The _Système des Contradictions Economiques_ may lay claim to the same sort of praise we have accorded to the _Political Justice_: it prompts reflection; and a man of intellect sufficiently robust to profit by such rude gymnastics, will not regret its perusal. It also avoids, like the work of Godwin, the pernicious cant of universal philanthropy--pernicious when brought forward as a general motive of human actions--and looks for a renovation of society in a more enlightened sentiment of justice--determining anew the value of each man's labour, and securing to him that value--property being legitimate only (so far as we can understand our author) when it contains in it the labour of the proprietor. How Justice is to execute the task which M. Prudhon, in very vague and mysterious terms, imposes upon her, we have not the least idea; nor has an attentive perusal of his book given us the remotest conception of any practical scheme that he would even make experiment of. But, at all events, it is better to descant on the energetic sentiment of justice, which desires to earn and keep its own, than on the idle sublimities of a universal fraternity--a sentiment which relaxes the springs of industry, by teaching every man to expect everything from his neighbours, or from an omnipotent abstraction he calls the state. It is a difference of some importance, because all these schemes for the renovation of society do, in fact, end in a sort of moral or immoral preachment. When we have said thus much, and added that M. Prudhon attacks the Communists, of all shades and descriptions, in a quite overwhelming manner, utterly crushing and annihilating them,--we have said the utmost that can be admitted, or devised, in praise of his work. It would require a much longer paragraph to exhaust all that might be justly said in its condemnation. It is strewed over, knee-deep, with metaphysical trash. It is steeped in atheism, or something worse, and infinitely more foolish; for there is a pretence of sustaining "the hypothesis" of a God, for no other ostensible reason than to provide an object for the blasphemy that follows. The rudest savages, in their first conception of a God, regard him as an enemy, and offer sacrifices to propitiate an unprovoked and wanton anger--the reflected image of their own wild passions. M. Prudhon's philosophy has actually brought him, in one respect, back to the creed of the savages. He proves, by some insane process not worth following, that the Creator of man is essentially opposed to the progress of human society, and is to be utterly deserted, desecrated, defied. He does not, indeed, sacrifice, like the savage; he rather talks rebellion, like Satan. No one would believe, who had not read the book, with what a mixture of outrage and levity he speaks of the most sacred of all beings: it is the doctrine of the rebel-fiend taught with the gesticulation of a satyr.