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 authorized 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
self-indulgence, probity for honor, principles for customs,
duties for decorum, the empire of reason for the tyranny of
{40}
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 that
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 operation of the
Constitution, his own principles of morality. He pretends to nothing
short of extirpating from the country by means of terror, self-interest,
honor, 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
{41}
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.
No wonder this idea suited Bonaparte so well. He embraced it with ardor,
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, Bonaparte, 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
organization of labor.
"In our project, society receives the impulse of power."
In what does the impulse that power gives to society consist? In
imposing upon it the project of Mr. Louis Blanc.
{42}
On the other hand, society is the human race. The human race, then, is
to receive its impulse from Mr. 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 Mr. 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 labor, 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 Mr. 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, Mr. 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 imponderable. For
{43}
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 education as shall enable his faculties to display
themselves, and for the tools of labor, without which human
activity can find no scope. Now, by whose intervention is
society to give to each of its members the requisite
education and the necessary tools of labor, unless by that
of the State?
Thus, liberty is power. In what does this power consist? In possessing
education and tools of labor. Who is to give education and tools of
labor? Society, who owes them. By whose intervention is society to give
tools of labor 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 that 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 that 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 mankind 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 discernment; their will is always right; the general will
cannot err. Suffrage cannot
{44}
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 forever led about by the nose? 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
organize. 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, these all lead them downwards towards
degradation. And yet they ought to have a little liberty! But are we not
assured by Mr. Considerant that liberty leads fatally to monopoly? Are
we not told that liberty is competition? and that competition, according
to Mr. 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 Mr. Louis Blanc tell us again
that competition
{45}
leads to monopoly, and that, for the same reason, cheapness leads
to exorbitant prices? That competition tends to drain the sources of
consumption, and diverts 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 Mr. 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 Mr. 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 Hindus, 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 labor? But this is only
competition, whose effect is to leave all products 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 will inevitably 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
{46}
nature, they tend in every instance to all kinds of degradation and
demoralization.
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 organizers 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 organizers 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 presume to stop it in its downward course,
and to give it a better direction. They have, therefore, received
from heaven, intelligence and virtues that 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 Academics, and the Protectionists renouncing their
own particular ideas; I would only have them renounce the idea that is
common to them all--viz.,
{47}
that of subjecting us by force to their own categories and rankings
to their social laboratories, to their ever-inflating bank, to their
Greco-Roman 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 pernicious assumption that
the organized 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 Mr. 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
{48}
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 educational monopoly, it has
undertaken 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 undertaken 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 undertakes to make commerce 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 undertaken to render them self-sufficient; 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 any wonder 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 undertakes to raise
and to regulate wages, and is not able to do it; if it undertakes
to assist all those who are in want, and is not able to do it; if it
undertakes to provide work for every laborer, and is not able to do it;
if it undertakes to offer to all who wish to borrow, easy credit, and is
not able to do it; if, in words that we regret should have escaped the
pen of Mr. de Lamartine, "the State considers that its mission is to
enlighten, to
{49}
develop, to enlarge, to strengthen, to spiritualize, and to sanctify the
soul of the people"--if it fails in this, is it not obvious 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 [4] of the question, and before 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 organized 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 the
domain of force, which is justice.
And as every individual has a right to have recourse to force only in
cases of lawful defense, so collective force, so which is only the union
{50}
of individual forces, cannot be rationally used for any other end.
The law, then, is solely the organization of individual rights that
existed before law.
Law is justice.
So far from being able to oppress the people, or to plunder their
property, even for a philanthropic end, its mission is to protect the
people, and to secure to them the possession of their property.
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, then 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, equalizing,
industrial, literary, or artistic, and you will be lost in vagueness and
uncertainty; you will be upon unknown ground, in a forced Utopia, or,
what is worse, in the midst of a multitude of contending Utopias, each
striving to gain possession of the law, and to impose it upon you; for
fraternity and philanthropy have no fixed limits, as justice has. Where
will you stop? Where is the law to stop? One person, Mr. de Saint Cricq,
will only extend his philanthropy to some of the industrial classes, and
will require the law to slight the consumers in favor of the producers.
Another, like Mr. Considérant, 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
{51}
everything necessary for the support of life. A third, Mr. Louis Blanc,
will say, and with reason, that this would be an incomplete fraternity,
and that the law ought to provide them with tools of labor and
education. 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--as it now is--the
battlefield 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 anyone 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 appeals, or assail the justices of the peace, for the sake of
claiming the rate of wages, free credit, tools of labor, the advantages
of the tariff, or the social workshop? They know perfectly well that
these matters 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 quite as much.
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
{52}
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 Messrs. 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
mold mankind in 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
education, rules for labor, directions for exchange, and plans for
charity, we shall plunge headlong into atheism, isolation, ignorance,
misery, and greed? Does it follow, that we shall no longer recognize 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
{53}
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 fullness 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 ordained
for 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, labor, 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 labor, capital, and production suffer the
least from artificial
{54}
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 realize 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, organizers,
institutors of society, conductors of the people, fathers of nations,
etc., etc. Too many persons place themselves above mankind, to rule and
patronize it; too many persons make a trade of looking after 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 human frame; I would study and admire it.
I am acting with regard to it in the spirit that animated a celebrated
traveler. 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
{55}
brain." "Stop!" said the traveler. "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 organizers! Away with their
rings, and their chains, and their hooks, and their pincers! Away with
their artificial methods! Away with their social laboratories,
their governmental whims, their centralization, their tariffs, their
universities, their State religions, their inflationary or monopolizing
banks, their limitations, their restrictions, their moralizations, and
their equalization 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 try liberty--liberty, which is an
act of faith in God and in His work.