What is Property [219]
have no right to accuse any one. The king himself (God forgive me! I do not like to justify a king),--the king himself is, like his predecessors, only the personification of an idea, and an idea, proletaires, which possesses you yet. His greatest wrong consists in wishing for its complete realization, while you wish it realized only partially,--consequently, in being logical in his government; while you, in your complaints, are not at all so. You clamor for a second regicide. He that is without sin among you,--let him cast at the prince of property the first stone!
How successful you would have been if, in order to influence men, you had appealed to the self-love of men,--if, in order to alter the constitution and the law, you had placed yourselves within the constitution and the law! Fifty thousand laws, they say, make up our political and civil codes. Of these fifty thousand laws, twenty-five thousand are for you, twenty-five thousand against you. Is it not clear that your duty is to oppose the former to the latter, and thus, by the argument of contradiction, drive privilege into its last ditch? This method of action is henceforth the only useful one, being the only moral and rational one.
For my part, if I had the ear of this nation, to which I am attached by birth and predilection, with no intention of playing the leading part in the future republic, I would instruct the laboring masses to conquer property through institutions and judicial pleadings; to seek auxiliaries and accomplices in the highest ranks of society, and to ruin all privileged classes by taking advantage of their common desire for power and popularity.
The petition for the electoral reform has already received two hundred thousand signatures, and the illustrious Arago threatens us with a million. Surely, that will be well done; but from this million of citizens, who are as willing to vote for an emperor as for equality, could we not select ten thousand signatures--I mean bona fide signatures--whose authors can read, write, cipher, and even think a little, and whom we could invite, after due perusal and verbal explanation, to sign such a petition as the following:--
"TO HIS EXCELLENCY THE MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR:--
"MONSIEUR LE MINISTRE,--On the day when a royal ordinance, decreeing the establishment of model national workshops, shall appear in the `Moniteur,' the undersigned, to the number of TEN THOUSAND, will repair to the Palace of the Tuileries, and there, with all the power of their lungs, will shout, `Long live Louis Philippe!'
"On the day when the `Moniteur' shall inform the public that this petition is refused, the undersigned, to the number of TEN THOUSAND, will say secretly in their hearts, `Down with Louis Philippe!'"
If I am not mistaken, such a petition would have some effect.[1] The pleasure of a popular ovation would be well worth the sacrifice of a few millions. They sow so much to reap unpopularity! Then, if the nation, its hopes of 1830 restored, should feel it its duty to keep its promise,--and it would keep it, for the word of the nation is, like that of God, sacred,--if, I say, the nation, reconciled by this act with the public-spirited monarchy, should bear to the foot of the throne its cheers and its vows, and should at that solemn moment choose me to speak in its name, the following would be the substance of my speech:--
[1] The electoral reform, it is continually asserted, is not an END, but a MEANS. Undoubtedly; but what, then, is the end? Why not furnish an unequivocal explanation of its object? How can the people choose their representatives, unless they know in advance the purpose for which they choose them, and the object of the commission which they entrust to them?
But, it is said, the very business of those chosen by the people is to find out the object of the reform.
That is a quibble. What is to hinder these persons, who are to be elected in future, from first seeking for this object, and then, when they have found it, from communicating it to the people? The
How successful you would have been if, in order to influence men, you had appealed to the self-love of men,--if, in order to alter the constitution and the law, you had placed yourselves within the constitution and the law! Fifty thousand laws, they say, make up our political and civil codes. Of these fifty thousand laws, twenty-five thousand are for you, twenty-five thousand against you. Is it not clear that your duty is to oppose the former to the latter, and thus, by the argument of contradiction, drive privilege into its last ditch? This method of action is henceforth the only useful one, being the only moral and rational one.
For my part, if I had the ear of this nation, to which I am attached by birth and predilection, with no intention of playing the leading part in the future republic, I would instruct the laboring masses to conquer property through institutions and judicial pleadings; to seek auxiliaries and accomplices in the highest ranks of society, and to ruin all privileged classes by taking advantage of their common desire for power and popularity.
The petition for the electoral reform has already received two hundred thousand signatures, and the illustrious Arago threatens us with a million. Surely, that will be well done; but from this million of citizens, who are as willing to vote for an emperor as for equality, could we not select ten thousand signatures--I mean bona fide signatures--whose authors can read, write, cipher, and even think a little, and whom we could invite, after due perusal and verbal explanation, to sign such a petition as the following:--
"TO HIS EXCELLENCY THE MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR:--
"MONSIEUR LE MINISTRE,--On the day when a royal ordinance, decreeing the establishment of model national workshops, shall appear in the `Moniteur,' the undersigned, to the number of TEN THOUSAND, will repair to the Palace of the Tuileries, and there, with all the power of their lungs, will shout, `Long live Louis Philippe!'
"On the day when the `Moniteur' shall inform the public that this petition is refused, the undersigned, to the number of TEN THOUSAND, will say secretly in their hearts, `Down with Louis Philippe!'"
If I am not mistaken, such a petition would have some effect.[1] The pleasure of a popular ovation would be well worth the sacrifice of a few millions. They sow so much to reap unpopularity! Then, if the nation, its hopes of 1830 restored, should feel it its duty to keep its promise,--and it would keep it, for the word of the nation is, like that of God, sacred,--if, I say, the nation, reconciled by this act with the public-spirited monarchy, should bear to the foot of the throne its cheers and its vows, and should at that solemn moment choose me to speak in its name, the following would be the substance of my speech:--
[1] The electoral reform, it is continually asserted, is not an END, but a MEANS. Undoubtedly; but what, then, is the end? Why not furnish an unequivocal explanation of its object? How can the people choose their representatives, unless they know in advance the purpose for which they choose them, and the object of the commission which they entrust to them?
But, it is said, the very business of those chosen by the people is to find out the object of the reform.
That is a quibble. What is to hinder these persons, who are to be elected in future, from first seeking for this object, and then, when they have found it, from communicating it to the people? The