laborers and employees who earned their livelihood in the
beet-root industry, and who were, perhaps, to be reduced to want.

Nevertheless, it is certain, according to the idea of capital and
the theory of production, that as the possessor of land, whose
means of labor is taken from him by the railroad, has a right to
be indemnified, so also the manufacturer, whose capital is
rendered unproductive by the same railroad, is entitled to
indemnification. Why, then, is he not indemnified? Alas!
because to indemnify him is impossible. With such a system of
justice and impartiality society would be, as a general thing,
unable to act, and would return to the fixedness of Roman
justice. There must be victims. The principle of indemnity is
consequently abandoned; to one or more classes of citizens the
State is inevitably bankrupt.

At this point the socialists appear. They charge that the sole
object of political economy is to sacrifice the interests of the
masses and create privileges; then, finding in the law of
expropriation the rudiment of an agrarian law, they suddenly
advocate universal expropriation; that is, production and
consumption in common.

But here socialism relapses from criticism into utopia, and its
incapacity becomes freshly apparent in its contradictions. If
the principle of expropriation for the sake of public utility,
carried to its logical conclusion, leads to a complete
reorganization of society, before commencing the work the
character of this new organization must be understood; now,
socialism, I repeat, has no science save a few bits of physiology