THE DEER EXCHANGE I SOLIDARITY. 
219 
stag is more apt than the hare to cross swamps and rivers in his 
combinations; he has always been reputed a good swimmer, and 
pleasant Greek writers who revel in a luxurious imagination have 
made him swim from Cyprus to the continent, thirty leagues at a 
stretch. The deer oftener changes with a fresh comrade. Touch- 
ing instinct of Solidarity 1 Nearly ail animals persecuted by the 
dog, have recourse to this procedure. The stag and the hare keep 
in mind the list of all the individuals of their species, who sojourn 
in their neighborhood ; they know the age, the cover, the lair of 
each. In default of stags or bucks, the stag will exchange with the 
roebuck, and reciprocally. See how difficult and troublesome both 
for dog and man the chase would become if all beasts knew how 
to associate or cooperate in the interest of their mutual defense. 
And the poor laborei s, how soon they would force the gentle- 
men of capital to account with them if they knew how to avail 
themselves of the saving principle of association, that potent lever 
of progress with v/hich labor will one day raise theworld.^' 
The hunters and the capitalists, who know well what they have 
to fear from the union of the laborers and of the beasts of chase, 
incessantly redouble their efforts to oppose the conclusion of any 
treaty of Solidarity among their victims. 
The banker has his journals and his writers on political economy 
to preach up anarchical competition under the name of commer- 
cial liberty ; the hunter has his sleuth-hounds to discover the ex- 
change and to set the puzzled pack again on the path of the 
beast of chase. 
Unfortunately this exchange becomes daily more difficult in 
consequence of the rarity of the species, while in cutting through 
fields full of people, the deer is exposed to mortal dangers, to mur- 
derous shots. 
On what then can he decide in this stern crisis ? 
To die, and sell his life dear, after having vainly tried to save it 
for an hour or two by paltry shifts and by inglorious flight. 
In 1826, in the month of August, one of those hot dog days 
^ Since Toussenel wrote this has come the Revolution, of 1848, and the 
practical associations of producing laborers in nearly all fhe branches of 
industry in Paris and elsewhere. 
