Now the people, instructed long since by their journals, their dramas, [41] and their songs, [42] know to-day that taxation, to be equitably divided, must be graduated, and must be borne mainly by the rich,--that it must be levied upon luxuries, &c.

And be sure that the people, once in the majority in the Chamber, will not fail to apply these lessons.

Already we have a minister of public works.

National workshops will follow; and soon, as a consequence, the excess of the proprietor's revenue over the workingman's wages will be swallowed up in the coffers of the laborers of the State.

Do you not see that in this way property is gradually reduced, as nobility was formerly, to a nominal title, to a distinction purely honorary in its nature?
Either the electoral reform will fail to accomplish that which is hoped from it, and will disappoint its innumerable partisans, or else it will inevitably result in a transformation of the absolute right under which we live into a right of possession; that is, that while, at present, property makes the elector, after this reform is accomplished, the citizen, the producer will be the possessor.