I accused property; I did not denounce the proprietors, which would have been absurd: and I am sorry that there are among us wills so perverse and minds so shattered that they care for only so much of the truth as will aid them in their evil designs.

Such is the only regret which I feel on account of my indignation, which, though expressed perhaps too bitterly, was at least honest, and legitimate in its source.
However, what did I do in this essay which I voluntarily submitted to the Academy of Moral Sciences?
Seeking a fixed axiom amid social uncertainties, I traced back to one fundamental question all the secondary questions over which, at present, so keen and diversified a conflict is raging This question was the right of property.

Then, comparing all existing theories with each other, and extracting from them that which is common to them all, I endeavored to discover that element in the idea of property which is necessary, immutable, and absolute; and asserted, after authentic verification, that this idea is reducible to that of INDIVIDUAL AND TRANSMISSIBLE POSSESSION; SUSCEPTIBLE OF EXCHANGE, BUT NOT OF ALIENATION; FOUNDED ON LABOR, AND NOT ON FICTITIOUS OCCUPANCY, OR IDLE CAPRICE.

I said, further, that this idea was the result of our revolutionary movements,--the culminating point towards which all opinions, gradually divesting themselves of their contradictory elements, converge.

And I tried to demonstrate this by the spirit of the laws, by political economy, by psychology and history.
A Father of the Church, finishing a learned exposition of the Catholic doctrine, cried, in the enthusiasm of his faith, _"Domine, si error est, a te decepti sumus_ (if my religion is false, God is to blame)." I, as well as this theologian, can say, "If equality is a fable, God, through whom we act and think and are; God, who governs society by eternal laws, who rewards just nations, and punishes proprietors,--God alone is the author of evil; God has lied.