Is it not true, Sire, that if Utopians were to suddenly demand the freedom of the right hand, they would spread alarm throughout the country?
Is it not true that this pretended reform would overthrow all existences?
Then our system is good, since it cannot be overthrown without causing great distress.
However, we have a sad presentiment that some day (so great is the perversity of man) an association will be organized to secure the liberty of right hands.
It seems to us that we already hear these free-right-handers speak as follows in the Salle Montesquieu: "People, you believe yourselves richer because they have taken from you one hand; you see but the increase of labor which results to you from it.

But look also at the dearness it causes, and the forced decrease in the consumption of all articles.

This measure has not made capital, which is the source of wages, more abundant.

The waters which flow from this great reservoir are directed into other channels; the quantity is not increased, and the definite result is, for the nation, as a whole, a loss of comfort equal to the excess of the production of several millions of right hands, over several millions of left hands.

Then let us form a league, and, at the expense of some inevitable disturbances, let us conquer the right of working with both hands." Happily, Sire, there will be organized an _association for the defense of left-handed labor_, and the _Sinistrists_ will have no trouble in reducing to nothing all these generalities and realities, suppositions and abstractions, reveries and Utopias.