"One of the first cares of the prince was to encourage
agriculture.... As there were posts established for the regulation
of the armies, so there were offices for the superintending of
rural works.... The respect with which the Persians were inspired
for royal authority was excessive."
The Greeks, although full of mind, were no less strangers to their own
responsibilities; so much so, that of themselves, like dogs and horses,
they would not have ventured upon the most simple games. In a classical
sense, it is an undisputed thing that everything comes to the people
from without.
"The Greeks, naturally full of spirit and courage, _had been early
cultivated_ by kings and colonies who had come from Egypt. From
them they had learned the exercises of the body, _foot races_, and
horse and chariot races.... The best thing that the Egyptians had
taught them was to become docile, and to allow themselves to be
formed by the laws for the public good."
_Fenelon_.--Reared in the study and admiration of antiquity, and a
witness of the power of Louis XIV., Fenelon naturally adopted the idea
that mankind should be passive, and that its misfortunes and its
prosperities, its virtues and its vices, are caused by the external
influence which is exercised upon it by the _law_, or by the makers of
the law. Thus, in his Utopia of Salentum, he brings the men, with their
interests, their faculties, their desires, and their possessions, under
the absolute direction of the legislator. Whatever the subject may be,
they themselves have no voice in it--the prince judges for them. The
nation is just a shapeless mass, of which the prince is the soul. In him
resides the thought, the foresight, the principle of all organisation,
of all progress; on him, therefore, rests all the responsibility.
In proof of this assertion, I might transcribe the whole of the tenth
book of "Telemachus." I refer the reader to it, and shall content myself
with quoting some passages taken at random from this celebrated work, to
which, in every other respect, I am the first to render justice.
With the astonishing credulity which characterizes the classics,
Fenelon, against the authority of reason and of facts, admits the
general felicity of the Egyptians, and attributes it, not to their own
wisdom, but to that of their kings:--
"We could not turn our eyes to the two shores, without perceiving
rich towns and country seats, agreeably situated; fields which were
covered every year, without intermission, with golden crops;
meadows full of flocks; labourers bending under the weight of
fruits which the earth lavished on its cultivators; and shepherds
who made the echoes around repeat the soft sounds of their pipes
and flutes. 'Happy,' said Mentor, 'is that people which is governed
by a wise king.'.... Mentor afterwards desired me to remark the
happiness and abundance which was spread over all the country of
Egypt, where twenty-two thousand cities might be counted. He
admired the excellent police regulations of the cities; the justice
administered in favour of the poor _against_ the rich; the good
education of the children, who were accustomed to obedience,
labour, and the love of arts and letters; the exactness with which
all the ceremonies of religion were performed; the
disinterestedness, the desire of honour, the fidelity to men, and
the fear of the gods, with which every father inspired his
children. He could not sufficiently admire the prosperous state of
the country. '_Happy_,' said he, '_is the people whom a wise king
rules in such a manner_.'"
Fenelon's idyl on Crete is still more fascinating. Mentor is made to
say:--
"All that you will see in this wonderful island is the result of
the laws of Minos. The education which the children receive renders
the body healthy and robust. They are accustomed, from the first,
to a frugal and laborious life; it is supposed that all the
pleasures of sense enervate the body and the mind; no other
pleasure is presented to them but that of being invincible by
virtue, that of acquiring much glory.... there _they_ punish three
vices which go unpunished amongst other people--ingratitude,
dissimulation, and avarice. As to pomp and dissipation, there is no
need to punish these, for they are unknown in Crete...... No costly
furniture, no magnificent clothing, no delicious feasts, no gilded
palaces are allowed."
It is thus that Mentor prepares his scholar to mould and manipulate,
doubtless with the most philanthropic intentions, the people of Ithaca,
and, to confirm him in these ideas, he gives him the example of
Salentum.
It is thus that we receive our first political notions. We are taught to
treat men very much as Oliver de Serres teaches farmers to manage and to
mix the soil.
_Montesquieu_.--"To sustain the spirit of commerce, it is necessary
that all the laws should favour it; that these same laws, by their
regulations in dividing the fortunes in proportion as commerce
enlarges them, should place every poor citizen in sufficiently easy
circumstances to enable him to work like the others, and every rich
citizen in such mediocrity that he must work, in order to retain or
to acquire."
Thus the laws are to dispose of all fortunes.
"Although, in a democracy, real equality be the soul of the State,
yet it is so difficult to establish, that an extreme exactness in
this matter would not always be desirable. It is sufficient that a
census be established to reduce or fix the differences to a certain
point. After which, it is for particular laws to equalise, as it
were, the inequality, by burdens imposed upon the rich, and reliefs
granted to the poor."
Here, again, we see the equalisation of fortunes by law, that is, by
force.
"There were, in Greece, two kinds of republics. One was military,
as Lacedæmon; the other commercial, as Athens. In the one it was
wished (by whom?) that the citizens should be idle: in the other,
the love of labour was encouraged.
"It is worth our while to pay a little attention to the extent of
genius required by these legislators, that we may see how, by
confounding all the virtues, they showed their wisdom to the world.
Lycurgus, blending theft with the spirit of justice, the hardest
slavery with extreme liberty, the most atrocious sentiments with
the greatest moderation, gave stability to his city. He seemed to
deprive it of all its resources, arts, commerce, money, and walls;
there Was ambition without the hope of rising; there were natural
sentiments where the individual was neither child, nor husband,
nor father. Chastity even was deprived of modesty. _By this road
Sparta was led on to grandeur and to glory_.
"The phenomenon which we observe in the institutions of Greece has
been seen in the midst of the _degeneracy and corruption of our
modern times_. An honest legislator has formed a people where
probity has appeared as natural as bravery among the Spartans. Mr.
Penn is a true Lycurgus, and although the former had peace for his
object, and the latter war, they resemble each other in the
singular path along which they have led _their_ people, in their
influence over free men, in the prejudices which they have
overcome, the passions they have subdued.
"Paraguay furnishes us with another example. _Society_ has been
accused of the crime of regarding the pleasure of commanding as the
only good of life; but it will always be a noble thing to govern
men by making them happy.
"_Those who desire to form similar institutions_, will establish
community of property, as in the republic of Plato, the same
reverence which he enjoined for the gods, separation from strangers
for the preservation of morality, and make the city and not the
citizens create commerce: they should give our arts without our
luxury, our wants without our desires."
Vulgar infatuation may exclaim, if it likes:--"It is Montesquieu!
magnificent! sublime!" I am not afraid to express my opinion, and to
say:--"What! you have the face to call that fine? It is frightful! it is
abominable! and these extracts, which I might multiply, show that,
according to Montesquieu, the persons, the liberties, the property,
mankind itself, are nothing but materials to exercise the sagacity of
lawgivers."
_Rousseau_.--Although this politician, the paramount authority of the
Democrats, makes the social edifice rest upon the _general will_, no one
has so completely admitted the hypothesis of the entire passiveness of
human nature in the presence of the lawgiver:--
"If it is true that a great prince is a rare thing, how much more
so must a great lawgiver be? The former has only to follow the
pattern proposed to him by the latter. _This latter is the
mechanician who invents the machine_; the former is merely the
workman who sets it in motion."
And what part have men to act in all this? That of the machine, which is
set in motion; or rather, are they not the brute matter of which the
machine is made? Thus, between the legislator and the prince, between
the prince and his subjects, there are the same relations as those which
exist between the agricultural writer and the agriculturist, the
agriculturist and the clod. At what a vast height, then, is the
politician placed, who rules over legislators themselves, and teaches
them their trade in such imperative terms as the following:--
"Would you give consistency to the State? Bring the extremes
together as much as possible. Suffer neither wealthy persons nor
beggars.
"If the soil is poor and barren, or the country too much confined
for the inhabitants, turn to industry and the arts, whose
productions you will exchange for the provisions which you
require.... On a good soil, if _you are short_ of inhabitants, give
all your attention to agriculture, which multiplies men, and
_banish_ the arts, which only serve to depopulate the country....
Pay attention to extensive and convenient coasts. _Cover the sea_
with vessels, and you will have a brilliant and short existence. If
your seas wash only inaccessible rocks, let the people _be
barbarous_, and eat fish; they will live more quietly, perhaps
better, and, most certainly, more happily. In short, besides those
maxims which are common to all, every people has its own particular
circumstances, which demand a legislation peculiar to itself.
"It was thus that the Hebrews formerly, and the Arabs more
recently, had religion for their principal object; that of the
Athenians was literature; that of Carthage and Tyre, commerce; of
Rhodes, naval affairs; of Sparta, war; and of Rome, virtue. The
author of the 'Spirit of Laws' has shown the art _by which the
legislator should frame his institutions towards each of these
objects_.... But if the legislator, mistaking his object, should
take up a principle different from that which arises from the
nature of things; if one should tend to slavery, and the other to
liberty; if one to wealth, and the other to population; one to
peace, and the other to conquests; the laws will insensibly become
enfeebled, the Constitution will be impaired, and the State will be
subject to incessant agitations until it is destroyed, or becomes
changed, and invincible Nature regains her empire."
But if Nature is sufficiently invincible to _regain_ its empire, why
does not Kousseau admit that it had no need of the legislator to _gain_
its empire from the beginning? Why does he not allow that, by obeying
their own impulse, men would, of themselves, apply agriculture to a
fertile district, and commerce to extensive and commodious coasts,
without the interference of a Lycurgus, a Solon, or a Rousseau, who
would undertake it at the risk of _deceiving themselves_?
Be that as it may, we see with what a terrible responsibility Rousseau
invests inventors, institutors, conductors, and manipulators of
societies. He is, therefore, very exacting with regard to them.
"He who dares to undertake the institutions of a people, ought to
feel that he can, as it were, transform every individual, who is by
himself a perfect and solitary whole, receiving his life and being
from a larger whole of which he forms a part; he must feel that he
can change the constitution of man, to fortify it, and substitute a
partial and moral existence for the physical and independent one
which we have all received from nature. In a word, he must deprive
man of his own powers, to give him others which are foreign to
him."
Poor human nature! What would become of its dignity if it were
entrusted to the disciples of Rousseau?
_Raynal_.--"The climate, that is, the air and the soil, is the
first element for the legislator. _His_ resources prescribe to him
his duties. First, he must consult _his_ local position. A
population dwelling upon maritime shores must have laws fitted for
navigation.... If the colony is located in an inland region, a
legislator must provide for the nature of the soil, and for its
degree of fertility....
"It is more especially in the distribution of property that the
wisdom of legislation will appear. As a general rule, and in every
country, when a new colony is founded, land should be given to each
man, sufficient for the support of his family....
"In an uncultivated island, which _you_ are colonizing with
children, it will only be needful to let the germs of truth expand
in the developments of reason! But when _you_ establish old people
in a new country, the skill consists in _only allowing it_ those
injurious opinions and customs which it is impossible to cure and
correct. If _you_ wish to prevent them from being perpetuated, you
will act upon the rising generation by a general and public
education of the children. A prince, or legislator, ought never to
found a colony without previously sending wise men there to
instruct the youth.... In a new colony, every facility is open to
the precautions of the legislator who desires _to purify the tone
and the manners of the people_. If he has genius and virtue, the
lands and the men which are _at his disposal_ will inspire his soul
with a plan of society which a writer can only vaguely trace, and
in a way which would be subject to the instability of all
hypotheses, which are varied and complicated by an infinity of
circumstances too difficult to foresee and to combine."
One would think it was a professor of agriculture who was saying to his
pupils--"The climate is the only rule for the agriculturist. _His_
resources dictate to him his duties. The first thing he has to consider
is his local position. If he is on a clayey soil, he must do so and so.
If he has to contend with sand, this is the way in which he must set
about it. Every facility is open to the agriculturist who wishes to
clear and improve his soil. If he only has the skill, the manure which
he has _at his disposal_ will suggest to him a plan of operation, which
a professor can only vaguely trace, and in a way that would be subject
to the uncertainty of all hypotheses, which vary and are complicated by
an infinity of circumstances too difficult to foresee and to combine."
But, oh! sublime writers, deign to remember sometimes that this clay,
this sand, this manure, of which you are disposing in so arbitrary a
manner, are men, your equals, intelligent and free beings like
yourselves, who have received from God, as you have, the faculty of
seeing, of foreseeing, of thinking, and of judging for themselves!
_Mably_. (He is supposing the laws to be worn out by time and by the
neglect of security, and continues thus):--
"Under these circumstances, we must be convinced that the springs
of Government are relaxed. _Give them_ a new tension (it is the
reader who is addressed), and the evil will be remedied.... Think
lees of punishing the faults than of encouraging the virtues _which
you want_. By this method you will bestow upon _your republic_ the
vigour of youth. Through ignorance of this, a free people has lost
its liberty! But if the evil has made so much way that the ordinary
magistrates are unable to remedy it effectually, _have recourse_ to
an extraordinary magistracy, whose time should be short, and its
power considerable. The imagination of the citizens requires to be
impressed."
In this style he goes on through twenty volumes.
There was a time when, under the influence of teaching like this, which
is the root of classical education, every one was for placing himself
beyond and above mankind, for the sake of arranging, organising, and
instituting it in his own way.
_Condillac_.--"Take upon yourself, my lord, the character of
Lycurgus or of Solon. Before you finish reading this essay, amuse
yourself with giving laws to some wild people in America or in
Africa. Establish these roving men in fixed dwellings; teach them
to keep flocks.... Endeavour to develop the social qualities which
nature has implanted in them.... Make them begin to practise the
duties of humanity.... Cause the pleasures of the passions to
become distasteful to them by punishments, and you will see these
barbarians, with every plan of your legislation, lose a vice and
gain a virtue.
"All these people have had laws. But few among them have been
happy. Why is this? Because legislators have almost always been
ignorant of the object of society, which is, to unite families by a
common interest.
"Impartiality in law consists in two things:--in establishing
equality in the fortunes and in the dignity of the citizens.... In
proportion to the degree of equality established by the laws, the
dearer will they become to every citizen.... How can avarice,
ambition, dissipation, idleness, sloth, envy, hatred, or jealousy,
agitate men who are equal in fortune and dignity, and to whom the
laws leave no hope of disturbing their equality?
"What has been told you of the republic of Sparta ought to
enlighten you on this question. No other State has had laws more in
accordance with the order of nature or of equality."
It is not to be wondered at that the 17th and 18th centuries should have
looked upon the human race as inert matter, ready to receive everything,
form, figure, impulse, movement, and life, from a great prince, or a
great legislator, or a great genius. These ages were reared in the study
of antiquity, and antiquity presents everywhere, in Egypt, Persia,
Greece, and Rome, the spectacle of a few men moulding mankind according
to their fancy, and mankind to this end enslaved by force or by
imposture. And what does this prove? That because men and society are
improvable, error, ignorance, despotism, slavery, and superstition must
be more prevalent in early times. The mistake of the writers quoted
above, is not that they have asserted this fact, but that they have
proposed it, as a rule, for the admiration and imitation of future
generations. Their mistake has been, with an inconceivable absence of
discernment, and upon the faith of a puerile conventionalism, that they
have admitted what is inadmissible, viz., the grandeur, dignity,
morality, and well-being of the artificial societies of the ancient
world; they have not understood that time produces and spreads
enlightenment; and that in proportion to the increase of enlightenment,
right ceases to be upheld by force, and society regains possession of
herself.
And, in fact, what is the political work which we are endeavouring to
promote? It is no other than the instinctive effort of every people
towards liberty. And what is liberty, whose name can make every heart
beat, and which can agitate the world, but the union of all liberties,
the liberty of conscience, of instruction, of association, of the press,
of locomotion, of labour, and of exchange; in other words, the free
exercise, for all, of all the inoffensive faculties; and again, in other
words, the destruction of all despotisms, even of legal despotism, and
the reduction of law to its only rational sphere, which is to regulate
the individual right of legitimate defence, or to repress injustice?
This tendency of the human race, it must be admitted, is greatly
thwarted, particularly in our country, by the fatal disposition,
resulting from classical teaching, and common to all politicians, of
placing themselves beyond mankind, to arrange, organise, and regulate
it, according to their fancy.
For whilst society is struggling to realise liberty, the great men who
place themselves at its head, imbued with the principles of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, think only of subjecting it to the
philanthropic despotism of their social inventions, and making it bear
with docility, according to the expression of Rousseau, the yoke of
public felicity, as pictured in their own imaginations.
This was particularly the case in 1789. No sooner was the old system
destroyed, than society was to be submitted to other artificial
arrangements, always with the same starting-point--the omnipotence of
the law.
_Saint Just_.--"The legislator commands the future. It is for him
to _will_ for the good of mankind. It is for him to make men what
he wishes them to be."
_Robespierre_.--"The function of Government is to direct the
physical and moral powers of the nation towards the object of its
institution."
_Billaud Varennes_.--"A people who are to be restored to liberty
must be formed anew. Ancient prejudices must be destroyed,
antiquated customs changed, depraved affections corrected,
inveterate vices eradicated. For this, a strong force and a
vehement impulse will be necessary.... Citizens, the inflexible
austerity of Lycurgus created the firm basis of the Spartan
republic. The feeble and trusting disposition of Solon plunged
Athens into slavery. This parallel contains the whole science of
Government."
_Lepelletier._--"Considering the extent of human degradation, I am
convinced of the necessity of effecting an entire regeneration of
the race, and, if I may so express myself, of creating a new
people."
Men, therefore, are nothing but raw material. It is not for them to
_will their own improvement_. They are not capable of it; according to
Saint Just, it is only the legislator who is. Men are merely to be what
he _wills_ that they should be. According to Robespierre, who copies
Rousseau literally, the legislator is to begin by assigning the aim of
the _institutions of the nation_. After this, the Government has only to
direct all its _physical_ and _moral forces_ towards this end. All this
time the nation itself is to remain perfectly passive; and Billaud
Varennes would teach us that it ought to have no prejudices, affections,
nor wants, but such as are authorised by the legislator. He even goes so
far as to say that the inflexible austerity of a man is the basis of a
republic.
We have seen that, in cases where the evil is so great that the ordinary
magistrates are unable to remedy it, Mably recommends a dictatorship, to
promote virtue. "_Have recourse_," says he, "to an extraordinary
magistracy, whose time shall be short, and his power considerable. The
imagination of the people requires to be impressed." This doctrine has
not been neglected. Listen to Robespierre:--
"The principle of the Republican Government is virtue, and the
means to be adopted, during its establishment, is terror. We want
to substitute, in our country, morality for egotism, probity for
honour, principles for customs, duties for decorum, the empire of
reason for the tyranny of fashion, contempt of vice for contempt of
misfortune, pride for insolence, greatness of soul for vanity,
love of glory for love of money, good people for good company,
merit for intrigue, genius for wit, truth for glitter, the charm of
happiness for the weariness of pleasure, the greatness of man for
the littleness of the great, a magnanimous, powerful, happy people,
for one that is easy, frivolous, degraded; that is to say, we would
substitute all the virtues and miracles of a republic for all the
vices and absurdities of monarchy."
At what a vast height above the rest of mankind does Robespierre place
himself here! And observe the arrogance with which he speaks. He is not
content with expressing a desire for a great renovation of the human
heart, he does not even expect such a result from a regular Government.
No; he intends to effect it himself, and by means of terror. The object
of the discourse from which this puerile and laborious mass of
antithesis is extracted, was to exhibit the _principles of morality
which ought to direct a revolutionary Government_. Moreover, when
Robespierre asks for a dictatorship, it is not merely for the purpose of
repelling a foreign enemy, or of putting down factions; it is that he
may establish, by means of terror, and as a preliminary to the game of
the Constitution, his own principles of morality. He pretends to nothing
short of extirpating from the country, by means of terror, _egotism,
honour, customs, decorum, fashion, vanity, the love of money, good
company, intrigue, wit, luxury, and misery_. It is not until after he,
Robespierre, shall have accomplished these _miracles_, as he rightly
calls them, that he will allow the law to regain her empire. Truly, it
would be well if these visionaries, who think so much of themselves and
so little of mankind, who want to renew everything, would only be
content with trying to reform themselves, the task would be arduous
enough for them. In general, however, these gentlemen, the reformers,
legislators, and politicians, do not desire to exercise an immediate
despotism over mankind. No, they are too moderate and too philanthropic
for that. They only contend for the despotism, the absolutism, the
omnipotence of the law. They aspire only to make the law.
To show how universal this strange disposition has been in France, I had
need not only to have copied the whole of the works of Mably, Raynal,
Rousseau, Fenelon, and to have made long extracts from Bossuet and
Montesquieu, but to have given the entire transactions of the sittings
of the Convention, I shall do no such thing, however, but merely refer
the reader to them.
It is not to be wondered at that this idea should have suited Buonaparte
exceedingly well. He embraced it with ardour, and put it in practice
with energy. Playing the part of a chemist, Europe was to him the
material for his experiments. But this material reacted against him.
More than half undeceived, Buonaparte, at St. Helena, seemed to admit
that there is an initiative in every people, and he became less hostile
to liberty. Yet this did not prevent him from giving this lesson to his
son in his will:--"To govern, is to diffuse morality, education, and
well-being."
After all this, I hardly need show, by fastidious quotations, the
opinions of Morelly, Babeuf, Owen, Saint Simon, and Fourier. I shall
confine myself to a few extracts from Louis Blanc's book on the
organisation of labour.
"In our project, society receives the impulse of power." (Page 126.)
In what does the impulse which power gives to society consist? In
imposing upon it the _project_ of M. Louis Blanc.
On the other hand, society is the human race. The human race, then, is
to receive its impulse from M. Louis Blanc.
It is at liberty to do so or not, it will be said. Of course the human
race is at liberty to take advice from anybody, whoever it may be. But
this is not the way in which M. Louis Blanc understands the thing. He
means that his project should be converted into _law_, and,
consequently, forcibly imposed by power.
"In our project, the State has only to give a legislation to
labour, by means of which the industrial movement may and ought to
be accomplished _in all liberty_. It (the State) merely places
society on an incline (_that is all_) that it may descend, when
once it is placed there, by the mere force of things, and by the
natural course of the _established mechanism_."
But what is this incline? One indicated by M. Louis Blanc. Does it not
lead to an abyss? No, it leads to happiness. Why, then, does not society
go there of itself? Because it does not know what it wants, and it
requires an impulse. What is to give it this impulse? Power. And who is
to give the impulse to power? The inventor of the machine, M. Louis
Blanc.
We shall never get out of this circle--mankind passive, and a great man
moving it by the intervention of the law.
Once on this incline, will society enjoy something like liberty? Without
a doubt. And what is liberty?
"Once for all: liberty consists, not only in the right granted, but
in the power given to man, to exercise, to develop his faculties
under the empire of justice, and under the protection of the law.
"And this is no vain distinction; there is a deep meaning in it,
and its consequences are not to be estimated. For when once it is
admitted that man, to be truly free, must have the power to
exercise and develop his faculties, it follows that every member of
society has a claim upon it for such instruction as shall _enable_
it to display itself, and for the instruments of labour, without
which human activity can find no scope. Now, by whose intervention
is society to give to each of its members the requisite instruction
and the necessary instruments of labour, unless by that of the
State?"
Thus, liberty is power. In what does this power consist? In possessing
instruction and instruments of labour. Who is to give instruction and
instruments of labour? Society, _who owes them_. By whose intervention
is society to give instruments of labour to those who do not possess
them?
By the _intervention of the State_. From whom is the State to obtain
them?
It is for the reader to answer this question, and to notice whither all
this tends.
One of the strangest phenomena of our time, and one which will probably
be a matter of astonishment to our descendants, is the doctrine which is
founded upon this triple hypothesis: the radical passiveness of
mankind,--the omnipotence of the law,--the infallibility of the
legislator:--this is the sacred symbol of the party which proclaims
itself exclusively democratic.
It is true that it professes also to be _social_.
So far as it is democratic, it, has an unlimited faith in mankind.
So far as it is social, it places it beneath the mud.
Are political rights under discussion? Is a legislator to be chosen? Oh!
then the people possess science by instinct: they are gifted with an
admirable tact; _their will is always right_; the general _will cannot
err_. Suffrage cannot be too _universal_. Nobody is under any
responsibility to society. The will and the capacity to choose well are
taken for granted. Can the people be mistaken? Are we not living in an
age of enlightenment? What! are the people to be always kept in leading
strings? Have they not acquired their rights at the cost of effort and
sacrifice? Have they not given sufficient proof of intelligence and
wisdom? Are they not arrived at maturity? Are they not in a state to
judge for themselves? Do they not know their own interest? Is there a
man or a class who would dare to claim the right of putting himself in
the place of the people, of deciding and of acting for them? No, no; the
people would be _free_, and they shall be so. They wish to conduct their
own affairs, and they shall do so.
But when once the legislator is duly elected, then indeed the style of
his speech alters. The nation is sent back into passiveness, inertness,
nothingness, and the legislator takes possession of omnipotence. It is
for him to invent, for him to direct, for him to impel, for him to
organise. Mankind has nothing to do but to submit; the hour of despotism
has struck. And we must observe that this is decisive; for the people,
just before so enlightened, so moral, so perfect, have no inclinations
at all, or, if they have any, they all lead them downwards towards
degradation. And yet they ought to have a little liberty! But are we not
assured, by M. Considerant, that _liberty leads fatally to monopoly_?
Are we not told that liberty is competition? and that competition,
according to M. Louis Blanc, _is a system of extermination for the
people, and of ruination for trade_? For that reason people are
exterminated and ruined in proportion as they are free--take, for
example, Switzerland, Holland, England, and the United States? Does not
M. Louis Blanc tell us again, that _competition leads to monopoly, and
that, for the same reason, cheapness leads to exorbitant prices? That
competition tends to drain the sources of consumption, and urges
production to a destructive activity? That competition forces production
to increase, and consumption to decrease_;--whence it follows that free
people produce for the sake of not consuming; that there is nothing but
_oppression and madness_ among them; and that it is absolutely necessary
for M. Louis Blanc to see to it?
What sort of liberty should be allowed to men? Liberty of
conscience?--But we should see them all profiting by the permission to
become atheists. Liberty of education?--But parents would be paying
professors to teach their sons immorality and error; besides, if we are
to believe M. Thiers, education, if left to the national liberty, would
cease to be national, and we should be educating our children in the
ideas of the Turks or Hindoos, instead of which, thanks to the legal
despotism of the universities, they have the good fortune to be educated
in the noble ideas of the Romans. Liberty of labour?--But this is only
competition, whose effect is to leave all productions unconsumed, to
exterminate the people, and to ruin the tradesmen. The liberty of
exchange?--But it is well known that the protectionists have shown, over
and over again, that a man must be ruined when he exchanges freely, and
that to become rich it is necessary to exchange without liberty. Liberty
of association?--But, according to the socialist doctrine, liberty and
association exclude each other, for the liberty of men is attacked just
to force them to associate.
You must see, then, that the socialist democrats cannot in conscience
allow men any liberty, because, by their own nature, they tend in every
instance to all kinds of degradation and demoralisation.
We are therefore left to conjecture, in this case, upon what foundation
universal suffrage is claimed for them with so much importunity.
The pretensions of organisers suggest another question, which I have
often asked them, and to which I am not aware that I ever received an
answer:--Since the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is
not safe to allow them liberty, how comes it to pass that the tendencies
of organisers are always good? Do not the legislators and their agents
form a part of the human race? Do they consider that they are composed
of different materials from the rest of mankind? They say that society,
when left to itself, rushes to inevitable destruction, because its
instincts are perverse. They pretend, to stop it in its downward course,
and to give it a better direction. They have, therefore, received from
heaven, intelligence and virtues which place them beyond and above
mankind: let them show their title to this superiority. They would be
our shepherds, and we are to be their flock. This arrangement
presupposes in them a natural superiority, the right to which we are
fully justified in calling upon them to prove.
You must observe that I am not contending against their right to invent
social combinations, to propagate them, to recommend them, and to try
them upon themselves, at their own expense and risk; but I do dispute
their right to impose them upon us through the medium of the law, that
is, by force and by public taxes.
I would not insist upon the Cabetists, the Fourierists, the
Proudhonians, the Universitaries, and the Protectionists renouncing
their own particular ideas; I would only have them renounce that idea
which is common to them all,--viz., that of subjecting us by force to
their own groups and series to their social workshops, to their
gratuitous bank to their Græco-Romano morality, and to their commercial
restrictions. I would ask them to allow us the faculty of judging of
their plans, and not to oblige us to adopt them, if we find that they
hurt our interests or are repugnant to our consciences.
To presume to have recourse to power and taxation, besides being
oppressive and unjust, implies further, the injurious supposition that
the organiser is infallible, and mankind incompetent.
And if mankind is not competent to judge for itself, why do they talk so
much about universal suffrage?
This contradiction in ideas is unhappily to be found also in facts; and
whilst the French nation has preceded all others in obtaining its
rights, or rather its political claims, this has by no means prevented
it from being more governed, and directed, and imposed upon, and
fettered, and cheated, than any other nation. It is also the one, of all
others, where revolutions are constantly to be dreaded, and it is
perfectly natural that it should be so.
So long as this idea is retained, which is admitted by all our
politicians, and so energetically expressed by M. Louis Blanc in these
words--"Society receives its impulse from power;" so long as men
consider themselves as capable of feeling, yet passive--incapable of
raising themselves by their own discernment and by their own energy to
any morality, or well-being, and while they expect everything from the
law; in a word, while they admit that their relations with the State are
the same as those of the flock with the shepherd, it is clear that the
responsibility of power is immense. Fortune and misfortune, wealth and
destitution, equality and inequality, all proceed from it. It is charged
with everything, it undertakes everything, it does everything; therefore
it has to answer for everything. If we are happy, it has a right to
claim our gratitude; but if we are miserable, it alone must bear the
blame. Are not our persons and property, in fact, at its disposal? Is
not the law omnipotent? In creating the universitary monopoly, it has
engaged to answer the expectations of fathers of families who have been
deprived of liberty; and if these expectations are disappointed, whose
fault is it? In regulating industry, it has engaged to make it prosper,
otherwise it would have been absurd to deprive it of its liberty; and if
it suffers, whose fault is it? In pretending to adjust the balance of
commerce by the game of tariffs, it engages to make it prosper; and if,
so far from prospering, it is destroyed, whose fault is it? In granting
its protection to maritime armaments in exchange for their liberty, it
has engaged to render them lucrative; if they become burdensome, whose
fault is it?
Thus, there is not a grievance in the nation for which the Government
does not voluntarily make itself responsible. Is it to be wondered at
that every failure threatens to cause a revolution?
And what is the remedy proposed? To extend indefinitely the dominion of
the law, _i.e._, the responsibility of Government. But if the Government
engages to raise and to regulate wages, and is not able to do it; if it
engages to assist all those who are in want, and is not able to do it;
if it engages to provide an asylum for every labourer, and is not able
to do it; if it engages to offer to all such as are eager to borrow,
gratuitous credit, and is not able to do it; if, in words which we
regret should have escaped the pen of M. de Lamartine, "the State
considers that its mission is to enlighten, to develop, to enlarge, to
strengthen, to spiritualize, and to sanctify the soul of the
people,"--if it fails in this, is it not evident that after every
disappointment, which, alas! is more than probable, there will be a no
less inevitable revolution?
I shall now resume the subject by remarking, that immediately after the
economical part[10] of the question, and at the entrance of the
political part, a leading question presents itself? It is the
following:--
What is law? What ought it to be? What is its domain? What are its
limits? Where, in fact, does the prerogative of the legislator stop?
I have no hesitation in answering, _Law is common force organised to
prevent injustice_;--in short, Law is Justice.
It is not true that the legislator has absolute power over our persons
and property, since they pre-exist, and his work is only to secure them
from injury.
It is not true that the mission of the law is to regulate our
consciences, our ideas, our will, our education, our sentiments, our
works, our exchanges, our gifts, our enjoyments. Its mission is to
prevent the rights of one from interfering with those of another, in any
one of these things.
Law, because it has force for its necessary sanction, can only have as
its lawful domain the domain of force, which is justice.
And as every individual has a right to have recourse to force only in
cases of lawful defence, so collective force, which is only the union of
individual forces, cannot be rationally used for any other end.
The law, then, is solely the organisation of individual rights, which
existed before legitimate defence.
Law is justice.
So far from being able to oppress the persons of the people, or to
plunder their property, even for a philanthropic end, its mission is to
protect the former, and to secure to them the possession of the latter.
It must not be said, either, that it may be philanthropic, so long as it
abstains from all oppression; for this is a contradiction. The law
cannot avoid acting upon our persons and property; if it does not secure
them, it violates them if it touches them.
The law is justice.
Nothing can be more clear and simple, more perfectly defined and
bounded, or more visible to every eye; for justice is a given quantity,
immutable and unchangeable, and which admits of neither _increase_ or
_diminution_.
Depart from this point, make the law religious, fraternal, equalising,
industrial, literary, or artistic, and you will be lost in vagueness and
uncertainty; you will be upon unknown ground, in a forced Utopia, or,
which is worse, in the midst of a multitude of Utopias, striving to gain
possession of the law, and to impose it upon you; for fraternity and
philanthropy have no fixed limits, like justice. Where will you stop?
Where is the law to stop? One person, as M. de Saint Cricq, will only
extend his philanthropy to some of the industrial classes, and will
require the law to _dispose of the consumers in favour of the
producers_. Another, like M. Considerant, will take up the cause of the
working classes, and claim for them by means of the law, at a fixed
rate, _clothing, lodging, food, and everything necessary for the support
of life_. A third, as, M. Louis Blanc, will say, and with reason, that
this would be an incomplete fraternity, and that the law ought to
provide them with instruments of labour and the means of instruction. A
fourth will observe that such an arrangement still leaves room for
inequality, and that the law ought to introduce into the most remote
hamlets luxury, literature, and the arts. This is the high road to
communism; in other words, legislation will be--what it now is--the
battle-field for everybody's dreams and everybody's covetousness.
Law is justice.
In this proposition we represent to ourselves a simple, immovable
Government. And I defy any one to tell me whence the thought of a
revolution, an insurrection, or a simple disturbance could arise against
a public force confined to the repression of injustice. Under such a
system, there would be more well-being, and this well-being would be
more equally distributed; and as to the sufferings inseparable from
humanity, no one would think of accusing the Government of them, for it
would be as innocent of them as it is of the variations of the
temperature. Have the people ever been known to rise against the court
of repeals, or assail the justices of the peace, for the sake of
claiming the rate of wages, gratuitous credit, instruments of labour,
the advantages of the tariff, or the social workshop? They know
perfectly well that these combinations are beyond the jurisdiction of
the justices of the peace, and they would soon learn that they are not
within the jurisdiction of the law.
But if the law were to be made upon the principle of fraternity, if it
were to be proclaimed that from it proceed all benefits and all
evils--that it is responsible for every individual grievance and for
every social inequality--then you open the door to an endless succession
of complaints, irritations, troubles, and revolutions.
Law is justice.
And it would be very strange if it could properly be anything else! Is not
justice right? Are not rights equal? With what show of right can the law
interfere to subject me to the social plans of MM. Mimerel, de Melun,
Thiers, or Louis Blanc, rather than to subject these gentlemen to _my_
plans? Is it to be supposed that Nature has not bestowed upon ME
sufficient imagination to invent a Utopia too? Is it for the law to make
choice of one amongst so many fancies, and to make use of the public
force in its service?
Law is justice.
And let it not be said, as it continually is, that the law, in this
sense, would be atheistic, individual, and heartless, and that it would
make mankind wear its own image. This is an absurd conclusion, quite
worthy of the governmental infatuation which sees mankind in the law.
What then? Does it follow that, if we are free, we shall cease to act?
Does it follow, that if we do not receive an impulse from the law, we
shall receive no impulse at all? Does it follow, that if the law
confines itself to securing to us the free exercise of our faculties,
our faculties will be paralyzed? Does it follow, that if the law does
not impose upon us forms of religion, modes of association, methods of
instruction, rules for labour, directions for exchange, and plans for
charity, we shall plunge eagerly into atheism, isolation, ignorance,
misery, and egotism? Does it follow, that we shall no longer recognise
the power and goodness of God; that we shall cease to associate
together, to help each other, to love and assist our unfortunate
brethren, to study the secrets of nature, and to aspire after perfection
in our existence?
Law is justice.
And it is under the law of justice, under the reign of right, under the
influence of liberty, security, stability, and responsibility, that
every man will attain to the measure of his worth, to all the dignity of
his being, and that mankind will accomplish, with order and with
calmness--slowly, it is true, but with certainty--the progress decreed
to it.
I believe that my theory is correct; for whatever be the question upon
which I am arguing, whether it be religious, philosophical, political,
or economical; whether it affects well-being, morality, equality, right,
justice, progress, responsibility, property, labour, exchange, capital,
wages, taxes, population, credit, or Government; at whatever point of
the scientific horizon I start from, I invariably come to the same
thing--the solution of the social problem is in liberty.
And have I not experience on my side? Cast your eye over the globe.
Which are the happiest, the most moral, and the most peaceable nations?
Those where the law interferes the least with private activity; where
the Government is the least felt; where individuality has the most
scope, and public opinion the most influence; where the machinery of the
administration is the least important and the least complicated; where
taxation is lightest and least unequal, popular discontent the least
excited and the least justifiable; where the responsibility of
individuals and classes is the most active, and where, consequently, if
morals are not in a perfect state, at any rate they tend incessantly to
correct themselves; where transactions, meetings, and associations are
the least fettered; where labour, capital, and production suffer the
least from artificial displacements; where mankind follows most
completely its own natural course; where the thought of God prevails the
most over the inventions of men; those, in short, who realise the most
nearly this idea--That within the limits of right, all should flow from
the free, perfectible, and voluntary action of man; nothing be attempted
by the law or by force, except the administration of universal justice.
I cannot avoid coming to this conclusion--that there are too many great
men in the world; there are too many legislators, organisers,
institutors of society, conductors of the people, fathers of nations,
&c., &c. Too many persons place themselves above mankind, to rule and
patronize it; too many persons make a trade of attending to it. It will
be answered:--"You yourself are occupied upon it all this time." Very
true. But it must be admitted that it is in another sense entirely that
I am speaking; and if I join the reformers it is solely for the purpose
of inducing them to relax their hold.
I am not doing as Vaucauson did with his automaton, but as a
physiologist does with the organisation of the human frame; I would
study and admire it.
I am acting with regard to it in the spirit which animated a celebrated
traveller. He found himself in the midst of a savage tribe. A child had
just been born, and a crowd of soothsayers, magicians, and quacks were
around it, armed with rings, hooks, and bandages. One said--"This child
will never smell the perfume of a calumet, unless I stretch his
nostrils." Another said--"He will be without the sense of hearing,
unless I draw his ears down to his shoulders." A third said--"He will
never see the light of the sun, unless I give his eyes an oblique
direction." A fourth said--"He will never be upright, unless I bend his
legs." A fifth said--"He will not be able to think, unless I press his
brain." "Stop!" said the traveller. "Whatever God does, is well done; do
not pretend to know more than He; and as He has given organs to this
frail creature, allow those organs to develop themselves, to strengthen
themselves by exercise, use, experience, and liberty."
God has implanted in mankind, also, all that is necessary to enable it
to accomplish its destinies. There is a providential social physiology,
as well as a providential human physiology. The social organs are
constituted so as to enable them to develop harmoniously in the grand
air of liberty. Away, then, with quacks and organisers! Away with their
rings, and their chains, and their hooks, and their pincers! Away with
their artificial methods! Away with their social workshops, their
governmental whims, their centralization, their tariffs, their
universities, their State religions, their gratuitous or monopolising
banks, their limitations, their restrictions, their moralisations, and
their equalisation by taxation! And now, after having vainly inflicted
upon the social body so many systems, let them end where they ought to
have begun--reject all systems, and make trial of liberty--of liberty,
which is an act of faith in God and in His work.