WHAT IS

PROPERTY?

OR

RESEARCHES INTO THE PRINCIPLE

OF RIGHT AND GOVERNMENT.

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FIRST MEMOIR.

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Adversus hostem æterna auctoritas esto.

Against the enemy, the right of ownership is eternal.

LAW OF THE TWELVE TABLES.

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CHAPTER ONE.

METHOD FOLLOWED IN THIS WORK. — IDEA OF A REVOLUTION.

If I had to answer the following question, What is slavery? and I were to answer with a single word, It is assassination, my thought would be immediately understood. I would not need a long discourse to show that the power to take from man thought, will, and personality, is a power of life and death, and that to make a man a slave is to assassinate him. Why then, to this other question, What is property? can I not answer in the same way, It is theft, without the certainty of not being understood, although this second proposition is only the first transformed?

I undertake to discuss the very principle of our government.