“VII. Products are purchased only by products; now, the condition of every exchange being the equivalence of products, profits from exchange are impossible and unjust. Observe this principle of the most elementary economy, and pauperism, luxury, oppression, vice, crime, and hunger will disappear from among us. “VIII. Men are associated by the physical and mathematical law of production; ... “IX. Free association, liberty, which confines itself to the maintenance of equality in the means of production and equivalence in exchanges, is the only form of society possible, just, and true. “X. Politics is the science of liberty; the government of man by man, under whatever name it may disguise itself, is oppression. The highest form of society is found in the union of order and anarchy.”[138] Proudhon’s earnestness and sincerity can scarcely be doubted. We must give him credit for honesty, however strong our conviction that his schemes are utterly impracticable, and however severely we condemn the bitterness and injustice with which his views are presented. He closes his first _mémoire_ on property with the following appeal to the Deity to hasten the coming emancipation and to witness his unselfish devotion: “O God of liberty! God of equality! Thou God, who hast placed in my heart the sentiment of justice before my reason comprehended it, hear my ardent prayer. Thou hast dictated that which I have written. Thou hast formed my thought, thou hast directed my studies, thou hast separated my spirit from curiosity and my heart from attachment, in order that I should publish the truth before the master and the slave. I have spoken as thou hast given me power and talent; it remains for thee to complete thy work. Thou knowest whether I have sought my interest or thy glory. O God of liberty! May my memory perish, if humanity may but be free; if I may but see in my obscurity the people finally instructed, if noble instructors but enlighten it, if disinterested hearts but guide it. Shorten, if it may be, our time of trial; smother inequality, pride, and avarice; confound this idolatry of glory which retains us in abjection; teach thy poor children that in the haven of liberty there are no more heroes nor grand men. Inspire the strong one, the wealthy one, whose name my lips shall never pronounce before thee, with horror on account of his robberies.... Then the great and the small, the rich and the poor, will unite in one ineffable fraternity; and all together, chanting a new hymn, will re-erect thy altar, O God of liberty and of equality!”[139] CHAPTER VIII. SOCIALISM IN FRANCE SINCE PROUDHON.