.

2. That, if we admit that labor has this power, we are led directly to
equality of property,--whatever the kind of labor, however scarce the
product, or unequal the ability of the laborers.

3. That, in the order of justice, labor DESTROYS property.

Following the example of our opponents, and that we may leave no
obstacles in the path, let us examine the question in the strongest
possible light.

M. Ch. Comte says, in his "Treatise on Property:"--

"France, considered as a nation, has a territory which is her own."

France, as an individuality, possesses a territory which she cultivates;
it is not her property. Nations are related to each other as individuals
are: they are commoners and workers; it is an abuse of language to call
them proprietors. The right of use and abuse belongs no more to nations
than to men; and the time will come when a war waged for the purpose of
checking a nation in its abuse of the soil will be regarded as a holy
war.

Thus, M. Ch. Comte--who undertakes to explain how property comes into
existence, and who starts with the supposition that a nation is a
proprietor--falls into that error known as BEGGING THE QUESTION; a
mistake which vitiates his whole argument.

If the reader thinks it is pushing logic too far to question a nation's
right of property in the territory which it possesses, I will simply
remind him of the fact that at all ages the results of the fictitious
right of national property have been pretensions to suzerainty,
tributes, monarchical privileges, statute-labor, quotas of men and
money, supplies of merchandise, &c.; ending finally in refusals to pay
taxes, insurrections, wars, and depopulations.

"Scattered through this territory are extended tracts of land, which
have not been converted into individual property. These lands, which
consist mainly of forests, belong to the whole population, and the
government, which receives the revenues, uses or ought to use them in
the interest of all."

OUGHT TO USE is well said: a lie is avoided thereby.

"Let them be offered for sale...."

Why offered for sale? Who has a right to sell them? Even were the nation
proprietor, can the generation of to-day dispossess the generation of
to-morrow? The nation, in its function of usufructuary, possesses
them; the government rules, superintends, and protects them. If it also
granted lands, it could grant only their use; it has no right to sell
them or transfer them in any