nuities are essentially redeemable. This
maxim of civil law, applied to the State, is good for those who wish to
return to the natural equality of labor and wealth; but, from the point
of view of the proprietor, and in the mouth of conversionists, it is
the language of bankrupts. The State is not only a borrower, it is an
insurer and guardian of property; granting the best of security, it
assures the most inviolable possession. How, then, can it force open the
hands of its creditors, who have confidence in it, and then talk to
them of public order and security of property? The State, in such
an operation, is not a debtor who discharges his debt; it is a
stock-company which allures its stockholders into a trap, and there,
contrary to its authentic promise, exacts from them twenty, thirty, or
forty per cent. of the interest on their capital.

That is not all. The State is a university of citizens joined together
under a common law by an act of society. This act secures all in the
possession of their property; guarantees to one his field, to another
his vineyard, to a third his rents, and to the bondholder, who might
have bought real estate but who preferred to come to the assistance of
the treasury, his bonds. The State cannot demand, without offering an
equivalent, the sacrifice of an acre of the field or a corner of the
vineyard; still less can it lower rents: why should it have the right
to diminish the interest on bonds? This right could not justly exist,
unless the bondholder could invest his funds elsewhere to equal
advantage; but being confined to the State, where can he find a place to
invest them, since the cause of conversion, that is, the power to borrow
to better advantage, lies in the State? That is why a government, based
on the principle of property, cannot redeem its annuities without the
consent of their holders.

The money deposited with the republic is property which it has no right
to touch while other kinds of property are respected; to force
their redemption is to violate the social contract, and outlaw the
bondholders.

The whole controversy as to the conversion of bonds finally reduces
itself to this:--

QUESTION. Is it just to reduce to misery forty-five thousand families
who derive an income from their bonds of one hundred francs or less?

ANSWER. Is it just to compel seven or eight millions of tax-payers to
pay a tax of five francs, when they should pay only three? It is clear,
in the firs