And, because
they have the power, others still more vast. After August 10, their
newspapers in Paris and their commissioners in the departments,[4]
have preached
"the agrarian law, the holding of all property in common, the
leveling of fortunes, the right of each fraction of the sovereign
people" to help itself by force to all food and stores at the expense
of the owner, to hunt down the rich, proscribe "land-owners, leading
merchants, financiers and all men in possession of whatever is
superfluous."
Rousseau's dogma that "the fruit belongs to everybody and the soil to
no one" is established at an early date as a maxim of State in the
Convention, while in the deliberations of the sovereign assembly
socialism, openly avowed, becomes ascendant, and, afterwards, supreme.
According to Robespierre,[5]
"whatever is essential to preserve life is common property to society
at large. It is only the excess which may be given up to individuals
and surrendered to commercial enterprise."
With still greater solemnity, the pontiff of the sect, in the
Declaration of Rights which, unanimously adopted by the all-powerful
Jacobin club, is to serve as the corner-stone of the new institutions,
pens the following formula heavy with their consequences:[6]
"Society must provide for the support of all its members.
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