Well, when I am fighting with an illustrious adversary, must I stop at the end of every phrase, like an orator in the tribune, to say "the learned author," "the eloquent writer," "the profound publicist," and a hundred other platitudes with which it is fashionable to mock people?
These civilities seem to me no less insulting to the man attacked than dishonorable to the aggressor.
But when, rebuking an author, I say to him, "Citizen, your doctrine is absurd, and, if to prove my assertion is an offence against you, I am guilty of it," immediately the listener opens his ears; he is all attention; and, if I do not succeed in convincing him, at least I give his thought an impulse, and set him the wholesome example of doubt and free examination.
Then do not think, sir, that, in tripping up the philosophy of your very learned and very estimable confrere, M.Troplong, I fail to appreciate his talent as a writer (in my opinion, he has too much for a jurist); nor his knowledge, though it is too closely confined to the letter of the law, and the reading of old books.

In these particulars, M.Troplong offends on the side of excess rather than deficiency.

Further, do not believe that I am actuated by any personal animosity towards him, or that I have the slightest desire to wound his self-love.

I know M.
Troplong only by his "Treatise on Prescription," which I wish he had not written; and as for my critics, neither M.Troplong, nor any of those whose opinion I value, will ever read me.

Once more, my only object is to prove, as far as I am able, to this unhappy French nation, that those who make the laws, as well as those who interpret them, are not infallible organs of general, impersonal, and absolute reason.
I had resolved to submit to a systematic criticism the semi-official defence of the right of property recently put forth by M.Wolowski, your colleague at the Conservatory.