odious act on the frontier which I was about to do myself?"

Enchanted by this pleasing prospect, you secure a nomination to the
Chambers, and obtain the passage of a law conceived in the following
terms:

SECTION 1. There shall be a tax levied upon everybody (but especially
upon that cursed hat-maker).

SEC. 2. The proceeds of this tax shall be applied to the payment of men
to guard the frontier in the interest of iron-founders.

SEC. 3. It shall be their duty to prevent the exchange of hats or other
articles of merchandise with the Belgians for iron.

SEC. 4. The ministers of the government, the prosecuting attorneys,
jailers, customs officers, and all officials, are entrusted with the
execution of this law.

I admit, sir, that in this form robbery would be far more lucrative,
more agreeable, and less perilous than under the arrangements which you
had at first determined upon. I admit that for you it would offer a very
pleasant prospect. You could most assuredly laugh in your sleeve, for
you would then have saddled all the expenses upon me.

But I affirm that you would have introduced into society a vicious
principle, a principle of immorality, of disorder, of hatred, and of
incessant revolutions; that you would have prepared the way for all the
various schemes of socialism and communism.

You, doubtless, find my hypothesis a very bold one. Well, then, let us
reverse the case. I consent for the sake of the demonstration.

Suppose that I am a laborer and you an iron-founder.

It would be a great advantage to me to buy hatchets cheap, and even to
get them for nothing. And I know that there are hatchets and saws in
your establishment. Accordingly, without any ceremony, I enter your
warehouse and seize everything that I can lay my hands upon.

But, in the exercise of your legitimate right of self-defense, you at
first resist force with force; afterwards, invoking the power of the
law, the magistrate, and the constables, you throw me into prison--and
you do well.

Oh! ho! the thought suggests itself to me that I have been very awkward
in this business. When a person wishes to enjoy the property of other
people, he will, unless he is a fool, act _in accordance_ with the law,
and not _in violation_ of it. Consequently, just as you have made
yourself a protectionist, I will make myself a socialist. Since you have
laid claim to the _right to profit_, I claim the _right to labor_, or to
the instruments of labor.