For the rest, I read my Louis Blanc in prison, and I know by heart this
doctrine: "In order to disenthrall themselves, the common people have
need of tools to work with; it is the function of the government to
provide them." And again: "If one admits that, in order to be really
free, a man requires the ability to exercise and to develop his
faculties, the result is that society owes each of its members
instruction, without which the human mind is incapable of development,
and the instruments of labor, without which human activities have no
field for their exercise. But by what means can society give to each one
of its members the necessary instruction and the necessary instruments
of labor, except by the intervention of the State?" So that if it
becomes necessary to revolutionize the country, I also will force my
way into the halls of legislation. I also will pervert the law, and make
it perform in my behalf and at your expense the very act for which it
just now punished me.

My decree is modeled after yours:

SECTION 1. There shall be taxes levied upon every citizen, and
especially upon iron founders.

SEC. 2. The proceeds of this tax shall be applied to the creation of
armed corps, to which the title of the _fraternal constabulary_ shall be
given.

SEC. 3. It shall be the duty of the _fraternal constabulary_ to make
their way into the warehouses of hatchets, saws, etc., to take
possession of these tools, and to distribute them to such workingmen as
may desire them.

Thanks to this ingenious device, you see, my lord, that I shall no
longer be obliged to bear the risks, the costs, the odium, or the
scruples of robbery. The State will rob for me as it has for you. We
shall both be playing the same game.

It remains to be seen what would be the condition of French society on
the realization of my second hypothesis, or what, at least, is the
condition of it after the almost complete realization of the first
hypothesis. I do not desire to discuss here the economy of the question.
It is generally believed that in advocating free trade we are
exclusively influenced by the desire to allow capital and labor to take
the direction most advantageous to them. This is an error. This
consideration is merely secondary. That which wounds, afflicts, and is
revolting to us in the protective system, is the denial of right, of
justice, of property; it is the fact that the system turns the law
against justice and against property,