Page:Babeuf's Conspiracy.djvu/396

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BABEUF'S CONSPIRACY.
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titude in misfortunes and servitude, aggravated by the false hope of mitigation, and consolidated by the increased number and perversity of its oppressors.

Before touching on the proofs of the possibility, of the justice, and of the charms of the system of real equality, in answer to the doubts of M. V., we must set him right on a question which he seems to misunderstand, when, after speaking of the division of lands, he adds, " the difficulty of the question regards not merely the division of lands, but to provide that such division be durable."

Nothing of the kind. The system of equality excludes all division. Nay, it is to this very division, that our societies—the offspring of the wants, passions, and ignorance of our ancestors— owe all the tyrannies and all the afflictions of which we are at present the victims. Before any of our forefathers could have said that a field belonged to him, it was necessary that a convention — express or tacit—should have guaranteed him the enjoyment or possession of it. Happy for mankind had that fetal convention never taken place! That convention it was which first introduced into the social state the disastrous consequences of force and cunning, of which there was so much reason to complain in the natural state.[1] That it is which has isolated and divided human kind, which has excited their cupidity, and founded upon this destructive vice the conservation of societies. That it is which has furnished force, cunning, and perversity, with the means of evading the natural conditions of the social compact, and delivering over simplicity and virtue to exhausting labour and penury and sorrow. That it is which has condemned the producers of all wealth to every privation, and heaped all manner of luxurious enjoyment upon the idle. That it is which has subjected the multitude (constrained to be ignorant) to the snares of ambition and fanaticism. It is it, in fine, which is the source of all tyrannies—1st, Because, were it not for the hope of wallowing in pleasure without doing any

  1. ↑ The right of nature differs essentially from what is called the slate of nature. The former is the result of experience and re* flection; the latter is the offspring of first impressions and of ignorance.
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