The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4: The French Revolution, Volume 3 by Hippolyte A. Taine

2191 (return)
[ Fenet, "Travaux du Code civil," 105 (Rapports by Cambacérès, August 9, 1793 and September 9, 1794).—Decrees of September 20, 1793 and Floréal 4, year II (On divorce).—Cf. "Institutions," by Saint-Just (Buchez et Roux, XXXV, 302). "A man and woman who love each other are married; if they have no children they may keep their relationship secret."]

2192 (return)
[ This article of the Jacobin program, like the others, has its practical result.—"At Paris, in the twenty-seven months after the promulgation of the law of September, 1792, the courts granted five thousand nine hundred and ninety-four divorces, and in year VI, the number of divorces exceeded the marriages." (Glasson, le Mariage civil et le Divorce, 51.)—"The number of foundlings which, in 1790, in France, did not exceed twenty-three thousand, is now (year X.) more than sixty-three thousand. "Statistique de la Sarthe," by Auvray, prefect, year, X.)—In the Lot-et-Garonne (Statistique, by Peyre, préfet, year X ), more than fifteen hundred foundlings are counted: "this extraordinary number increased during the Revolution through the too easy admission of foundlings into the asylums, through the temporary sojourning of soldiers in their homes, through the disturbance of every moral and religious principle."—"It is not rare to find children of thirteen and fourteen talking and acting in a way that would have formerly disgraced a young man of twenty." (Moselle, Analyse, by Ferrière.)—"The children of workmen are idle and insubordinate; some indulge in the most shameful conduct against their parents;" others try stealing and use the coarsest language." (Meurthe, Statistique, by Marquis, préfet.)—Cf. Anne Plumptre (A Narrative of three years' residence in France from 1802 to 1805, I. 436). "You would not believe it, Madame, said a gardener to her at Nimes, that during the Revolution we dared not scold our children for their faults. Those who called themselves patriots regarded it as against the fundamental principles of liberty to correct children. This made them so unruly that, very often, when a parent presumed to scold its child the latter would tell him to mind his business, adding, 'we are free and equal, the Republic is our only father and mother; if you are not satisfied, I am. Go where you like it better.' Children are still saucy. It will take a good many years to bring them back to minding.']

2193 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux, XXXII., 364 (Report by Robespierre, Floréal 8, year II.)]

2194 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux, XXXII., 385—(Address of a Jacobin deputation to the Convention, Floréal 27, year II.)—At Bayeux, the young girl who represented Liberty, had the following inscription on her breast or back: "Do not make of me an instrument of licentiousness." (Gustave Flaubert, family souvenirs.)]

2195 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux, XXXI., 415. (Report by Fabre d'Eglantine, October 6, 1793.)—(Grégoire, "Memoires," I., 341.) "The new calendar was invented by Romme in order to get rid of Sunday. This was his object; he admitted it to me."]

2196 (return)
[ Ibid., XXXII., 274. (Report by Robespierre, Floréal 18, year II.) "National Festivals form an essential part of public education.... A system of national festivals is the most powerful means of regeneration."]

2197 (return)
[ Ibid., XXXVIII., 335. Marat's heart, placed on a table in the Cordéliers Club, was an object of religious reverence.—(Grégoire, "Mémoires," I., 341.) "In some schools the pupils were obliged to make the sign of the cross at the names of Marat, Lazowski, etc."]

2198 (return)
[ Comte de Martel, "Étude sur Fouché," 137. Fête at Nevers, on the inaguration of a bust of Brutus.—Ibid., 222, civic festival at Nevers in honor of valor and morals.—Dauban, "Paris en 1794." Programme of the fête of the supreme Being at Sceaux.]

21100 (return)
[ Ibid., XXXII., 373 (Report by Robespierre, Floréal 15, year II.)—Danton had expressed precisely the same opinion, supported by the same arguments, at the meeting of Frimaire 22, year II. (Moniteur, XVIII, 654.) "Children first belong to the Republic before belonging to their parents. Who will assure me that these children, inspired by parental egoism, will not become dangerous to the Republic? What do we care for the ideas of an individual alongside of national ideas?... Who among us does not know the danger of this constant isolation? It is in the national schools that the child must suck republican milk! .... The Republic is one and indivisible. Public instruction must likewise relate to this center of unity."]

21101 (return)
[ Decree of Vendémaire 30 and Brumaire 7, year II.—Cf. Sauzay, VI., 252, on the application of this decree in the provinces.]

21102 (return)
[ Albert Duruy, 2L 'Instruction publique et la Revolution,2 164, to 172' (extracts from various republican spelling-books and catechisms).—Decree of Frimaire 29, year II., section I., art. I, 83; section II., art. 2; section III., arts. 6 and 9.]

21103 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVIII., 653. (Meeting of Frimaire 22, speech by Bouquir, reporter.)]

21104 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVIII., 351-359. (Meeting of Brumaire 15, year II., report by Chénier.) "You have made laws—create habits.... You can apply to the public instruction of the nation the same course that Rousseau follows in 'Emile.' "]

21105 (return)
[ The words of Bouquier, reporter. (Meeting of Frimaire 22, year II.)]

21106 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux, XXIV, 57 (Plan by Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau, read by Robespierre at the Convention, July 13, 1793.)—Ibid., 35. (Draft of a decree by the same hand.)]

21108 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux, XXXI., 261. (Meeting of Nivose 17.) On the committee presenting the final draft of the decrees on public instruction the Convention adopts the following article: "All boys who, on leaving the primary schools of instruction, do not devote themselves to tillage, will be obliged to learn some science, art or occupation useful to society. Otherwise, on reaching twenty, they will be deprived of citizens' rights for ten years, and the same penalty will be laid on their father, mother, tutor or guardian."]

21111 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux, XXXII., 355. (Report by Robespierre, Floréal 18, year II.)]

21112 (return)
[ Moniteur, XVIII., 326. (Meeting of the Commune, Brumaire 11, year II.) the commissary announces that, at Fontainebleau and other places, "he has established the system of equality in the prisons and places of confinement, where the rich and the poor partake of the same food."—Ibid., 210. (Meeting of the Jacobins, Vendémiaire 29, year II. Speech by Laplance on his mission to Gers.) "Priests had every comfort in their secluded retreats; the sans-culottes in the prisons slept on straw. The former provided me with mattresses for the latter."—Ibid., XVIII., 445. (Meeting of the convention, Brumaire 26, year II.) "The Convention decrees that the food of persons kept in places of confinement shall be simple and the same for all, the rich paying for the poor."]

21113 (return)
[ Archives Nationales. (AF. II., 37, order of Lequinio, Saintes, Nivose 1, year II.) "Citizens generally in all communes, are requested to celebrate the day of the decade by a fraternal banquet which, served without luxury or display... will render the man bowed down with fatique insensible to his forlorn condition; which will fill the soul of the poor and unfortunate with the sentiment of social equality and raise man up to the full sense of his dignity; which will suppress with the rich man the slightest feeling of pride and extinguish in the public functionary all germs of haughtiness and aristocracy."]

21114 (return)
[ Archives Nationales, AF. II., ii., 48 (Act of Floréal 25, year II.) "the Committee of Public Safety request David, representative of the people, to present his views and plans in relation to modifying the present national costume, so as to render it appropriate to republican habits and the character of the Revolution."—Ibid., (Act of Prairial 5, year II.) for engraving and coloring twenty thousand impressions of the design for a civil uniform, and six thousand impressions for the three designs for a military, judicial and legislative uniform.]

21115 (return)
[ An identical change took, strangely enough and as caused by some hidden force, place in Denmark in the seventies. (SR.)]

21116 (return)
[ This is now the case in the entire Western 'democratic' sphere, in newspapers, schools, and on television. (SR.)]

21117 (return)
[ Ibid, XXXI., 271. (Report by Robespierre, Pluviose 1, year II.) "This sublime principle supposes a preference for public interests over all private interests; from which it follows that the love of country supposes again, or produces, all the virtues." "As the essence of a republic or of democracy is equality, it follows that love of country necessarily comprises a love of equality." "The soul of the Republic is virtue, equality."—Lavalette, "Memoirs," I., 254. (Narrated by Madame Lavalette.) She was compelled to attend public festivals, and, every month, the patriotic processions. "I was rudely treated by my associates, the low women of the quarter; the daughter of an emigré, of a marquis, or of an imprisoned mother, ought not to be allowed the honor of their company;.... it was all wrong that she was not made an apprentice.... Hortense de Beauharnais was apprenticed to her mother's seamstress, while Eugene was put with a carpenter in the Faubourg St. Germain." The prevailing dogmatism has a singular effect with simple-minded people. (Archives Nationals, AF. II., 135. petition of Ursule Riesler, servant to citizen Estreich and arrested along with him, addressed to Garneri, agent of the Committee of Public Safety. She begs citizen Garnerin to interest himself in obtaining her freedom. She will devote her life to praying to the Supreme Being for him, since he will redeem her life. He is to furnish her, moreover, with the means for espousing a future husband, a genuine republican, by who she is pregnant, and who would not allow her to entertain any idea of fanatical capers.]

CHAPTER II. REACTIONARY CONCEPT OF THE STATE.

I. Reactionary concept of the State.

     Reactionary concept of the State.—Analogy between this idea
     of the State and that of antiquity.—Difference between
     antique and modern society.—Changed circumstances.

* Constraints put upon labor, trade and property, upon the family and education, upon worship, habits, customs and sentiments.

No theory could be more reactionary since it moves modern man back to a type of society which he, eighteen centuries ago, had already passed through and left behind.

During the historical era proceeding our own, and especially in the old Greek or Latin cities, in Rome or Sparta, which the Jacobins take for their models,2201 human society was shaped after the pattern of an army or convent. In a convent as in an army, one idea, absorbing and unique, predominates:

Accordingly, each renounces every other desire and entirely abandons himself, the monk to his rules and the soldier to his drill. In like manner, in the antique world, two preoccupations were of supreme importance. In the first place, the city had its gods who were both its founders and protectors: it was therefore obliged to worship these in the most reverent and particular manner; otherwise, they abandoned it. The neglect of any insignificant rite might offend them and ruin it. In the second place, there was incessant warfare, and the spoils of war were atrocious; on a city being taken every citizen might expect to be killed or maimed, or sold at auction, and see his children and wife sold to the highest bidder.2202 In short, the antique city, with its acropolis of temples and its fortified citadel surrounded by implacable and threatening enemies, resembles for us the institution of the Knights of St. John on their rocks at Rhodes or Malta, a religious and military confraternity encamped around a church.—Liberty, under such conditions, is out of the question: public convictions are too imperious; public danger is too great. With this pressure upon him, and thus hampered, the individual gives himself up to the community, which takes full possession of him, because, to maintain its own existence, it needs the whole man. Henceforth, no one may develop apart and for himself; no one may act or think except within fixed lines. The type of Man is distinctly and clearly marked out, if not logically at least traditionally; each life, as well as each portion of each life must conform to this type; otherwise public security is compromised: any falling off in gymnastic education weakens the army; passing the images of the gods and neglecting the usual libation draws down celestial vengeance on the city. Consequently, to prevent all deviations, the State, absolute master, exercises unlimited jurisdiction; no freedom whatever is left to the individual, no portion of himself is reserved to himself, no sheltered corner against the strong hand of public force, neither his possessions, his children, his personality, his opinions or his conscience.2203 If, on voting days, he shares in the sovereignty, he is subject all the rest of the year, even to his private sentiments. Rome, to serve these ends, had two censors. One of the archons of Athens was inquisitor of the faith. Socrates was put to death for not believing in the gods in which the city believed.2204—In reality, not only in Greece and in Rome, but in Egypt, in China, in India, in Persia, in Judea, in Mexico, in Peru, during the first stages of civilization,2205 the principle of human communities is still that of gregarious animals: the individual belongs to his community the same as the bee to its hive and the ant to its ant-hill; he is simply an organ within an organism. Under a variety of structures and in diverse applications authoritative socialism alone prevails.

Just the opposite in modern society; what was once the rule has now become the exception; the antique system survives only in temporary associations, like that of an army, or in special associations, as in a convent. Gradually, the individual has liberated himself, and century after century, he has extended his domain and the two chains which once bound him fast to the community, have snapped or been lightened.

In the first place, public power has ceased to consist of a militia protecting a cult. In the beginning, through the institution of Christianity, civil society and religious society have become two distinct empires, Christ himself having separated the two jurisdictions;

"Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's, and unto God the things that are God's."

Additionally, through the rise of Protestantism, the great Church is split into numerous sects which, unable to destroy each other, have been so compelled to live together and the State, even when preferring one of them, has found it necessary to tolerate the others. Finally, through the development of Protestantism, philosophy and the sciences, speculative beliefs have multiplied. There are almost as many faiths now-a-days as there are thinking men, and, as thinking men are becoming daily more numerous, opinions are daily becoming more numerous. So should the State try to impose any one of these on society, this would excite opposition from an infinity of others; hence the wisdom in governing is found, first, in remaining neutral, and, next, in acknowledging that it is not qualified to interfere.

In the second place, war has become less frequent and less destructive because men have not so many motives for waging it, nor the same motives to push it to the same extremes. Formerly, war was the main source of wealth; through victories Man acquired slaves, subjects and tributaries; he turned these to the best account; he leisurely enjoyed their forced labor. Nothing of this kind is seen now-a-days; people no longer think of providing themselves human cattle; they have discovered that, of all animals, these are the most troublesome, the least productive, and the most dangerous. Comforts and security are obtained much more readily through free labor and machinery; the great object no is not to conquer, but to produce and interchange. Every day, man, pressing forward more eagerly in civil careers, is less disposed to put up with any obstacle that interferes with his aims; if he still consents to be a soldier it is not to become an invader, but to provide against invasion. Meanwhile, war has become more scientific and, through the complications of its machinery, more costly; the State can no longer call out and enlist for life every able-bodied man without ruining itself, nor put too many obstacles in the way of the free industry which, through taxation, provides for its expenses; however short-sighted the State may be, it consults civil interests, even in its military interest.—Thus, of the two nets in which it has enveloped all human activity, one is rent asunder and the other has slackened its meshes. There is no longer any reason for making the community omnipotent; the individual need not alienate himself entirely; he may, without inconvenience, reserve to himself a part of himself, and, if now called upon to sign a social contract, you may be sure that he would make this reservation.

II. Changed minds.

     Changed minds.—Conscience and its Christian origin.—Honor
     and its feudal origin.—The individual of to-day refuses to
     surrender himself entirely.—His motives.—Additional
     motives in modern democracy.—Character of the elective
     process and the quality of the representative.

And so have not only outward circumstances changed, but the very human attitudes are now different. In the mind of modern man a feeling, distasteful to the antique pact, has evolved.—Undoubtedly, in extreme cases and under the pressure of brutal necessity I may, momentarily, sign a blank check. But, never, if I understand what I am doing, will I sign away in good faith the complete and permanent abandonment of myself: it would be against conscience and against honor, which two possessions are not to be alienated. My honor and my conscience are not to go out of my keeping; I am their sole guardian and depositary; I would not even entrust them to my father.—Both these terms are recent and express two conceptions unknown to the ancients,2206 both being of profound import and of infinite reach. Through them, like a bud separated from its stem and taking root apart, the individual has separated himself from the primitive body, clan, family, caste or city in which he has lived indistinguishable and lost in the crowd; he has ceased to be an organ and appendage; he has become a personality.—The first of these concepts is of Christian origin the second of feudal origin; both, following each other and conjoined, measure the enormous distance which separates an antique soul from a modern soul.2207

Alone, in the presence of God, the Christian has felt melting, like wax, all the ties binding him to his group; this because he is in front of the Great Judge, and because this infallible judge sees all souls as they are, not confusedly and in masses, but clearly, each by itself. At the bar of His tribunal no one is answerable for another; each answers for himself alone; one is responsible only for one's own acts. But those acts are of infinite consequence, for the soul, redeemed by the blood of a God, is of immeasurable value; hence, according as it has or has not profited by the divine sacrifice, so will the reward or punishment be infinite; at the final judgment, an eternity of torment or bliss opens before it. All other interests vanish alongside of a vision of such vastness. Thenceforth, righteousness is the most serious of all aims, not in the eyes of man, but of God and again, day after day, the soul renews within itself that tragic questioning in which the Judge interrogates and the sinner responds.—Through this dialogue, which has been going on for eighteen centuries, and which is yet to continue, conscience has grown more and more sensitive, and man has conceived the idea of absolute justice. Whether this is vested in an all-powerful master, or whether it is a self-existent truth, like mathematical truths, in no way diminishes its sacredness nor, consequently, from its authority. It commands with a superior voice and its commands must be obeyed, irrespective of cost: there are strict duties to which every man is rigorously bound. No pledge may relieve him of these duties; if not fulfilled because he has given contrary pledges he is no less culpable on this account, and besides, he is culpable for having pledged himself; the pledging of himself to crimes was in itself a crime. His fault thus appears to himself twofold, and the inward prick galls him twice instead of once. Hence, the more sensitive the conscience, the more loath it is to give up; it rejects any promise which may lead to wrong-doing, and refuses to give to give others any right of imposing remorse.

At the same time another sentiment has arisen, not less valuable, but hardier, more energetic, more human and more effective. On his own in his stronghold, the feudal chieftain, at the head of his band, could depend on nobody but himself, for a public force did not then exist. It was necessary that he should protect himself, and, indeed, over-protect himself. Whoever, in the anarchical and military society in which he lived, allowed the slightest encroachment, or left unpunished the slightest approach to insult, was regarded as weak or craven and at once became a prey; one had to be proud-spirited, if not, one risked death. This was not difficult either. Sole proprietor and nearly absolute sovereign, with neither equals or peers on his domain, here he was unique being, superior and incomparable to every one else.2208 On that subject revolved his long monologue during his hours of gloomy solitude, which soliloquy has lasted for nine centuries.2209 Thus in his own eyes, his person and all that depends on him are inviolable; rather than tolerate the slightest infringement on his prerogatives he will dare all and sacrifice all.2210 A sensitive pride (orgueil exalté) is the best of sentinels to protect a right; for, not only does it mount guard over the right to preserve it, but, again, and especially, for its own satisfaction; the imagination has conceived a personality appropriate for his rank, and this character the man imposes on himself as his role. Henceforth, he not only forces the respect of others, but he respects himself; he possesses the sentiment of honor, a generous self-esteem which makes him regard himself as noble and incapable of doing anything mean. In discriminating between his actions, he may err; fashion or vanity may sometimes lead him too far, or lead him astray, either on the path of recklessness or on that of puerility; his point of honor may be fixed in the wrong direction. But, in sum, and thanks to this being a fixed point, he will maintain himself erect even under an absolute monarchy, under a Philip II. in Spain, under a Louis XIV. in France, under a Frederick II. in Prussia. From the feudal baron or gentleman of the court to the modern gentleman, this tradition persists and descends from story to story down to lowest social substratum: to-day, every man of spirit, the bourgeois, the peasant, the workman, has his point of honor like the noble. He likewise, in spite of the social encroachments that gain on him, reserves to himself his private nook, a sort of moral stronghold wherein he preserves his faiths, his opinions, his affections, his obligations as son, husband and father; it is the sacred treasury of his innermost being. This stronghold belongs to him alone; no one, even in the name of the public, has a right to enter it; to surrender it would be cowardice, rather than give up its keys he would die in the breach;2211 when this militant sentiment of honor is enlisted on the side of conscience it becomes virtue itself.2212—Such are, in these days, (1870) the two central themes of our European morality.2213 Through the former the individual recognizes duties from which nothing can exempt him; through the latter, he claims rights of which nothing can deprive him: our civilization has vegetated from these two roots, and still vegetates. Consider the depth and the extent of the historical soil in which they penetrate, and you may judge of their vigor. Consider the height and unlimited growth of the trees which they nourish, and you may judge of their healthiness. Everywhere else, one or other having failed, in China, in the Roman Empire, in Islam, the sap has dried downward and the tree has become stunted, or has fallen.... It is the modern man, who is neither Chinese, nor antique, nor Moslem, nor Negro, nor savage, the man formed by Christian education and taking refuge in his conscience as in a sanctuary, the man formed by feudal education and entrenched behind his honor as in a fortress, whose sanctuary and stronghold the new social contract bids him surrender.

Now, in this democracy founded on the preponderance of numbers, into whose hands am I required to make this surrender?—Theoretically, to the community, that is to say, to a crowd in which an anonymous impulse is the substitute for individual judgment; in which action becomes impersonal because it is collective; in which nobody acknowledges responsibility; in which I am borne along like a grain of sand in a whirlwind; in which all sorts of outrages are condoned beforehand for reasons of state: practically, to the plurality of voices counted by heads, to a majority which, over-excited by the struggle for mastery, will abuse its victory and wrong the minority to which I may belong; to a provisional majority which, sooner or later, will be replaced by another, so that if I am to-day oppressor I am sure of being oppressed to-morrow; still more particularly, to six or seven hundred representatives, among who I am called upon to choose but one. To elect this unique mandatory I have but one vote among ten thousand; and in helping to elect him I am only the ten-thousandth; I do not even count for a ten-thousandth in electing the others. And it is these six or seven hundred strangers to me to who I give full power to decide for me—note the expression full power—which means unlimited power, not alone over my possessions and life, but, again, over my conscience, with all its powers combined; that is to say, with powers much more extensive than those I confer separately on ten persons in whom I place the most confidence—to my legal adviser who looks after my fortune, to the teacher of my children, to the physician who cares for my health, to the confessor who directs my conscience, to friends who are to serve as executors of my last will and testament, to seconds in a duel who decide on my life, on the was of my blood and who guard my honor. Without reference to the deplorable farce, so often played around the ballot-box, or to the forced and distorted elections which put a contrary interpretation on public sentiment, or to the official lies by which, at this very moment, a few fanatics and madmen, who represent nobody but themselves, assume to represent the nation,2214 measure what degree of confidence I may have, even after honest elections, in mandatories who are thus chosen! Frequently, I have voted for the defeated candidate; in which case I am represented by the other who I did not want for a representative. In voting for the elected candidate, I did it because I knew of no better one, and because his opponent seemed to me worse. I have only seen him one time out of four and then fleetingly, at odd moment; I scarcely knew more of him than the color of his coat, the tone of his voice, and the way he has of thumping his breast. All I know of him is through his "platform," vague and declamatory, through editorials, and through drawing-room, coffee-house, or street gossip. His title to my confidence is of the flimsiest and shallowest kind; there is nothing to substantiate to me his integrity or competency; he has no diploma, and no one to endorse him as has a private tutor; he has no guarantee from the society to which he belongs, like the physician, the priest or the lawyer. With references as poor as these I should hesitate to recruit him even as a domestic. And all the more because the class from which I am obliged to take him is almost always that of politicians, a suspicious class, especially in countries in which universal suffrage prevails. This class is not recruited among the most independent, the ablest, and the most honest, but among voluble, scheming men, zealous charlatans, who for want of perseverance, having failed in private careers, in situations where one is watched too closely and too nicely weighed in the balance, have selected roles in which the want of scrupulousness and discretion is a force instead of a weakness; to their indelicacy and impudence the doors of a public career stand wide open.—Such is the august personage into whose hands, according to the theory, I am called upon to surrender my will, my will in full; certainly, if self-renunciation were necessary, I should risk less in giving myself up to a king or to an aristocracy, even hereditary; for then would my representatives be at least recommended by their evident rank and their probable competency.—Democracy, in its nature and composition, is a system in which the individual awards to his representatives the least trust and deference; hence, it is the system in which he should entrust them with the least power. Conscience and honor everywhere enjoin a man to retain for himself some portion of his independence; but nowhere is there so little be ceded. If a modern constitution ought to clearly define and limit the domain of the State, it is in respect of contemporary democracy that it ought to be the most restrictive.

III. Origin and nature of the modern State.

Origin and nature of the modern State.—Its functions,
rights and limits.

Let us try to define these limits.—After the turmoil of invasions and conquest, at the height of social disintegration, amidst the combats daily occurring between private parties, there arose in every European community a public force, which force, lasting for centuries, still persists to our day. How it was organized, through what early stages of violence it passed, through what accidents and struggles, and into whose hands it is now entrusted, whether temporarily or forever, whatever the laws of its transmission, whether by inheritance or election, is of secondary importance; the main thing is its functions and their mode of operation. It is essentially a mighty sword, drawn from its scabbard and uplifted over the smaller blades around it, with which private individuals once cut each others' throats. Menaced by it, the smaller blades repose in their scabbards; they have become inert, useless, and, finally rusty; with few exceptions, everybody save malefactors, has now lost both the habit and the desire to use them, so that, henceforth, in this pacified society, the public sword is so formidable that all private resistance vanishes the moment it flashes.—This sword is forged out of two interests: it was necessary to have one of its magnitude, first, against similar blades brandished by other communities on the frontier, and next, against the smaller blades which bad passions are always sharpening in the interior. People demanded protection against outside enemies and inside ruffians and murderers, and, slowly and painfully, after much groping and much re-tempering, the agreement between hereditary forces has fashioned the sole arm which is capable of protecting lives and property with any degree of success.—So long as it does no more I am indebted to the State which holds the hilt: it gives me a security which, without it, I could not have enjoyed. In return for this security I owe it, for my quota, the means for keeping this weapon in good condition: he who enjoys a service is under an obligation to pay for it. Accordingly, there is between the State and myself, if not an express contract, at least a tacit understanding equivalent to that which binds a child to its parent, a believer to his church, and, on both sides, this mutual understanding is clear and precise. The state engages to look after my security within and without; I engage to furnish the means for so doing, which means consist of my respect and gratitude, my zeal as a citizen, my services as a conscript, my contributions as a tax-payer, in short, whatever is necessary for the maintenance of an army, a navy, a diplomatic organization, civil and criminal courts, a militia and police, central and local administrations, in short, a harmonious set of organs of which my obedience and loyalty constitute the food, the substance and the blood. This loyalty and obedience, whatever I am, whether rich or poor, Catholic, Protestant, Jew or free-thinker, royalist or republican, individualist or socialist, upon my honor and in my conscience I owe. This because I have received the equivalent; I am delighted that I am not vanquished, assassinated, or robbed. I reimburse the State, exactly but not more that which it has spent on equipment and personnel for keeping down brutal cupidity, greedy appetites, deadly fanaticism, the entire howling pack of passions and desires of which, sooner or later, I might become the prey, were it not constantly to extend over me its vigilant protection. When it demands its outlay of me it is not my property which it takes away, but its own property, which it collects and, in this light, it may legitimately force me to pay.—On condition, however, that it does not exact more than my liabilities, and this it does when it oversteps its original engagements;

2. when it constitutes itself sectarian, moralist, philanthropist, or pedagogue;

3. when it strives to propagate within its borders, or outside of them, any religious or philosophic dogma, or any special political or social system.

For then, it adds a new article to the primitive pact, for which article there is not the same unanimous and assured assent that existed for the pact. We are all willing to be secured against violence and fraud; outside of this, and on almost any other point, there are divergent wills. I have my own religion, my own opinions, my habits, my customs, my peculiar views of life and way of regarding the universe; now, this is just what constitutes my personality, what honor and conscience forbid me to alienate, and which the State has promised me to protect. Consequently, when, through its additional article, it attempts to regulate these in a certain way, if that way is not my way, it fails to fulfill its primordial engagement and, instead of protecting me, it oppresses me. Even if it should have the support of a majority, even if all voters, less one, should agree to entrusting it with this supererogatory function, were there only one dissenter, he would be wronged, and in two ways.—

First of all, and in any event, the State, to fulfill its new tasks, exacts from him an extra amount of subsidy and service; for, every supplementary work brings along with it supplementary expenses; the budget is overburdened when the State takes upon itself the procuring of work for laborers or employment for artists, the maintenance of any particular industrial or commercial enterprise, the giving of alms, and the furnishing of education. To an expenditure of money add an expenditure of lives, should it enter upon a war of generosity or of propaganda. Now, to all these expenditures that it does not approve of, the minority contributes as well as the majority which does approve of them; so much the worse for the conscript and the tax-payer if they belong to the dissatisfied group. Like it or not, the collector puts his hand in the tax-payer's pocket, and the sergeant lays his hand on the conscript's collar.—

In the second place, and in many circumstances, not only does the State unjustly take more than its due, but it uses the money it has extorted from me to apply unjustly new constraints against me. Such is the case,

For then, to enforce its commands and prohibitions, it enacts light or serious penalties against the recalcitrant, all the way from political or civil incapacity to fines, imprisonment, exile and the guillotine. In other words, the money I do not owe it, and of which it robs me, pays for the persecution which it inflicts upon me; I am reduced to paying out of my own purse the wages of my inquisitors, my jailer and my executioner. A more glaring oppression could not be imagined!—Let us watch out for the encroachments of the State and not allow it to become anything more than a watch-dog. Whilst the teeth and nails of other guests in the household have been losing their sharpness, its fangs have become formidable; it is now colossal and it alone still keeps up the practice of fighting. Let us supply it with nourishment against wolves; but never let it touch peaceable folks around the table. Appetite grows by eating; it would soon become a wolf itself, and the most ravenous wolf inside the fold. The important thing is to keep a chain around its neck and confine it within its own enclosure.