But, they say, the courts and the police force are established to restrain this mob; government is a company, not exactly for insurance, for it does not insure, but for vengeance and repression.The premium which this company exacts, the tax, is divided in proportion to property; that is, in proportion to the trouble which each piece of property occasions the avengers and repressers paid by the government.
This is any thing but the absolute and inalienable right of property.Under this system the poor and the rich distrust, and make war upon, each other.But what is the object of the war?
Property.So that property is necessarily accompanied by war upon property.The liberty and security of the rich do not suffer from the liberty and security of the poor; far from that, they mutually strengthen and sustain each other.The rich man's right of property, on the contrary, has to be continually defended against the poor man's desire for property.What a contradiction! In England they have a poor-rate: they wish me to pay this tax.But what relation exists between my natural and inalienable right of property and the hunger from which ten million wretched people are suffering? When religion commands us to assist our fellows, it speaks in the name of charity, not in the name of law.The obligation of benevolence, imposed upon me by Christian morality, cannot be imposed upon me as a political tax for the benefit of any person or poor-house.I will give alms when I see fit to do so, when the sufferings of others excite in me that sympathy of which philosophers talk, and in which I do not believe: I will not be forced to bestow them.No one is obliged to do more than comply with this injunction: INTHE EXERCISE OF YOUR OWN RIGHTS DO NOT ENCROACH UPON THE RIGHTSOF ANOTHER; an injunction which is the exact definition of liberty.Now, my possessions are my own; no one has a claim upon them: I object to the placing of the third theological virtue in the order of the day.
Everybody, in France, demands the conversion of the five per cent.bonds; they demand thereby the complete sacrifice of one species of property.They have the right to do it, if public necessity requires it; but where is the just indemnity promised by the charter? Not only does none exist, but this indemnity is not even possible; for, if the indemnity were equal to the property sacrificed, the conversion would be useless.
The State occupies the same position to-day toward the bondholders that the city of Calais did, when besieged by Edward III, toward its notables.The English conqueror consented to spare its inhabitants, provided it would surrender to him its most distinguished citizens to do with as he pleased.Eustache and several others offered themselves; it was noble in them, and our ministers should recommend their example to the bondholders.But had the city the right to surrender them?
Assuredly not.The right to security is absolute; the country can require no one to sacrifice himself.The soldier standing guard within the enemy's range is no exception to this rule.
Wherever a citizen stands guard, the country stands guard with him: to-day it is the turn of the one, to-morrow of the other.
When danger and devotion are common, flight is parricide.No one has the right to flee from danger; no one can serve as a scapegoat.The maxim of Caiaphas--IT IS RIGHT THAT A MAN SHOULDDIE FOR HIS NATION--is that of the populace and of tyrants; the two extremes of social degradation.
It is said that all perpetual annuities are essentially redeemable.This maxim of civil law, applied to the State, is good for those who wish to return to the natural equality of labor and wealth; but, from the point of view of the proprietor, and in the mouth of conversionists, it is the language of bankrupts.The State is not only a borrower, it is an insurer and guardian of property; granting the best of security, it assures the most inviolable possession.How, then, can it force open the hands of its creditors, who have confidence in it, and then talk to them of public order and security of property? The State, in such an operation, is not a debtor who discharges his debt; it is a stock-company which allures its stockholders into a trap, and there, contrary to its authentic promise, exacts from them twenty, thirty, or forty per cent.of the interest on their capital.
That is not all.The State is a university of citizens joined together under a common law by an act of society.This act secures all in the possession of their property; guarantees to one his field, to another his vineyard, to a third his rents, and to the bondholder, who might have bought real estate but who preferred to come to the assistance of the treasury, his bonds.
The State cannot demand, without offering an equivalent, the sacrifice of an acre of the field or a corner of the vineyard;still less can it lower rents: why should it have the right to diminish the interest on bonds? This right could not justly exist, unless the bondholder could invest his funds elsewhere to equal advantage; but being confined to the State, where can he find a place to invest them, since the cause of conversion, that is, the power to borrow to better advantage, lies in the State?
That is why a government, based on the principle of property, cannot redeem its annuities without the consent of their holders.
The money deposited with the republic is property which it has no right to touch while other kinds of property are respected; to force their redemption is to violate the social contract, and outlaw the bondholders.
The whole controversy as to the conversion of bonds finally reduces itself to this:--QUESTION.Is it just to reduce to misery forty-five thousand families who derive an income from their bonds of one hundred francs or less?
