off with pike and
musket the proletaire washed overboard by the wave of civilization, and
seeking to gain a foothold upon the rocks of property. "Give me work!"
cries he with all his might to the proprietor: "don't drive me away, I
will work for you at any price." "I do not need your services," replies
the proprietor, showing the end of his pike or the barrel of his gun.
"Lower my rent at least." "I need my income to live upon." "How can
I pay you, when I can get no work?" "That is your business." Then the
unfortunate proletaire abandons himself to the waves; or, if he attempts
to land upon the shore of property, the proprietor takes aim, and kills
him.

We have just listened to a spiritualist; we will now question a
materialist, then an eclectic: and having completed the circle of
philosophy, we will turn next to law.

According to Destutt de Tracy, property is a necessity of our nature.
That this necessity involves unpleasant consequences, it would be
folly to deny. But these consequences are necessary evils which do not
invalidate the principle; so that it as unreasonable to rebel against
property on account of the abuses which it generates, as to complain
of life because it is sure to end in death. This brutal and pitiless
philosophy promises at least frank and close reasoning. Let us see if it
keeps its promise.

"We talk very gravely about the conditions of property,... as if it was
our province to decide what constitutes property.... It would seem, to
hear certain philosophers and legislators, that at a certain moment,
spontaneously and without cause, people began to use the words THINE and
MINE; and that they might have, or ought to have, dispensed with them.
But THINE and MINE were never invented."

A philosopher yourself, you are too realistic. THINE and MINE do not
necessarily refer to self, as they do when I say your philosophy, and my
equality; for your philosophy is you philosophizing, and my equality is
I professing equality. THINE and MINE oftener indicate a relation,--YOUR
country, YOUR parish, YOUR tailor, YOUR milkmaid; MY chamber, MY seat at
the theatre, MY company and MY battalion in the National Guard. In the
former sense, we may sometimes say MY labor, MY skill, MY virtue; never
MY grandeur nor MY majesty: in the latter sense only, MY field, MY
house, MY vineyard, MY capital,--precisely as the banker's clerk says
MY cash-box. In short, THINE and MINE are signs and expressions of
personal