ON EQUALIZING PROPERTY. 17 
multiplicity of privileges from which the more numerous 
classes of the population had then so much to suffer ; 
finally, after having divided mankind into two categories, 
the workers and the idlers, he goes so far as to say of 
these latter, who alone, according to him, have been 
taken into account in the constitution of modern society, 
that “they do not begin to be useful till the moment in 
which they die, for they do not vivify the earth except 
by reéntering it.” Such, Gentlemen, are the bold 
opinions which an Academy rewarded in 1784; which 
ealled forth from Buffon, who certainly cannot be ac- 
cused of having been an innovator in matters of govern- 
ment, these words so flattering to the successful orator : 
—‘“ Your style is noble and flowing; you have done, sir, 
an agreeable and useful work ;” and which inspired the 
brother of an absolute king with the desire of attaching 
Carnot, whose “ friend” he declared himself to be, to the 
service of Prussia; which gained for the young officer 
the favour of the prince whom Worms and Coblentz 
witnessed a few years afterwards at the head of the 
emigration! Who then will dare to call our revolution 
of 1789 an effect without a cause, a meteor of whose 
arrival there had been no warning? The moral trans- 
formations of society are subjected to the law of con- 
tinuity ; they rise and grow like the productions of the © 
earth, by imperceptible gradations. 
Each century develops, discusses, and adapts to itself, 
in some degree, truths—or, if you prefer it, principles— 
of which the conception belonged to the preceding cen- 
tury ; this work of the mind usually goes on without 
being perceived by the vulgar; but when the day of 
application arrives, when principles claim their part in 
practice, when they aim at penetrating into political life, 
