At this rate we cannot possibly have any virtue to plume ourselves upon. The best we can do being no more than our duly, the only reward we can claim is exemption from the punishment we should have deserved if we had not done it. Whether it be that we have abstained from killing or robbing our fellow-citizens for our own advantage, or have impoverished or half-killed ourselves in the service of the State, our meed is the same. _Loris non ureris. Non pasces in cruce corvos_, is what we are told. We may congratulate ourselves on having escaped the cat-o'-nine-tails and the gallows. Well, we have, most of us, so much self-sufficiency, that to deprive us of all ground for it might be a fault on the right side. But now comes a second and more awkward reflection. If you will not of your own accord do your duty, those to whom performance of the duty is owing have a right to use means to make you--foul means if fair means will not avail. If, then, you hesitate to do your utmost for the interests of society, society is warranted in taking measures to accelerate your movement. If you are not, or what is practically the same thing, if a numerical majority of your fellow-citizens think you are not, making the most beneficial use of your property; if it be generally considered that it would be for the greater good of the greater number to divide your park and garden into peasant properties and cottage allotments, to double the wages of the workmen in your employment, or to subject you and the likes of you to a graduated income tax for the purpose of setting up national workshops to compete with you in your own trade; and, if you do not readily enter into the same views, then the said numerical majority are not simply warranted in taking the law into their own hands and doing, in spite of you, what they think ought to be done with your property, but would be culpably remiss if they neglected so to act.