Till now, it is true, these ideas had only been enounced on a small scale, obscurely and timidly, and were repelled and execrated almost as soon as they saw the light. But now they boldly exhibit themselves, and put forth all their pretensions before the public. It signifies little whether this is by their own strength, by the fault of the public itself, or from causes inherent in the present state of society. Since the Social Republic is proclaimed aloud, we must look at it steadily and endeavour to fathom its lowest depths. I wish to avoid all circumlocution, to throw aside all disguises, and to go straight to the heart of the idol. Nor is this impossible. For as all the efforts of the Social Republic tend to one end, so all its ideas are the offspring of one fundamental idea. This fundamental idea is to be found, explicitly or implicitly, in the language of all the leaders of the Social Republic, though all do not avow, and some are perhaps not even conscious that they entertain it. M. Proudhon appears to me the one among them who knows best what he thinks and what he wishes: he appears to show the firmest and most consistent understanding in his detestable dreams. It is not, however, so firm nor so consistent as it appears, or probably as he himself thinks it. He has not declared, and I doubt if he have perceived, to what his system leads. His system, nakedly and rigorously stated, is this:-- All men have a right--and the same right--to happiness. Happiness is the enjoyment (without any limit but that prescribed by the want and the faculty of enjoying) of all the good things existing or possible in this world; whether natural and primitive, or progressively created by the intelligence and the labour of man. Certain men, certain families, or certain classes have acquired the exclusive enjoyment of some (indeed the greater part) of the most essential and productive of these good things; or, in other words, these things, or the means of procuring them, are become the special and perpetual property of certain men, families, and classes. Such a confiscation of a part of the fund common to mankind, for the advantage of a few, is essentially contrary to justice; contrary to the rights of the men of the same generation, who ought all to enjoy it equally; and contrary to the rights of successive generations, each of which, on its entrance into life, ought to find the good things of life equally accessible, and to enjoy them in its turn like its predecessors. Therefore all special and perpetual appropriation of the good things which confer happiness, and of the means of procuring those good things, must be abolished, in order to insure the universal enjoyment and the equal distribution of them amongst all men, and all successive generations of men. But how is it possible to abolish property? or, at least, so to transform it, that, as regards its social and permanent effects, it may be as if it were abolished?