therefore, plunder is organised by law, for the
profit of those who perpetrate it, all the plundered classes tend,
either by peaceful or revolutionary means, to enter in some way into the
manufacturing of laws. These classes, according to the degree of
enlightenment at which they have arrived, may propose to themselves two
very different ends, when they thus attempt the attainment of their
political rights; either they may wish to put an end to lawful plunder,
or they may desire to take part in it.

Woe to the nation where this latter thought prevails amongst the masses,
at the moment when they, in their turn, seize upon the legislative
power!

Up to that time, lawful plunder has been exercised by the few upon the
many, as is the case in countries where the right of legislating is
confined to a few hands. But now it has become universal, and the
equilibrium is sought in universal plunder. The injustice which society
contains, instead of being rooted out of it, is generalised. As soon as
the injured classes have recovered their political rights, their first
thought is, not to abolish plunder (this would suppose them to possess
enlightenment, which they cannot have), but to organise against the
other classes, and to their own detriment, a system of reprisals,--as if
it was necessary, before the reign of justice arrives, that all should
undergo a cruel retribution,--some for their iniquity and some for their
ignorance.

It would be impossible, therefore, to introduce into society a greater
change and a greater evil than this--the conversion of the law into an
instrument of plunder.

What would be the consequences of such a perversion? It would require
volumes to describe them all. We must content ourselves with pointing
out the most striking.

In the first place, it would efface from everybody's conscience the
distinction between justice and injustice.

No society can exist unless the laws are respected to a certain degree,
but the safest way to make them respected is to make them respectable.
When law and morality are in contradiction to each other, the citizen
finds himself in the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense,
or of losing his respect for the law--two evils of equal magnitude,
between which it would be difficult to choose.

It is so much in the nature of law to support justice, that in the minds
of the masses they are one and the same. There is in all of us a strong
disposition to regard wh