The modern phase of thought does not venture openly to attack socially property, as politically it has attacked divine right, because it has not known what to substitute in its place. It was less difficult to sustain universal suffrage, which met with fewer obstacles in its translation into fact than communism or socialism. There has therefore been no direct attack on property, but for a long while circuitous means have been taken to undermine its rights. By the destruction of the feudal system, the bonds which connected property with the exercise of political power were burst asunder, and another blow was struck at its stability by the abolition of the rights of eldest sons, and of all the other privileges belonging to it, according to ancient usage. Later, legitimate successions and those of intestate persons have been regulated, and thus the disintegration has been gradually prepared. Finally, the laws of taxation for purposes of the State or of public welfare have further confiscated a large portion of private property. Hence it may be said that on great part of the Continent property of every kind—rural, urban, movable, or immovable—has become a merchandise, great part of which is administered by trustees for the benefit of the State, while the rest is subject to a number of laws, contracts, and combinations which cause it to pass from one person to another with the utmost rapidity, so that its enjoyment may be extended to as large a number as possible, since the mode of distributing it to all has not yet been discovered. Charity has been overthrown by the same blow. It has shared the unpopularity of her preachers, and it also, without being directly attacked, has been subjected, under different pretexts, to the destruction and conversion of a very large number of institutions founded under its banner, and discredit has been thrown on its practices and provisions, while the struggle for existence has been brutally substituted for charity. So much the worse for the man who cannot help himself out of a difficulty. The motto of our time is a species of _sauve qui peut_, which begins in the transactions of the money market and leads some to the temple of fortune and others to the river or to the lunatic asylum.