your labor.
We will count, weigh, and measure them. It will be the judgment of
Balthasar; for I swear by balance, level, and square, that if you have
appropriated another's labor in any way whatsoever, you shall restore it
every stroke.

Thus, the principle of occupation is abandoned; no longer is it said,
"The land belongs to him who first gets possession of it." Property,
forced into its first intrenchment, repudiates its old adage; justice,
ashamed, retracts her maxims, and sorrow lowers her bandage over her
blushing cheeks. And it was but yesterday that this progress in social
philosophy began: fifty centuries required for the extirpation of a
lie! During this lamentable period, how many usurpations have been
sanctioned, how many invasions glorified, how many conquests celebrated!
The absent dispossessed, the poor banished, the hungry excluded by
wealth, which is so ready and bold in action! Jealousies and wars,
incendiarism and bloodshed, among the nations! But henceforth, thanks
to the age and its spirit, it is to be admitted that the earth is not a
prize to be won in a race; in the absence of any other obstacle, there
is a place for everybody under the sun. Each one may harness his goat
to the bearn, drive his cattle to pasture, sow a corner of a field, and
bake his bread by his own fireside.

But, no; each one cannot do these things. I hear it proclaimed on all
sides, "Glory to labor and industry! to each according to his capacity;
to each capacity according to its results!" And I see three-fourths of
the human race again despoiled, the labor of a few being a scourge to
the labor of the rest.

"The problem is solved," exclaims M. Hennequin. "Property, the daughter
of labor, can be enjoyed at present and in the future only under the
protection of the laws. It has its origin in natural law; it derives its
power from civil law; and from the union of these two ideas, LABOR and
PROTECTION, positive legislation results."...

Ah! THE PROBLEM IS SOLVED! PROPERTY IS THE DAUGHTER OF LABOR! What,
then, is the right of accession, and the right of succession, and the
right of donation, &c., if not the right to become a proprietor by
simple occupancy? What are your laws concerning the age of majority,
emancipation, guardianship, and interdiction, if not the various
conditions by which he who is already a laborer gains or loses the right
of occupancy; that is, property?

Being unable, at this time, to enter upon a d