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thing to earn his Hying, nobody would desire to be either a monarch, or a noble, or a governor; 2d, Because it is the perfection of perfidy to call men free who, condemned to labour to exhaustion, without hoping ever to enjoy, are incapacited to make known their feelings and sufferings by the want of leisure, and by the constrained ignorance in which our social state retains them. Behold why nothing is more contrary to equality and to happiness than private property, or the division of lands which is its fountain-head.

Nay, more—this division of lands to which, according to some, the maximum of our social happiness is reducible, would aggravate the general evil, inasmuch as it would alarm the egoism of our proprietors, which forms the only basis of what at present is called public prosperity, and open the way to the immediate return of disorders of which it is pretended that it would be the remedy.

Now, let us see what is understood by real equality. It has for its basis two essential conditions:—work in common; enjoyment in common.

In the first place, labour being a necessary condition, without which society would perish, nobody can evade his share of it without injustice; the man who has done so, has either diminished the public stock of wealth, or, else thrown his own burden upon his neighbour.

Two powerful considerations occur in support of this system. 1. This common labour would augment the riches of society, which in the actual state can count upon the useful labour of only a small portion of its members. 2. If the general labour were fairly distributed amongst all the valid members of society, it would deliver from an insupportable burden those whom we have condemned exclusively to drudgery, and would transfer to the rest only a very moderate portion of labour, which would soon become for all a source of pleasure and amusement. I do not comprehend how one can honestly regard our present state as the best possible, whilst the great mass of the people lead a more miserable life than they would in a state of simple nature. Look at the savage—if he hunts, if he fishes, if he cultivates the earth, the fruits of his sweat is entirely his own, and he enjoys all the happiness he knows. Our journeymen pperatives