What I have just shown with relation to property, is equally true with relation to labour. It is the glory of modern civilization to have understood and proclaimed the moral value and the social importance of labour; to have raised it to the estimation and the rank which justly belong to it. If I had to point out the most profound evil, the most fatal vice, of the state of things which prevailed in France up to the sixteenth century, I should say, without hesitation, the contempt in which labour was held. Contempt of labour and pride in idleness are certain signs either that society is under the dominion of brute force, or that it is verging to its decline. Labour is the law which God has enjoined on man. It is by labour that he developes and improves everything around him--by labour that he developes and improves his own nature. Labour is become the surest pledge of peace between nations. The respect and the liberty enjoyed by labour tend more than anything to calm the anxieties which we might otherwise too justly feel, and to raise our hopes for the prospects of the human race. By what fatality then has it happened that the word _labour_, so honourable to modern civilization, is become a war-cry and a source of disasters in France? It is because that word is made a cloak for a great and pernicious lie. It is not labour, its interests or its rights, which are the object of the ferment excited in its name; the war which has been declared on the plea of protecting labour, is not in fact waged in its behalf, nor, if successful, would redound to its advantage. It is, on the contrary, directed against labour, whose ruin and degradation would be its infallible result.