an act which this citizen cannot perform without committing a crime.  Abolish this law without delay; it is not merely an iniquity—­it is a fertile source of iniquities, for it invites reprisals; and if you do not take care, the exceptional case will extend, multiply, and become systematic.  No doubt the party benefited will exclaim loudly; he will assert his acquired rights.  He will say that the State is bound to protect and encourage his industry; he will plead that it is a good thing for the State to be enriched, that it may spend the more, and thus shower down salaries upon the poor workmen.  Take care not to listen to this sophistry, for it is just by the systematising of these arguments that legal plunder becomes systematised.

And this is what has taken place.  The delusion of the day is to enrich all classes at the expense of each other; it is to generalise plunder under pretence of organising it.  Now, legal plunder may be exercised in an infinite multitude of ways.  Hence come an infinite multitude of plans for organisation; tariffs, protection, perquisites, gratuities, encouragements, progressive taxation, gratuitous instruction, right to labour, right to profit, right to wages, right to assistance, right to instruments of labour, gratuity of credit, &c., &c.  And it is all these plans, taken as a whole, with what they have in common, legal, plunder, which takes the name of socialism.

Now socialism, thus defined, and forming a doctrinal body, what other war would you make against it than a war of doctrine?  You find this doctrine false, absurd, abominable.  Refute it.  This will be all the more easy, the more false, the more absurd and the more abominable it is.  Above all, if you wish to be strong, begin by rooting out of your legislation every particle of socialism which may have crept into it,—­and this will be no light work.

M. Montalembert has been reproached with wishing to turn brute force against socialism.  He ought to be exonerated from this reproach, for he has plainly said:—­“The war which we must make against socialism must be one which is compatible with the law, honour, and justice.”

But how is it that M. Montalembert does not see that he is placing himself in a vicious circle?  You would oppose law to socialism.  But it is the law which socialism invokes.  It aspires to legal, not extra-legal plunder.  It is of the law itself, like monopolists of all kinds, that it wants to make an instrument; and when once it has the law on its side, how will you be able to turn the law against it?  How will you place it under the power of your tribunals, your gendarmes, and of your prisons?  What will you do then?  You wish to prevent it from taking any part in the making of laws.  You would keep it outside the Legislative Palace.  In this you will not succeed, I venture to prophesy, so long as legal plunder is the basis of the legislation within.

It is absolutely necessary that this question of legal plunder should be determined, and there are only three solutions of it:—­