Undoubtedly, in as far as he is a being provided with material organs, or, to speak plainly, in as far as he is an animal, the law of limitation, in the form of destruction, applies to him. It is impossible that the numbers of men can exceed their means of subsistence; for to assert that more men existed than had the means of existing, would imply a contradiction. If, then, his reason and foresight are lulled asleep, he becomes a vegetable, he becomes a brute. In that case, he will inevitably multiply in virtue of the great physiological law which governs all organized nature; and, in that case, it is equally inevitable that he should perish in virtue of that law of limitation the action of which he has ignored. [p410]

But if he exercise foresight, this second law comes within the sphere of his will. He modifies and directs it. It is, in fact, no longer the same law. It is no longer a blind, but an intelligent force; it is no longer a mere natural, it has become a social law. Man is the centre in which these two principles, matter and intelligence, meet, unite, and are blended; he belongs exclusively neither to the one nor to the other. As regards the human race, the law of limitation is manifested in both its aspects, and maintains population at the necessary level by the double action of foresight and destruction.

These two actions are not of uniform intensity. On the contrary, the one is enlarged in proportion as the other is restrained. The thing to be accomplished, the point to be reached is limitation; and it is so more or less by means of repression, or by means of prevention, according as man is brutish or spiritual, according as he is more allied to matter or to mind, according as he has in him more of vegetative or of moral life. The law may be external to him, or internal, but it must exist somewhere.

We do not form a just idea of the vast domain of foresight, which the translator of Malthus has much circumscribed, by giving currency to that vague and inadequate expression, moral restraint [contrainte morale], which he has still farther limited by the definition he has given of it, namely, “The virtue which consists in not marrying, when one has not the means of maintaining a family, and yet living in chastity.” The obstacles which intelligent human society opposes to possible multiplication take many other forms besides that of moral restraint thus defined. What means, for example, the pure and holy ignorance of early life, the only ignorance which it is criminal to dissipate, which every one respects, and over which the timid mother watches as over hidden treasure? What means the modesty which succeeds that ignorance, that mysterious defence of the young female, which intimidates whilst it enchants her lover, and prolongs, while it embellishes, the innocent season of courtship? The veil which is thus interposed at first between ignorance and truth, and then between truth and happiness, is a marvellous thing, and in aught save this would be absurd. What means that power of opinion which imposes such severe laws on the relations of the sexes, stigmatizes the slightest transgression of those laws, and visits it not only on the erring feebleness which succumbs, but, from generation to generation, on the unhappy offspring? What mean that sensitive honour, that rigid reserve, so generally admired even by those who have cast it off, those institutions, those [p411] restraints of etiquette, those precautions of all sorts—if they are not the action of that law of limitation manifested in an intelligent, moral, and preventive shape—in a shape, consequently, which is peculiar to man?

Let these barriers be once overturned—let mankind, in what regards the sexes, be no longer concerned either with etiquette or with fortune, or with the future, or with opinion, or with manners—let men lower themselves to the rank of vegetables or animals,—can we doubt that for the former, as for the latter, the power of multiplication would act with a force to necessitate the instant intervention of the law of limitation, manifested under such circumstances in a physical, brutal, and repressive shape; that is to say, by the action of indigence, disease, and death?

It is impossible to deny that, but for foresight and moral considerations, marriage would, in most cases, be contracted at an early age, or immediately after puberty. If we fix this age at sixteen, and if the registers of a given country show that marriages on an average, do not take place before four-and-twenty, we have then eight years deducted by the law of limitation, in its moral and preventive form, from the action of the law of multiplication; and if we add to this figure the necessary allowance for those who never marry, we shall be convinced that the Creator has not degraded man to the level of the beasts that perish, but, on the contrary, has given him the power to transform the repressive into the preventive limitation.

It is singular enough that the spiritualist school and the materialist school should have, as it were, changed sides on this great question: the former fulminating against foresight, and endeavouring to set up the principle of animal nature; the latter exalting the moral part of man, and enforcing the dominion of reason over passion and appetite.

The truth is, the subject is not rightly understood. Let a father consult the most orthodox clergyman he can find as to the management of his family, the counsels he will receive are just those which science has exalted into principles, and which, as such, the clergyman might probably repudiate. “Keep your daughter in strict seclusion,” the old minister will say; “conceal from her as much as you can the seductions of the world; cultivate, as you would a precious flower, that holy ignorance, that heavenly modesty, which are at once her charm and her defence. Wait until an eligible match presents itself; and labour in the meantime to secure her an adequate fortune. Consider that a poor and improvident marriage brings along with it much suffering and many dangers. Recall [p412] those old proverbs which embody the wisdom of nations, and which assure us that comfortable circumstances constitute the surest guarantee of union and domestic peace. Why be in a hurry? Would you have your daughter at five-and-twenty burdened with a family which she cannot maintain and educate suitably to your rank in life? Would you have her husband, feeling the inadequacy of his income to support his family, fall into affliction and despair, and finally, perhaps, betake himself to riot and debauchery? The subject which now occupies you is the most important which can come under your consideration. Weigh it well and maturely; and avoid precipitation,” etc.

Suppose that the father, borrowing the language of M. de Lamennais, should reply: “In the beginning God addressed to all men the command to increase and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it. And yet you would persuade a young woman to live single, renounce family ties, and give up and abandon the chaste happiness of married life, and the holy joys of maternity; and all this for no better reason than a sordid fear of poverty.” Think you the old clergyman would have no reply to this?

God, he might say, has not commanded man to increase and multiply without discretion and without prudence; to act with as little regard to the future as the inferior animals. He has not indued man with reason, in order that he may cease to use it in the most solemn and important circumstances. He has commanded man, no doubt, to increase, but in order to increase he must live, and in order to live he must have the means of living. In the command to increase, therefore, there is implied another command, namely, to prepare for his offspring the means of subsistence. Religion has not placed celibacy in the catalogue of crimes. So far from that, she has ranked it as a virtue, which she honours and sanctifies. We must not think that we violate the commandment of God when we are preparing to fulfil it with prudence, and with a view to the future good, happiness, and dignity of our family.

Now this reasoning, or reasoning of a similar kind, which we hear repeated every day, and which regulates the conduct of every moral and enlightened family, what is it but the application of a general doctrine to particular cases? Or rather, what is that doctrine, but the generalization of reasoning which applies to every particular case? The spiritualist who repudiates, on principle, the intervention of preventive limitation, is like the natural philosopher who should say to us, “Act in every case as if gravity existed, but don’t admit gravitation in theory.” [p413]

In our observations hitherto we have followed the theory of Malthus; but there is one attribute of humanity to which it seems to me that most of our authors have not assigned that importance which it merits, and which plays an important part in the phenomena relative to population, resolves many of the problems to which this great question has given rise, and gives birth in the mind of the philanthropist to a confidence and serenity which false science had banished; this attribute, which is comprised, indeed, in the notions of reason and foresight, is man’s perfectibility. Man is perfectible; he is susceptible of amelioration and of deterioration; and if, in a strict sense, he can remain stationary, he can also mount and descend without limit the endless ladder of civilisation. This holds true not only of individuals, but of families, nations, and races.

It is from not having taken into account all the power of this progressive principle, that Malthus has landed us in those discouraging consequences which have rendered his theory generally repulsive.

For, regarding the preventive check, in a somewhat ascetic and not very attractive light, he could hardly attribute much force to it. Hence he concludes that it is the repressive check which generally operates; in other words, vice, poverty, war, crime, etc.

This, as I think, is an error; and we are about to see that the limitative force presents itself not only in the shape of an effort of chastity, an act of self-control, but also, and above all, as a condition of happiness, an instructive movement which prevents men from degrading themselves and their families.

Population, it has been said, tends to keep on a level with the means of subsistence. I should say that, for this expression means of subsistence, formerly in universal use, J. B. Say has substituted another which is much more correct, namely, means of existence. At first sight it would seem that subsistence alone enters into the question, but it is not so. Man does not live by bread alone, and a reference to facts shows us clearly that population is arrested, or retarded, when the aggregate of all the means of existence, including clothing, lodging, and other things which climate or even habit renders necessary, come to be awanting.

We should say, then, that population tends to keep on a level with the means of existence.

But do these means constitute something which is fixed, absolute, and uniform? Certainly not. In proportion as civilisation advances, the range of man’s wants is enlarged, having regard even to simple subsistence. Regarded as a perfectible being the means of [p414] existence, among which we comprehend the satisfaction of moral and intellectual, as well as physical wants, admit of as many degrees as there are degrees in civilisation itself, in other words, of infinite degrees. Undoubtedly, there is an inferior limit—to appease hunger, to shelter oneself from cold to some extent, is one condition of life, and this limit we may perceive among American savages or European paupers. But a superior limit I know not—in fact, there is none. Natural wants satisfied, others spring up, which are factitious at first, if you will, but which habit renders natural in their turn, and, after these, others still, and so on without assignable limit.

At each step, then, which man takes on the road of civilisation, his wants embrace a wider and more extended circle, and the means of existence, the point where the laws of multiplication and limitation meet, is removed and elevated. For although man is susceptible of deterioration as well as of improvement, he aspires after the one and shuns the other. His efforts all tend to maintain the rank he has gained, and to rise still higher; and habit, which has been so well called a second nature, performs the part of the valves of our arterial system, by checking every retrograde tendency. It is very natural, then, that the intelligent and moral control which man exercises over his own multiplication should partake of the nature of these efforts to rise, and be combined and mixed up with his progressive tendencies.

The consequences which result from this organization are numerous. We shall confine ourselves to pointing out a few of them. First of all, we admit with the Economists that population and the means of existence come to an equilibrium; but the last of these terms being infinitely flexible, and varying with civilisation and habits, we cannot admit that in comparing nations and classes, population is proportionate to production, as J. B. Say90 affirms, or to income, as is represented by M. de Sismondi. And then every advancing step of culture implies greater foresight, and the moral and preventive check comes to neutralize the repressive one more and more as civilisation is realized in society at large, or in one or other of its sections. Hence it follows that each step of progress tends to a new step in the same direction, vires acquirit eundo; seeing that better circumstances and greater foresight engender one another in indefinite succession. For the same reason, when men, from whatever cause, follow a retrograde course, narrower circumstances and want of foresight become reciprocally cause and effect, [p415] and retrogression and decay would have no limit had society not been indued with that curative force, that vis medicatrix, which Providence has vouchsafed to all organized bodies. Observe, too, that at each step of this retrograde movement, the action of the law of limitation in its destructive form becomes at once more painful and more apparent. At first, it is only deterioration and sinking in the social scale; then it is poverty, famine, disorder, war, death;—painful but infallible teachers.

I should like to pause here to show how well this theory explains facts, and how well facts in their turn justify the theory. When, in the case of a nation or a class, the means of existence have descended to that inferior limit at which they come to be confounded with the means of pure subsistence, as in China, in Ireland, and among the lowest and poorest class of every country, the smallest oscillations of population, or of the supply of food, are tantamount to death. In this respect facts confirm the scientific induction. Famine has not for a long period visited Europe, and we attribute the absence of this scourge to a multitude of causes. The most general of these causes undoubtedly is, that the means of existence, by reason of social progress, have risen far above the means of mere subsistence. When years of scarcity come, we are thus enabled to give up many enjoyments before encroaching on the first necessaries of life. Not so in such countries as China or Ireland, where men have nothing in the world but a little rice or a few potatoes. When the rice or potato crops fail, they have absolutely no means of purchasing other food.

A third consequence of human perfectibility we must notice here, because it tends to modify the doctrine of Malthus in its most afflicting phase. The formula which we have attributed to that economist is, that “Population tends to keep on a level with the means of subsistence.” We should say that he has gone much farther, and that his true formula, that from which he has drawn his most distressing conclusions, is this: “Population tends to go beyond the means of subsistence.” Had Malthus by this simply meant to say that in the human race the power of propagating life is superior to the power of sustaining life, there could have been no controversy. But this is not what he means. He affirms that, taking into account absolute fecundity on the one hand, and, on the other, limitation, as manifested in the two forms, repressive and preventive, the result is still the tendency of population to go beyond the means of subsistence.91 This holds true of every species [p416] of living creatures, except the human race. Man is an intelligent being, and can make an unlimited use of the preventive check. He is perfectible, seeks after improvement, and shuns deterioration. Progress is his normal state, and progress presupposes a more and more enlightened exercise of the preventive check; and then the means of existence increase more rapidly than population. This effect not only flows from the principle of perfectibility, but is confirmed by fact, since on all sides the range of satisfactions is extended. Were it true, as Malthus asserts, that along with every addition to the means of subsistence there is a still greater addition to the population, the misery of our race would be fatally—inevitably—progressive; society would begin with civilisation and end with barbarism. The contrary is the fact; and we must conclude that the law of limitation has had sufficient force to restrain the multiplication of men, and keep it below the multiplication of products.

It may be seen from what has been said how vast and how difficult the question of population is. We may regret, no doubt, that a precise formula has not been given to it, and we regret still more that we find ourselves unable to propose one. But we may see how repugnant the narrow limits of a dogmatic axiom are to such a subject. It is a vain endeavour to try to express, in the form of an inflexible equation, the relations of data so essentially variable. Allow me to recapitulate these data.

(1.) The law of increase or multiplication.—The absolute, virtual, physiological power which resides in the human race to propagate life, apart from the consideration of the difficulty of sustaining life. This first datum, the only one susceptible of anything like precision, is the only one in which precision is superfluous; for what matters it where the superior limit of multiplication is placed in the hypothesis, if it can never be attained in the actual condition of man, which is to sustain life with the sweat of his brow.

(2.) There is a limit, then, to the law of multiplication. What is that limit? The means of existence, it is replied. But what are the means of existence? The aggregate of satisfactions or enjoyments, which cannot be exactly defined. They vary with times, places, races, ranks, manners, opinions, habits, and consequently the limit we are in search of is shifted or displaced.

(3.) Last of all, it may be asked, in what consists the force which [p417] restrains population within this limit, which is itself movable? As far as man is concerned, it is twofold: a force which represses, and a force which prevents. Now, the action of the first, incapable as it is in itself of being accurately measured, is, moreover, entirely subordinated to the action of the second, which depends on the degree of civilisation, on the power and prevalence of habits, on the tendency of political and religious institutions, on the organization of property, of labour, of family relations, etc. Between the law of multiplication and the law of limitation, then, it is impossible to establish an equation from which could be deduced the actual population. In algebra a and b represent determinate quantities which are numbered and measured, and of which we can fix the proportions; but means of existence, moral government of the will, inevitable action of mortality, these are the three data of the problem of population, data which are flexible in themselves, and which partake somewhat, moreover, of the astonishing flexibility of the subject to which they have reference—man—that being whom Montaigne describes as so fluctuating and so variable. It is not surprising, then, that in desiring to give to this equation a precision of which it is incapable, economists have rather divided men’s minds than brought them into unison, and this because there is not one of the terms of their formulas which is not open to a multitude of objections, both in reasoning and in fact.

We shall now proceed to say something on the practical application of the doctrine of population, for application not only elucidates doctrine, but is the true fruit of the tree of science.

Labour, as we have said, is the only subject of exchange. In order to obtain utility (unless the utility which nature gives us gratuitously), we must be at the pains to produce it, or remunerate another who takes the pains for us. Man creates, and can create, nothing; he arranges, disposes, or transports things for a useful purpose; he cannot do this without exertion, and the result of this exertion becomes his property. If he gives away his property, he has right to recompense, in the shape of a service which is judged equivalent after free discussion. Such is the principle of value, of remuneration, of exchange—a principle which is not the less true because it is simple. Into what we denominate products, there enter divers degrees of natural utility, and divers degrees of artificial utility; the latter, which alone implies labour, is alone the subject of human bargains and transactions; and without questioning in the least the celebrated and suggestive formula of J. B. Say, that “products are exchanged for products,” I esteem it more [p418] rigorously scientific to say that labour is exchanged for labour, or, better still, that services are exchanged for services.

It must not be inferred from this, however, that quantities of labour are exchanged for each other in the ratio of their duration or of their intensity; or that the man who transfers to another an hour’s labour, or even the man who labours with the greatest intensity, who, as it were, pushes the needle of the dynamometer up to 100 degrees, can always stipulate for an equal effort in return. Duration and intensity are, no doubt, two of the elements taken into account in the appreciation of labour; but they are not the only ones; for we must consider, besides, that labour may be more or less repugnant, dangerous, difficult, intelligent, that it may imply more or less foresight, and may even be more or less successful. When transactions are free, and property completely secured, each has entire control over his own labour, and, consequently, need only dispose of it at his own price. The limit to his compliance is the point at which it is more advantageous to reserve his labour than to exchange it; the limit to his exactions is the point at which the other party to the bargain finds it his interest not to make the exchange.

There are in Society as many strata, if I may use the expression, as there are degrees in the scale of remuneration. The worst remunerated of all labour is that which approximates most nearly to brute force. This is an arrangement of Providence which is just, useful, and inevitable. The mere manual labourer soon reaches that limit to his exactions of which I have just spoken, for everybody can perform this kind of muscular automatic labour; and the limit to his compliance is also soon reached, for he is incapable of the intelligent labour which his own wants require. Duration and intensity, which are attributes of matter, are the sole elements of the remuneration of this species of unskilled material labour; and that is the reason why it is usually paid by the day. All industrial progress consists in this, namely, in replacing in each product a certain amount of artificial, and, consequently, onerous utility, by the same amount of natural, and, therefore, gratuitous utility. Hence it follows that if there be one class of society more interested than another in free competition, it is the labouring class. What would be the fate of these men if natural agents, and new processes and instruments of production, were not brought continually, by means of competition, to confer gratuitously, on all, the results of their co-operation? The mere day-labourer knows not how to make available in the production of the commodities he has occasion for, heat, gravitation, or elasticity; [p419] nor can he discover the processes, nor does he possess the instruments, by which these forces are rendered useful. When such discoveries are new, the labour of inventors, who are men of the highest intelligence, is well remunerated; in other words, that labour is the equivalent of a large amount of rude unskilled labour; or, again, to change the expression, his product is dear. But competition interposes, the product falls in price, the co-operation of natural agents is no longer profitable to the producer, but to the consumer, and the labour which has made them available approximates, as regards remuneration, to that labour which is estimated by mere duration. Thus, the common fund of gratuitous wealth goes on constantly increasing. Products of every kind tend, day after day, to become again invested,—and they are in reality invested,—with that condition of gratuitousness which characterizes our supply of air, and light, and water. The general level of humanity thus continues to rise, and to equalize itself; and, apart from the operation of the law of population, the lowest class of society is that whose amelioration is virtually the most rapid. We have said, apart from the operation of the law of population; and this brings us back to the subject we are now examining.

Figure to yourself a basin into which an orifice which is constantly enlarging admits a constantly increasing supply of water. If we look only to this circumstance, we conclude that the level of the water in the basin is continually rising. But if the sides of the basin are flexible, and capable of contracting and expanding, it is evident that the height of the water will depend on the manner in which this new circumstance is combined with the other. The level of the water will sink, however great may be the supply running into the basin, if the capacity of the basin itself is enlarged still more rapidly. It will rise, if the circle of the reservoir is enlarged only proportionally and very slowly, higher still if it remain fixed, and highest of all if it is narrowed or contracted.

This is a picture of the social class whose destinies we are now considering, and which constitutes, it must be allowed, the great mass of mankind. The water which comes into the basin through the elastic orifice represents their remuneration, or the objects fitted to supply their wants and to sustain life. The flexibility of the sides of the basin represents the movement of population. It is certain92 that the means of existence overtake our population in a constantly increasing progression, but then it is equally certain that their numbers may increase in a still superior progression. The life of this class, then, will be more or less happy, more or less [p420] comfortable, according as the law of limitation, in its moral, intelligent, and preventive form, shall circumscribe, to a greater or less extent, the absolute law of multiplication. There is a limit to the increase of the numbers of the working class. That limit is the point at which the progressive fund of remuneration becomes insufficient for their maintenance. But there is no limit to their possible amelioration, because of the two elements which constitute it, the one, wealth, is constantly increasing, and the other, population, is under their own control.

What we have just said with reference to the lowest social grade, the class of mere manual labourers, is applicable also to each of the superior grades, when classified in relation to one another, in an inverse proportion, so to speak, to the rudeness and materiality of their occupations. Taking each class simply by itself, all are subjected to the same general laws. In all there is a struggle between the physiological power of multiplication, and the moral power of limitation. The only respect in which one class differs from another is with reference to the point where these two forces meet, the height to which the limit between the two laws may be raised by remuneration or be fixed by the habits of the labourers—this limit we have denominated the means of existence.

But if we consider the various classes, no longer each by itself, but in their reciprocal relations, I think we can discern the influence of two principles acting in an inverse sense, and this without doubt is the explanation of the actual condition of mankind. We have shown how all the economic phenomena, and especially the law of competition, tend to an equality of conditions. Theoretically this appears to us incontestable. Seeing that no natural advantage, no ingenious process, none of the instruments by which such processes are made available, can remain permanently with producers, as such; and seeing that the results of such natural advantages or discoveries, by an irresistible law of Providence, tend to become the common, gratuitous, and, consequently, equal, patrimony of all men, it is evident that the poorest class is the one which derives the greatest relative profit from this admirable arrangement of the laws of the social economy. Just as the poor man is as liberally treated as the rich man with reference to the air he breathes, in the same way he becomes equal to the rich man, as regards all that portion of the value of commodities which progress is constantly annihilating. Essentially, then, the human race has a very marked tendency towards equality. I do not speak of a tendency of aspiration, but a tendency of realization. And yet equality is not realized, or is realized so slowly, that in comparing two distant [p421] epochs we are scarcely sensible of the progress. Indeed we are so little sensible of it, that many able men deny it altogether, although in this they are certainly mistaken. Now, what is the cause which retards this fusion of classes on a common and progressive level?

In searching for the cause we need not, I think, look farther than the various degrees of foresight which each class exercises as regards the increase of population. The law of limitation, as has been already said, in as far as it is moral and preventive, we have under our own control. Man, as we have also said, is perfectible, and in proportion to his progress in improvement, he pays a more intelligent regard to this law. The superior classes, then, in proportion as they are more enlightened, are led to make greater exertions, and submit to greater sacrifices, in order to maintain their respective numbers on a level with the means of existence which their position in society demands.

Were we sufficiently far advanced in statistics, we should probably have this theoretical deduction converted into certainty, and have it proved by fact that marriages are less hasty and precocious among the higher than among the lower classes of society. If it be so, it is easy to see that in the general market, to which all classes bring their respective services, and in which labour of every kind is the subject of exchange, unskilled labour will be supplied in greater abundance than skilled labour; and this explains the continuance of that inequality of conditions, which so many, and such powerful, causes of another kind tend constantly to efface.

The theory which we have now briefly explained leads us to the practical conclusion that the best forms of philanthropy, the best social institutions, are those which, while acting in accordance with the Providential plan, as revealed to us by the social harmonies—I mean the plan of progressive equality—shall cause to descend among all ranks of society, and especially the lowest ranks, knowledge, discretion, morality, and foresight.

I say institutions, because, in fact, foresight results as much from the necessities of position as from resolutions purely intellectual. There are certain organizations of property, or, I should rather say, of industry, which are more favourable than others to what economists call a knowledge of the market, and, consequently, to foresight. It seems certain, for example, that métayage is much more efficacious than fermage93 (the latter necessitating [p422] the employment of day labourers) in interposing a preventive obstacle to the exuberance of population among the lower classes. A family of métayers is in a much more likely situation than a family of day-labourers to experience the inconveniences of hasty marriages and improvident multiplication.

I have also used the expression, “forms of philanthropy.” In fact, almsgiving may effect a local and present good, but its influence must be limited even where it is not prejudicial to the happiness of the labouring classes; for it does not develop, but, on the contrary, may paralyze, that virtue which is most fitted to elevate the condition of the labourer, namely, foresight. To disseminate sound ideas, and, above all, to induce those habits which mark a certain degree of self-respect, is the greatest and most permanent good which we can confer upon the lower orders.

The means of existence, we cannot too often repeat, do not constitute a fixed quantity; they depend upon the state of manners, of opinion, and of habits. Whatever rank a man holds in the social scale, he has as much repugnance to descend from the position to which he has been accustomed as can be felt by men of an inferior grade. Perhaps there is even greater suffering in the mind of the aristocrat, the noble scions of whose house are lost among the bourgeoisie, than in that of the citizen whose sons become manual labourers, or in that of manual labourers whose children are reduced to pauperism. The habit, then, of enjoying a certain amount of material prosperity and a certain rank in life, is the strongest stimulant to the exercise of foresight; and if the working classes shall once raise themselves to the possession of a higher amount of enjoyment, and be unwilling again to descend in the social scale, then, in order to maintain themselves in that position, and preserve wages in keeping with their new habits, they must employ the infallible means of preventive limitation.

It is for this reason that I regard as one of the finest manifestations of philanthropy the resolution which appears to have been taken in England by many of the proprietors and manufacturers, to pull down cottages of mud and thatch, and substitute for them brick houses, neat, spacious, well lighted, well aired, and conveniently furnished. Were such a measure to become general, it [p423] would elevate the tone of the working classes. It would convert into real wants what are nowadays regarded as comparative luxuries; it would raise that limit which we have denominated the means of existence, and, by consequence, the standard of remuneration, from its present low rate. And why not? The lower orders in civilized countries are much above the lower orders among savages. They have raised themselves so far; and why should they not raise themselves still more?

We must not, however, deceive ourselves on this subject; progress can be but very slow, since to some extent it must be general. In certain parts of the world it might perhaps be realized rapidly if the people exercised no influence over each other; but this is not so. There is a great law of solidarity for the human race, in progress as well as in deterioration. If in England, for example, the condition of the working classes were sensibly improved, in consequence of a general rise of wages, French industry would have more chances of surpassing its rival, and by its advance would moderate the progressive movement manifested on the other side of the Channel. It would seem that, beyond certain limits, Providence has not designed that one people should rise above another. And thus, in the great aggregate of human society, as in its most minute details, we always find that admirable and inflexible forces tend to confer, in the long-run, on the masses, individual or collective advantages, and to bring back all temporary manifestations of superiority to a common level, which, like that of the ocean when the tide flows, is always equalizing itself and always advancing.

To conclude, perfectibility, which is the distinctive characteristic of man, being given, and the action of competition and the law of limitation being known, the fate of the human race, as regards its worldly destinies, may be thus summed up:—1st, Simultaneous elevation of all the social ranks, or of the general level of humanity; 2d, Indefinite approximation of conditions, and successive annihilation of the distances which separate classes, as far as consistent with absolute justice; 3d, Relative diminution of the numbers of the lowest and highest orders, and extension of intermediate classes. It may be said that these laws must lead to absolute equality. No more than the constant approximation of asymptotical lines can finally load to their junction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

XVII.
PRIVATE AND PUBLIC SERVICES.

Services are exchanged for services.

The equivalence of services results from voluntary exchange, and the free bargaining and discussion which precede it.

In other words, each service rendered to society is worth as much as any other service of which it constitutes the equivalent, provided supply and demand are in all respects perfectly free.

It is in vain to carp and refine upon it; it is impossible to conceive the idea of value without associating with it the idea of liberty.

When the equivalence of services is not impaired by violence, restriction, or fraud, we may pronounce that justice prevails.

I do not mean to say that the human race will then have reached the extreme limit of improvement, for liberty does not exclude the errors of individual appreciations—man is frequently the dupe of his judgments and passions, nor are his desires always arranged in the most rational order. We have seen that the value of a service may be appreciated without there being any reasonable proportion between its value and its utility; and this arises from our giving certain desires precedence over others It is the progress of intelligence, of good sense, and of manners, which establishes this fair and just proportion by putting each service, if I may so express myself, in its right moral place. A frivolous object, a puerile show, an immoral pleasure, may have much value in one country, and may be despised or repudiated in another. The equivalence of services, then, is a different thing from a just appreciation of their utility. But still, as regards this, it is liberty and the sense of responsibility which correct and improve our tastes, our desires, our satisfactions, and our appreciations.

In all countries of the world, there exists one class of services, which, as regards the manner in which they are distributed and [p426] remunerated, accomplishes an evolution quite different from that of private or free services. I allude to public services.

When a want assumes a character so universal and so uniform that one can describe it as a public want, it may be convenient for those people who form part of the same agglomeration (be it district, province, or country) to provide for the satisfaction of that want by collective action, or a collective delegation of power. In that case, they name functionaries whose duty it is to render to the community, and distribute among them, the service in question, and whose remuneration they provide for by a contribution which is, at least in principle, proportionate to the means of each member of the society.

In reality, the primordial elements of the social economy are not necessarily impaired or set aside by this peculiar form of exchange,—above all, when the consent of all parties is assumed. It still resolves itself into a transmission of efforts, a transmission of services. These functionaries labour to satisfy the wants of the taxpayers, and the taxpayers labour to satisfy the wants of the functionaries. The relative value of their reciprocal services is determined by a method which we shall have afterwards to examine; but the essential principles of the exchange, speaking in the abstract at least, remain intact.

Those authors, then, are wrong, who, influenced by their dislike of unjust and oppressive taxes, regard as lost all values devoted to the public service.94 This unqualified condemnation will not bear examination. In so far as loss or gain is concerned, the public service, scientifically considered, differs in nothing from private service. Whether I protect my field myself, or pay a man for protecting it or pay the State for causing it to be protected, there is always a sacrifice with a corresponding benefit. In both ways, no doubt, I lose this amount of labour, but I gain security. It is not a loss, but an exchange.

Will it be said that I give a material object, and receive in return a thing without body or form? This is just to fall back upon the erroneous theory of value. As long as we attribute value to matter, not to services, we must regard every public service as being without value, or lost. Afterwards, when we begin to shift [p427] about between what is true and what is false, on the subject of value, we shift about between what is true and what is false on the subject of taxation.

If taxation is not necessarily a loss, still less is it necessarily spoliation.95 No doubt, in modern societies, spoliation by means of taxation is perpetrated on a great scale. We shall afterwards see that it is one of the most active of those causes which disturb the equivalence of services and the harmony of interests. But the best way of combating and eradicating the abuses of taxation, is to steer clear of that exaggeration which would represent all taxation as being essentially, and in itself, spoliation.

Thus, considered in themselves, in their own nature, in their normal state, and apart from abuses, public services, like private services, resolve themselves into pure exchanges.

But the modes in which, in these two forms of exchange, services are compared, bargained for, and transmitted, the modes in which they are brought to an equilibrium or equivalence, and in which their relative value is manifested, are so different in themselves, and in their effects, that the reader will bear with me if I dwell at some length on this difficult subject, one of the most interesting which can be presented to the consideration of the economist and the statesman. It is here, in truth, that we have the connecting link between politics and social economy. It is here that we discover the origin and tendency of the most fatal error which has ever infected the science, the error of confounding society with Government; society being the grand whole, which includes both private and public services, and Government, the fraction which includes public services alone.

Unfortunately, when, by following the teaching of Rousseau, and his apt scholars the French republicans, we employ indifferently the words Government and Society, we pronounce, implicitly, beforehand, and without examination, that the State can and ought to absorb private exertion altogether, along with individual liberty and responsibility. We conclude that all private services ought to be converted into public services. We conclude that the social order is a conventional and contingent fact which owes its existence to the law. We pronounce the lawgiver [p428] omnipotent, and mankind powerless, as having forfeited their rights.

In fact, we see public services, or governmental action, extended or restrained according to circumstances of time and place, from the Communism of Sparta, or the Missions of Paraguay, to the individualism of the United States, and the centralization of France.

The question which presents itself on the threshold of Politics, as a science, then, is this:—

What are the services which should remain in the domain of private activity? And what are the services which should fall within that of public or collective activity?

The problem, then, is this:—

In the great circle called society, to trace accurately the inscribed circle called government.

It is evident that this problem belongs to Political Economy, since it implies the comparative examination of two very different forms of exchange.

This problem once solved, there remains another, namely, what is the best organization of public services? This last belongs to pure Politics, and we shall not enter upon it.

Let us examine, then, first of all, the essential differences by which public and private services are characterized, which is a preliminary inquiry necessary to enable us to fix accurately the line which should divide them.

The whole of the preceding portion of this work has been devoted to exhibit the evolution of private services. We have had a glimpse of it in this formal or tacit proposition: Do this for me, and I shall do that for you; which implies, whether as regards what we give away or what we receive, a double and reciprocal consent. We can form no correct notion, then, of barter, exchange, appreciation, value, apart from the consideration of liberty, nor of liberty apart from responsibility. In having recourse to exchange, each party consults, on his own responsibility, his wants, his tastes, his desires, his faculties, his affections, his convenience, his entire situation; and we have nowhere denied that to the exercise of free will is attached the possibility of error, the possibility of a foolish and irrational choice. The error belongs not to exchange, but to human imperfection; and the remedy can only reside in responsibility itself (that is to say, in liberty), seeing that liberty is the source of all experience. To establish restraint in the business of exchange, to destroy free will under the pretext that man may err, would be no improvement, unless it were [p429] first proved to us that the agent who organizes the restraint does not himself participate in the imperfection of our nature, and is subject neither to the passions nor to the errors of other men. On the contrary, is it not evident that this would be, not only to displace responsibility, but to annihilate it, at least as regards all that is valuable in its remunerative, retributive, experimental, corrective, and, consequently, progressive character? Again, we have seen that free exchanges, or services voluntarily rendered and received, are, under the action of competition, continually extending the co-operation of gratuitous forces, as compared with that of onerous forces, the domain of community as compared with the domain of property, and thus we have come to recognise in liberty that power which promotes progressive equality, or social harmony.

We have no need to describe the form which exchanges assume when thus left free. Restraint takes a thousand shapes; liberty has but one. I repeat once more, that the free and voluntary transmission of private services is defined by the simple words: “Give me this, and I will give you that; do this for me, and I shall do that for you”—Do ut des; facio ut facias.96

The same thing does not hold with reference to the exchange of public services. Here constraint is to a certain extent inevitable, and we encounter an infinite number of different forms, from absolute despotism, down to the universal and direct intervention of all the citizens.

Although this ideal order of things has never been anywhere actually realized, and perhaps may never be so, except in a very elusory shape, we may nevertheless assume its existence. What is the object of our inquiry? We are seeking to discover the modifications which services undergo when they enter the public domain; and for the purposes of science we must discard the consideration of individual and local acts of violence, and regard the public service simply as such, and as existing under the most legitimate circumstances. In a word, we must investigate the transformation which it undergoes from the single circumstance of its having become public, apart from the causes which have made it so, and of the abuses which may mingle with the means of execution.

The process is this:—

The citizens name mandatories. These mandatories meet, and decide, by a majority, that a certain class of wants—the want of education, for example—can no longer be supplied by free exertions [p430] and free exchanges made by the citizens themselves, and they decree that education shall be provided by functionaries specially delegated and intrusted with the work of instruction. So much for the service rendered. As regards the services received, as the State has secured the time and abilities of these new functionaries for the benefit of the citizens, it must also take from the citizens a part of their means for the benefit of the functionaries. This is effected by an assessment or general contribution.

In all civilized communities such contributions are paid in money. It is scarcely necessary to say that behind this money there is labour. In reality, it is a payment in kind. In reality, the citizens work for the functionaries, and the functionaries work for the citizens, just as, in free and private transactions, the citizens work for one another.

We set down this observation here, in order to elude a very widely-spread sophism which springs from the consideration of money. We hear it frequently said that money received by public functionaries falls back like refreshing rain on the citizens. And we are led to infer that this rain is a second benefit added to that which results from the service. Reasoning in this way, people have come to justify the existence of functions the most parasitical. They do not consider that if this service had remained in the domain of private activity, the money (which, in place of going to the treasury, and from the treasury to the functionaries) would have gone directly to men who voluntarily undertook the duty, and in the same way would have fallen back like rain upon the masses. This sophism will not stand examination, when we extend our regards beyond the mere circulation of money, and see that at the bottom it is labour exchanged for labour, services for services. In public life, it may happen that functionaries receive services without rendering any in return; and then there is a loss entailed on the taxpayer, however we may delude ourselves with reference to this circulation of specie.

Be this as it may, let us resume our analysis:—

We have here, then, an exchange under a new form. Exchange includes two terms—to give, and to receive. Let us inquire then how this transaction, which from being private has become public, is affected in the double point of view of services rendered and services received.

In the first place, it is proved beyond doubt that public services always, or nearly always, extinguish, in law or in fact, private services of the same nature. The State, when it undertakes a service, generally takes care to decree that no other body shall render it, [p431] more especially if one of its objects be to derive a revenue from it. Witness the cases of postage, tobacco, gunpowder, etc. Did the State not take this precaution, the result would be the same. What manufacturer would engage to render to the public a service which the State renders for nothing? We scarcely meet with any one who seeks a livelihood by teaching law or medicine privately, by the formation of high-roads, by rearing thoroughbred horses, by founding schools of arts and design, by clearing lands in Algeria, by establishing museums, etc. And the reason is this, that the public will not go to purchase what the State gives it for nothing. As M. de Cormenin has said, the trade of the shoemakers would soon be put an end to, even were it declared inviolable by the first article of the constitution, if Government took it into its head to furnish shoes to everybody gratuitously.

In truth, in the word gratuitous, as applied to public services, there lurks the grossest and most puerile of sophisms.

For my own part, I wonder at the extreme gullibility of the public in allowing itself to be taken in with this word. What! it is said, do you not wish gratuitous education? gratuitous studs?

Certainly I wish them, and I should also wish to have gratuitous food and gratuitous lodging—if it were possible.

But there is nothing really gratuitous but what costs nothing to any one. Now public services cost something to everybody; and it is just because everybody has paid for them beforehand that they no longer cost anything to the man who receives the benefit. The man who has paid his share of the general contribution will take good care not to pay for the service a second time by calling in the aid of private industry.

Public service is thus substituted for private service. It adds nothing either to the general labour of the nation or to its wealth. It accomplishes by means of functionaries, what would have been effected by private industry. The question, then, is, Which of these arrangements entails the greatest amount of inconvenience? and the solution of that question is the object of the present chapter.

The moment the satisfaction of a want becomes the subject of a public service, it is withdrawn, to a great extent, from the domain of individual liberty and responsibility. The individual is no longer free to procure that satisfaction in his own way, to purchase what he chooses and when he chooses, consulting only his own situation and resources, his means, and his moral appreciations; nor can he any longer exercise his discretion in regard to the order in which he may judge it reasonable to provide for [p432] his various wants. Whether he will or not, his wants are now supplied by the public, and he obtains from society, not that measure of service which he judges useful, as he did in the case of private services, but the amount of service which the Government thinks it proper to furnish, whatever be its quantity and quality. Perhaps he is in want of bread to satisfy his hunger, and part of the bread of which he has such urgent need is withheld from him, in order to furnish him with education, or with theatrical entertainments, which he does not want. He ceases to exercise free control over the satisfaction of his own wants, and having no longer any feeling of responsibility, he no longer exerts his intelligence. Foresight has become as useless to him as experience. He is less his own master; he is deprived, to some extent, of free will, he is less progressive, he is less a man. Not only does he no longer judge for himself in a particular case; he has got out of the habit of judging for himself in any case. The moral torpor which thus gains upon him, gains, for the same reason, on all his fellow-citizens, and in this way we have seen whole nations abandon themselves to a fatal inaction.97

As long as a certain class of wants and of corresponding satisfactions remains in the domain of liberty, each, in so far as this class is concerned, lays down a rule for himself, which he can modify at pleasure. This would seem to be both natural and fair, seeing that no two men find themselves in exactly the same situation; nor is there any one man whose circumstances do not vary from day to day. In this way, all the human faculties remain in exercise, comparison, judgment, foresight. In this way, too, every good and judicious resolution brings its recompense and every error its chastisement; and experience, that rude [p433] substitute for foresight, so far at least fulfils its mission that society goes on improving.

But when the service becomes public, all individual rules of conduct and action disappear, and are mixed up and generalized in a written, coercive, and inflexible law, which is the same for all, which makes no allowance for particular situations, and strikes the noblest faculties of human nature with numbness and torpor.

If State intervention deprive us of all self-government with reference to the services we receive from the public, it deprives us in a still more marked degree of all control with reference to the services which we render in return. This counterpart, this supplementary element in the exchange, is likewise a deduction from our liberty, and is regulated by uniform inflexible rules, by a law passed beforehand, made operative by force, and of which we cannot get rid. In a word, as the services which the State renders us are imposed upon us, those which it demands in return are also imposed upon us, and in all languages take the name of imposts.

And here a multitude of theoretical difficulties and inconveniences present themselves; for practically the State surmounts all obstacles by means of an armed force, which is the necessary sequence of every law. But, to confine ourselves to the theory, the transformation of a private into a public service gives rise to these grave questions:—

Will the State under all circumstances demand from each citizen an amount of taxation equivalent to the services rendered? This were but fair; and this equivalence is exactly the result which we almost infallibly obtain from free and voluntary transactions, and the bargaining which precedes them. If the design of the State, then, is to realize this equivalence (which is only justice), it is not worth while taking this class of services out of the domain of private activity. But equivalence is never thought of, nor can it be. We do not stand higgling and chaffering with public functionaries. The law proceeds on general rules, and cannot make conditions applicable to each individual case. At the utmost, and when it is conceived in a spirit of justice, it aims at a sort of average equivalence, an approximate equivalence, between the two services exchanged. Two principles—namely, the proportionality and the progression of taxation—have appeared in many respects to carry this approximation to its utmost limit. But the slightest reflection will convince us that proportional taxation cannot, any more than progressive taxation, realize the exact equivalence of services exchanged. Public services, after having forcibly deprived the citizens of their liberty, as regards services [p434] both rendered and received, have, then, this farther fault of unsettling the value of these services.

Another, and not less grave, inconvenience is, that they destroy, or at least displace, responsibility. To man responsibility is all-important. It is his mover and teacher, his rewarder and avenger. Without it man is no longer a free agent, he is no longer perfectible, no longer a moral being, he learns nothing, he is nothing. He abandons himself to inaction, and becomes a mere unit of the herd.

If it be a misfortune that the sense of responsibility should be extinguished in the individual, it is no less a misfortune that it should be developed in the State in an exaggerated form. Man, however degraded, has always as much light left him as to see the quarter from whence good or evil comes to him; and when the State assumes the charge of all, it becomes responsible for all. Under the dominion of such artificial arrangements, a people which suffers can only lay the blame on its Government, and its only remedy, its only policy, is to overturn it. Hence an inevitable succession of revolutions. I say inevitable, for under such a régime the people must necessarily suffer; and the reason of it is that public services, besides disturbing and unsettling values, which is injustice, lead also to the destruction of wealth, which is ruin; ruin and injustice, suffering and discontent—four fatal causes of effervescence in society, which, combined with the displacement of responsibility, cannot fail to bring about political convulsions like those from which we have been suffering for more than half a century.

Without desiring to indulge in digressions, I cannot help remarking, that when things are organized in this fashion, when Government has assumed gigantic proportions by the successive transformation of free and voluntary transactions into public services, it is to be feared that revolutions, which constitute in themselves so great an evil, have not even the advantage of being a remedy, unless the remedy is forced upon us by experience. The displacement of responsibility has perverted public opinion. The people, accustomed to expect everything from the State, never accuse Government of doing too much, but of not doing enough. They overturn it, and replace it by another, to which they do not say, “Do less,” but “Do more;” so that, having fallen into one ditch, they set to work to dig another.

At length the moment comes when their eyes are opened, and it is felt to be necessary to curtail the prerogatives and responsibilities of Government. Here we are stopped by difficulties of another kind. Functionaries alleging vested rights rise up and [p435] coalesce, and we are averse to bear hard on numerous interests to which we have given an artificial existence. On the other hand, the people have forgotten how to act for themselves. At the moment they have succeeded in reconquering the liberty of which they were in quest, they are afraid of it, and repudiate it. Offer them a free and voluntary system of education:98 they believe that all science is about to be extinguished. Offer them religious liberty: they believe that atheism is about to invade us,—so often has it been dinned into their ears that all religion, all wisdom, all science, all learning, all morality, resides in the State or flows from it.

But we shall find a place for such reflections elsewhere, and must now return to the argument.

We set ourselves to discover the true part which competition plays in the development of wealth, and we found that it consisted in giving an advantage in the first instance to the producer; then turning this advantage to the profit of the community; and constantly enlarging the domain of the gratuitous, and consequently the domain of equality.

But when private services become public services, they escape competition, and this fine harmony is suspended. In fact, the functionary is divested of that stimulant which urges on to progress, and how can progress turn to the public advantage when it no longer exists? A public functionary does not act under the spur of self-interest, but under the influence of the law. The law says to him, “You will render to the public such or such a determinate service, and you will receive from it in return a determinate recompense.” A little more or a little less zeal has no effect in changing these two fixed terms. On the contrary, private interest whispers in the ear of the free labourer, “The more you do for others, the more others will do for you.” In this case, the recompense depends entirely on the efforts of the workman being more or less intense, and more or less skilful. No doubt esprit de corps, the desire for advancement, devotion to duty, may prove active stimulants with the functionary; but they never can supply the place of the irresistible incitement of personal interest. All experience confirms this reasoning. Everything which has fallen within the domain of Government routine has remained almost stationary. It is doubtful whether our system of education now is better than it was in the reign of Francis the First; and no one would think of comparing the activity of a government office with the activity of a manufactory. [p436]

In proportion, then, as private services enter into the class of public services, they become, at least to a certain extent, sterile and motionless, not to the injury of those who render these services (their salaries are fixed), but to the detriment of the public at large.

Along with these inconveniences, which are immense, not only in a moral and political, but in an economical point of view—inconveniences which, trusting to the sagacity of the reader, I have only sketched—there is sometimes an advantage in substituting collective for individual action. In some kinds of services, the chief merit is regularity and uniformity. It may happen that, under certain circumstances, such a substitution gives rise to economy, and saves, in relation to a given satisfaction, a certain amount of exertion to the community. The question to be resolved, then, is this: What services should remain in the domain of private exertion? What services should pertain to collective or public exertion? The inquiry, which we have just finished, into the essential differences which characterize these two kinds of services, will facilitate the solution of this important problem.

And, first of all, it may be asked, is there any principle to enable us to distinguish what may legitimately enter the circle of collective action, and what should remain in the circle of private action?

I begin by intimating that what I denominate here public action is that great organization which has for rule the law, and for means of execution, force; in other words, the Government. Let it not be said that free and voluntary associations display likewise collective exertion. Let it not be supposed that I use the term private action as synonymous with isolated action. What I say is, that free and voluntary association belongs still to the domain of private action, for it is one of the forms of exchange, and the most powerful form of all. It does not impair the equivalence of services, it does not affect the appreciation of values, it does not displace responsibilities, it does not exclude free will, it does not destroy competition nor its effects; in a word, it has not constraint for its principle.

But the action of Government is made general by constraint. It necessarily proceeds on the compelle intrare. It acts in form of law, and every one must submit to it, because a law implies a sanction. No one, I think, will dispute these premises; which are supported by the best of all authorities, the testimony of universal fact. On all sides we have laws, and force to restrain the refractory. [p437]

Hence, no doubt, has come the saying that “men, in uniting in society, have sacrificed part of their liberty in order to preserve the remainder,”—a saying in great vogue with those who, confounding government with society, conclude that the latter is artificial and conventional like the former.

It is evident that this saying does not hold true in the region of free and voluntary transactions. Let two men, determined by the prospect of greater profit and advantage, exchange their services, or unite their efforts, in place of continuing their isolated exertions—is there in this any sacrifice of liberty? Is it to sacrifice liberty to make a better use of it?

The most that can be said is this, that men sacrifice part of their liberty to preserve the remainder, not when they unite in society, but when they subject themselves to a Government, since the necessary mode of action of every Government is force.

Now, even with this modification, the pretended principle is erroneous, as long as Government confines itself to its legitimate functions.

But what are these functions?

It is precisely this special character of having force for their necessary auxiliary which marks out to us their extent and their limits. I affirm that as Government acts only by the intervention of force, its action is legitimate only where the intervention of force is itself legitimate.