Lacordaire on Property [pp. 338-347]

LACORDAIRE ON PROPER TY.
LACORDAIRE ON PROPERTY.
IN his thirty-third conference on the church Father Lacordaire treats of the influence of Catholic upon natural society with
regard to property. The famous preacher was first a distinguished member of the French bar, then a priest and a monk,
but a man always of democratic principles, and even a member,
while a Dominican monk and priest, of the Assembly of the Second French Republic, in I848. Let us hear his views:
The opponents of Christianity, he begins by saying, assert
that, after so many centuries of its sway, property is not equitably
distributed; some have too much, many not enough to support
life. But the church has consecrated this inequality, sanctioned
it, placed it under the protection of God's commandment.
First the orator admits the merit of those who thus concern
themselves about their poor brethren, and, seeking to find a
remedy for their sufferings, are carried away by their lack of
knowledge so far as to assail even the church, as if it were partly
her fault, and then proceeds to answer and enlighten them to the
following effect:
God gave the earth to man, and with it an activity to fertilize
and render it obedient and productive. The primitive gift,
therefore, is double: there is proprietorship of the soil and pro,
prietorship of labor. Proprietorship of labor is first in order,
because evidently a man owns himself before he gains possession
of anything else. According to the tradition sanctioned by the
Gospel, God says to man: "Thou art master of thy labor; for
thy labor is thy activity put in practice, and thy activity is thyself. To take from thee the domain of thy labor would be to
take from thee the domain of thy activity-that is to say, the possession of thyself, of that which makes thee a living and a free
being. Thou art then master of thy labor. Thou art also master of the soil, of that portion of it which thy labor may have
fertilized; for thy labor is nothing without the soil, and the earth
is nothing without thy labor; the one and the other are sustained
and quickened reciprocally. When, then, thou shalt have mingled
the sweat of thy brow with the earth, and when thou shalt thus
have fertilized it, it will belong to thee, for it will have become
a part of thyself, the extension of thine own personality; it will
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