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These laconic notes proved as enigmatic to Louis, as did the letters in cipher which covered the table. Here all was confusion. An edict of banishment and expropriation of the Huguenots of La Rochelle was mingled with treaties with Gustavus Adolphus and the Huguenots of the north against the empire.
In relation to the ownership of mines, to the cadastre, to expropriation, and to the portion of property which a man might bequeath, Napoleon was more liberal than his jurists. Madame de Stael, "Dix annees d'exil," ch. "Correspondance," letter to Fouche, Jan. 15, 1805.
They were expressed in an empty treasury, rising taxes, inflation, expropriation, the degradation of the currency. Side by side with the rise in overhead costs went the increase of parasitism among the rich and among the poor. Something-for-nothing was the order of the day. Speculation was rampant. Gambling was universal.
On the day that the expropriation of houses takes place, on that day, the exploited workers will have realized that new times have come, that Labour will no longer have to bear the yoke of the rich and powerful, that Equality has been openly proclaimed, that this Revolution is a real fact, and not a theatrical make-believe, like so many others preceding it.
The first measure promulgated to meet the new conditions was a prohibition of exportation. Potato flour was employed in bread-baking. War bread was standardized for the whole Empire. The principal cities purchased vast quantities of cereals, and Prussia founded a War Corn Association for the acquisition of cereals to be stored until the ensuing spring. Expropriation was legalized.
What is the law of expropriation on the ground of public utility, which everybody favors, and which is even thought too lenient? A flagrant violation of the right of property. Society indemnifies, it is said, the dispossessed proprietor; but does it return to him the traditional associations, the poetic charm, and the family pride which accompany property?
We are afraid of not going far enough, of carrying out Expropriation on too small a scale to be lasting.
Now it is evident that the smaller is the number of those who hold possession of the land and the means of production the easier is their expropriation with or without indemnification for the benefit of a single proprietor which is and can be Society alone. Land is the physical basis of the social organism.
On the other hand, the feudal orders hold aloof, as what is at stake is their existence or non-existence, that is, property or expropriation. It is clear that absolute monarchy, in spite of all the servile homage of the bourgeoisie, perceives its true interest to lie on the side of these orders.
But modern capitalist property is the final and most complete expression of that system of producing and appropriating products that is based on class antagonism, on the expropriation of the many by the few."
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