(by whom?) upon the mind of the Egyptians, was the love of
their country.... Nobody was allowed to be useless to the
State; the law assigned to every one his employment, which
descended from father to son. No one was permitted to have
two professions, nor to adopt another.
... But there was one occupation which was obliged to be common to all, this was the study of the laws and of wisdom; ignorance of religion and the political regulations of the country was excused in no condition of life. Moreover, every profession had a district assigned to it (by whom?).... Amongst good laws, one of the best things was, that everybody was taught to observe them (by whom?). Egypt abounded with wonderful inventions, and nothing was neglected which could render life comfortable and tranquil.
Thus men, according to Bossuet, derive nothing from themselves; patriotism, wealth, inventions, husbandry, science—all come to them by the operation of the laws, or by kings. All they have to do is to be passive. It is on this ground that Bossuet takes exception when Diodorus accuses the Egyptians of rejecting wrestling and music. "How is that possible," says he, "since these arts were invented by Trismegistus?"
It is the same with the Persians:
agriculture.... As there were posts established for the
regulation of the armies, so there were offices for the
superintending of rural works....
The respect with which the Persians were inspired for royal authority was excessive.
The Greeks, although full of mind, were no less strangers to their own responsibilities; so much so, that of themselves, like dogs and horses, they would not have ventured upon the most simple games. In a classical sense, it is an undisputed thing that everything comes to the people from without.
early cultivated by kings and colonies who had come from
Egypt. From them they had learned the exercises of the body,
foot races, and horse and chariot races.... The best thing
that the Egyptians had taught them was to become docile, and
to allow themselves to be formed by the laws for the public
good.
FENELON—Reared in the study and admiration of antiquity and a witness of the power of Louis XIV, Fenelon naturally adopted the idea that mankind should be passive, and that its misfortunes and its prosperities, its virtues and its vices, are caused by the external influence that is exercised upon it by the law, or by the makers of the law. Thus, in his Utopia of Salentum, he brings the men, with their interests, their faculties, their desires, and their possessions, under the absolute direction of the legislator. Whatever the subject may be, they themselves have no voice in it—the prince judges for them. The nation is just a shapeless mass, of which the prince is the soul. In him resides the thought, the foresight, the principle of all organization, of all progress; on him, therefore, rests all the responsibility.
In proof of this assertion, I might transcribe the whole of the tenth book of Telemachus. I refer the reader to it, and shall content myself with quoting some passages taken at random from this celebrated work, to which, in every other respect, I am the first to render justice.
With the astonishing credulity that characterizes the classics, Fénelon, against the authority of reason and of facts, admits the general felicity of the Egyptians, and attributes it, not to their own wisdom, but to that of their kings:
perceiving rich towns and country seats, agreeably situated;
fields that were covered every year,
without intermission, with golden crops; meadows full of
flocks; laborers bending under the weight of fruits that the
earth lavished on its cultivators; and shepherds who made
the echoes around repeat the soft sounds of their pipes and
flutes. "Happy," said Mentor, "is that people who is
governed by a wise king."... Mentor afterwards desired me to
remark the happiness and abundance that was spread over all
the country of Egypt, where twenty-two thousand cities might
be counted. He admired the excellent police regulations of
the cities; the justice administered in favor of the poor
against the rich; the good education of the children, who
were accustomed to obedience, labor, and the love of arts
and letters; the exactness with which all the ceremonies of
religion were performed; the disinterestedness, the desire
of honor, the fidelity to men, and the fear of the gods,
with which every father inspired his children. He could not
sufficiently admire the prosperous state of the country.
"Happy" said he, "is the people whom a wise king rules in
such a manner."
Fénelon's idyll on Crete is still more fascinating. Mentor is made to say:
result of the laws of Minos. The education that the children
receive renders the body healthy and robust. They are
accustomed, from the first, to a frugal and laborious life;
it is supposed that all the pleasures of sense enervate the
body and the mind; no other pleasure is presented to them
but that of being invincible by virtue, that of acquiring
much glory... there they punish three vices that go
unpunished amongst other people—ingratitude, dissimulation,
and avarice. As to pomp and dissipation, there is no need to
punish these, for they are unknown in Crete.... No costly
furniture, no magnificent clothing, no delicious feasts, no
gilded palaces are allowed.
It is thus that Mentor prepares his scholar to mould and manipulate, doubtless with the most philanthropic intentions, the people of Ithaca, and, to confirm him in these ideas, he gives him the example of Salentum.
So we receive our first political notions. We are taught to treat men very much as Oliver de Serres teaches farmers to manage and to mix the soil.
MONTESQUIEU—
all the laws should favor it; that these same laws, by their
regulations in dividing the fortunes in proportion as
commerce enlarges them, should place every poor citizen in
sufficiently easy circumstances to enable him to work like
the others, and every rich citizen in such mediocrity that
he must work, in order to retain or to acquire.
Thus the laws are to dispose of all fortunes.
State, yet it is so difficult to establish that an extreme
exactness in this matter would not always be desirable. It
is sufficient that a census be established to reduce or fix
the differences to a certain point, after which, it is for
particular laws to equalize, as it were, the inequality by
burdens imposed upon the rich and reliefs granted to the
poor.
Here, again, we see the equalization of fortunes by law, that is, by force.
military, as Sparta; the other commercial, as Athens. In the
one it was wished (by whom?) that the citizens should be
idle: in the other, the love of labor was encouraged.
It is worth our while to pay a little attention to the
extent of genius required by these legislators, that
we may see how, by confounding all the virtues, they showed
their wisdom to the world. Lycurgus, blending theft with the
spirit of justice, the hardest slavery with extreme liberty,
the most atrocious sentiments with the greatest moderation,
gave stability to his city. He seemed to deprive it of all
its resources, arts, commerce, money, and walls; there was
ambition without the hope of rising; there were natural
sentiments where the individual was neither child, nor
husband, nor father. Chastity even was deprived of modesty.
By this road Sparta was led on to grandeur and to glory.
The phenomenon that we observe in the institutions of
Greece has been seen in the midst of the degeneracy and
corruption of our modern times. An honest legislator has
formed a people where probity has appeared as natural as
bravery among the Spartans. Mr. Penn is a true Lycurgus, and
although the former had peace for his object, and the latter
war, they resemble each other in the singular path along
which they have led their people, in their influence over
free men, in the prejudices which they have overcome, the
passions they have subdued.
Paraguay furnishes us with another example. Society has
been accused of the crime of regarding the pleasure of
commanding as the only good of life; but it will always be a
noble thing to govern men by making them happy.
Those who desire to form similar institutions will
establish community of property, as in the republic of
Plato, the same reverence as he enjoined for the gods,
separation from strangers for the preservation of morality,
and make the city and not the citizens create commerce: they
should give our arts without our luxury, our wants without
our desires.
Vulgar infatuation may exclaim, if it likes, "It is Montesquieu! magnificent! sublime!" I am not afraid to express my opinion, and to say:
frightful! It is abominable! And these extracts, which I
might multiply, show that according to Montesquieu, the
persons, the liberties, the property, mankind itself, are
nothing but grist for the mill of the sagacity of lawgivers.
ROUSSEAU—Although this politician, the paramount authority of the Democrats, makes the social edifice rest upon the general will, no one has so completely admitted the hypothesis of the entire passiveness of human nature in the presence of the lawgiver:
much more so must a great lawgiver be? The former has only
to follow the pattern proposed to him by the latter. This
latter is the engineer who invents the machine; the former
is merely the workman who sets it in motion.
And what part have men to act in all this? That of the machine, which is set in motion; or rather, are they not the brute matter of which the machine is made? Thus, between the legislator and the prince, between the prince and his subjects, there are the same relations as those that exist between the agricultural writer and the agriculturist, the agriculturist and the clod. At what a vast height, then, is the politician placed, who rules over legislators themselves and teaches them their trade in such imperative terms as the following:
extremes together as much as possible. Suffer neither
wealthy persons nor beggars. If the soil is poor and barren,
or the country too much confined for the inhabitants, turn
to industry and the arts, whose productions you will
exchange for the provisions which you require.... On a good
soil, if you are short of inhabitants, give all your
attention to agriculture, which multiplies men, and banish
the arts, which only serve to depopulate the country.... Pay
attention to extensive and convenient coasts. Cover the sea
with vessels, and you will have a brilliant and short
existence. If your seas wash only inaccessible rocks, let
the people be barbarous, and eat fish; they will live more
quietly, perhaps better, and most certainly more happily. In
short, besides those maxims which are common to all, every
people has its own particular circumstances, which demand a
legislation peculiar to itself.
It was thus that the Hebrews formerly, and the Arabs more
recently, had religion for their principal object; that of
the Athenians was literature; that of Carthage and Tyre,
commerce; of Rhodes, naval affairs; of Sparta, war; and of
Rome, virtue.
The author of the "Spirit of Laws" has shown the art by which the legislator should frame his institutions towards each of these objects.... But if the legislator, mistaking his object, should take up a principle different from that which arises from the nature of things; if one should tend to slavery, and the other to liberty; if one to wealth, and the other to population; one to peace, and the other to conquests; the laws will insensibly become enfeebled, the Constitution will be impaired, and the State will be subject to incessant agitations until it is destroyed, or becomes changed, and invincible Nature regains her empire.
But if Nature is sufficiently invincible to regain its empire, why does not Rousseau admit that it had no need of the legislator to gain its empire from the beginning?
Why does he not allow that by obeying their own impulse, men would of themselves apply agriculture to a fertile district, and commerce to extensive and commodious coasts without the interference of a Lycurgus, a Solon, or a Rousseau, who would undertake it at the risk of deceiving themselves?
Be that as it may, we see with what a terrible responsibility Rousseau invests inventors, institutors, conductors, and manipulators of societies. He is, therefore, very exacting with regard to them.
ought to feel that he can, as it were, transform every
individual, who is by himself a perfect and solitary whole,
receiving his life and being from a larger whole of which he
forms a part; he must feel that he can change the
constitution of man, to fortify it, and substitute a social
and moral existence for the physical and independent one
that we have all received from nature. In a word, he must
deprive man of his own powers, to give him others that are
foreign to him.
Poor human nature! What would become of its dignity if it were entrusted to the disciples of Rousseau?
RAYNAL—
element for the legislator. His resources prescribe to him
his duties. First, he must consult his local position. A
population dwelling upon maritime shores must have laws
fitted for navigation.... If the colony is located in an
inland region, a legislator must provide for the nature of
the soil, and for its degree of fertility....
It is more especially in the distribution of property
that the wisdom of legislation will appear. As a
general rule, and in every country, when a new colony is
founded, land should be given to each man, sufficient for
the support of his family....
In an uncultivated island, which you are colonizing with
children, it will only be needful to let the germs of truth
expand in the developments of reason!... But when you
establish old people in a new country, the skill consists in
only allowing it those injurious opinions and customs which
it is impossible to cure and correct. If you wish to prevent
them from being perpetuated, you will act upon the rising
generation by a general and public education of the
children. A prince or legislator ought never to found a
colony without previously sending wise men there to instruct
the youth.... In a new colony, every facility is open to the
precautions of the legislator who desires to purify the tone
and the manners of the people. If he has genius and virtue,
the lands and the men that are at his disposal will inspire
his soul with a plan of society that a writer can only
vaguely trace, and in a way that would be subject to the
instability of all hypotheses, which are varied and
complicated by an infinity of circumstances too difficult to
foresee and to combine.
One would think it was a professor of agriculture who was saying to his pupils
His resources dictate to him his duties. The first thing he has to consider is his local position. If he is on a clayey soil, he must do so and so. If he has to contend with sand, this is the way in which he must set about it. Every facility is open to the agriculturist who wishes to clear and improve his soil.
If he only has the skill, the manure which he has at his disposal will suggest to him a plan of operation, which a professor can only vaguely trace, and in a way that would be subject to the uncertainty of all hypotheses, which vary and are complicated by an infinity of circumstances too difficult to foresee and to combine.
But, oh! sublime writers, deign to remember sometimes that this clay, this sand, this manure, of which you are disposing in so arbitrary a manner, are men, your equals, intelligent and free beings like yourselves, who have received from God, as you have, the faculty of seeing, of foreseeing, of thinking, and of judging for themselves!
MABLY—(He is supposing the laws to be worn out by time and by the neglect of security, and continues thus):
bonds of Government are slack. Give them a new tension (it
is the reader who is addressed), and the evil will be
remedied.... Think less of punishing the faults than of
encouraging the virtues that you want. By this method you
will bestow upon your republic the vigor of youth. Through
ignorance of this, a free people has lost its liberty! But
if the evil has made so much way that the ordinary
magistrates are unable to remedy it effectually, have
recourse to an extraordinary magistracy, whose time should
be short, and its power considerable. The imagination of the
citizens requires to be impressed.
In this style he goes on through twenty volumes.
There was a time when, under the influence of teaching like this, which is the foundation of classical education, everyone was for placing himself beyond and above mankind, for the sake of arranging, organizing, and instituting it in his own way.
CONDILLAC—
of Solon. Before you finish reading this essay, amuse
yourself with giving laws to some wild people in America or
in Africa. Establish these roving men in fixed dwellings;
teach them to keep flocks.... Endeavor to develop the social
qualities that nature has implanted in them.... Make them
begin to practice the duties of humanity.... Cause the
pleasures of the passions to become distasteful to them by
punishments, and you will see these barbarians, with every
plan of your legislation, lose a vice and gain a virtue.
All these people have had laws. But few among them have
been happy. Why is this? Because legislators have almost
always been ignorant of the object of society, which is to
unite families by a common interest.
Impartiality in law consists in two things, in
establishing equality in the fortunes and in the dignity of
the citizens.... In proportion to the degree of equality
established by the laws, the dearer will they become to
every citizen. How can avarice, ambition, dissipation,
idleness, sloth, envy, hatred, or jealousy agitate men who
are equal in fortune and dignity, and to whom the laws leave
no hope of disturbing their equality?
What has been told you of the republic of Sparta ought to
enlighten you on this question. No other State has had laws
more in accordance with the order of nature or of equality.
It is not to be wondered at that the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries should have looked upon the human race as inert matter, ready to receive everything—form, figure, impulse, movement, and life, from a great prince, or a great legislator, or a great genius. These ages were reared in the study of antiquity; and antiquity presents everywhere—in Egypt, Persia, Greece, and Rome, the spectacle of a few men molding mankind according to their fancy, and mankind to this end enslaved by force or by imposture. And what does this prove? That because men and society are improvable, error, ignorance, despotism, slavery, and superstition must be more prevalent in early times. The mistake of the writers quoted above is not that they have asserted this fact, but that they have proposed it as a rule for the admiration and imitation of future generations. Their mistake has been, with an inconceivable absence of discernment, and upon the faith of a puerile conventionalism, that they have admitted what is inadmissible, viz., the grandeur, dignity, morality, and well-being of the artificial societies of the ancient world; they have not understood that time produces and spreads enlightenment; and that in proportion to the increase of enlightenment, right ceases to be upheld by force, and society regains possession of herself.
And, in fact, what is the political work that we are endeavoring to promote? It is no other than the instinctive effort of every people towards liberty. And what is liberty, whose name can make every heart beat, and which can agitate the world, but the union of all liberties, the liberty of conscience, of education, of association, of the press, of movement, of labor, and of exchange; in other words, the free exercise, for all, of all the inoffensive faculties; and again, in other words, the destruction of all despotisms, even of legal despotism, and the reduction of law to its only rational sphere, which is to regulate the individual right of legitimate defense, or to repress injustice?
This tendency of the human race, it must be admitted, is greatly thwarted, particularly in our country, by the fatal disposition, resulting from classical teaching and common to all politicians, of placing themselves beyond mankind, to arrange, organize, and regulate it, according to their fancy.
For whilst society is struggling to realize liberty, the great men who place themselves at its head, imbued with the principles of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, think only of subjecting it to the philanthropic despotism of their social inventions, and making it bear with docility, according to the expression of Rousseau, the yoke of public felicity as pictured in their own imaginations.
This was particularly the case in 1789. No sooner was the old system destroyed than society was to be submitted to other artificial arrangements, always with the same starting point—the omnipotence of the law.
SAINT-JUST—
for the good of mankind. It is for him to make men what he
wishes them to be.
ROBESPIERRE—
moral powers of the nation towards the object of its
institution.
BILLAUD VARENNES—
anew. Ancient prejudices must be destroyed, antiquated
customs changed, depraved affections corrected, inveterate
vices eradicated.
For this, a strong force and a vehement impulse will be necessary.... Citizens, the inflexible austerity of Lycurgus created the firm basis of the Spartan republic. The feeble and trusting disposition of Solon plunged Athens into slavery. This parallel contains the whole science of Government.
LEPELLETIER—
convinced—of the necessity of effecting an entire
regeneration of the race, and, if I may so express myself,
of creating a new people.
Men, therefore, are nothing but raw material. It is not for them to will their own improvement. They are not capable of it; according to Saint-Just, it is only the legislator who is. Men are merely to be what he wills that they should be. According to Robespierre, who copies Rousseau literally, the legislator is to begin by assigning the aim of the institutions of the nation. After this, the Government has only to direct all its physical and moral forces towards this end. All this time the nation itself is to remain perfectly passive; and Billaud Varennes would teach us that it ought to have no prejudices, affections, nor wants, but such as are authorized by the legislator. He even goes so far as to say that the inflexible austerity of a man is the basis of a republic.
We have seen that, in cases where the evil is so great that the ordinary magistrates are unable to remedy it, Mably recommends a dictatorship, to promote virtue. "Have recourse," says he, "to an extraordinary magistracy, whose time shall be short, and his power considerable. The imagination of the people requires to be impressed." This doctrine has not been neglected. Listen to Robespierre:
the means to be adopted, during its establishment, is
terror. We want to substitute, in our country, morality for
self-indulgence, probity for honor, principles for customs,
duties for decorum, the empire of reason for the tyranny of
fashion, contempt of vice for contempt of misfortune, pride
for insolence, greatness of soul for vanity, love of glory
for love of money, good people for good company, merit for
intrigue, genius for wit, truth for glitter, the charm of
happiness for the weariness of pleasure, the greatness of
man for the littleness of the great, a magnanimous,
powerful, happy people, for one that is easy, frivolous,
degraded; that is to say, we would substitute all the
virtues and miracles of a republic for all the vices and
absurdities of monarchy.
At what a vast height above the rest of mankind does Robespierre place himself here! And observe the arrogance with which he speaks. He is not content with expressing a desire for a great renovation of the human heart, he does not even expect such a result from a regular Government. No; he intends to effect it himself, and by means of terror. The object of the discourse from which this puerile and laborious mass of antithesis is extracted, was to exhibit the principles of morality that ought to direct a revolutionary Government. Moreover, when Robespierre asks for a dictatorship, it is not merely for the purpose of repelling a foreign enemy, or of putting down factions; it is that he may establish, by means of terror and as a preliminary to the operation of the Constitution, his own principles of morality. He pretends to nothing short of extirpating from the country by means of terror, self-interest, honor, customs, decorum, fashion, vanity, the love of money, good company, intrigue, wit, luxury, and misery. It is not until after he, Robespierre, shall have accomplished these miracles, as he rightly calls them, that he will allow the law to regain her empire. Truly it would be well if these visionaries, who think so much of themselves and so little of mankind, who want to renew everything, would only be content with trying to reform themselves, the task would be arduous enough for them. In general, however, these gentlemen, the reformers, legislators, and politicians, do not desire to exercise an immediate despotism over mankind. No, they are too moderate and too philanthropic for that. They only contend for the despotism, the absolutism, the omnipotence of the law. They aspire only to make the law.
To show how universal this strange disposition has been in France, I had need not only to have copied the whole of the works of Mably, Raynal, Rousseau, Fenelon, and to have made long extracts from Bossuet and Montesquieu, but to have given the entire transactions of the sittings of the Convention. I shall do no such thing, however, but merely refer the reader to them.
No wonder this idea suited Bonaparte so well. He embraced it with ardor, and put it in practice with energy. Playing the part of a chemist, Europe was to him the material for his experiments. But this material reacted against him. More than half undeceived, Bonaparte, at St. Helena, seemed to admit that there is an initiative in every people, and he became less hostile to liberty. Yet this did not prevent him from giving this lesson to his son in his will—"To govern is to diffuse morality, education, and well-being."
After all this, I hardly need show, by fastidious quotations, the opinions of Morelly, Babeuf, Owen, Saint Simon, and Fourier. I shall confine myself to a few extracts from Louis Blanc's book on the organization of labor.
"In our project, society receives the impulse of power."
In what does the impulse that power gives to society consist? In imposing upon it the project of Mr. Louis Blanc.
On the other hand, society is the human race. The human race, then, is to receive its impulse from Mr. Louis Blanc.
It is at liberty to do so or not, it will be said. Of course the human race is at liberty to take advice from anybody, whoever it may be. But this is not the way in which Mr. Louis Blanc understands the thing. He means that his project should be converted into law, and consequently forcibly imposed by power.
to labor, by means of which the industrial movement may and
ought to be accomplished in all liberty. It (the State)
merely places society on an incline (that is all) that it
may descend, when once it is placed there, by the mere force
of things, and by the natural course of the established
mechanism.
But what is this incline? One indicated by Mr. Louis Blanc. Does it not lead to an abyss? No, it leads to happiness. Why, then, does not society go there of itself? Because it does not know what it wants, and it requires an impulse. What is to give it this impulse? Power. And who is to give the impulse to power? The inventor of the machine, Mr. Louis Blanc.
We shall never get out of this circle—mankind passive, and a great man moving it by the intervention of the law. Once on this incline, will society enjoy something like liberty? Without a doubt. And what is liberty?
granted, but in the power given to man to exercise, to
develop his faculties under the empire of justice, and under
the protection of the law.
And this is no vain distinction; there is a deep meaning
in it, and its consequences are imponderable. For
when once it is admitted that man, to be truly free, must
have the power to exercise and develop his faculties, it
follows that every member of society has a claim upon it for
such education as shall enable his faculties to display
themselves, and for the tools of labor, without which human
activity can find no scope. Now, by whose intervention is
society to give to each of its members the requisite
education and the necessary tools of labor, unless by that
of the State?
Thus, liberty is power. In what does this power consist? In possessing education and tools of labor. Who is to give education and tools of labor? Society, who owes them. By whose intervention is society to give tools of labor to those who do not possess them? By the intervention of the State. From whom is the State to obtain them?
It is for the reader to answer this question, and to notice whither all this tends.
One of the strangest phenomena of our time, and one that will probably be a matter of astonishment to our descendants, is the doctrine which is founded upon this triple hypothesis: the radical passiveness of mankind,—the omnipotence of the law,—the infallibility of the legislator: this is the sacred symbol of the party that proclaims itself exclusively democratic.
It is true that it professes also to be social.
So far as it is democratic, it has an unlimited faith in mankind.
So far as it is social, it places mankind beneath the mud.
Are political rights under discussion? Is a legislator to be chosen? Oh, then the people possess science by instinct: they are gifted with an admirable discernment; their will is always right; the general will cannot err. Suffrage cannot be too universal. Nobody is under any responsibility to society. The will and the capacity to choose well are taken for granted. Can the people be mistaken? Are we not living in an age of enlightenment? What! Are the people to be forever led about by the nose? Have they not acquired their rights at the cost of effort and sacrifice? Have they not given sufficient proof of intelligence and wisdom? Are they not arrived at maturity? Are they not in a state to judge for themselves? Do they not know their own interest? Is there a man or a class who would dare to claim the right of putting himself in the place of the people, of deciding and of acting for them? No, no; the people would be free, and they shall be so. They wish to conduct their own affairs, and they shall do so.
But when once the legislator is duly elected, then indeed the style of his speech alters. The nation is sent back into passiveness, inertness, nothingness, and the legislator takes possession of omnipotence. It is for him to invent, for him to direct, for him to impel, for him to organize. Mankind has nothing to do but to submit; the hour of despotism has struck. And we must observe that this is decisive; for the people, just before so enlightened, so moral, so perfect, have no inclinations at all, or, if they have any, these all lead them downwards towards degradation. And yet they ought to have a little liberty! But are we not assured by Mr. Considerant that liberty leads fatally to monopoly? Are we not told that liberty is competition? and that competition, according to Mr. Louis Blanc, is a system of extermination for the people, and of ruination for trade? For that reason people are exterminated and ruined in proportion as they are free—take, for example, Switzerland, Holland, England, and the United States? Does not Mr. Louis Blanc tell us again that competition leads to monopoly, and that, for the same reason, cheapness leads to exorbitant prices? That competition tends to drain the sources of consumption, and diverts production to a destructive activity? That competition forces production to increase, and consumption to decrease—whence it follows that free people produce for the sake of not consuming; that there is nothing but oppression and madness among them; and that it is absolutely necessary for Mr. Louis Blanc to see to it?
What sort of liberty should be allowed to men? Liberty of conscience?—But we should see them all profiting by the permission to become atheists. Liberty of education?—But parents would be paying professors to teach their sons immorality and error; besides, if we are to believe Mr. Thiers, education, if left to the national liberty, would cease to be national, and we should be educating our children in the ideas of the Turks or Hindus, instead of which, thanks to the legal despotism of the universities, they have the good fortune to be educated in the noble ideas of the Romans. Liberty of labor? But this is only competition, whose effect is to leave all products unconsumed, to exterminate the people, and to ruin the tradesmen. The liberty of exchange? But it is well known that the protectionists have shown, over and over again, that a man will inevitably be ruined when he exchanges freely, and that to become rich it is necessary to exchange without liberty. Liberty of association? But according to the socialist doctrine, liberty and association exclude each other, for the liberty of men is attacked just to force them to associate.
You must see, then, that the socialist democrats cannot in conscience allow men any liberty, because, by their own nature, they tend in every instance to all kinds of degradation and demoralization.
We are therefore left to conjecture, in this case, upon what foundation universal suffrage is claimed for them with so much importunity.
The pretensions of organizers suggest another question, which I have often asked them, and to which I am not aware that I ever received an answer: Since the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to allow them liberty, how comes it to pass that the tendencies of organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their agents form a part of the human race? Do they consider that they are composed of different materials from the rest of mankind? They say that society, when left to itself, rushes to inevitable destruction, because its instincts are perverse. They presume to stop it in its downward course, and to give it a better direction. They have, therefore, received from heaven, intelligence and virtues that place them beyond and above mankind: let them show their title to this superiority. They would be our shepherds, and we are to be their flock. This arrangement presupposes in them a natural superiority, the right to which we are fully justified in calling upon them to prove.
You must observe that I am not contending against their right to invent social combinations, to propagate them, to recommend them, and to try them upon themselves, at their own expense and risk; but I do dispute their right to impose them upon us through the medium of the law, that is, by force and by public taxes.
I would not insist upon the Cabetists, the Fourierists, the Proudhonians, the Academics, and the Protectionists renouncing their own particular ideas; I would only have them renounce the idea that is common to them all—viz., that of subjecting us by force to their own categories and rankings to their social laboratories, to their ever-inflating bank, to their Greco-Roman morality, and to their commercial restrictions. I would ask them to allow us the faculty of judging of their plans, and not to oblige us to adopt them if we find that they hurt our interests or are repugnant to our consciences.
To presume to have recourse to power and taxation, besides being oppressive and unjust, implies further, the pernicious assumption that the organized is infallible, and mankind incompetent.
And if mankind is not competent to judge for itself, why do they talk so much about universal suffrage?
This contradiction in ideas is unhappily to be found also in facts; and whilst the French nation has preceded all others in obtaining its rights, or rather its political claims, this has by no means prevented it from being more governed, and directed, and imposed upon, and fettered, and cheated, than any other nation. It is also the one, of all others, where revolutions are constantly to be dreaded, and it is perfectly natural that it should be so.
So long as this idea is retained, which is admitted by all our politicians, and so energetically expressed by Mr. Louis Blanc in these words—"Society receives its impulse from power," so long as men consider themselves as capable of feeling, yet passive—incapable of raising themselves by their own discernment and by their own energy to any morality, or well-being, and while they expect everything from the law; in a word, while they admit that their relations with the State are the same as those of the flock with the shepherd, it is clear that the responsibility of power is immense. Fortune and misfortune, wealth and destitution, equality and inequality all proceed from it. It is charged with everything, it undertakes everything, it does everything; therefore it has to answer for everything. If we are happy, it has a right to claim our gratitude; but if we are miserable, it alone must bear the blame. Are not our persons and property in fact, at its disposal? Is not the law omnipotent? In creating the educational monopoly, it has undertaken to answer the expectations of fathers of families who have been deprived of liberty; and if these expectations are disappointed, whose fault is it?
In regulating industry, it has undertaken to make it prosper, otherwise it would have been absurd to deprive it of its liberty; and if it suffers, whose fault is it? In pretending to adjust the balance of commerce by the game of tariffs, it undertakes to make commerce prosper; and if, so far from prospering, it is destroyed, whose fault is it? In granting its protection to maritime armaments in exchange for their liberty, it has undertaken to render them self-sufficient; if they become burdensome, whose fault is it?
Thus, there is not a grievance in the nation for which the Government does not voluntarily make itself responsible. Is it any wonder that every failure threatens to cause a revolution? And what is the remedy proposed? To extend indefinitely the dominion of the law, i.e., the responsibility of Government. But if the Government undertakes to raise and to regulate wages, and is not able to do it; if it undertakes to assist all those who are in want, and is not able to do it; if it undertakes to provide work for every laborer, and is not able to do it; if it undertakes to offer to all who wish to borrow, easy credit, and is not able to do it; if, in words that we regret should have escaped the pen of Mr. de Lamartine, "the State considers that its mission is to enlighten, to develop, to enlarge, to strengthen, to spiritualize, and to sanctify the soul of the people"—if it fails in this, is it not obvious that after every disappointment, which, alas! is more than probable, there will be a no less inevitable revolution?
I shall now resume the subject by remarking, that immediately after the economical part 4 of the question, and before the political part, a leading question presents itself. It is the following:
What is law? What ought it to be? What is its domain? What are its limits? Where, in fact, does the prerogative of the legislator stop?
I have no hesitation in answering, Law is common force organized to prevent injustice;—in short, Law is Justice.
It is not true that the legislator has absolute power over our persons and property, since they pre-exist, and his work is only to secure them from injury.
It is not true that the mission of the law is to regulate our consciences, our ideas, our will, our education, our sentiments, our works, our exchanges, our gifts, our enjoyments. Its mission is to prevent the rights of one from interfering with those of another, in any one of these things.
Law, because it has force for its necessary sanction, can only have the domain of force, which is justice.
And as every individual has a right to have recourse to force only in cases of lawful defense, so collective force, so which is only the union of individual forces, cannot be rationally used for any other end.
The law, then, is solely the organization of individual rights that existed before law.
Law is justice.
So far from being able to oppress the people, or to plunder their property, even for a philanthropic end, its mission is to protect the people, and to secure to them the possession of their property.
It must not be said, either, that it may be philanthropic, so long as it abstains from all oppression; for this is a contradiction. The law cannot avoid acting upon our persons and property; if it does not secure them, then it violates them if it touches them.
The law is justice.
Nothing can be more clear and simple, more perfectly defined and bounded, or more visible to every eye; for justice is a given quantity, immutable and unchangeable, and which admits of neither increase or diminution.
Depart from this point, make the law religious, fraternal, equalizing, industrial, literary, or artistic, and you will be lost in vagueness and uncertainty; you will be upon unknown ground, in a forced Utopia, or, what is worse, in the midst of a multitude of contending Utopias, each striving to gain possession of the law, and to impose it upon you; for fraternity and philanthropy have no fixed limits, as justice has. Where will you stop? Where is the law to stop? One person, Mr. de Saint Cricq, will only extend his philanthropy to some of the industrial classes, and will require the law to slight the consumers in favor of the producers. Another, like Mr. Considérant, will take up the cause of the working classes, and claim for them by means of the law, at a fixed rate, clothing, lodging, food, and everything necessary for the support of life. A third, Mr. Louis Blanc, will say, and with reason, that this would be an incomplete fraternity, and that the law ought to provide them with tools of labor and education. A fourth will observe that such an arrangement still leaves room for inequality, and that the law ought to introduce into the most remote hamlets luxury, literature, and the arts. This is the high road to communism; in other words, legislation will be—as it now is—the battlefield for everybody's dreams and everybody's covetousness.
Law is justice.
In this proposition we represent to ourselves a simple, immovable Government. And I defy anyone to tell me whence the thought of a revolution, an insurrection, or a simple disturbance could arise against a public force confined to the repression of injustice. Under such a system, there would be more well-being, and this well-being would be more equally distributed; and as to the sufferings inseparable from humanity, no one would think of accusing the Government of them, for it would be as innocent of them as it is of the variations of the temperature. Have the people ever been known to rise against the court of appeals, or assail the justices of the peace, for the sake of claiming the rate of wages, free credit, tools of labor, the advantages of the tariff, or the social workshop? They know perfectly well that these matters are beyond the jurisdiction of the justices of the peace, and they would soon learn that they are not within the jurisdiction of the law quite as much.
But if the law were to be made upon the principle of fraternity, if it were to be proclaimed that from it proceed all benefits and all evils—that it is responsible for every individual grievance and for every social inequality—then you open the door to an endless succession of complaints, irritations, troubles, and revolutions.
Law is justice.
And it would be very strange if it could properly be anything else! Is not justice right? Are not rights equal? With what show of right can the law interfere to subject me to the social plans of Messrs. Mimerel, de Melun, Thiers, or Louis Blanc, rather than to subject these gentlemen to my plans? Is it to be supposed that Nature has not bestowed upon me sufficient imagination to invent a Utopia too? Is it for the law to make choice of one amongst so many fancies, and to make use of the public force in its service?
Law is justice.
And let it not be said, as it continually is, that the law, in this sense, would be atheistic, individual, and heartless, and that it would mold mankind in its own image. This is an absurd conclusion, quite worthy of the governmental infatuation which sees mankind in the law.
What then? Does it follow that if we are free, we shall cease to act? Does it follow that if we do not receive an impulse from the law, we shall receive no impulse at all? Does it follow that if the law confines itself to securing to us the free exercise of our faculties, our faculties will be paralyzed? Does it follow, that if the law does not impose upon us forms of religion, modes of association, methods of education, rules for labor, directions for exchange, and plans for charity, we shall plunge headlong into atheism, isolation, ignorance, misery, and greed? Does it follow, that we shall no longer recognize the power and goodness of God; that we shall cease to associate together, to help each other, to love and assist our unfortunate brethren, to study the secrets of nature, and to aspire after perfection in our existence?
Law is justice.
And it is under the law of justice, under the reign of right, under the influence of liberty, security, stability, and responsibility, that every man will attain to the fullness of his worth, to all the dignity of his being, and that mankind will accomplish with order and with calmness—slowly, it is true, but with certainty—the progress ordained for it.
I believe that my theory is correct; for whatever be the question upon which I am arguing, whether it be religious, philosophical, political, or economical; whether it affects well-being, morality, equality, right, justice, progress, responsibility, property, labor, exchange, capital, wages, taxes, population, credit, or Government; at whatever point of the scientific horizon I start from, I invariably come to the same thing—the solution of the social problem is in liberty.
And have I not experience on my side? Cast your eye over the globe. Which are the happiest, the most moral, and the most peaceable nations? Those where the law interferes the least with private activity; where the Government is the least felt; where individuality has the most scope, and public opinion the most influence; where the machinery of the administration is the least important and the least complicated; where taxation is lightest and least unequal, popular discontent the least excited and the least justifiable; where the responsibility of individuals and classes is the most active, and where, consequently, if morals are not in a perfect state, at any rate they tend incessantly to correct themselves; where transactions, meetings, and associations are the least fettered; where labor, capital, and production suffer the least from artificial displacements; where mankind follows most completely its own natural course; where the thought of God prevails the most over the inventions of men; those, in short, who realize the most nearly this idea that within the limits of right, all should flow from the free, perfectible, and voluntary action of man; nothing be attempted by the law or by force, except the administration of universal justice.
I cannot avoid coming to this conclusion—that there are too many great men in the world; there are too many legislators, organizers, institutors of society, conductors of the people, fathers of nations, etc., etc. Too many persons place themselves above mankind, to rule and patronize it; too many persons make a trade of looking after it. It will be answered—"You yourself are occupied upon it all this time." Very true. But it must be admitted that it is in another sense entirely that I am speaking; and if I join the reformers it is solely for the purpose of inducing them to relax their hold.
I am not doing as Vaucauson did with his automaton, but as a physiologist does with the human frame; I would study and admire it.
I am acting with regard to it in the spirit that animated a celebrated traveler. He found himself in the midst of a savage tribe. A child had just been born, and a crowd of soothsayers, magicians, and quacks were around it, armed with rings, hooks, and bandages. One said—"This child will never smell the perfume of a calumet, unless I stretch his nostrils." Another said—"He will be without the sense of hearing, unless I draw his ears down to his shoulders." A third said—"He will never see the light of the sun, unless I give his eyes an oblique direction." A fourth said—"He will never be upright, unless I bend his legs." A fifth said—"He will not be able to think, unless I press his brain." "Stop!" said the traveler. "Whatever God does, is well done; do not pretend to know more than He; and as He has given organs to this frail creature, allow those organs to develop themselves, to strengthen themselves by exercise, use, experience, and liberty."
God has implanted in mankind also all that is necessary to enable it to accomplish its destinies. There is a providential social physiology, as well as a providential human physiology. The social organs are constituted so as to enable them to develop harmoniously in the grand air of liberty. Away, then, with quacks and organizers! Away with their rings, and their chains, and their hooks, and their pincers! Away with their artificial methods! Away with their social laboratories, their governmental whims, their centralization, their tariffs, their universities, their State religions, their inflationary or monopolizing banks, their limitations, their restrictions, their moralizations, and their equalization by taxation! And now, after having vainly inflicted upon the social body so many systems, let them end where they ought to have begun—reject all systems, and try liberty—liberty, which is an act of faith in God and in His work.