When a certain number of men, who cannot live without labour and without property, unite to support a _common authority_, they evidently desire to be able to labour, and to enjoy the fruits of their labour in all security, and not to place their faculties and their properties at the mercy of that authority. Even antecedent to all form of regular government, I do not believe that individuals could be properly deprived of the _right of defence_--the right of defending their persons, their faculties, and their possessions. Without pretending, in this place, to philosophise upon the origin and the extent of the rights of governments--a vast subject, well calculated to deter me--permit me to submit the following idea to you. It seems to me that the rights of the state can only be the reduction into method of personal rights _previously existing_. I cannot, for myself, conceive _collective right_ which has not its root in _individual right_, and does not presume it. Then, in order to know if the state is legitimately invested with a right, it is incumbent on us to ask whether this right dwells in the individual in virtue of his being and independently of all government. It is upon this principle that I denied some time ago the right of labour. I said, since Peter has no right to take directly from Paul what Paul has acquired by his labour, there is no better foundation for this pretended right through the intervention of the state: for the state is but the _public authority_ created by Peter and by Paul, at their expense, with a defined and clear object in view, but which never can render that just which is in itself not so. It is with the aid of this touchstone that I test the distinction between property secured and property controlled by the state. Why has the state the right to secure, even by force, every man's property? Because this right exists previously in the individual. No one can deny to individuals the _right of lawful defence_--the right of employing force, if necessary, to repel the injuries directed against their persons, their faculties, and their effects. It is conceived that this individual right, since it resides in all men, can assume the collective form, and justify the employment of public authority. And why has the state no right to _equalize_ or apportion worldly wealth? _Because, in order to do so, it is necessary to rob some in order to gratify others_. Now, as none of the thirty-five millions of Frenchmen have the right to take by force, under the pretence of rendering fortunes more equal, it does not appear how they could invest public authority with this right.