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.