All slavery in all countries called civilised is the work of landlords and profitmongers. These two classes, which have no right to form an integral portion of society at all, have everywhere made themselves masters of society, and are everywhere in a state of permanent conspiracy against the rest of the community, allowing no man to hold his proper rank or position in the world unless he makes common cause with them in keeping the poor and the labouring class in ignorance, poverty, and slavery. There is no age nor country in which they have not shown themselves murderers or assassins the moment any large section of the public began to see through their system of self-licensed rapine. They have invariably either murdered the leaders and teachers of the creed which menaced their usurpations, or else got up sham wars with neighbouring States (the belligerents being co-conspirators), under colour of which they procured the intervention of foreign arms in aid of their own, to crush the new creed and its abettors before they had time to take root. No one nation on earth has, up to the present time, been permitted to learn, much less establish, honest laws on Land, Credit, Currency, and Exchange, so as to secure its permanent freedom and happiness, owing to malignant combinations of these two classes, which seem to exist for no other purpose than to keep the human race in eternal chains and misery.

Robespierre is the only legislator and statesman known to history who sought a radical reformation of society for the millions, through just fundamental laws on property, with analogous institutions to reach and purify every department of the State, so that the poorest man in France might get rich through his own industry if he chose to work, and have the whole armed power of society to guarantee to him the exclusive ownership and enjoyment of his earnings and accumulations. But at the same time he left to the rich all they had, depriving them only of the power of future robbery. To this end were directed articles 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 of his "Declaration of Rights:"—"Art.6. Property is the right which each citizen has to enjoy and to dispose of, at his pleasure, the portion of fortune or wealth that is guaranteed to him by the law. Art.7. The right of property is limited, like all other rights, by the obligation to respect the rights of others. Art.8. It can prejudice neither the safety, nor the liberty, nor the existence, nor the property of our fellow-citizens. Art.9. All traffic that violates this principle is essentially illicit and immoral. Art.10. Society is under obligation to provide subsistence for all its members, either by procuring employment for them or by ensuring the means of existence to those who are incapable of labour. Art.11. The relief indispensable to those who are in want of necessaries is a debt due by the possessors of superfluities. It belongs to the law to determine the manner in which the debt should be discharged. Art.12. Citizens whose incomes do not exceed what is necessary to their subsistence are dispensed from contributing to the public expenditure. The rest ought to contribute progressively, according to the extent of their fortunes."

Although Robespierre and his party were ostensibly murdered by the Convention, it was the landlords and profitmongers of France that were really and substantially his murderers in chief; for it was in their interest the Convention murdered him, well knowing beforehand that these classes wished for his death, in order to eject the working-classes from the constitution, and re-seize the whole powers of the State for themselves, as they had done under the Constituent. The 9th Thermidor was as much a coup d'etat as Louis Napoleon's 2nd December, and both for the same classes—for landlords and profitmongers, who never yet submitted to any laws not made exclusively by themselves or for themselves, at the cost of slavery to the masses. Real liberty will never exist in the world until these two murderous classes are made to disappear from society under the operation of just laws on Land, Credit, Currency, and Exchange. It is to such laws that Robespierre points in articles 6, 7, 8, and 9 of his "Declaration of Rights;" and it is to their operation upon society he points in that magnificent passage here quoted from his report, on Pluviôse, An II, the parallel of which was never before uttered by statesman:—"We desire an order of things in which all the mean and cruel passions shall be chained down—all the beneficent and generous passions awakened by the laws; in which ambition shall consist in the desire of meriting glory, and serving our country; in which distinctions shall spring but from equality itself; in which the citizen shall be subject to the magistrate, the magistrate to the people, and the people to justice; in which the country shall ensure the prosperity of every individual, and in which each individual shall enjoy with pride the prosperity and glory of his country; in which every soul shall be aggrandised by the continual intercommunication of republican sentiments, and by the wish to merit the esteem of a great people; in which the arts shall flourish as the decorations of the liberty that ennobles them; and in which commerce will be a source of public riches, and not of monstrous opulence to a few great houses only. We desire to substitute in our country morality for egotism, probity for honour, principles for usages, duties for conventionalities, the empire of reason for the tyranny of fashion, contempt of vice for contempt of misfortune, manly pride for insolence, greatness of soul for vanity, love of glory for love of money, honesty for respectability, good people for good society, merit for intrigue, genius for wit, truth for display, the charms of happiness for the ennui of pleasure, the greatness of man for the littleness of the great; a people magnanimous, powerful, and happy, for a people amiable, frivolous, and miserable; in a word, we desire to substitute all the virtues and all the miracles of the Republic for all the vices and all the ridiculous fopperies of the Monarchy. We desire, in short, to fulfil the vows of nature, to accomplish the destinies of humanity, to absolve Providence from the long reign of crime and tyranny; that France, heretofore illustrious amongst enslaved countries, may, by eclipsing all the free States that ever existed, become a model for nations, the terror of oppressors, the consolation of the oppressed, the ornament of the world; and that, in sealing our work with our blood, we may at least witness the breaking dawn of universal felicity." It was these articles and his speeches at the Jacobin club, showing Robespierre's determination, if he got the power, to put property on a proper basis, that determined the landlords and profitmongers of France to murder him the moment the state of parties and divisions of the people gave them the chance of doing so with safety to themselves.

It is idle to attribute the evils of society to any other source but the ascendancy of these two accursed classes; for no other component parts of society have any interest in oppressing mankind or in debasing humanity. Examine the other constituents of society, and you find them all to be naturally friends and benefactors of their fellow-creatures, and their callings to be essential to the public welfare. All truly Christian ministers give full value for what they get; so do physicians and surgeons; so do engineers, architects, builders, draughtsmen, designers, artists of every kind, sculptors, miniature and portrait painters, musicians, composers, mechanics, and artisans of every description, whether engaged on works of usefulness or ornament, professors and teachers of science and belles lettres, more especially the higher class of scientific men, to whom we owe inventions and discoveries, and the higher class of philosophers, poets, historians, and critics, to whom we owe taste, refinement, and a thousand sources of quiet enjoyment. In short, every man that contributes, either by the labour of his brain or of his hands, to the wealth and enjoyments of society is a valuable member of it, and cannot possibly have an interest in keeping his fellow-creatures in ignorance and bondage. In virtue of their callings, they, and all other persons employed in art and education, as in production and distribution, are naturally interested in just and good government, and in seeing equal rights and equal laws exist for all. But not so landlords and profitmongers: their class-interests are diametrically opposed to the well-being, independence, and happiness of society, of which they have not a right even to form an integral part. We cannot do without Christian pastors, physicians, engineers, architects, builders, professors, artists, and able men devoted to the sciences, without relapsing into barbarism and savagery. But where is the earthly use of a landlord, as a landlord; of a profitmonger, as a profitmonger? All the ingenuity in the world could not point out any legitimate use for these classes. What functions do they perform that could not be better performed without them than with them, and at less than a hundredth part of the cost? What business have they in society at all? They have no lawful business whatever. They are no more a necessary part of the body politic than are wens, tumours, or ulcers necessary parts of the natural human body. Their presence in it is only a proof of the diseased state of the body politic; just as the presence of the others attests an impure state of the blood or functional disorganization. They have no more legitimate right to obtrude themselves on society than a wolf or a tiger has to join and make one of a Christmas party. They exist only for the impoverishment, corruption, enslavement, and destruction of the human race. They are the sole authors of all the calamities known to social existence; and the history of our race is little else than a harrowing record of their wars, plots, conspiracies, invasions, massacres, famines, conflagrations, and atrocities of every sort, to blot the image of God out of man, in order to turn him into a beast of burden or a beast of prey for their own use. It is only by just laws on Property that the human race can be delivered from these two hellish classes; and all reform is a farce which points not to that paramount object.