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The law perverted! The law--and, in its wake, all the collective
forces of the nation--the law, I say, not only diverted from its proper
direction, but made to pursue one entirely contrary! The law become
the tool of every kind of avarice, instead of being its check! The law
guilty of that very iniquity which it was its mission to punish! Truly,
this is a serious fact, if it exists, and one to which I feel bound to
call the attention of my fellow citizens.
We hold from God the gift that, as far as we are concerned, contains all
others, Life--physical, intellectual, and moral life.
But life cannot support itself. He who has bestowed it, has entrusted us
with the care of supporting it, of developing it, and of perfecting
it. To that end, He has provided us with a collection of wonderful
faculties; He has plunged us into the midst of a variety of elements. It
is by
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the application of our faculties to these elements that the phenomena of
assimilation and of appropriation, by which life pursues the circle that
has been assigned to it are realized.
Existence, faculties, assimilation--in other words, personality,
liberty, property--this is man.
It is of these three things that it may be said, apart from all
demagogic subtlety, that they are anterior and superior to all human
legislation.
It is not because men have made laws, that personality, liberty, and
property exist. On the contrary, it is because personality, liberty, and
property exist beforehand, that men make laws. What, then, is law? As I
have said elsewhere, it is the collective organization of the individual
right to lawful defense.
Nature, or rather God, has bestowed upon every one of us the right to
defend his person, his liberty, and his property, since these are the
three constituent or preserving elements of life; elements, each of
which is rendered complete by the others, and that cannot be understood
without them. For what are our faculties, but the extension of our
personality? and what is property, but an extension of our faculties?
If every man has the right of defending, even by force, his person, his
liberty, and his property, a number of men have the right to combine
together to extend, to organize a common force to provide regularly for
this defense.
Collective right, then, has its principle, its reason for existing, its
lawfulness, in individual right; and the common force cannot rationally
have any other end, or any other mission, than that of the isolated
forces for which it is substituted. Thus, as the force of an individual
cannot lawfully touch the person, the liberty, or the property of
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another individual--for the same reason, the common force cannot
lawfully be used to destroy the person, the liberty, or the property of
individuals or of classes.
For this perversion of force would be, in one case as in the other, in
contradiction to our premises. For who will dare to say that force has
been given to us, not to defend our rights, but to annihilate the equal
rights of our brethren? And if this be not true of every individual
force, acting independently, how can it be true of the collective force,
which is only the organized union of isolated forces?
Nothing, therefore, can be more evident than this: The law is the
organization of the natural right of lawful defense; it is the
substitution of collective for individual forces, for the purpose of
acting in the sphere in which they have a right to act, of doing what
they have a right to do, to secure persons, liberties, and properties,
and to maintain each in its right, so as to cause justice to reign over
all.
And if a people established upon this basis were to exist, it seems to
me that order would prevail among them in their acts as well as in their
ideas. It seems to me that such a people would have the most simple, the
most economical, the least oppressive, the least to be felt, the most
restrained, the most just, and, consequently, the most stable Government
that could be imagined, whatever its political form might be.
For under such an administration, everyone would feel that he possessed
all the fullness, as well as all the responsibility of his existence. So
long as personal safety was ensured, so long as labor was free, and the
fruits of labor secured against all unjust attacks, no one would have
any difficulties to contend with in the State. When
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prosperous, we should not, it is true, have to thank the State for our
success; but when unfortunate, we should no more think of taxing it with
our disasters than our peasants think of attributing to it the arrival
of hail or of frost. We should know it only by the inestimable blessing
of Safety.
It may further be affirmed, that, thanks to the nonintervention of
the State in private affairs, our wants and their satisfactions would
develop themselves in their natural order. We should not see poor
families seeking for literary instruction before they were supplied
with bread. We should not see towns peopled at the expense of rural
districts, nor rural districts at the expense of towns. We should not
see those great displacements of capital, of labor, and of population,
that legislative measures occasion; displacements that render so
uncertain and precarious the very sources of existence, and thus enlarge
to such an extent the responsibility of Governments.
Unhappily, law is by no means confined to its own sphere. Nor is it
merely in some ambiguous and debatable views that it has left its proper
sphere. It has done more than this. It has acted in direct opposition to
its proper end; it has destroyed its own object; it has been employed
in annihilating that justice which it ought to have established, in
effacing amongst Rights, that limit which it was its true mission to
respect; it has placed the collective force in the service of those who
wish to traffic, without risk and without scruple, in the persons, the
liberty, and the property of others; it has converted plunder into a
right, that it may protect it, and lawful defense into a crime, that it
may punish it.
How has this perversion of law been accomplished? And what has resulted
from it?
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The law has been perverted through the influence of two very different
causes--naked greed and misconceived philanthropy.
Let us speak of the former. Self-preservation and development is the
common aspiration of all men, in such a way that if every one enjoyed
the free exercise of his faculties and the free disposition of their
fruits, social progress would be incessant, uninterrupted, inevitable.
But there is also another disposition which is common to them. This is
to live and to develop, when they can, at the expense of one another.
This is no rash imputation, emanating from a gloomy, uncharitable
spirit. History bears witness to the truth of it, by the incessant wars,
the migrations of races, sectarian oppressions, the universality of
slavery, the frauds in trade, and the monopolies with which its annals
abound. This fatal disposition has its origin in the very constitution
of man--in that primitive, and universal, and invincible sentiment that
urges it towards its well-being, and makes it seek to escape pain.
Man can only derive life and enjoyment from a perpetual search and
appropriation; that is, from a perpetual application of his faculties to
objects, or from labor. This is the origin of property.
But also he may live and enjoy, by seizing and appropriating the
productions of the faculties of his fellow men. This is the origin of
plunder.
Now, labor being in itself a pain, and man being naturally inclined to
avoid pain, it follows, and history proves it, that wherever plunder
is less burdensome than labor, it prevails; and neither religion nor
morality can, in this case, prevent it from prevailing.
When does plunder cease, then? When it becomes more burdensome and more
dangerous than labor. It is
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very evident that the proper aim of law is to oppose the fatal tendency
to plunder with the powerful obstacle of collective force; that all its
measures should be in favor of property, and against plunder.
But the law is made, generally, by one man, or by one class of men.
And as law cannot exist without the sanction and the support of a
preponderant force, it must finally place this force in the hands of
those who legislate.
This inevitable phenomenon, combined with the fatal tendency that, we
have said, exists in the heart of man, explains the almost universal
perversion of law. It is easy to conceive that, instead of being a check
upon injustice, it becomes its most invincible instrument.
It is easy to conceive that, according to the power of the legislator,
it destroys for its own profit, and in different degrees amongst the
rest of the community, personal independence by slavery, liberty by
oppression, and property by plunder.
It is in the nature of men to rise against the injustice of which they
are the victims. When, therefore, plunder is organized by law, for
the profit of those who perpetrate it, all the plundered classes tend,
either by peaceful or revolutionary means, to enter in some way into
the manufacturing of laws. These classes, according to the degree of
enlightenment at which they have arrived, may propose to themselves
two very different ends, when they thus attempt the attainment of their
political rights; either they may wish to put an end to lawful plunder,
or they may desire to take part in it.
Woe to the nation where this latter thought prevails amongst the masses,
at the moment when they, in their turn, seize upon the legislative
power!
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Up to that time, lawful plunder has been exercised by the few upon the
many, as is the case in countries where the right of legislating is
confined to a few hands. But now it has become universal, and the
equilibrium is sought in universal plunder. The injustice that society
contains, instead of being rooted out of it, is generalized. As soon as
the injured classes have recovered their political rights, their first
thought is not to abolish plunder (this would suppose them to possess
enlightenment, which they cannot have), but to organize against the
other classes, and to their own detriment, a system of reprisals--as if
it was necessary, before the reign of justice arrives, that all should
undergo a cruel retribution--some for their iniquity and some for their
ignorance.
It would be impossible, therefore, to introduce into society a greater
change and a greater evil than this--the conversion of the law into an
instrument of plunder.
What would be the consequences of such a perversion? It would require
volumes to describe them all. We must content ourselves with pointing
out the most striking.
In the first place, it would efface from everybody's conscience the
distinction between justice and injustice. No society can exist unless
the laws are respected to a certain degree, but the safest way to make
them respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality are
in contradiction to each other, the citizen finds himself in the cruel
alternative of either losing his moral sense, or of losing his respect
for the law--two evils of equal magnitude, between which it would be
difficult to choose.
It is so much in the nature of law to support justice that in the minds
of the masses they are one and the same. There is in all of us a strong
disposition to regard what is lawful as legitimate, so much so that many
falsely derive
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all justice from law. It is sufficient, then, for the law to order
and sanction plunder, that it may appear to many consciences just and
sacred. Slavery, protection, and monopoly find defenders, not only
in those who profit by them, but in those who suffer by them. If you
suggest a doubt as to the morality of these institutions, it is said
directly--"You are a dangerous experimenter, a utopian, a theorist,
a despiser of the laws; you would shake the basis upon which society
rests."
If you lecture upon morality, or political economy, official bodies will
be found to make this request to the Government:
That henceforth science be taught not only with sole
reference to free exchange (to liberty, property, and
justice), as has been the case up to the present time, but
also, and especially, with reference to the facts and
legislation (contrary to liberty, property, and justice)
that regulate French industry.
That, in public lecterns salaried by the treasury, the
professor abstain rigorously from endangering in the
slightest degree the respect due to the laws now in
force.[2]
So that if a law exists that sanctions slavery or monopoly, oppression
or plunder, in any form whatever, it must not even be mentioned--for how
can it be mentioned without damaging the respect that it inspires? Still
further, morality and political economy must be taught in connection
with this law--that is, under the supposition that it must be just, only
because it is law.
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Another effect of this deplorable perversion of the law is that it
gives to human passions and to political struggles, and, in general, to
politics, properly so called, an exaggerated importance.
I could prove this assertion in a thousand ways. But I shall confine
myself, by way of an illustration, to bringing it to bear upon a subject
which has of late occupied everybody's mind: universal suffrage.
Whatever may be thought of it by the adepts of the school of Rousseau,
which professes to be very far advanced, but which I consider 20
centuries behind, universal suffrage (taking the word in its strictest
sense) is not one of those sacred dogmas with respect to which
examination and doubt are crimes.
Serious objections may be made to it.
In the first place, the word universal conceals a gross sophism. There
are, in France, 36,000,000 inhabitants. To make the right of suffrage
universal, 36,000,000 electors should be reckoned. The most extended
system reckons only 9,000,000. Three persons out of four, then, are
excluded; and more than this, they are excluded by the fourth. Upon what
principle is this exclusion founded? Upon the principle of incapacity.
Universal suffrage, then, means: universal suffrage of those who are
capable. In point of fact, who are the capable? Are age, sex, and
judicial condemnations the only conditions to which incapacity is to be
attached?
On taking a nearer view of the subject, we may soon perceive the reason
why the right of suffrage depends upon the presumption of incapacity;
the most extended system differing from the most restricted in the
conditions on which this incapacity depends, and which constitutes not a
difference in principle, but in degree.
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This motive is, that the elector does not stipulate for himself, but for
everybody.
If, as the republicans of the Greek and Roman tone pretend, the right of
suffrage had fallen to the lot of every one at his birth, it would be an
injustice to adults to prevent women and children from voting. Why are
they prevented? Because they are presumed to be incapable. And why is
incapacity a reason for exclusion? Because the elector does not reap
alone the responsibility of his vote; because every vote engages and
affects the community at large; because the community has a right to
demand some assurances, as regards the acts upon which its well-being
and its existence depend.
I know what might be said in answer to this. I know what might be
objected. But this is not the place to settle a controversy of this
kind. What I wish to observe is this, that this same controversy (in
common with the greater part of political questions) that agitates,
excites, and unsettles the nations, would lose almost all its importance
if the law had always been what it ought to be.
In fact, if law were confined to causing all persons, all liberties, and
all properties to be respected--if it were merely the organization of
individual right and individual defense--if it were the obstacle, the
check, the chastisement opposed to all oppression, to all plunder--is it
likely that we should dispute much, as citizens, on the subject of the
greater or lesser universality of suffrage? Is it likely that it would
compromise that greatest of advantages, the public peace? Is it likely
that the excluded classes would not quietly wait for their turn? Is
it likely that the enfranchised classes would be very jealous of their
privilege? And is it not clear, that the interest of all being one and
the same, some would act without much inconvenience to the others?
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But if the fatal principle should come to be introduced, that, under
pretense of organization, regulation, protection, or encouragement, the
law may take from one party in order to give to another, help itself to
the wealth acquired by all the classes that it may increase that of one
class, whether that of the agriculturists, the manufacturers, the ship
owners, or artists and comedians; then certainly, in this case, there is
no class which may not try, and with reason, to place its hand upon
the law, that would not demand with fury its right of election and
eligibility, and that would overturn society rather than not obtain
it. Even beggars and vagabonds will prove to you that they have an
incontestable title to it. They will say:
We never buy wine, tobacco, or salt, without paying the
tax, and a part of this tax is given by law in perquisites
and gratuities to men who are richer than we are. Others
make use of the law to create an artificial rise in the
price of bread, meat, iron, or cloth.
Since everybody traffics in law for his own profit, we
should like to do the same. We should like to make it
produce the right to assistance, which is the poor man's
plunder. To effect this, we ought to be electors and
legislators, that we may organize, on a large scale, alms
for our own class, as you have organized, on a large scale,
protection for yours.
Don't tell us that you will take our cause upon yourselves, and throw
to us 600,000 francs to keep us quiet, like giving us a bone to pick. We
have other claims, and, at any rate, we wish to stipulate for ourselves,
as other classes have stipulated for themselves!
How is this argument to be answered? Yes, as long as it is admitted
that the law may be diverted from its true mission, that it may violate
property instead of securing it,
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everybody will be wanting to manufacture law, either to defend himself
against plunder, or to organize it for his own profit. The political
question will always be prejudicial, predominant, and absorbing; in a
word, there will be fighting around the door of the Legislative Palace.
The struggle will be no less furious within it. To be convinced of this,
it is hardly necessary to look at what passes in the Chambers in France
and in England; it is enough to know how the question stands.
Is there any need to prove that this odious perversion of law is a
perpetual source of hatred and discord, that it even tends to social
disorganization? Look at the United States. There is no country in the
world where the law is kept more within its proper domain--which is, to
secure to everyone his liberty and his property. Therefore, there is
no country in the world where social order appears to rest upon a more
solid basis. Nevertheless, even in the United States, there are two
questions, and only two, that from the beginning have endangered
political order. And what are these two questions? That of slavery and
that of tariffs; that is, precisely the only two questions in which,
contrary to the general spirit of this republic, law has taken the
character of a plunderer. Slavery is a violation, sanctioned by law, of
the rights of the person. Protection is a violation perpetrated by the
law upon the rights of property; and certainly it is very remarkable
that, in the midst of so many other debates, this double legal scourge,
the sorrowful inheritance of the Old World, should be the only one which
can, and perhaps will, cause the rupture of the Union. Indeed, a more
astounding fact, in the heart of society, cannot be conceived than this:
That law should have become an instrument of injustice. And if this fact
occasions consequences so formidable to the United
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States, where there is but one exception, what must it be with us in
Europe, where it is a principle--a system?
Mr. Montalembert, adopting the thought of a famous proclamation of Mr.
Carlier, said, "We must make war against socialism." And by socialism,
according to the definition of Mr. Charles Dupin, he meant plunder. But
what plunder did he mean? For there are two sorts: extralegal and legal
plunder.
As to extralegal plunder, such as theft, or swindling, which is defined,
foreseen, and punished by the penal code, I do not think it can be
adorned by the name of socialism. It is not this that systematically
threatens the foundations of society. Besides, the war against this
kind of plunder has not waited for the signal of Mr. Montalembert or
Mr. Carlier. It has gone on since the beginning of the world; France was
carrying it on long before the revolution of February--long before the
appearance of socialism--with all the ceremonies of magistracy, police,
gendarmerie, prisons, dungeons, and scaffolds. It is the law itself that
is conducting this war, and it is to be wished, in my opinion, that the
law should always maintain this attitude with respect to plunder.
But this is not the case. The law sometimes takes its own part.
Sometimes it accomplishes it with its own hands, in order to save the
parties benefited the shame, the danger, and the scruple. Sometimes
it places all this ceremony of magistracy, police, gendarmerie, and
prisons, at the service of the plunderer, and treats the plundered
party, when he defends himself, as the criminal. In a word, there is
a legal plunder, and it is, no doubt, this that is meant by Mr.
Montalembert.
This plunder may be only an exceptional blemish in the legislation of a
people, and in this case, the best thing
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that can be done is, without so many speeches and lamentations, to
do away with it as soon as possible, notwithstanding the clamors of
interested parties. But how is it to be distinguished? Very easily. See
whether the law takes from some persons that which belongs to them,
to give to others what does not belong to them. See whether the law
performs, for the profit of one citizen, and, to the injury of others,
an act that this citizen cannot perform without committing a crime.
Abolish this law without delay; it is not merely an iniquity--it is a
fertile source of iniquities, for it invites reprisals; and if you do
not take care, the exceptional case will extend, multiply, and become
systematic. No doubt the party benefited will exclaim loudly; he will
assert his acquired rights. He will say that the State is bound to
protect and encourage his industry; he will plead that it is a good
thing for the State to be enriched, that it may spend the more, and thus
shower down salaries upon the poor workmen. Take care not to listen to
this sophistry, for it is just by the systematizing of these arguments
that legal plunder becomes systematized.
And this is what has taken place. The delusion of the day is to enrich
all classes at the expense of each other; it is to generalize plunder
under pretense of organizing it. Now, legal plunder may be exercised in
an infinite multitude of ways. Hence come an infinite multitude of
plans for organization; tariffs, protection, perquisites, gratuities,
encouragements, progressive taxation, free public education, right to
work, right to profit, right to wages, right to assistance, right to
instruments of labor, gratuity of credit, etc., etc. And it is all these
plans, taken as a whole, with what they have in common, legal plunder,
that takes the name of socialism.
Now socialism, thus defined, and forming a doctrinal body, what other
war would you make against it than a
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war of doctrine? You find this doctrine false, absurd, abominable.
Refute it. This will be all the easier, the more false, absurd, and
abominable it is. Above all, if you wish to be strong, begin by rooting
out of your legislation every particle of socialism which may have crept
into it--and this will be no light work.
Mr. Montalembert has been reproached with wishing to turn brute force
against socialism. He ought to be exonerated from this reproach, for he
has plainly said: "The war that we must make against socialism must be
one that is compatible with the law, honor, and justice."
But how is it that Mr. Montalembert does not see that he is placing
himself in a vicious circle? You would oppose law to socialism. But it
is the law that socialism invokes. It aspires to legal, not extralegal
plunder. It is of the law itself, like monopolists of all kinds, that it
wants to make an instrument; and when once it has the law on its side,
how will you be able to turn the law against it? How will you place it
under the power of your tribunals, your gendarmes, and of your prisons?
What will you do then? You wish to prevent it from taking any part in
the making of laws. You would keep it outside the Legislative Palace.
In this you will not succeed, I venture to prophesy, so long as legal
plunder is the basis of the legislation within.
It is absolutely necessary that this question of legal plunder should be
determined, and there are only three solutions of it: