the war which results therefrom, that
a balance (justice) has been employed, and covenants (implied or
expressed) agreed upon: it is to correct, as far as possible, inequality
of innate property by equality of acquired property. As long as the
division remains unequal, so long the partners remain enemies; and it
is the purpose of the covenants to reform this state of things. Thus
we have, on the one hand, isolation, inequality, enmity, war, robbery,
murder; on the other, society, equality, fraternity, peace, and love.
Choose between them!

M. Joseph Dutens--a physician, engineer, and geometrician, but a very
poor legist, and no philosopher at all--is the author of a "Philosophy
of Political Economy," in which he felt it his duty to break lances in
behalf of property. His reasoning seems to be borrowed from Destutt
de Tracy. He commences with this definition of property, worthy of
Sganarelle: "Property is the right by which a thing is one's own."
Literally translated: Property is the right of property.

After getting entangled a few times on the subjects of will, liberty,
and personality; after having distinguished between IMMATERIAL-NATURAL
property, and MATERIAL-NATURAL property, a distinction similar to
Destutt de Tracy's of innate and acquired property,--M. Joseph Dutens
concludes with these two general propositions: 1. Property is a natural
and inalienable right of every man; 2. Inequality of property is a
necessary result of Nature,--which propositions are convertible into a
simpler one: All men have an equal right of unequal property.

He rebukes M. de Sismondi for having taught that landed property has no
other basis than law and conventionality; and he says himself, speaking
of the respect which people feel for property, that "their good sense
reveals to them the nature of the ORIGINAL CONTRACT made between society
and proprietors."

He confounds property with possession, communism with equality, the just
with the natural, and the natural with the possible. Now he takes these
different ideas to be equivalents; now he seems to distinguish between
them, so much so that it would be infinitely easier to refute him than
to understand him. Attracted first by the title of the work, "Philosophy
of Political Economy," I have found, among the author's obscurities,
only the most ordinary ideas. For that reason I will not speak of him.

M. Cousin, in his "Moral Philosophy," page 15, teaches that all
morality, all laws