How happens it that to-day I am obliged to defend my intentions, when my conduct bears the evident impress of such lofty morality?
You have read my work, sir, and you know the gist of my tedious and scholastic lucubrations.

Considering the revolutions of humanity, the vicissitudes of empires, the transformations of property, and the innumerable forms of justice and of right, I asked, "Are the evils which afflict us inherent in our condition as men, or do they arise only from an error?
This inequality of fortunes which all admit to be the cause of society's embarrassments, is it, as some assert, the effect of Nature; or, in the division of the products of labor and the soil, may there not have been some error in calculation?
Does each laborer receive all that is due him, and only that which is due him?
In short, in the present conditions of labor, wages, and exchange, is no one wronged ?--are the accounts well kept ?--is the social balance accurate ?" Then I commenced a most laborious investigation.

It was necessary to arrange informal notes, to discuss contradictory titles, to reply to captious allegations, to refute absurd pretensions, and to describe fictitious debts, dishonest transactions, and fraudulent accounts.

In order to triumph over quibblers, I had to deny the authority of custom, to examine the arguments of legislators, and to oppose science with science itself.

Finally, all these operations completed, I had to give a judicial decision.
I therefore declared, my hand upon my heart, before God and men, that the causes of social inequality are three in number: 1.