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NOTE The Law

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The Law by Frederic Bastiat

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Forward

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Anyone building a personal library of liberty

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must include in it a copy of Frederic Bastiat's classic essay, The Law.

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First published in 1850 by the great French economist and journalist,

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it is as clear a statement as has ever been made

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of the Original American Ideal of Government, as proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence,

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that the main purpose of any government is the protection of the lives, liberties and

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property of its citizens.

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Bastiat believed that all human beings possessed the God-given natural rights of individuality,

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liberty, property.

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This is man, he wrote. These three gifts from God precede all human legislation.

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But even in his time, writing in the late 1840s, Bastiat was alarmed over how the law had been perverted into an instrument of what he called legal plunder.

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Far from protecting individual rights, the law was increasingly used to deprive one group of citizens of those rights for the benefit of another group, and especially for the benefit of the state itself.

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He condemned the legal plunder of protectionist tariffs, government subsidies of all kinds, progressive taxation, public schools, government jobs programs, minimum wage laws, welfare, usury laws, and more.

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Bastiat's warnings of the dire effects of legal plunder are as relevant today as they were the day he first issued them.

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The system of legal plunder, which many now celebrate as democracy, will erase from everyone's

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conscience, he wrote, the distinction between justice and injustice.

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The plundered classes will eventually figure out how to enter the political game and plunder

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their fellow man.

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and will never be guided by any principles of justice, but only by brute political force.

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The great French champion of liberty also forecasts the corruption of education by the state.

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Those who held government-endowed teaching positions, he wrote, would rarely criticize

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legal plunder lest their government endowments be ended.

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The system of legal plunder would also greatly exaggerate the importance of politics in the

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Society. That would be a most unhealthy development, as it would encourage even more citizens to

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seek to improve their own well-being, not by producing goods and services for the marketplace,

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but by plundering their fellow citizens through politics. Bastiat was also wise enough to

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anticipate what modern economists call rent-seeking and rent-avoidance behavior. These two clumsy

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Policy phrases refer respectively to the phenomena of lobbying for political favors,

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legal plunder, and of engaging in political activity directed at protecting oneself from

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being the victim of plunder seekers.

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For example, the steel manufacturing industry lobbies for high tariffs on steel, whereas

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Steel-using industries, like the automobile industry, can be expected to lobby against

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high tariffs on steel.

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The reason why modern economists are concerned about rent-seeking is the opportunity cost

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involved.

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The more time, effort and money that is spent by businesses on conniving to manipulate politics,

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merely transferring wealth, the less time is spent on producing goods and services which

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increases wealth. Thus legal plunder impoverishes the entire society despite the fact that a

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small but politically influential part of the society benefits from it. It is remarkable

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in reading the law how perfectly accurate Bastiat was in describing the status of his

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is Day, which, it turns out, were not much different from the statist of today or any

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other day.

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The French socialist of Bastiat's day espoused doctrines that perverted charity, education

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and morals, for one thing.

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True charity does not begin with the robbery of taxation, he pointed out.

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Socialist schooling is inevitably an exercise in statist brainwashing, not genuine education,

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and it is hardly moral for a large-gang government to legally rob one segment of the population,

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keep most of the loot, and share a little of it with various needy individuals.

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Socialists want to play God, Bastiat observed, anticipating all the future tyrants and despots

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of the world who would try to remake the world in their image, whether that image would be

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communism, fascism, the glorious union, or global democracy.

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Bastiat also observed that socialists wanted forced conformity, rigid regimentation of

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of the population through pervasive regulation, forced equality of wealth, and dictatorship.

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As such, they were the mortal enemies of liberty.

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Dictatorship need not involve an actual dictator.

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All that was needed, said Bastiat, was the laws enacted by a congress or a parliament

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that would achieve the same effect, forced conformity.

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Bastiat was also wise to point out that the world has far too many great men, fathers

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of their countries and so forth, who in reality are usually nothing but petty tyrants with

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a sick and compulsive desire to rule over others.

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The defenders of the free society should have a healthy disrespect for all such men.

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Bastiat admired America and pointed to the America of 1850 as being as close as any society

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in the world to his ideal of a government that protected individual rights to life,

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liberty and property.

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There were two major exceptions however, the twin evils of slavery and protectionist tariffs.

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Frederic Bastiat died on Christmas Eve 1850 and did not live to observe the convulsions

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that the America he admired so much would go through in the next 15 years and longer.

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It is unlikely that he would have considered the U.S. government's military invasion

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of the southern states in 1861, the killing of some 300,000 citizens, and the bombing,

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burning and plundering of the regions, cities, towns, farms and businesses as being consistent

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in any way with the protection of the lives, liberties and properties of those citizens

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as promised by the Declaration of Independence.

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Had he lived to see all of this, he most likely would have added legal murder to legal plunder

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as one of the two great sins of government.

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He would likely have viewed the post-war Republican Party with its 50% average tariff rates, its

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massive corporate welfare schemes, and its 25-year campaign of genocide against the Plains

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Indians as first-rate plunderers and traitors to the American ideal.

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In the latter pages of the law, Bastiat offers the sage advice that what was really needed

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was a science of economics that would explain the harmony or lack thereof of a free society

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as opposed to socialism. He made a major contribution to this end himself with the publication of

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his book, Economic Harmonies, which can be construed as a precursor to the modern literature

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of the Austrian School of Economics. There is no substitute for a solid understanding

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Combating of the market order and of the realities of politics when it comes to combating the

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kinds of destructive socialistic schemes that plague de Bastiat's day as well as ours.

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Anyone who reads this great essay along with other free market classics such as Henry Haslett's

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Economics in One Lesson and Murray Rothbard's Power in Market will possess enough intellectual

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The Law. The Law perverted. The Law, and in its wake, all the collective forces of the

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nation. The Law, I say, not only diverted from its proper direction, but made to pursue

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To one entirely contrary, the law become the tool of every kind of avarice instead of being

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its check, the law guilty of that very iniquity which it was its mission to punish.

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Truly this is a serious fact, if it exists, and one to which I feel bound to call the

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attention of my fellow citizens.

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We hold from God the gift that, as far as we are concerned, contains all others—life—physical,

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intellectual and moral life.

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But life cannot support itself.

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He who has bestowed it has entrusted us with the care of supporting it, of developing it,

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and of perfecting it.

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To that end, he has provided us with a collection of wonderful faculties.

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He has plunged us into the midst of a variety of elements.

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It is by the application of our faculties to these elements that the phenomena of assimilation

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and of appropriation, by which life pursues the circle that has been assigned to it, are

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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.

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It is not because men have made laws that personality, liberty and property exist.

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On the contrary, it is because personality, liberty and property exist beforehand that

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men make laws.

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What then is law?

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As I have said elsewhere, it is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful

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defense.

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Nature, or rather God, has bestowed upon every one of us the right to defend his person,

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his liberty, and his property, since these are the three constituent or preserving elements

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of life, elements each of which is rendered complete by the others, and that cannot be

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understood without them.

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For what are our faculties but the extension of our personality?

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And what is property but an extension of our faculties?

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If every man has the right of defending, even by force, his person, his liberty, and his

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property, a number of men have the right to combine together, to extend, to organize a

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common force, to provide regularly for this defense.

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If right, then, has its principle, its reason for existing, its lawfulness in individual

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right, and the common force cannot rationally have any other end or any other mission than

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that of the isolated forces for which it is substituted, thus, as the force of an individual

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cannot lawfully touch the person, the liberty, or the property of another individual, for

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For the same reason, the common force cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, the

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liberty, or the property of individuals or of classes.

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For this perversion of force would be, in one case as in the other, in contradiction

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to our premises.

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For who will dare to say that force has been given to us, not to defend our rights, but

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to annihilate the equal rights of our brethren?

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And if this be not true of every individual force acting independently, how can it be

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true of the collective force which is only the organized union of isolated forces?

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Nothing therefore can be more evident than this.

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The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense.

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It is the substitution of collective for individual forces.

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For the purpose of acting in the sphere in which they have a right to act, of doing what

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they have a right to do, to secure persons liberties and properties, and to maintain

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each in its right, so as to cause justice to reign over all.

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And if a people established upon this basis were to exist, it seems to me that order would

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prevail among them in their acts as well as in their ideas.

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It seems to me that such a people would have the most simple, the most economical, the

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least oppressive, the least to be felt, the most restrained, the most just, and consequently

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the most stable government that could be imagined, whatever its political form might be.

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For under such an administration, everyone would feel that he possessed all the fullness

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as well as all the responsibility of his existence.

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So long as personal safety was ensured, so long as labor was free and the fruits of labor

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secured against all unjust attacks, no one would have any difficulties to contend with

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in the State.

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When prosperous, we should not, it is true, have to thank the State for our success.

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But when unfortunate, we should no more think of taxing it with our disasters than our peasants

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think of attributing to it the arrival of hail or frost.

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We should know it only by the inestimable blessing of safety.

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It may further be affirmed that, thanks to the non-intervention of the state in private

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Affairs, our wants and their satisfactions would develop themselves in their natural order.

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We should not see poor families seeking for literary instruction before they were supplied

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with bread.

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We should not see towns peopled at the expense of rural districts, nor rural districts at

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the expense of towns.

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We should not see those great displacements of capital, of labor, and of population that

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that legislative measures occasion, displacements that render so uncertain and precarious the

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very sources of existence, and thus enlarge to such an extent the responsibility of governments.

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Unhappily, law is by no means confined to its own sphere, nor is it merrily in some

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ambiguous and debatable views that it has left its proper sphere. It has done more than

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It has acted in direct opposition to its proper end.

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It has destroyed its own object.

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It has been employed in annihilating that justice which it ought to have established,

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interfacing amongst rights that limit which it was its true mission to respect.

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It has placed the collective force in the service of those who wish to traffic without

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Without Risk and Without Scruple, In the Persons, the Liberty and the Property of Others.

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It has converted plunder into a right that it may protect it, and lawful defense into

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a crime that it may punish it.

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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

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and Misconceived Philanthropy.

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Let us speak of the former.

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Self-preservation and development is the common aspiration of all men, in such a way that

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if everyone enjoyed the free exercise of his faculties and the free disposition of their

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fruits, social progress would be incessant, uninterrupted, inevitable.

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But there is also another disposition which is common to them.

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This is to live and to develop when they can at the expense of one another.

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This is no rash imputation emanating from a gloomy, uncharitable spirit.

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History bears witness to the truth of it by the incessant wars, the migrations of races,

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sectarian oppressions, the universality of slavery, the frauds in trade, and the monopolies

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with which its annals abound.

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This fatal disposition has its origin in the very constitution of man, in that primitive

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and universal and invincible sentiment that urges it towards its well-being and makes

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it seek to escape pain.

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Man can only derive life and enjoyment from a perpetual search and appropriation, that

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is from a perpetual application of his faculties to objects or from labor. This is the origin

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of property. But also he may live and enjoy by seizing and appropriating the productions

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of the faculties of his fellow men. This is the origin of plunder. Now, labor being in

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in itself a pain, and man, being naturally inclined to avoid pain, it follows, and history

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proves it, that wherever plunder is less burdensome than labor, it prevails, and neither religion

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nor morality can, in this case, prevent it from prevailing.

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When does plunder cease then?

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When it becomes more burdensome and more dangerous than labor.

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It is very evident that the proper aim of law is to oppose the fatal tendency to plunder

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with the powerful obstacle of collective force, that all its measures should be in favor of

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property and against plunder.

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But the law is made generally by one man, or by one class of man, and as law cannot

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exist without the sanction and the support of the preponderant force, it must finally

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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.

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It is easy to conceive that, instead of being a check upon injustice, it becomes its most invincible instrument.

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It is easy to conceive that according to the power of the legislator, it destroys for its

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own profit, and in different degrees amongst the rest of the community, personal independence

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by slavery, liberty by oppression, and property by plunder.

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It is in the nature of men to rise against the injustice of which they are the victims,

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When, therefore, plunder is organized by law, for the profit of those who perpetrate it,

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all the plundered classes tend, either by peaceful or revolutionary means, to enter

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in some way into the manufacturing of laws.

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These classes, according to the degree of enlightenment at which they have arrived,

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may propose to themselves two very different ends, when they thus attempt the attainment

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of their Political Rights. Either they may wish to put an end to lawful plunder, or they

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may desire to take part in it. Woe to the nation where this latter thought prevails

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amongst the masses at the moment when they, in their turn, seize upon the legislative

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power. Up to that time, lawful plunder has been exercised by the few upon the many, as

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is the case in countries where the right of legislating is confined to a few hands.

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But now it has become universal, and the equilibrium is sought in universal plunder.

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The injustice that society contains, instead of being rooted out of it, is generalized.

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As soon as the injured classes have recovered their political rights, their first thought

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What is not to abolish plunder, this would suppose them to possess enlightenment which

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they cannot have, but to organize against the other classes and to their own detriment

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a system of reprisals as if it was necessary before the reign of justice arrives that all

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should undergo a cruel retribution, some for their iniquity and some for their ignorance.

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It would be impossible, therefore, to introduce into society a greater change and a greater

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evil than this, the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.

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What would be the consequences of such a perversion?

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It would require volumes to describe them all.

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We must content ourselves with pointing out the most striking.

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In the first place, it would efface from everybody's conscience the distinction between justice

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and injustice.

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No society can exist unless the laws are respected to a certain degree, but the safest way to

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make them respected is to make them respectable.

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When law and morality are in contradiction to each other, the citizen finds himself in

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and the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or of losing his respect for

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the law, two evils of equal magnitude between which it would be difficult to choose.

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It is so much in the nature of law to support justice that in the minds of the masses they

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are one and the same.

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There is in all of us a strong disposition to regard what is lawful as legitimate, so

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So much so that many falsely derive all justice from law.

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It is sufficient, then, for the law to order and sanction plunder, that it may appear to

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many consciences just and sacred.

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Slavery, protection, and monopoly find defenders not only in those who profit by them, but

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in those who suffer by them.

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If you suggest a doubt as to the morality of these institutions, it is said directly.

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You are a dangerous experimenter, a utopian, a theorist, a despiser of the laws.

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You would shake the basis upon which society rests.

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If you lecture upon morality or political economy, official bodies will be found to

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make this request to the government.

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And henceforth, science be taught not only with sole reference to free exchange to liberty,

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property and justice, as has been the case up to the present time, but also and especially

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with reference to the facts and legislation contrary to liberty, property and justice

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that regulate French industry, that in public lecterns salaried by the treasury, the professor

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abstain rigorously from endangering in the slightest degree the respect due to the laws

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now in force.

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So that if a law exists that sanctions slavery or monopoly, oppression or plunder in any

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form whatever, it must not even be mentioned.

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For how can it be mentioned without damaging the respect that it inspires?

258
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No further, morality and political economy must be taught in connection with this law,

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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

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and to political struggles, and in general to politics, properly so called, an exaggerated

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importance.

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I could prove this assertion in a thousand ways, but I shall confine myself by way of

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an illustration to bringing it to bear upon a subject which has of late occupied everybody's

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mind, universal suffrage.

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Whatever may be thought of it by the adepts of the School of Rousseau, which professes

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is to be very far advanced, but which I consider 20 centuries behind, universal suffrage, taking

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the word in its strictest sense, is not one of those sacred dogmas with respect to which

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examination and doubt are crimes.

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Serious objections may be made to it.

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In the first place, the word universal conceals a gross sophism.

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There are in France 36 million inhabitants.

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To make the right of suffrage universal, 36 million electors should be reckoned.

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The most extended system reckons only 9 million.

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Three persons out of four, then, are excluded.

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And more than this, they are excluded by the fourth.

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Upon what principle is this exclusion founded?

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Upon the principle of incapacity.

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Universal suffrage then means universal suffrage of those who are capable.

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In point of fact, who are the capable?

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Are age, sex, and judicial condemnations the only conditions to which incapacity is to

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be attached?

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On taking a nearer view of the subject, we may soon perceive the reason why the right

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of suffrage depends upon the presumption of incapacity, the most extended system differing

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from the most restricted in the conditions on which this incapacity depends and which

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constitutes not a difference in principle but in degree.

287
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This motive is that the elector does not stipulate for himself but for everybody.

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If as the Republicans of the Greek and Roman tone pretend the right of suffrage had fallen

289
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to the lot of everyone at his birth, it would be an injustice to adults to prevent women

290
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and children from voting.

291
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Why are they prevented?

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Because they are presumed to be incapable.

293
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And why is incapacity a reason for exclusion?

294
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Because the elector does not reap alone the responsibility of his vote.

295
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Because every vote engages and affects the community at large.

296
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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 its significance.

297
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is almost all its importance if the law had always been what it ought to be.

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In fact, if law were confined to causing all persons, all liberties, and all properties

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to be respected, if it were merely the organization of individual right and individual defense,

300
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if it were the obstacle, the check, the chastisement, opposed to all oppression, to all plunder,

301
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Is it likely that we should dispute much as citizens on the subject of the greater or

302
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lesser universality of suffrage?

303
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Is it likely that it would compromise that greatest of advantages, the public peace?

304
00:30:50.900 --> 00:30:56.380
Is it likely that the excluded classes would not quietly wait for their turn?

305
00:30:56.380 --> 00:31:02.620
Is it likely that the enfranchised classes would be very jealous of their privileged?

306
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And is it not clear that the interest of all being one and the same, some would act without

307
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much inconvenience to the others?

308
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But if the fatal principle should come to be introduced, that under-pretensive organization,

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regulation, protection or encouragement, the law may take from one party in order to give

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to Another help itself to the wealth acquired by all the classes that it may increase that

311
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of one class, whether that of the agriculturalist, the manufacturers, the ship owners, or artists

312
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and comedians, then certainly in this case there is no class which may not try and with

313
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reason to place its hand upon the law, that would not demand with fury its right of election

314
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and Eligibility, and that would overturn society rather than not obtain it.

315
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Even beggars and vagabonds will prove to you that they have an incontestable title to it.

316
00:32:10.420 --> 00:32:16.420
They will say, we never buy wine, tobacco or salt without paying the tax, and a part

317
00:32:16.420 --> 00:32:22.160
of this tax is given by law in perquisites and gratuities to men who are richer than

318
00:32:22.160 --> 00:32:23.460
we are.

319
00:32:23.460 --> 00:32:30.260
Electors make use of the law to create an artificial rise in the price of bread, meat, iron or cloth.

320
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Since everybody traffics in law for his own profit, we should like to do the same.

321
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We should like to make it produce the right to assistance, which is the poor man's plunder.

322
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To effect this, we ought to be electors and legislators.

323
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That we may organize on a large scale, alms for our own class, as you have organized on

324
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On a large scale, protection for yours.

325
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Don't tell us that you will take our cause upon yourselves and throw to us 600,000 francs

326
00:33:01.860 --> 00:33:05.740
to keep us quiet like giving us a bone to pick.

327
00:33:05.740 --> 00:33:11.540
We have other claims, and at any rate, we wish to stipulate for ourselves as other classes

328
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have stipulated for themselves.

329
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How is this argument to be answered?

330
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Yes, as long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true mission, that

331
00:33:25.060 --> 00:33:31.700
it may violate property instead of securing it, everybody will be wanting to manufacture

332
00:33:31.700 --> 00:33:39.100
law, either to defend himself against plunder or to organize it for his own profit.

333
00:33:39.100 --> 00:33:45.060
The political question will always be prejudicial, predominant and absorbing.

334
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In a word, there will be fighting around the door of the legislative palace.

335
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The struggle will be no less furious within it.

336
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To be convinced of this, it is hardly necessary to look at what passes in the chambers in

337
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France and in England.

338
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It is enough to know how the question stands.

339
00:34:04.300 --> 00:34:10.560
Is there any need to prove that this odious perversion of law is a perpetual source of

340
00:34:10.560 --> 00:34:16.200
of Hatred and Discord, that it even tends to social disorganization.

341
00:34:16.200 --> 00:34:18.080
Look at the United States.

342
00:34:18.080 --> 00:34:23.200
There is no country in the world where the law is kept more within its proper domain,

343
00:34:23.200 --> 00:34:27.880
which is to secure to everyone his liberty and his property.

344
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Therefore there is no country in the world where social order appears to rest upon a

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more solid basis.

346
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Nevertheless, even in the United States, there are two questions, and only two, that from the beginning have endangered political order.

347
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And what are these two questions? That of slavery and that of tariffs.

348
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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.

349
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Slavery is a violation, sanctioned by law, of the rights of the person.

350
00:35:10.560 --> 00:35:18.560
Protection is a violation, perpetrated by the law upon the rights of property.

351
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And certainly it is very remarkable that, in the midst of so many other debates, this

352
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double legal scourge, the sorrowful inheritance of the old world, should be the only one which

353
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which can, and perhaps will, cause the rupture of the Union.

354
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Indeed, a more astounding fact in the heart of society cannot be conceived than this.

355
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That law should have become an instrument of injustice.

356
00:35:49.080 --> 00:35:54.640
And if this fact occasions consequences so formidable to the United States, where there

357
00:35:54.640 --> 00:36:01.520
There is but one exception. What must it be with us in Europe, where it is a principle,

358
00:36:01.520 --> 00:36:09.340
a system? Mr. Montalembert, adopting the thought of a famous proclamation of Mr. Carlier, said,

359
00:36:09.340 --> 00:36:15.760
We must make war against socialism. And by socialism, according to the definition of

360
00:36:15.760 --> 00:36:22.960
Mr. Charles Dufresne, he meant plunder. But what plunder did he mean? For there are two

361
00:36:22.960 --> 00:36:27.840
Two sorts, extra-legal and legal plunder.

362
00:36:27.840 --> 00:36:34.320
As to extra-legal plunder, such as theft or swindling, which is defined, foreseen and

363
00:36:34.320 --> 00:36:40.000
punished by the penal code, I do not think it can be adorned by the name of socialism.

364
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It is not this that systematically threatens the foundations of society.

365
00:36:46.000 --> 00:36:52.840
Besides, the war against this kind of plunder has not waited for the signal of Mr. Montalemberg

366
00:36:52.840 --> 00:36:58.800
It has gone on since the beginning of the world.

367
00:36:58.800 --> 00:37:04.760
France was carrying it on long before the revolution of February, long before the appearance

368
00:37:04.760 --> 00:37:13.480
of socialism, with all the ceremonies of magisteries, police, gendarmerie, prisons, dungeons and

369
00:37:13.480 --> 00:37:14.920
scaffolds.

370
00:37:14.920 --> 00:37:20.480
It is the law itself that is conducting this war, and it is to be wished, in my opinion,

371
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that the law should always maintain this attitude with respect to plunder.

372
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But this is not the case.

373
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The law sometimes takes its own part.

374
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Sometimes it accomplishes it with its own hands in order to save the parties benefitted

375
00:37:36.120 --> 00:37:40.400
the shame, the danger and the scruple.

376
00:37:40.400 --> 00:37:48.200
Sometimes it places all this ceremony of magistery, police, gendarmerie and prisons at the service

377
00:37:48.200 --> 00:37:55.640
of the Plunderer and treats the plundered party when he defends himself as the criminal.

378
00:37:55.640 --> 00:38:04.140
In a word, there is a legal plunder and it is no doubt this that is meant by Mr. Montalembert.

379
00:38:04.140 --> 00:38:09.640
This plunder may be only an exceptional blemish in the legislation of a people and in this

380
00:38:09.640 --> 00:38:15.900
case the best thing that can be done is without so many speeches and lamentations to do away

381
00:38:15.900 --> 00:38:21.580
Stay with it as soon as possible, notwithstanding the clamors of interested parties.

382
00:38:21.580 --> 00:38:24.700
But how is it to be distinguished?

383
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Very easily.

384
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See whether the law takes from some persons that which belongs to them to give to others

385
00:38:35.100 --> 00:38:38.900
what does not belong to them.

386
00:38:38.900 --> 00:38:45.740
See whether the law performs for the profit of one citizen and to the injury of others.

387
00:38:45.740 --> 00:38:53.740
An act that this citizen cannot perform without committing a crime. Abolish this law without delay.

388
00:38:53.740 --> 00:39:02.740
It is not merely an iniquity. It is a fertile source of iniquities, for it invites reprisals.

389
00:39:02.740 --> 00:39:08.740
And if you do not take care, the exceptional case will extend, multiply and become systematic.

390
00:39:08.740 --> 00:39:14.740
No doubt the party benefited will exclaim loudly. He will assert his acquired rights.

391
00:39:14.740 --> 00:39:20.820
Rights, he will say that the state is bound to protect and encourage his industry.

392
00:39:20.820 --> 00:39:25.460
He will plead that it is a good thing for the state to be enriched, that it may spend

393
00:39:25.460 --> 00:39:30.980
the more and thus shower down salaries upon the poor workmen.

394
00:39:30.980 --> 00:39:38.260
Take care not to listen to this sophistry, for it is just by the systematizing of these

395
00:39:38.260 --> 00:39:44.880
These arguments that legal plunder becomes systematized.

396
00:39:44.880 --> 00:39:48.100
And this is what has taken place.

397
00:39:48.100 --> 00:39:53.900
The delusion of the day is to enrich all classes at the expense of each other.

398
00:39:53.900 --> 00:39:59.580
It is to generalize plunder under pretense of organizing it.

399
00:39:59.580 --> 00:40:05.180
Now legal plunder may be exercised in an infinite multitude of ways.

400
00:40:05.180 --> 00:40:12.780
Since common infinite multitude of plans for organization, tariffs, protection, perquisites,

401
00:40:12.780 --> 00:40:20.740
gratuities, encouragements, progressive taxation, free public education, right to work, right

402
00:40:20.740 --> 00:40:28.500
to profit, right to wages, right to assistance, right to instruments of labor, gratuity of

403
00:40:28.500 --> 00:40:32.900
credit, and so forth, and so forth.

404
00:40:32.900 --> 00:40:40.860
And it is all these plans, taken as a whole, with what they have in common, legal plunder,

405
00:40:40.860 --> 00:40:45.220
that takes the name of socialism.

406
00:40:45.220 --> 00:40:52.340
Now socialism thus defined in forming a doctrinal body, what other war would you make against

407
00:40:52.340 --> 00:40:55.620
it than a war of doctrine?

408
00:40:55.620 --> 00:41:00.100
You find this doctrine false, absurd, abominable?

409
00:41:00.100 --> 00:41:01.480
Refute it.

410
00:41:01.480 --> 00:41:07.080
This will be all the easier, the more false, absurd and abominable it is.

411
00:41:07.080 --> 00:41:13.960
Above all, if you wish to be strong, begin by rooting out of your legislation every particle

412
00:41:13.960 --> 00:41:17.600
of socialism which may have crept into it.

413
00:41:17.600 --> 00:41:20.280
And this will be no light work.

414
00:41:20.280 --> 00:41:26.680
Mr. Montalember has been reproached with wishing to turn brute force against socialism.

415
00:41:26.680 --> 00:41:32.760
He ought to be exonerated from this reproach, for he has plainly said, the war that we must

416
00:41:32.760 --> 00:41:41.000
make against socialism must be one that is compatible with the law, honor and justice.

417
00:41:41.000 --> 00:41:47.360
But how is it that Mr. Montalembert does not see that he is placing himself in a vicious

418
00:41:47.360 --> 00:41:48.360
circle?

419
00:41:48.360 --> 00:41:56.080
You would oppose law to socialism, but it is the law that socialism invokes.

420
00:41:56.080 --> 00:42:00.880
It aspires to legal, not extra-legal, plunder.

421
00:42:00.880 --> 00:42:07.900
It is of the law itself, like monopolist of all kinds, that it wants to make an instrument.

422
00:42:07.900 --> 00:42:14.440
And when, once, it has the law on its side, how will you be able to turn the law against

423
00:42:14.440 --> 00:42:15.440
it?

424
00:42:15.440 --> 00:42:22.040
How will you place it under the power of your tribunals, your gendarmes, and of your prisons?

425
00:42:22.040 --> 00:42:24.200
What will you do then?

426
00:42:24.200 --> 00:42:29.680
You wish to prevent it from taking any part in the making of laws, you would keep it outside

427
00:42:29.680 --> 00:42:32.080
the legislative palace.

428
00:42:32.080 --> 00:42:39.120
In this, you will not succeed, I venture to prophecy, so long as legal plunder is the

429
00:42:39.120 --> 00:42:43.260
basis of the legislation within.

430
00:42:43.260 --> 00:42:49.520
It is absolutely necessary that this question of legal plunder should be determined and

431
00:42:49.520 --> 00:42:53.400
there are only three solutions of it.

432
00:42:53.400 --> 00:43:03.400
1. When the few plunder the many. 2. When everybody plunders everybody else.

433
00:43:03.400 --> 00:43:09.400
And 3. When nobody plunders anybody.

434
00:43:09.400 --> 00:43:14.400
Partial plunder, universal plunder, absence of plunder.

435
00:43:14.400 --> 00:43:18.400
Amongst these we have to make our choice.

436
00:43:18.400 --> 00:43:23.400
The law can only produce one of these results.

437
00:43:23.400 --> 00:43:25.400
Partial Plunder

438
00:43:25.400 --> 00:43:36.400
This is the system that prevailed so long as the elective privilege was partial, a system that is resorted to, to avoid the invasion of socialism.

439
00:43:36.400 --> 00:43:38.400
Universal Plunder

440
00:43:38.400 --> 00:43:43.400
We've been threatened by this system when the elective privilege has become universal.

441
00:43:43.400 --> 00:43:51.400
The masses having conceived the idea of making law on the principle of legislators who had preceded them.

442
00:43:52.400 --> 00:44:11.400
Absence of Plunder. This is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, conciliation, and of good sense, which I shall proclaim with all the force of my lungs, which is very inadequate, alas, till the day of my death.

443
00:44:11.400 --> 00:44:18.200
and, in all sincerity, can anything more be required at the hands of the law?

444
00:44:18.200 --> 00:44:25.160
Can the law, whose necessary sanction is force, be reasonably employed upon anything beyond

445
00:44:25.160 --> 00:44:28.640
securing to everyone his right?

446
00:44:28.640 --> 00:44:35.020
I defy anyone to remove it from this circle without perverting it, and consequently turning

447
00:44:35.020 --> 00:44:37.200
force against right.

448
00:44:37.200 --> 00:44:43.520
And as this is the most fatal, the most illogical social perversion that can possibly be imagined,

449
00:44:43.520 --> 00:44:50.960
it must be admitted that the true solution, so much sought after, of the social problem

450
00:44:50.960 --> 00:44:59.560
is contained in these simple words, law is organized justice.

451
00:44:59.560 --> 00:45:06.880
Now it is important to remark that to organize justice by law, that is to say by force, excludes

452
00:45:06.880 --> 00:45:13.760
It's the idea of organizing by law or by force any manifestation whatever of human

453
00:45:13.760 --> 00:45:22.960
activity, labor, charity, agriculture, commerce, industry, instruction, the fine arts or religion.

454
00:45:22.960 --> 00:45:30.800
For any one of these organizing would inevitably destroy the essential organization.

455
00:45:30.800 --> 00:45:42.800
How, in fact, can we imagine force encroaching upon the liberty of citizens without infringing upon justice, and so acting against its proper aim?

456
00:45:42.800 --> 00:45:53.800
Here I am taking on the most popular prejudice of our time. It is not considered enough that law should be just. It must be philanthropic.

457
00:45:53.800 --> 00:46:07.400
It is not sufficient that it should guarantee to every citizen the free and inoffensive exercise of his faculties applied to his physical, intellectual, and moral development.

458
00:46:07.400 --> 00:46:14.200
It is required to extend well-being, instruction, and morality directly over the nation.

459
00:46:14.200 --> 00:46:18.120
This is the fascinating side of socialism.

460
00:46:18.120 --> 00:46:24.180
But, I repeat it, these two missions of the law contradict each other.

461
00:46:24.180 --> 00:46:27.480
We have to choose between them.

462
00:46:27.480 --> 00:46:34.280
A citizen cannot at the same time be free and not free.

463
00:46:34.280 --> 00:46:41.280
Mr. Dilla-Martin wrote to me one day thus, Your doctrine is only the half of my program.

464
00:46:41.280 --> 00:46:43.040
You have stopped at liberty.

465
00:46:43.040 --> 00:46:45.400
I go on to fraternity.

466
00:46:45.400 --> 00:46:47.280
I answered him.

467
00:46:47.280 --> 00:46:51.640
The second part of your program will destroy the first.

468
00:46:51.640 --> 00:46:58.520
And in fact it is impossible for me to separate the word fraternity from the word voluntary.

469
00:46:58.520 --> 00:47:06.280
I cannot possibly conceive fraternity legally enforced without liberty being legally destroyed

470
00:47:06.280 --> 00:47:10.960
and justice legally trampled underfoot.

471
00:47:10.960 --> 00:47:13.380
Legal plunder has two roots.

472
00:47:13.380 --> 00:47:19.500
One of them, as we have already seen, is in human greed. The other is in misconceived

473
00:47:19.500 --> 00:47:26.780
philanthropy. Before I proceed, I think I ought to explain myself upon the word plunder.

474
00:47:26.780 --> 00:47:33.940
I do not take it as it often is taken in a vague, undefined relative or metaphorical

475
00:47:33.940 --> 00:47:42.380
sense. I use it in its scientific acceptation and as expressing the opposite idea to property.

476
00:47:42.380 --> 00:47:47.540
When a portion of wealth passes out of the hands of him who has acquired it without his

477
00:47:47.540 --> 00:47:54.820
consent and without compensation to him who has not created it, whether by force or by

478
00:47:54.820 --> 00:48:01.580
artifice, I say that property is violated, that plunder is perpetrated.

479
00:48:01.580 --> 00:48:08.660
I say that this is exactly what the law ought to repress always and everywhere.

480
00:48:08.660 --> 00:48:15.700
If the law itself performs the action it ought to repress, I say that plunder is still perpetrated,

481
00:48:15.700 --> 00:48:20.580
and even in a social point of view, under aggravated circumstances.

482
00:48:20.580 --> 00:48:26.360
In this case, however, he who profits from the plunder is not responsible for it.

483
00:48:26.360 --> 00:48:35.100
It is the law, the lawgiver, society itself, and this is where the political danger lies.

484
00:48:35.100 --> 00:48:40.780
It is to be regretted that there is something offensive in the word. I have sought in vain

485
00:48:40.780 --> 00:48:46.580
for another, for I would not wish at any time and especially just now to add an irritating

486
00:48:46.580 --> 00:48:53.140
word to our disagreements. Therefore, whether I am believed or not, I declare that I do

487
00:48:53.140 --> 00:49:00.220
not mean to impugn the intentions nor the morality of anybody. I am attacking an idea

488
00:49:00.220 --> 00:49:06.580
that I believe to be false, a system that appears to me to be unjust, and this is so

489
00:49:06.580 --> 00:49:12.980
independent of intentions that each of us profits by it without wishing it, and suffers

490
00:49:12.980 --> 00:49:17.760
from it without being aware of the cause.

491
00:49:17.760 --> 00:49:23.620
Any person must ride under the influence of party spirit or of fear, who would call into

492
00:49:23.620 --> 00:49:29.740
question the sincerity of protectionism, of socialism, and even of communism, which are

493
00:49:29.740 --> 00:49:34.580
are one and the same plant in three different periods of its growth.

494
00:49:34.580 --> 00:49:43.580
All that can be said is that plunder is more visible by its partiality in protectionism.

495
00:49:43.580 --> 00:49:49.540
If protection were only granted in France to a single class, to the engineers for instance,

496
00:49:49.540 --> 00:49:54.020
it would be so absurdly plundering as to be unable to maintain itself.

497
00:49:54.020 --> 00:50:00.220
Thus we see all the protected trades combine, make common cause and even recruit themselves

498
00:50:00.220 --> 00:50:05.580
in such a way as to appear to embrace the mass of the national labor.

499
00:50:05.580 --> 00:50:12.060
They feel instinctively that plunder is slurred over by being generalized.

500
00:50:12.060 --> 00:50:18.380
Plunder is more visible by its universality in communism.

501
00:50:18.380 --> 00:50:25.220
Since it follows that, of the three systems, socialism is still the most vague, the most

502
00:50:25.220 --> 00:50:30.180
undefined, and consequently the most sincere.

503
00:50:30.180 --> 00:50:35.700
Be that as it may, to conclude that legal plunder has one of its roots in misconceived

504
00:50:35.700 --> 00:50:41.800
philanthropy is evidently to put intentions out of the question.

505
00:50:41.800 --> 00:50:48.320
With this understanding, let us examine the value, the origin, and the tendency of this

506
00:50:48.320 --> 00:50:56.320
popular aspiration, which pretends to realize the general good by general plunder.

507
00:50:56.320 --> 00:51:03.880
The socialists say, since the law organizes justice, why should it not organize labor,

508
00:51:03.880 --> 00:51:06.840
instruction, and religion?

509
00:51:06.840 --> 00:51:08.320
Why?

510
00:51:08.320 --> 00:51:16.700
Because it could not organize labor, instruction and religion without disorganizing justice.

511
00:51:16.700 --> 00:51:23.440
For remember that law is force and that consequently the domain of the law cannot properly extend

512
00:51:23.440 --> 00:51:27.000
beyond the domain of force.

513
00:51:27.000 --> 00:51:34.080
When law and force keep a man within the bounds of justice, they impose nothing upon him but

514
00:51:34.080 --> 00:51:36.000
a mere negation.

515
00:51:36.000 --> 00:51:39.980
They only oblige him to abstain from doing harm.

516
00:51:39.980 --> 00:51:45.240
They violate neither his personality, his liberty, nor his property.

517
00:51:45.240 --> 00:51:49.940
They only guard the personality, the liberty, the property of others.

518
00:51:49.940 --> 00:51:52.580
They hold themselves on the defensive.

519
00:51:52.580 --> 00:51:56.040
They defend the equal right of all.

520
00:51:56.040 --> 00:52:01.360
They fulfill a mission whose harmlessness is evident, whose utility is palpable and whose

521
00:52:01.360 --> 00:52:04.760
legitimacy is not to be disputed.

522
00:52:04.760 --> 00:52:09.800
This is so true that, as a friend of mine once remarked to me, to say that the aim of

523
00:52:09.800 --> 00:52:17.220
the law is to cause justice to reign is to use an expression that is not rigorously exact.

524
00:52:17.220 --> 00:52:24.120
It ought to be said the aim of the law is to prevent injustice from reigning.

525
00:52:24.120 --> 00:52:28.320
In fact, it is not justice that has an existence of its own.

526
00:52:28.320 --> 00:52:30.460
It is injustice.

527
00:52:30.460 --> 00:52:34.400
The one results from the absence of the other.

528
00:52:34.400 --> 00:52:41.600
But when the law, through the medium of its necessary agent force, imposes a form of labor,

529
00:52:41.600 --> 00:52:49.420
a method or a subject of instruction, a creed or worship, it is no longer negative.

530
00:52:49.420 --> 00:52:51.800
It acts positively upon men.

531
00:52:51.800 --> 00:52:57.520
It substitutes the will of the legislator for their own will, the initiative of the

532
00:52:57.520 --> 00:53:00.480
legislator for their own initiative.

533
00:53:00.480 --> 00:53:04.200
They have no need to consult, to compare, to foresee.

534
00:53:04.200 --> 00:53:06.200
The law does all that for them.

535
00:53:06.200 --> 00:53:09.840
The intellect is for them a useless encumbrance.

536
00:53:09.840 --> 00:53:11.840
They cease to be men.

537
00:53:11.840 --> 00:53:17.440
They lose their personality, their liberty, their property.

538
00:53:17.440 --> 00:53:23.600
Try to imagine a form of labor imposed by force that is not a violation of liberty,

539
00:53:23.600 --> 00:53:29.600
a transmission of wealth imposed by force that is not a violation of property.

540
00:53:29.600 --> 00:53:34.740
If you cannot succeed in reconciling this, you are bound to conclude that the law cannot

541
00:53:34.740 --> 00:53:41.160
organize labor and industry without organizing injustice.

542
00:53:41.160 --> 00:53:47.300
When from the seclusion of his office, a politician takes a view of society, he is struck with

543
00:53:47.300 --> 00:53:50.920
the spectacle of inequality that presents itself.

544
00:53:50.920 --> 00:53:56.260
He mourns over the sufferings that are the lot of so many of our brethren, sufferings

545
00:53:56.260 --> 00:54:19.260
He ought perhaps to ask himself whether such a social state has not been caused by the plunder of ancient times, exercised in the way of conquest, and by plunder of more recent times, effected through the medium of the laws.

546
00:54:19.260 --> 00:54:26.740
He ought to ask himself whether, granting the aspiration of all men to well-being and improvement,

547
00:54:26.740 --> 00:54:32.620
the reign of justice would not suffice to realize the greatest activity of progress

548
00:54:32.620 --> 00:54:39.020
and the greatest amount of equality compatible with that individual responsibility that God

549
00:54:39.020 --> 00:54:43.580
has awarded as a just retribution of virtue and vice?

550
00:54:43.580 --> 00:54:45.660
He never gives this a thought.

551
00:54:45.660 --> 00:54:53.160
His mind turns towards combinations, arrangements, legal or factitious organizations.

552
00:54:53.160 --> 00:55:00.820
He seeks the remedy in perpetuating and exaggerating what has produced the evil.

553
00:55:00.820 --> 00:55:06.900
For justice apart, which we have seen is only negation, is there any one of these legal

554
00:55:06.900 --> 00:55:12.780
arrangements that does not contain the principle of plunder?

555
00:55:12.780 --> 00:55:18.560
You say, there are men who have no money, and you apply to the law.

556
00:55:18.560 --> 00:55:25.340
But the law is not a self-supplied fountain, whence every stream may obtain supplies independently

557
00:55:25.340 --> 00:55:26.900
of society.

558
00:55:26.900 --> 00:55:33.380
Nothing can enter the public treasury in favor of one citizen or one class, but what other

559
00:55:33.380 --> 00:55:38.380
citizens and other classes have been forced to send to it.

560
00:55:38.380 --> 00:55:44.500
If everyone draws from it only the equivalent of what he has contributed to it, your law,

561
00:55:44.500 --> 00:55:50.680
it is true, is no plunderer, but it does nothing for men who want money.

562
00:55:50.680 --> 00:55:53.460
It does not promote equality.

563
00:55:53.460 --> 00:55:59.020
It can only be an instrument of equalization as far as it takes from one party to give to

564
00:55:59.020 --> 00:56:04.100
another, and then it is an instrument of plunder.

565
00:56:04.100 --> 00:56:11.180
And in this life, the protection of tariffs, subsidies, right to profit, right to labor,

566
00:56:11.180 --> 00:56:18.500
right to assistance, free public education, progressive taxation, gratuitousness of credit,

567
00:56:18.500 --> 00:56:27.500
social workshops, and you will always find at the bottom legal plunder, organized injustice.

568
00:56:27.500 --> 00:56:33.460
You say, there are men who want knowledge, and you apply to the law, but the law is not

569
00:56:33.460 --> 00:56:49.460
is not a torch that sheds light that originates within itself, it extends over a society where there are men who have knowledge and others who have not, citizens who want to learn and others who are disposed to teach.

570
00:56:49.460 --> 00:57:13.460
It can only do one of two things, either allow a free operation to this kind of transaction, that is, let this kind of want satisfy itself freely, or else preempt the will of the people in the matter and take from some of them sufficient to pay professors commissioned to instruct others for free.

571
00:57:13.460 --> 00:57:21.460
But in this second case, there cannot fail to be a violation of liberty and property, legal plunder.

572
00:57:21.460 --> 00:57:28.460
You say, here are men who are wanting in morality or religion, and you apply to the law.

573
00:57:28.460 --> 00:57:37.460
But law is force, and need, I say, how far it is a violent and absurd enterprise to introduce force in these matters?

574
00:57:37.460 --> 00:57:50.460
As the result of its systems and of its efforts, it would seem that socialism, notwithstanding all itself complacency, can scarcely help perceiving the monster of legal plunder.

575
00:57:50.460 --> 00:58:04.460
But what does it do? It disguises it cleverly from others, and even from itself, under the seductive names of fraternity, solidarity, organization, association.

576
00:58:04.460 --> 00:58:22.460
And because we do not ask so much at the hands of the law, because we only ask it for justice, it alleges that we reject fraternity, solidarity, organization and association, and they brand us with the name of individualist.

577
00:58:22.460 --> 00:58:30.460
We can assure them that what we repudiate is not natural organization, but forced organization.

578
00:58:30.460 --> 00:58:37.100
Association. It is not free association but the forms of association that they would impose

579
00:58:37.100 --> 00:58:44.100
upon us. It is not spontaneous fraternity but legal fraternity. It is not providential

580
00:58:45.340 --> 00:58:52.340
solidarity but artificial solidarity, which is only an unjust displacement of responsibility.

581
00:58:53.140 --> 00:59:00.140
Socialism, like the old policy from which it emanates, confounds government and society.

582
00:59:00.140 --> 00:59:08.140
And so, every time we object to a thing being done by government, it concludes that we object to its being done at all.

583
00:59:08.140 --> 00:59:14.140
We disapprove of education by the state, well then we are against education altogether.

584
00:59:14.140 --> 00:59:19.140
We object to a state religion, then we would have no religion at all.

585
00:59:19.140 --> 00:59:27.140
We object to an equality which is brought about by the state when we are against equality, and so forth, and so forth.

586
00:59:27.140 --> 00:59:33.340
They might as well accuse us of wishing men not to eat because we object to the cultivation

587
00:59:33.340 --> 00:59:36.200
of corn by the state.

588
00:59:36.200 --> 00:59:42.000
How is it that the strange idea of making the law produce what it does not contain—prosperity

589
00:59:42.000 --> 00:59:49.440
in a positive sense, wealth, science, religion—should ever have gained ground in the political world?

590
00:59:49.440 --> 00:59:54.680
The modern politicians, particularly those of the socialist school, found their different

591
00:59:54.680 --> 01:00:01.500
theories upon one common hypothesis, and surely a more strange and more presumptuous notion

592
01:00:01.500 --> 01:00:05.080
could never have entered a human brain.

593
01:00:05.080 --> 01:00:09.040
They divide mankind into two parts.

594
01:00:09.040 --> 01:00:13.280
Men in general, except one, form the first.

595
01:00:13.280 --> 01:00:19.240
The politician himself forms the second, which is by far the most important.

596
01:00:19.240 --> 01:00:25.000
In fact, they begin by supposing that men are devoid of any principle of action and

597
01:00:25.000 --> 01:00:30.680
of any means of discernment in themselves, that they have no initiative, that they are

598
01:00:30.680 --> 01:00:38.160
inert matter, passive particles, atoms without impulse, at best a vegetation indifferent

599
01:00:38.160 --> 01:00:44.120
to its own mode of existence, susceptible of assuming from an exterior will and hand

600
01:00:44.120 --> 01:00:51.360
and Infinite Number of Forms, more or less symmetrical, artistic and perfected. Moreover,

601
01:00:51.360 --> 01:00:57.600
every one of these politicians does not hesitate to assume that he himself is, under the names

602
01:00:57.600 --> 01:01:06.240
of organizer, discoverer, legislator, instituter or founder, this will and hand, this universal

603
01:01:06.240 --> 01:01:13.960
initiative, this creative power, whose sublime mission it is to gather together these scattered

604
01:01:13.960 --> 01:01:19.240
Materials, that is, men, into society.

605
01:01:19.240 --> 01:01:25.680
Starting from these data, as a gardener, according to his caprice, shapes his trees into pyramids,

606
01:01:25.680 --> 01:01:33.640
parasols, cubes, cones, vases, espaliers, distaffs, or fans, so the socialist, following

607
01:01:33.640 --> 01:01:42.360
his chimera, shapes poor humanity into groups, series, circles, sub-circles, honeycombs,

608
01:01:42.360 --> 01:01:46.840
or social workshops, with all kinds of variations.

609
01:01:46.840 --> 01:01:52.360
And as the gardener, to bring his trees into shape, needs hatchets, pruning hooks, saws

610
01:01:52.360 --> 01:01:59.640
and shears, so the politician, to bring society into shape, needs the forces which he can

611
01:01:59.640 --> 01:02:07.280
only find in the laws, the law of tariffs, the law of taxation, the law of assistance

612
01:02:07.280 --> 01:02:09.940
and the law of education.

613
01:02:09.940 --> 01:02:16.780
It is so true that the socialists look upon mankind as a subject for social experiments

614
01:02:16.780 --> 01:02:22.020
that if, by chance, they are not quite certain of the success of these experiments, they

615
01:02:22.020 --> 01:02:27.260
will request a portion of mankind as a subject to experiment upon.

616
01:02:27.260 --> 01:02:33.820
It is well known how popular the idea of trying all systems is, and one of their chiefs has

617
01:02:33.820 --> 01:02:39.600
has been known seriously to demand of the constituent assembly a parish with all its

618
01:02:39.600 --> 01:02:44.000
inhabitants upon which to make his experiments.

619
01:02:44.000 --> 01:02:48.480
It is thus that an inventor will make a small machine before he makes one of the regular

620
01:02:48.480 --> 01:02:49.480
size.

621
01:02:49.480 --> 01:02:56.940
Thus, the chemist sacrifices some substances, the agriculturalist some seed and a corner

622
01:02:56.940 --> 01:03:01.120
of his field to make trial of an idea.

623
01:03:01.120 --> 01:03:06.600
Now think of the difference between the gardener and his trees, between the inventor and his

624
01:03:06.600 --> 01:03:13.160
machine, between the chemist and his substances, between the agriculturalist and his seed.

625
01:03:13.160 --> 01:03:19.160
The socialist thinks, in all sincerity, that there is the same difference between himself

626
01:03:19.160 --> 01:03:21.440
and mankind.

627
01:03:21.440 --> 01:03:27.600
No wonder the politicians of the 19th century look upon society as an artificial production

628
01:03:27.600 --> 01:03:30.360
of the legislator's genius.

629
01:03:30.360 --> 01:03:36.520
This idea, the result of a classical education, has taken possession of all the thinkers and

630
01:03:36.520 --> 01:03:39.440
great writers of our country.

631
01:03:39.440 --> 01:03:44.500
To all these persons, the relations between mankind and the legislator appear to be the

632
01:03:44.500 --> 01:03:49.800
same as those that exist between the clay and the potter.

633
01:03:49.800 --> 01:03:55.960
Moreover, if they have consented to recognize in the heart of man a capability of action

634
01:03:55.960 --> 01:04:01.920
and in his intellect a faculty of discernment, they have looked upon this gift of God as

635
01:04:01.920 --> 01:04:08.920
a fatal one and thought that mankind, under these two impulses, tended fatally towards

636
01:04:08.920 --> 01:04:10.880
ruin.

637
01:04:10.880 --> 01:04:17.200
They have taken it for granted that if abandoned to their own inclinations, men would only

638
01:04:17.200 --> 01:04:24.200
occupy themselves with religion to arrive at atheism, with instruction to come to ignorance

639
01:04:24.200 --> 01:04:29.400
and with labor and exchange to be extinguished in misery.

640
01:04:29.400 --> 01:04:35.680
Happily, according to these writers, there are some men termed governors and legislators

641
01:04:35.680 --> 01:04:43.060
upon whom heaven has bestowed opposite tendencies not for their own sake only, but for the sake

642
01:04:43.060 --> 01:04:45.760
of the rest of the world.

643
01:04:45.760 --> 01:04:50.000
Whilst mankind tends to evil, they incline to good.

644
01:04:50.000 --> 01:04:55.560
Whilst mankind is advancing toward darkness, they are aspiring to enlightenment.

645
01:04:55.560 --> 01:05:01.200
Whilst mankind is drawn towards vice, they are attracted by virtue.

646
01:05:01.200 --> 01:05:07.760
And this granted, they demand the assistance of force by means of which they are to substitute

647
01:05:07.760 --> 01:05:11.520
their own tendencies for those of the human race.

648
01:05:11.520 --> 01:05:20.160
It is only needful to open, almost at random, a book on philosophy, politics or history,

649
01:05:20.160 --> 01:05:26.640
to see how strongly this idea, the child of classical studies and the mother of socialism,

650
01:05:26.640 --> 01:05:28.800
is rooted in our country.

651
01:05:28.800 --> 01:05:35.560
That mankind is merely inert matter, receiving life, organization, morality and wealth from

652
01:05:35.560 --> 01:05:56.160
Classical Conventionalism shows us everywhere, behind passive society, a hidden power under

653
01:05:56.160 --> 01:06:02.680
the names of law or legislator, or by a mode of expression which refers to some person

654
01:06:02.680 --> 01:06:10.760
or Persons of Undisputed Weight and Authority, but Not Named, which moves, animates, enriches,

655
01:06:10.760 --> 01:06:13.840
and regenerates mankind.

656
01:06:13.840 --> 01:06:17.080
We will give a quotation from Beausuay.

657
01:06:17.080 --> 01:06:24.140
One of the things which was the most strongly impressed, by whom, upon the mind of the Egyptians,

658
01:06:24.140 --> 01:06:26.460
was the love of their country.

659
01:06:26.460 --> 01:06:29.860
Nobody was allowed to be useless to the state.

660
01:06:29.860 --> 01:06:36.040
The law assigned to every one his employment, which descended from father to son.

661
01:06:36.040 --> 01:06:41.540
No one was permitted to have two professions nor to adopt another.

662
01:06:41.540 --> 01:06:46.700
But there was one occupation which was obliged to be common to all.

663
01:06:46.700 --> 01:06:50.700
This was the study of the laws and of wisdom.

664
01:06:50.700 --> 01:06:56.440
Ignorance of religion and the political regulations of the country was excused in no condition

665
01:06:56.440 --> 01:07:20.440
of Life. Moreover, every profession had a district assigned to it. By whom? Amongst good laws, one of the best things was that everybody was taught to observe then. By whom? Egypt abounded with wonderful inventions and nothing was neglected which could render life comfortable and tranquil.

666
01:07:20.440 --> 01:07:27.440
Thus men, according to Bossouet, derive nothing from themselves.

667
01:07:27.440 --> 01:07:38.440
Patriotism, wealth, inventions, husbandry, science, all come to them by the operation of the laws or by kings.

668
01:07:38.440 --> 01:07:42.440
All they have to do is to be passive.

669
01:07:42.440 --> 01:07:51.440
It is on this ground that Bossouet takes exception when Diodorus accuses the Egyptians of rejecting wrestling and music.

670
01:07:51.440 --> 01:07:58.440
How is that possible, says he, since these arts were invented by Trismegistus?

671
01:07:58.440 --> 01:08:00.440
It is the same with the Persians.

672
01:08:00.440 --> 01:08:05.440
One of the first cares of the prince was to encourage agriculture.

673
01:08:05.440 --> 01:08:12.160
As there were posts established for the regulation of the armies, so there were offices for the

674
01:08:12.160 --> 01:08:15.040
superintending of rural works.

675
01:08:15.040 --> 01:08:21.380
The respect with which the Persians were inspired for royal authority was excessive.

676
01:08:21.380 --> 01:08:27.020
The Greeks, although full of mind, were no less strangers to their own responsibilities,

677
01:08:27.020 --> 01:08:32.840
so much so that of themselves, like dogs and horses, they would not have ventured upon

678
01:08:32.840 --> 01:08:35.200
the most simple gains.

679
01:08:35.200 --> 01:08:42.660
In a classical sense it is an undisputed thing that everything comes to the people from without.

680
01:08:42.660 --> 01:08:48.480
The Greeks, naturally full of spirit and courage, had been early cultivated by kings and colonies

681
01:08:48.480 --> 01:08:51.000
who had come from Egypt.

682
01:08:51.000 --> 01:08:56.240
From them they had learned the exercises of the body, foot races and horse and chariot

683
01:08:56.240 --> 01:08:57.400
races.

684
01:08:57.400 --> 01:09:03.100
The best thing that the Egyptians had taught them was to become docile and to allow themselves

685
01:09:03.100 --> 01:09:06.700
was to be formed by the laws for the public good.

686
01:09:06.700 --> 01:09:13.220
Phenelon, reared in the study and admiration of antiquity and a witness of the power of

687
01:09:13.220 --> 01:09:21.180
Louis XIV, Phenelon naturally adopted the idea that mankind should be passive and that

688
01:09:21.180 --> 01:09:28.900
its misfortunes and its prosperities, its virtues and its vices are caused by the external

689
01:09:28.900 --> 01:09:35.900
influence that is exercised upon it by the law or by the makers of the law. Thus, in

690
01:09:35.900 --> 01:09:43.300
his Utopia of Salentum, he brings the men with their interests, their faculties, their

691
01:09:43.300 --> 01:09:49.740
desires and their possessions under the absolute direction of the legislator. Whatever the

692
01:09:49.740 --> 01:09:57.300
subject may be, they themselves have no voice in it. The prince judges for them. The nation

693
01:09:57.300 --> 01:10:02.480
and is just a shapeless mass of which the prince is the soul.

694
01:10:02.480 --> 01:10:08.340
In him resides the thought, the foresight, the principle of all organization, of all

695
01:10:08.340 --> 01:10:09.660
progress.

696
01:10:09.660 --> 01:10:14.180
On him, therefore, rests all the responsibility.

697
01:10:14.180 --> 01:10:20.380
In proof of this assertion, I might transcribe the whole of the tenth book of Telemachus.

698
01:10:20.380 --> 01:10:25.620
I refer the reader to it and shall content myself with quoting some passages taken at

699
01:10:25.620 --> 01:10:31.080
random from this celebrated work, to which, in every other respect, I am the first to

700
01:10:31.080 --> 01:10:33.720
render justice.

701
01:10:33.720 --> 01:10:39.560
With the astonishing credulity that characterizes the classics, Fenelon, against the authority

702
01:10:39.560 --> 01:10:46.840
of reason and of facts, admits the general felicity of the Egyptians and attributes it

703
01:10:46.840 --> 01:10:51.680
not to their own wisdom, but to that of their king's.

704
01:10:51.680 --> 01:10:56.600
We could not turn our eyes to the two shores without perceiving rich towns and country

705
01:10:56.600 --> 01:11:03.080
seats agreeably situated, fields that were covered every year without intermission with

706
01:11:03.080 --> 01:11:09.040
golden crops, meadows full of flocks, laborers bending under the weight of fruits that the

707
01:11:09.040 --> 01:11:15.640
earth lavished on its cultivators, and shepherds who made the echoes around repeat the soft

708
01:11:15.640 --> 01:11:18.000
sounds of their pipes and flutes.

709
01:11:18.000 --> 01:11:24.000
Happy, said Mentor, is that people who is governed by a wise king.

710
01:11:24.000 --> 01:11:34.000
Mentor afterwards desired me to remark the happiness and abundance that was spread over all the country of Egypt, where 22,000 cities might be counted.

711
01:11:34.000 --> 01:11:42.000
He admired the excellent police regulations of the cities, the justice administered in favor of the poor against the rich,

712
01:11:42.000 --> 01:11:49.000
The good education of the children who were accustomed to obedience, labor, and the love of arts and letters.

713
01:11:49.000 --> 01:11:54.000
The exactness with which all the ceremonies of religion were performed.

714
01:11:54.000 --> 01:12:04.000
The disinterestedness, the desire of honor, the fidelity to men, and the fear of the gods with which every father inspired his children.

715
01:12:04.000 --> 01:12:08.000
He could not sufficiently admire the prosperous state of the country.

716
01:12:08.000 --> 01:12:15.320
Happy, said he, is the people whom a wise king rules in such a manner.

717
01:12:15.320 --> 01:12:21.640
Fennelon's idol on Crete is still more fascinating, mentors made to say.

718
01:12:21.640 --> 01:12:27.960
All that you will see in this wonderful island is the result of the laws of minus.

719
01:12:27.960 --> 01:12:32.600
The education that the children receive renders the body healthy and robust.

720
01:12:32.600 --> 01:12:37.160
They are accustomed from the first to a frugal and laborious life.

721
01:12:37.160 --> 01:12:42.320
It is supposed that all the pleasures of sense innervate the body and the mind.

722
01:12:42.320 --> 01:12:47.800
No other pleasure is presented to them but that of being invincible by virtue, that of

723
01:12:47.800 --> 01:12:50.440
acquiring much glory.

724
01:12:50.440 --> 01:12:57.780
There they punish three vices that go unpunished amongst other people, ingratitude, dissimulation,

725
01:12:57.780 --> 01:12:59.360
and avarice.

726
01:12:59.360 --> 01:13:05.540
As to pomp and dissipation, there is no need to punish these, for they are unknown in Crete.

727
01:13:05.540 --> 01:13:12.220
No costly furniture, no magnificent clothing, no delicious feasts, no gilded palaces are

728
01:13:12.220 --> 01:13:13.220
allowed.

729
01:13:13.220 --> 01:13:20.940
It is thus that Mentor prepares his scholar to mold and manipulate, doubtless with the

730
01:13:20.940 --> 01:13:25.940
most philanthropic intentions, the people of Ithaca.

731
01:13:25.940 --> 01:13:31.160
And to confirm him in these ideas, he gives him the example of solentum.

732
01:13:31.160 --> 01:13:33.900
So we receive our first political notions.

733
01:13:33.900 --> 01:13:40.720
We are taught to treat men very much as Oliver de Ceres teaches farmers to manage and to

734
01:13:40.720 --> 01:13:48.420
mix the soil. Montesquieu. To sustain the spirit of commerce it is necessary that all

735
01:13:48.420 --> 01:13:53.920
the laws should favor it, that these same laws by their regulations in dividing the

736
01:13:53.920 --> 01:14:00.500
fortunes in proportion as commerce enlarges them should place every poor citizen in sufficiently

737
01:14:00.500 --> 01:14:18.020
Thus the laws are to dispose of all fortunes.

738
01:14:18.020 --> 01:14:23.220
Although in a democracy real equality be the soul of the state, yet it is so difficult

739
01:14:23.220 --> 01:14:29.100
to establish that an extreme exactness in this matter would not always be desirable.

740
01:14:29.100 --> 01:14:35.140
It is sufficient that a census be established to reduce or fix the differences to a certain

741
01:14:35.140 --> 01:14:42.280
point, after which it is for particular laws to equalize, as it were, the inequality by

742
01:14:42.280 --> 01:14:48.340
burdens imposed upon the rich and reliefs granted to the poor.

743
01:14:48.340 --> 01:14:54.900
Here again we see the equalization of fortunes by law, that is, by force.

744
01:14:54.900 --> 01:15:01.100
There were in Greece two kinds of republics. One was military as Sparta, the other commercial

745
01:15:01.100 --> 01:15:08.260
as Athens. In the one it was wished, by whom, that the citizens should be idle. In the other,

746
01:15:08.260 --> 01:15:14.020
the love of labor was encouraged. It is worth our while to pay little attention to the extent

747
01:15:14.020 --> 01:15:20.520
of genius required by these legislators, that we may see how, by confounding all the virtues,

748
01:15:20.520 --> 01:15:23.520
They showed their wisdom to the world.

749
01:15:23.520 --> 01:15:29.240
Lysergius, blending theft with the spirit of justice, the hardest slavery with extreme

750
01:15:29.240 --> 01:15:35.000
liberty, the most atrocious sentiments with the greatest moderation, gave stability to

751
01:15:35.000 --> 01:15:36.000
his city.

752
01:15:36.000 --> 01:15:41.720
He seemed to deprive it of all its resources, arts, commerce, money and walls.

753
01:15:41.720 --> 01:15:44.780
There was ambition without the hope of rising.

754
01:15:44.780 --> 01:15:50.580
There were natural sentiments where the individual was neither child nor husband nor father.

755
01:15:50.580 --> 01:15:54.500
Chastity was even deprived of modesty.

756
01:15:54.500 --> 01:15:59.500
By this road, Sparta was led on to grandeur and to glory.

757
01:15:59.500 --> 01:16:04.940
The phenomenon that we observe in the institutions of Greece has been seen in the midst of the

758
01:16:04.940 --> 01:16:08.900
degeneracy and corruption of our modern times.

759
01:16:08.900 --> 01:16:14.780
An honest legislator has formed a people where property has appeared as natural as

760
01:16:14.780 --> 01:16:21.980
bravery among the Spartans. Mr. Penn is a true lysergist, and although the former had

761
01:16:21.980 --> 01:16:28.340
peace for his object and the latter war, they resemble each other in the singular path upon

762
01:16:28.340 --> 01:16:34.260
which they have led their people, in their influence over free men, in the prejudices

763
01:16:34.260 --> 01:16:38.680
which they have overcome the passions they have subdued.

764
01:16:38.680 --> 01:16:41.640
Paraguay furnishes us with another example.

765
01:16:41.640 --> 01:16:47.440
Society has been accused of the crime of regarding the pleasure of commanding as the only good

766
01:16:47.440 --> 01:16:53.560
of life, but it will always be a noble thing to govern men by making them happy.

767
01:16:53.560 --> 01:16:59.960
Those who desire to form similar institutions will establish community of property as in

768
01:16:59.960 --> 01:17:05.760
in the Republic of Plato, the same reverence as he enjoined for the gods, separation from

769
01:17:05.760 --> 01:17:12.320
strangers for the preservation of morality, and make the city, and not the citizens, create

770
01:17:12.320 --> 01:17:13.320
commerce.

771
01:17:13.320 --> 01:17:19.880
They should give our arts without our luxury, our wants without our desires.

772
01:17:19.880 --> 01:17:27.240
Vulgar infatuation may exclaim, if it likes, it is monoskew, magnificent, sublime.

773
01:17:27.240 --> 01:17:54.760
I am not afraid to express my opinion, and to say, what? You have the gall 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 grist for the mill of the sagacity of lawgivers.

774
01:17:54.760 --> 01:18:02.000
Rousseau. Although this politician, the paramount authority of the Democrats, makes the social

775
01:18:02.000 --> 01:18:08.320
edifice rest upon the general will, no one has so completely admitted the hypothesis

776
01:18:08.320 --> 01:18:14.880
of the entire passiveness of human nature in the presence of the lawgiver. If it is

777
01:18:14.880 --> 01:18:22.000
true that a great prince is a rare thing, how much more so must a great lawgiver be?

778
01:18:22.000 --> 01:18:26.040
The former has only to follow the pattern proposed to him by the latter.

779
01:18:26.040 --> 01:18:28.900
This latter is the engineer who invents the machine.

780
01:18:28.900 --> 01:18:33.280
The former is merely the workman who sets it in motion.

781
01:18:33.280 --> 01:18:36.600
And what part have men to act in all this?

782
01:18:36.600 --> 01:18:39.680
That of the machine, which is set in motion?

783
01:18:39.680 --> 01:18:44.120
Or rather, are they not the brute matter of which the machine is made?

784
01:18:44.120 --> 01:18:50.480
Thus, between the legislator and the prince, between the prince and his subjects, there

785
01:18:50.480 --> 01:18:55.720
There are the same relations as those that exist between the agricultural writer and

786
01:18:55.720 --> 01:19:01.240
the agriculturalist, the agriculturalist and the Claude.

787
01:19:01.240 --> 01:19:08.840
At what a vast height, then, is the politician placed who rules over legislators themselves

788
01:19:08.840 --> 01:19:15.240
and teaches them their trade in such imperative terms as the following?

789
01:19:15.240 --> 01:19:17.600
Would you give consistency to the state?

790
01:19:17.600 --> 01:19:24.240
Putting the extremes together as much as possible suffer neither wealthy persons nor beggars.

791
01:19:24.240 --> 01:19:29.840
If the soil is poor and barren, or the country too much confined for the inhabitants, turn

792
01:19:29.840 --> 01:19:34.680
to industry and the arts, whose productions you will exchange for the provisions which

793
01:19:34.680 --> 01:19:36.380
you require.

794
01:19:36.380 --> 01:19:42.340
On a good soil, if you are short of inhabitants, give all your attention to agriculture, which

795
01:19:42.340 --> 01:19:49.380
which multiplies men, and banish the arts, which only serve to depopulate the country.

796
01:19:49.380 --> 01:19:53.560
Pay attention to extensive and convenient coasts.

797
01:19:53.560 --> 01:19:59.080
Cover the sea with vessels, and you will have a brilliant and short existence.

798
01:19:59.080 --> 01:20:05.260
If your seas wash only inaccessible rocks, let the people be barbarous and eat fish.

799
01:20:05.260 --> 01:20:09.980
They will live more quietly, perhaps better and most certainly more happily.

800
01:20:09.980 --> 01:20:15.420
In short, besides those maxims which are common to all, every people has its own particular

801
01:20:15.420 --> 01:20:20.780
circumstances which demand a legislation peculiar to itself.

802
01:20:20.780 --> 01:20:26.720
It was thus that the Hebrews formally, and the Arabs more recently, had religion for

803
01:20:26.720 --> 01:20:29.240
their principal object.

804
01:20:29.240 --> 01:20:36.840
That of the Athenians was literature, that of Carthage and Tyre, commerce, of Rhodes

805
01:20:36.840 --> 01:20:42.520
Naval Affairs, of Sparta, War, and of Rome, Virtue.

806
01:20:42.520 --> 01:20:47.980
The author of The Spirit of Laws has shown the art by which the legislator should frame

807
01:20:47.980 --> 01:20:52.340
his institutions towards each of these objects.

808
01:20:52.340 --> 01:20:57.840
But if the legislator, mistaking his object, should take up a principle different from

809
01:20:57.840 --> 01:21:03.240
that which arises from the nature of things, if one should tend to slavery and the other

810
01:21:03.240 --> 01:21:09.080
Further to liberty, if one to wealth and the other to population, one to peace and the

811
01:21:09.080 --> 01:21:15.680
other to conquests, the laws will insensibly become enfeebled, the Constitution will be

812
01:21:15.680 --> 01:21:21.160
impaired, and the state will be subject to incessant agitations until it is destroyed

813
01:21:21.160 --> 01:21:28.060
or becomes changed and invincible nature regains her empire.

814
01:21:28.060 --> 01:21:35.340
But if nature is sufficiently invincible to regain its empire, why does not Rousseau admit

815
01:21:35.340 --> 01:21:40.980
that it had no need of the legislator to gain its empire from the beginning?

816
01:21:40.980 --> 01:21:47.260
Why does he not allow that by obeying their own impulse, men would of themselves apply

817
01:21:47.260 --> 01:21:53.540
agriculture to a fertile district, and commerce to extensive and commodious coasts without

818
01:21:53.540 --> 01:22:00.520
The Interference of a Lysergist, a Solon or a Rousseau who would undertake it at the risk

819
01:22:00.520 --> 01:22:07.640
of deceiving themselves. Be that as it may, we see with what a terrible responsibility

820
01:22:07.640 --> 01:22:17.180
Rousseau invests inventors, institutors, conductors and manipulators of societies. He is therefore

821
01:22:17.180 --> 01:22:20.940
very exacting with regard to them.

822
01:22:20.940 --> 01:22:26.220
He who dares to undertake the institutions of a people ought to feel that he can, as

823
01:22:26.220 --> 01:22:33.900
it were, transform every individual who is by himself a perfect and solitary whole, receiving

824
01:22:33.900 --> 01:22:38.960
his life and being from a larger whole of which he forms a part.

825
01:22:38.960 --> 01:22:45.440
He must feel that he can change the constitution of man to fortify it and substitute a social

826
01:22:45.440 --> 01:22:50.400
Renal and moral existence for the physical and independent one that we have all received

827
01:22:50.400 --> 01:22:52.120
from nature.

828
01:22:52.120 --> 01:22:59.080
In a word, he must deprive man of his own powers to give him others that are foreign

829
01:22:59.080 --> 01:23:01.200
to him.

830
01:23:01.200 --> 01:23:03.040
Poor human nature.

831
01:23:03.040 --> 01:23:09.280
What would become of its dignity if it were entrusted to the disciples of Rousseau?

832
01:23:09.280 --> 01:23:16.440
The climate, that is, the air and the soil, is the first element for the legislator. His

833
01:23:16.440 --> 01:23:23.720
resources prescribe to him his duties. First, he must consult his local position. A population

834
01:23:23.720 --> 01:23:30.760
dwelling upon maritime shores must have laws fitted for navigation. If the colony is located

835
01:23:30.760 --> 01:23:37.280
in an inland region, a legislator must provide for the nature of the soil and for its degree

836
01:23:37.280 --> 01:23:42.720
of Fertility. It is more especially in the distribution of property that the wisdom of

837
01:23:42.720 --> 01:23:48.680
legislation will appear. As a general rule, and in every country, when a new colony is

838
01:23:48.680 --> 01:23:55.140
founded, land should be given to each man sufficient for the support of his family.

839
01:23:55.140 --> 01:24:01.820
In an uncultivated island, which you are colonizing with children, it will only be needful to

840
01:24:01.820 --> 01:24:06.140
to let the germs of truth expand in the developments of reason.

841
01:24:06.140 --> 01:24:11.380
But when you establish old people in a new country, the skill consists in only allowing

842
01:24:11.380 --> 01:24:18.160
it those injurious opinions and customs which it is impossible to cure and correct.

843
01:24:18.160 --> 01:24:23.540
If you wish to prevent them from being perpetuated, you will act upon the rising generation by

844
01:24:23.540 --> 01:24:26.620
a general and public education of the children.

845
01:24:26.620 --> 01:24:32.760
A prince or legislator ought never to found a colony without previously sending wise men

846
01:24:32.760 --> 01:24:35.340
there to instruct the youth.

847
01:24:35.340 --> 01:24:40.940
In a new colony, every facility is open to the precautions of the legislator who desires

848
01:24:40.940 --> 01:24:44.600
to purify the tone and the manners of the people.

849
01:24:44.600 --> 01:24:52.060
If he has genius and virtue, the lands and the men there are at his disposal, will inspire

850
01:24:52.060 --> 01:24:57.140
to compare his soul with the plan of society that a writer can only vaguely trace, and

851
01:24:57.140 --> 01:25:03.300
in a way that would be subject to the instability of all hypotheses, which are varied and complicated

852
01:25:03.300 --> 01:25:09.740
by an infinity of circumstances too difficult to foresee and to combine.

853
01:25:09.740 --> 01:25:15.360
One would think it was a professor of agriculture who was saying to his pupils, the climate

854
01:25:15.360 --> 01:25:21.920
It is the only rule for the agriculturalist. His resources dictate to him his duties. The

855
01:25:21.920 --> 01:25:27.200
first thing he has to consider is his local position. If he is on clay soil, he must do

856
01:25:27.200 --> 01:25:32.720
so and so. If he has to contend with sand, this is the way in which he must set about

857
01:25:32.720 --> 01:25:39.540
it. Every facility is open to the agriculturist who wishes to clear and improve his soil.

858
01:25:39.540 --> 01:25:44.680
If he only has the skill, the manure which he has at his disposal will suggest to him

859
01:25:44.680 --> 01:25:50.000
from a Plan of Operation, which a professor can only vaguely trace, and in a way that

860
01:25:50.000 --> 01:25:55.200
would be subject to the uncertainty of all hypotheses, which vary and are complicated

861
01:25:55.200 --> 01:26:00.760
by an infinity of circumstances too difficult to foresee and to combine.

862
01:26:00.760 --> 01:26:07.420
But oh, sublime writers, deign to remember sometimes that this clay, this sand, this

863
01:26:07.420 --> 01:26:14.420
This manure of which you are disposing in so arbitrary a manner are men, your equals,

864
01:26:14.420 --> 01:26:20.740
intelligent and free beings like yourselves, who have received from God, as you have, the

865
01:26:20.740 --> 01:26:28.260
faculty of seeing, of foreseeing, of thinking, and of judging for themselves.

866
01:26:28.260 --> 01:26:34.460
Mably, he is supposing the laws to be worn out by time and by the neglect of security

867
01:26:34.460 --> 01:26:41.020
and Continues Thus. Under these circumstances, we must be convinced that the bonds of government

868
01:26:41.020 --> 01:26:46.940
are slack. Give them a new tension, it is the reader who is addressed, and the evil

869
01:26:46.940 --> 01:26:52.060
will be remedied. Think less of punishing the faults than of encouraging the virtues

870
01:26:52.060 --> 01:26:58.500
that you want. By this method, you will bestow upon your republic the vigor of youth. Through

871
01:26:58.500 --> 01:27:04.120
ignorance of this, a free people has lost its liberty. But if the evil has made so much

872
01:27:04.120 --> 01:27:10.000
In such a way that the ordinary magistrates are unable to remedy it effectually have recourse

873
01:27:10.000 --> 01:27:16.760
to an extraordinary magistrate whose time should be short and its power considerable.

874
01:27:16.760 --> 01:27:21.240
The imagination of the citizens requires to be impressed.

875
01:27:21.240 --> 01:27:24.440
In this style he goes on through 20 volumes.

876
01:27:24.440 --> 01:27:29.920
There was a time when under the influence of teaching like this, which is the foundation

877
01:27:29.920 --> 01:27:37.040
Education of Classical Education, Everyone Was for Placing Himself Beyond and Above Mankind

878
01:27:37.040 --> 01:27:44.800
for the Sake of Arranging, Organizing and Instituting It in His Own Way, Kondelac.

879
01:27:44.800 --> 01:27:49.440
Take upon yourself, my lord, the character of Lysergis or of Solon.

880
01:27:49.440 --> 01:27:54.120
Before you finish reading this essay, amuse yourself with giving laws to some wild people

881
01:27:54.120 --> 01:27:57.120
in America or in Africa.

882
01:27:57.120 --> 01:28:03.000
Teach these roving men in fixed dwellings, teach them to keep flocks, endeavor to develop

883
01:28:03.000 --> 01:28:08.720
the social qualities that nature has implanted in them, make them begin to practice the duties

884
01:28:08.720 --> 01:28:16.080
of humanity, cause the pleasures of the passions to become distasteful to them by punishments,

885
01:28:16.080 --> 01:28:21.800
and you will see these barbarians, with every plan of your legislation, lose a vice and

886
01:28:21.800 --> 01:28:24.040
gain a virtue.

887
01:28:24.040 --> 01:28:28.480
All these people have had laws, but few among them have been happy.

888
01:28:28.480 --> 01:28:30.080
Why is this?

889
01:28:30.080 --> 01:28:34.960
Because legislators have almost always been ignorant of the object of society, which is

890
01:28:34.960 --> 01:28:40.060
to unite families by a common interest.

891
01:28:40.060 --> 01:28:45.540
Impartiality and law consist in two things, in establishing equality in the fortunes and

892
01:28:45.540 --> 01:28:48.240
in the dignity of the citizens.

893
01:28:48.240 --> 01:28:55.120
In proportion to the degree of equality established by the laws, the dearer will they become to

894
01:28:55.120 --> 01:28:56.760
every citizen?

895
01:28:56.760 --> 01:29:05.680
How can avarice, ambition, dissipation, idleness, sloth, envy, hatred or jealousy agitate men

896
01:29:05.680 --> 01:29:11.120
who are equal in fortune and dignity, and to whom the laws leave no hope of disturbing

897
01:29:11.120 --> 01:29:13.000
their equality?

898
01:29:13.000 --> 01:29:18.560
What has been told you of the Republic of Sparta ought to enlighten you on this question.

899
01:29:18.560 --> 01:29:25.880
No other state has had laws more in accordance with the order of nature or of equality.

900
01:29:25.880 --> 01:29:30.800
It is not to be wondered at that the 17th and 18th centuries should have looked upon

901
01:29:30.800 --> 01:29:38.800
the human race as inert matter, ready to receive everything, form, figure, impulse, movement

902
01:29:38.800 --> 01:29:45.840
and Life from a Great Prince or a Great Legislator or a Great Genius.

903
01:29:45.840 --> 01:29:53.600
These ages were reared in the study of antiquity, and antiquity presents everywhere, in Egypt,

904
01:29:53.600 --> 01:30:00.620
Persia, Greece and Rome, the spectacle of a few men molding mankind according to their

905
01:30:00.620 --> 01:30:08.740
fancy and mankind to this end enslaved by force or by imposture.

906
01:30:08.740 --> 01:30:16.780
And what does this prove? That because men in society are improvable, error, ignorance,

907
01:30:16.780 --> 01:30:23.620
despotism, slavery and superstition must be more prevalent in early times. The mistake

908
01:30:23.620 --> 01:30:29.660
of the writers quoted above is not that they have asserted this fact, but that they have

909
01:30:29.660 --> 01:30:37.440
proposed it as a rule for the admiration and imitation of future generations. Their mistake

910
01:30:37.440 --> 01:30:43.560
Ludwig has been, with an inconceivable absence of discernment and upon the faith of a puerile

911
01:30:43.560 --> 01:30:52.160
conventionalism, that they have admitted what is inadmissible, namely the grandeur, dignity,

912
01:30:52.160 --> 01:30:58.560
morality and well-being of the artificial societies of the ancient world.

913
01:30:58.560 --> 01:31:04.640
They have not understood that time produces and spreads enlightenment, and that in proportion

914
01:31:04.640 --> 01:31:11.240
to the increase of enlightenment, right ceases to be upheld by force, and society regains

915
01:31:11.240 --> 01:31:14.080
possession of herself.

916
01:31:14.080 --> 01:31:18.840
And in fact, what is the political work that we are endeavoring to promote?

917
01:31:18.840 --> 01:31:24.400
It is no other than the instinctive effort of every people towards liberty.

918
01:31:24.400 --> 01:31:30.560
And what is liberty, whose name can make every heart beat, and which can agitate the world,

919
01:31:30.560 --> 01:31:37.460
but the union of all liberties, the liberty of conscience, of education, of association,

920
01:31:37.460 --> 01:31:41.940
of the press, of movement, of labor, and of exchange.

921
01:31:41.940 --> 01:31:48.540
In other words, the free exercise for all of all the inoffensive faculties.

922
01:31:48.540 --> 01:31:55.760
And again, in other words, the destruction of all despotisms, even of legal despotism,

923
01:31:55.760 --> 01:32:02.200
and the reduction of law to its only rational sphere, which is to regulate the individual

924
01:32:02.200 --> 01:32:08.520
right of legitimate defense or to repress injustice.

925
01:32:08.520 --> 01:32:13.800
This tendency of the human race, it must be admitted, is greatly thwarted, particularly

926
01:32:13.800 --> 01:32:20.540
in our country, by the fatal disposition resulting from classical teaching and common to all

927
01:32:20.540 --> 01:32:29.140
All politicians of placing themselves beyond mankind to arrange, organize and regulate it

928
01:32:29.140 --> 01:32:31.620
according to their fancy.

929
01:32:31.620 --> 01:32:37.280
For whilst society is struggling to realize liberty, the great men who place themselves

930
01:32:37.280 --> 01:32:43.620
at its head imbued with the principles of the 17th and 18th centuries think only of

931
01:32:43.620 --> 01:32:51.540
of subjecting it to the philanthropic despotism of their social inventions and making it there

932
01:32:51.540 --> 01:32:58.500
with docility, according to the expression of Rousseau, the yoke of public felicity as

933
01:32:58.500 --> 01:33:02.600
pictured in their own imaginations.

934
01:33:02.600 --> 01:33:06.640
This was particularly the case in 1789.

935
01:33:06.640 --> 01:33:14.160
No sooner was the old system destroyed than society was to be submitted to other artificial

936
01:33:14.160 --> 01:33:20.520
arrangements, always with the same starting point, the omnipotence of the law.

937
01:33:20.520 --> 01:33:22.420
Sandjust.

938
01:33:22.420 --> 01:33:24.640
The legislator commands the future.

939
01:33:24.640 --> 01:33:27.580
It is for him to will for the good of mankind.

940
01:33:27.580 --> 01:33:31.400
It is for him to make men what he wishes them to be.

941
01:33:31.400 --> 01:33:33.080
Robespierre.

942
01:33:33.080 --> 01:33:38.040
The function of government is to direct the physical and moral powers of the nation towards

943
01:33:38.040 --> 01:33:41.360
the object of its institution.

944
01:33:41.360 --> 01:33:46.720
The L'Ouveraine, a people who are to be restored to liberty, must be formed anew.

945
01:33:46.720 --> 01:33:53.880
Ancient prejudices must be destroyed, antiquated customs changed, depraved affections corrected,

946
01:33:53.880 --> 01:33:56.360
inveterate vices eradicated.

947
01:33:56.360 --> 01:34:00.600
For this a strong force and a vehement impulse will be necessary.

948
01:34:00.600 --> 01:34:07.880
Citizens, the inflexible austerity of Lycurgus created the firm basis of the Spartan Republic.

949
01:34:07.880 --> 01:34:12.900
The feeble and trusting disposition of Salon plunged Athens into slavery.

950
01:34:12.900 --> 01:34:16.880
This parallel contains the whole science of government.

951
01:34:16.880 --> 01:34:22.800
Le Pelletier, considering the extent of human degradation, I am convinced of the necessity

952
01:34:22.800 --> 01:34:29.920
of effecting an entire regeneration of the race, and if I may so express myself, of creating

953
01:34:29.920 --> 01:34:35.600
Men, therefore, are nothing but raw material.

954
01:34:35.600 --> 01:34:39.440
It is not for them to will their own improvement.

955
01:34:39.440 --> 01:34:42.200
They are not capable of it.

956
01:34:42.200 --> 01:34:46.600
According to Sandus, it is only the legislator who is.

957
01:34:46.600 --> 01:34:50.760
Men are merely to be what he wills that they should be.

958
01:34:50.760 --> 01:34:56.720
According to Robespierre, who copies Rousseau literally, the legislator is to begin by assigning

959
01:34:56.720 --> 01:35:18.880
And below, Farren would teach us that it ought to have no prejudices, affections, nor wants,

960
01:35:18.880 --> 01:35:22.760
but such as are authorized by the legislator.

961
01:35:22.760 --> 01:35:29.760
He even goes so far as to say that the inflexible austerity of a man is the basis of a republic.

962
01:35:29.760 --> 01:35:35.280
We have seen that in cases where the evil is so great that the ordinary magistrates

963
01:35:35.280 --> 01:35:42.640
are unable to remedy it, Mabley recommends a dictatorship to promote virtue.

964
01:35:42.640 --> 01:35:47.720
Have recourse, says he, to an extraordinary magistrate whose time shall be short and his

965
01:35:47.720 --> 01:35:55.720
is power considerable. The imagination of the people requires to be impressed. This doctrine has not been neglected.

966
01:35:55.720 --> 01:36:06.720
Listen to Robespierre. The principle of the Republican government is virtue and the means to be adopted during its establishment is terror.

967
01:36:06.720 --> 01:36:16.720
We want to substitute in our country morality for self-indulgence, probity for honor, principles for customs, duties for decorum,

968
01:36:16.720 --> 01:36:23.440
Forum, The Empire of Reason for the Tyranny of Fashion, Contempt of Vice for Contempt of

969
01:36:23.440 --> 01:36:30.240
Misfortune, Pride for Insolence, Greatness of Soul for Vanity, Love of Glory for Love

970
01:36:30.240 --> 01:36:38.520
of Money, Good People for Good Company, Merit for Intrigue, Genius for Wit, Truth for Glitter,

971
01:36:38.520 --> 01:36:43.640
The Charm of Happiness for the Weariness of Pleasure, The Greatness of Man for the Littleness

972
01:36:43.640 --> 01:36:51.960
of the Great, a magnanimous, powerful, happy people for one that is easy, frivolous, degraded.

973
01:36:51.960 --> 01:36:58.000
That is to say, we would substitute all the virtues and miracles of a republic for all

974
01:36:58.000 --> 01:37:01.760
the vices and absurdities of monarchy.

975
01:37:01.760 --> 01:37:09.000
At what a vast height above the rest of mankind does Robespierre place himself here and observe

976
01:37:09.000 --> 01:37:12.400
the arrogance with which he speaks.

977
01:37:12.400 --> 01:37:19.040
He is not content with expressing the desire for a great renovation of the human heart.

978
01:37:19.040 --> 01:37:22.760
He does not even expect such a result from a regular government.

979
01:37:22.760 --> 01:37:30.140
No, he intends to effect it himself and by means of terror.

980
01:37:30.140 --> 01:37:35.540
The object of the discourse from which this puerile and laborious mass of antithesis is

981
01:37:35.540 --> 01:37:41.520
extracted was to exhibit the principles of morality that ought to direct a revolutionary

982
01:37:41.520 --> 01:37:47.660
Government. Moreover, when Robespierre asks for a dictatorship, it is not merely for the

983
01:37:47.660 --> 01:37:54.760
purpose of repelling a foreign enemy or putting down factions. It is that he may establish,

984
01:37:54.760 --> 01:38:00.280
by means of terror and as a preliminary to the operation of the Constitution, his own

985
01:38:00.280 --> 01:38:07.500
principles of morality. He pretends to nothing short of extirpating from the country, by

986
01:38:07.500 --> 01:38:14.800
by means of terror, self-interest, honor, customs, decorum, fashion, vanity, the love

987
01:38:14.800 --> 01:38:20.460
of money, good company, intrigue, wit, luxury and misery.

988
01:38:20.460 --> 01:38:26.740
It is not until after he, Robespierre, shall have accomplished these miracles, as he rightly

989
01:38:26.740 --> 01:38:31.780
calls them, that he will allow the law to regain her empire.

990
01:38:31.780 --> 01:38:38.500
Truly, it would be well if these visionaries, who think so much of themselves and so little

991
01:38:38.500 --> 01:38:45.900
of mankind, who want to renew everything, would only be content with trying to reform

992
01:38:45.900 --> 01:38:47.380
themselves.

993
01:38:47.380 --> 01:38:51.140
The task would be arduous enough for them.

994
01:38:51.140 --> 01:38:57.700
In general, however, these gentlemen, the reformers, legislators and politicians, do

995
01:38:57.700 --> 01:39:03.260
Do not desire to exercise an immediate despotism over mankind.

996
01:39:03.260 --> 01:39:08.080
No, they are too moderate and too philanthropic for that.

997
01:39:08.080 --> 01:39:16.760
They only contend for the despotism, the absolutism, the omnipotence of the law.

998
01:39:16.760 --> 01:39:21.960
They aspire only to make the law.

999
01:39:21.960 --> 01:39:28.760
To show how universal this strange disposition has been in France, I had need not only to

1000
01:39:28.760 --> 01:39:34.960
have copied the whole of the works of Mabli, Reynaud, Rousseau, Fenlon, and to have made

1001
01:39:34.960 --> 01:39:42.240
long extracts from Bossouet and Montesquieu, but to have given the entire transactions

1002
01:39:42.240 --> 01:39:47.940
of the sittings of the Convention. I shall do no such thing, however, but merely refer

1003
01:39:47.940 --> 01:40:17.940
Boehm-Bawerk, Friedrich Hayek, Eugen von Mises, Murray Rothbard, Friedrich Hayek, Eugen von Boehm-Bawerk, Jean-Baptiste Say, Frederic Bastiat, Israel Kirzner, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Friedrich Hayek, Mises Institute, Austrian School, Praxeology, Catallactics, Man Economy and State, The Theory of Money and Credit

1004
01:40:17.940 --> 01:40:23.940
is hostile to liberty, yet this did not prevent him from giving this lesson to his son in

1005
01:40:23.940 --> 01:40:25.380
his will.

1006
01:40:25.380 --> 01:40:32.660
To govern is to diffuse morality, education and well-being.

1007
01:40:32.660 --> 01:40:40.460
After all this, I hardly need show by fastidious quotations the opinions of Morelli, Babouf,

1008
01:40:40.460 --> 01:40:43.500
Owen, St. Simon and Fourier.

1009
01:40:43.500 --> 01:40:48.840
I shall confine myself to a few extracts from Louis Blanc's book on the Organization of

1010
01:40:48.840 --> 01:40:50.600
Labor.

1011
01:40:50.600 --> 01:40:55.180
In our project, society receives the impulse of power.

1012
01:40:55.180 --> 01:40:59.860
In what does the impulse that power gives to society consist?

1013
01:40:59.860 --> 01:41:05.200
In imposing upon it the project of Mr. Louis Blanc.

1014
01:41:05.200 --> 01:41:08.180
On the other hand, society is the human race.

1015
01:41:08.180 --> 01:41:14.400
The human race, then, is to receive its impulse from Mr. Louis Blanc.

1016
01:41:14.400 --> 01:41:18.820
It is at liberty to do so or not, it will be said.

1017
01:41:18.820 --> 01:41:25.000
Of course, the human race is at liberty to take advice from anybody, whoever it may be.

1018
01:41:25.000 --> 01:41:29.580
But this is not the way in which Mr. Louis Blanc understands the thing.

1019
01:41:29.580 --> 01:41:36.800
He means that his project should be converted into law and consequently forcibly imposed

1020
01:41:36.800 --> 01:41:39.320
by Power.

1021
01:41:39.320 --> 01:41:45.040
In our project, the state has only to give a legislation to labor by means of which the

1022
01:41:45.040 --> 01:41:48.800
industrial movement may and ought to be accomplished in all liberty.

1023
01:41:48.800 --> 01:41:56.760
It, the state, merely places society on an incline, that is all, that it may descend

1024
01:41:56.760 --> 01:42:01.800
when once it is placed there by the mere force of things and by the natural concourse of

1025
01:42:01.800 --> 01:42:04.640
the established mechanism.

1026
01:42:04.640 --> 01:42:06.560
But what is this incline?

1027
01:42:06.560 --> 01:42:14.160
And indicated by Mr. Louis Blanc, does it not lead to an abyss? No, it leads to happiness.

1028
01:42:14.160 --> 01:42:20.160
Why then does not society go there of itself? Because it does not know what it wants and

1029
01:42:20.160 --> 01:42:26.760
it requires an impulse. What is to give it this impulse? Power. And who is to give the

1030
01:42:26.760 --> 01:42:33.080
impulse to power? The inventor of the machine, Mr. Louis Blanc. We shall never get out of

1031
01:42:33.080 --> 01:42:40.200
The Circle, Mankind Passive and a Great Man Moving It by the Intervention of the Law.

1032
01:42:40.200 --> 01:42:46.960
Once on this incline, will society enjoy something like liberty? Without a doubt. And what is

1033
01:42:46.960 --> 01:42:53.360
liberty? Once for all, liberty consists not only in the right granted, but in the power

1034
01:42:53.360 --> 01:42:59.640
given to man to exercise, to develop his faculties under the empire of justice and under the

1035
01:42:59.640 --> 01:43:01.960
and the Protection of the Law.

1036
01:43:01.960 --> 01:43:04.240
And this is no vain distinction.

1037
01:43:04.240 --> 01:43:08.720
There is a deep meaning in it and its consequences are imponderable.

1038
01:43:08.720 --> 01:43:14.340
For when once it is admitted that man to be truly free must have the power to exercise

1039
01:43:14.340 --> 01:43:19.720
and develop his faculties, it follows that every member of society has a claim upon it

1040
01:43:19.720 --> 01:43:26.520
for such education as shall enable his faculties to display themselves and for the tools of

1041
01:43:26.520 --> 01:43:33.460
of Labor, without which human activity can find no scope. Now, by whose intervention

1042
01:43:33.460 --> 01:43:39.120
is society to give to each of its members the requisite education and the necessary tools

1043
01:43:39.120 --> 01:43:46.120
of labor, unless by that of the state? Thus, liberty is power. And what does this power

1044
01:43:47.440 --> 01:43:53.660
consist in possessing education and tools of labor? Who is to give education and tools

1045
01:43:53.660 --> 01:44:00.940
Tools of Labor, society who owes them, but whose intervention is society to give tools

1046
01:44:00.940 --> 01:44:08.600
of labor to those who do not possess them, by the intervention of the state.

1047
01:44:08.600 --> 01:44:12.320
From whom is the state to obtain them?

1048
01:44:12.320 --> 01:44:19.020
It is for the reader to answer this question and to notice whither all this tends.

1049
01:44:19.020 --> 01:44:23.860
One of the strangest phenomena of our time and one that will probably be a matter of

1050
01:44:23.860 --> 01:44:31.420
astonishment to our descendants is the doctrine which is founded upon this triple hypothesis,

1051
01:44:31.420 --> 01:44:40.040
the radical passiveness of mankind, the omnipotence of the law, the infallibility of the legislator.

1052
01:44:40.040 --> 01:44:48.340
This is the sacred symbol of the party that proclaims itself exclusively democratic.

1053
01:44:48.340 --> 01:44:52.620
It is true that it professes also to be social.

1054
01:44:52.620 --> 01:44:57.900
So far as it is democratic, it has an unlimited faith in mankind.

1055
01:44:57.900 --> 01:45:04.020
So far as it is social, it places mankind beneath the mud.

1056
01:45:04.020 --> 01:45:06.620
Are political rights under discussion?

1057
01:45:06.620 --> 01:45:08.780
Is a legislator to be chosen?

1058
01:45:08.780 --> 01:45:12.580
Oh, then the people possess science by instinct.

1059
01:45:12.580 --> 01:45:15.300
They are gifted with an admirable discernment.

1060
01:45:15.300 --> 01:45:17.100
Their will is always right.

1061
01:45:17.100 --> 01:45:25.380
The general will cannot err. Suffrage cannot be too universal. Nobody is under any responsibility

1062
01:45:25.380 --> 01:45:31.260
to society. The will and the capacity to choose well are taken for granted. Can the people

1063
01:45:31.260 --> 01:45:37.200
be mistaken? Are we not living in an age of enlightenment? What? Are the people to be

1064
01:45:37.200 --> 01:45:42.780
forever led about by the knows? Have they not acquired their rights at the cost of effort

1065
01:45:42.780 --> 01:45:48.860
and Sacrifice? Have they not given sufficient proof of intelligence and wisdom? Are they

1066
01:45:48.860 --> 01:45:54.940
not arrived at maturity? Are they not in a state to judge for themselves? Do they not

1067
01:45:54.940 --> 01:45:59.980
know their own interest? Is there a man or a class who would dare to claim the right

1068
01:45:59.980 --> 01:46:06.840
of putting himself in the place of the people, of deciding and of acting for them? No, no,

1069
01:46:06.840 --> 01:46:24.080
But when once the legislator is duly elected, then indeed the style of his speech alters.

1070
01:46:24.080 --> 01:46:30.720
The nation is sent back into passiveness, inertness, nothingness, and the legislator

1071
01:46:30.720 --> 01:46:33.980
takes possession of omnipotence.

1072
01:46:33.980 --> 01:46:42.080
It is for him to invent, for him to direct, for him to impel, for him to organize.

1073
01:46:42.080 --> 01:46:45.220
Mankind has nothing to do but to submit.

1074
01:46:45.220 --> 01:46:49.280
The hour of despotism has struck.

1075
01:46:49.280 --> 01:46:52.880
And we must observe that this is decisive.

1076
01:46:52.880 --> 01:46:59.540
For the people just before, so enlightened, so moral, so perfect, have no inclinations

1077
01:46:59.540 --> 01:47:15.540
or if they have any these all lead them downwards toward degradation and yet they ought to have a little liberty but are we not assured by Mr. Considerant that liberty leads fatally to monopoly?

1078
01:47:15.540 --> 01:47:27.540
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?

1079
01:47:27.540 --> 01:47:33.540
For that reason, people are exterminated and ruined in proportion as they are free.

1080
01:47:33.540 --> 01:47:38.540
Take, for example, Switzerland, Holland, England and the United States.

1081
01:47:38.540 --> 01:47:49.540
Does not Mr. Louis Blanc tell us again that competition leads to monopoly and that, for the same reason, cheapness leads to exorbitant prices?

1082
01:47:49.540 --> 01:47:56.540
That competition tends to drain the sources of consumption and diverts production to a destructive activity?

1083
01:47:56.540 --> 01:48:03.660
that competition forces production to increase and consumption to decrease, whence it follows

1084
01:48:03.660 --> 01:48:09.460
that free people produce for the sake of not consuming, that there is nothing but oppression

1085
01:48:09.460 --> 01:48:16.980
and madness among them and that it is absolutely necessary for Mr. Louis Blanc to see to it.

1086
01:48:16.980 --> 01:48:20.500
What sort of liberty should be allowed to men?

1087
01:48:20.500 --> 01:48:26.260
Liberty of Conscience, but we should see them all profiting by the permission to become

1088
01:48:26.260 --> 01:48:28.500
atheists.

1089
01:48:28.500 --> 01:48:34.340
Liberty of Education, but parents would be paying professors to teach their sons immorality

1090
01:48:34.340 --> 01:48:35.340
and error.

1091
01:48:35.340 --> 01:48:41.700
Besides, if we are to believe Mr. Thiers, education, if left to the national liberty,

1092
01:48:41.700 --> 01:48:43.580
would cease to be national.

1093
01:48:43.580 --> 01:48:48.660
And we should be educating our children in the ideas of the Turks or Hindus, instead

1094
01:48:48.660 --> 01:48:54.380
of which, thanks to the legal despotism of the universities, they have the good fortune

1095
01:48:54.380 --> 01:48:59.180
to be educated in the noble ideas of the Romans.

1096
01:48:59.180 --> 01:49:00.560
Liberty of labor?

1097
01:49:00.560 --> 01:49:06.880
But this is only competition, whose effect is to leave all products unconsumed, to exterminate

1098
01:49:06.880 --> 01:49:09.580
the people and to ruin the tradesmen.

1099
01:49:09.580 --> 01:49:11.620
The liberty of exchange?

1100
01:49:11.620 --> 01:49:15.580
But it is well known that the protectionists have shown over and over again that a man

1101
01:49:15.580 --> 01:49:22.020
Man will inevitably be ruined when he exchanges freely, and that to become rich it is necessary

1102
01:49:22.020 --> 01:49:26.780
to exchange without liberty, liberty of association.

1103
01:49:26.780 --> 01:49:32.540
But according to the socialist doctrine, liberty and association exclude each other, for the

1104
01:49:32.540 --> 01:49:38.500
liberty of men is a tact just to force them to associate.

1105
01:49:38.500 --> 01:49:47.460
We must see, then, that the Socialist Democrats cannot in conscience allow men any liberty,

1106
01:49:47.460 --> 01:49:56.940
because by their own nature they tend in every instance to all kinds of degradation and demoralization.

1107
01:49:56.940 --> 01:50:05.060
We are therefore left to conjecture, in this case, upon what foundation universal suffrage

1108
01:50:05.060 --> 01:50:21.060
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.

1109
01:50:21.060 --> 01:50:31.060
Since the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to allow them liberty,

1110
01:50:31.060 --> 01:50:39.220
how comes it to pass that the tendencies of organizers are always good?

1111
01:50:39.220 --> 01:50:44.220
Do not the legislators and their agents form a part of the human race?

1112
01:50:44.220 --> 01:50:50.520
Do they consider that they are composed of different materials from the rest of mankind?

1113
01:50:50.520 --> 01:50:56.180
They say that society, when left to itself, rushes to inevitable destruction because its

1114
01:50:56.180 --> 01:50:59.040
instincts are perverse.

1115
01:50:59.040 --> 01:51:04.300
They presume to stop it in its downward course and to give it better direction.

1116
01:51:04.300 --> 01:51:11.080
They have, therefore, received from heaven intelligence and virtues that place them beyond

1117
01:51:11.080 --> 01:51:13.820
and above mankind.

1118
01:51:13.820 --> 01:51:17.780
Let them show their title to this superiority.

1119
01:51:17.780 --> 01:51:22.280
They would be our shepherds and we are to be their flock.

1120
01:51:22.280 --> 01:51:28.900
This arrangement presupposes in them a natural superiority, the right to which we are fully

1121
01:51:28.900 --> 01:51:34.180
justified in calling upon them to prove.

1122
01:51:34.180 --> 01:51:39.380
You must observe that I am not contending against their right to invent social combinations,

1123
01:51:39.380 --> 01:51:44.680
to propagate them, to recommend them, to try them upon themselves at their own expense

1124
01:51:44.680 --> 01:52:08.680
I would not insist upon the Quebecist, the Forerist, the Proudhonians, the academics and the protectionists renouncing their own particular ideas.

1125
01:52:08.680 --> 01:52:16.140
I would only have them renounce the idea that is common to them all, namely that of subjecting

1126
01:52:16.140 --> 01:52:24.720
us by force to their own categories and rankings, to their social laboratories, to their ever-inflating

1127
01:52:24.720 --> 01:52:31.600
bank, to their Greco-Roman morality, and to their commercial restrictions.

1128
01:52:31.600 --> 01:52:38.320
I would ask them to allow us, the faculty, of judging of their plans and not to oblige

1129
01:52:38.320 --> 01:52:46.500
us to adopt them if we find that they hurt our interest or are repugnant to our consciences.

1130
01:52:46.500 --> 01:52:53.580
To presume to have recourse to power and taxation, besides being oppressive and unjust, implies

1131
01:52:53.580 --> 01:53:03.060
is further the pernicious assumption that the organized is infallible and mankind incompetent.

1132
01:53:03.060 --> 01:53:09.540
And if mankind is not competent to judge for itself, why do they talk so much about universal

1133
01:53:09.540 --> 01:53:17.620
suffrage? This contradiction in ideas is unhappily to be found also in facts. And whilst the

1134
01:53:17.620 --> 01:53:25.220
The French nation has preceded all others in obtaining its rights, or rather its political claims.

1135
01:53:25.220 --> 01:53:31.840
This has by no means prevented it from being more governed and directed and imposed upon

1136
01:53:31.840 --> 01:53:36.420
and fettered and cheated than any other nation.

1137
01:53:36.420 --> 01:53:43.060
It is also the one of all others where revolutions are constantly to be dreaded, and it is perfectly

1138
01:53:43.060 --> 01:53:45.820
natural that it should be so.

1139
01:53:45.820 --> 01:53:52.780
So long as this idea is retained, which is admitted by all our politicians and so energetically

1140
01:53:52.780 --> 01:53:59.700
expressed by Mr. Louis Blanc in these words, society receives its impulse from power.

1141
01:53:59.700 --> 01:54:07.280
So long as men consider themselves as capable of feeling yet passive, incapable of raising

1142
01:54:07.280 --> 01:54:12.980
themselves by their own discernment and by their own energy to any morality or well-being,

1143
01:54:12.980 --> 01:54:19.260
And while they expect everything from the law, in a word, while they admit that their

1144
01:54:19.260 --> 01:54:25.060
relations with the state are the same as those of the flock with the shepherd, it is clear

1145
01:54:25.060 --> 01:54:29.900
that the responsibility of power is immense.

1146
01:54:29.900 --> 01:54:38.660
Fortune and misfortune, wealth and destitution, equality and inequality all proceed from it.

1147
01:54:38.660 --> 01:54:41.340
It is charged with everything.

1148
01:54:41.340 --> 01:54:50.340
It undertakes everything. It does everything. Therefore, it has to answer for everything.

1149
01:54:50.340 --> 01:54:56.420
If we are happy, it has a right to claim our gratitude. But if we are miserable, it alone

1150
01:54:56.420 --> 01:55:03.800
must bear the blame. Are not our persons and property in fact at its disposal? Is not the

1151
01:55:03.800 --> 01:55:11.160
law omnipotent in creating the educational monopoly? It is undertaken to answer the expectations

1152
01:55:11.160 --> 01:55:27.600
In regulating industry, it is undertaken to make it prosper, otherwise it would have been

1153
01:55:27.600 --> 01:55:31.000
absurd to deprive it of its liberty.

1154
01:55:31.000 --> 01:55:34.960
And if it suffers, whose fault is it?

1155
01:55:34.960 --> 01:55:40.960
In pretending to adjust the balance of commerce by the game of tariffs, it undertakes to make

1156
01:55:40.960 --> 01:55:49.560
Commerce Prosper, and if, so far from prospering, it is destroyed, whose fault is it?

1157
01:55:49.560 --> 01:55:55.520
In granting its protection to maritime armaments in exchange for their liberty, it is undertaken

1158
01:55:55.520 --> 01:55:58.520
to render them self-sufficient.

1159
01:55:58.520 --> 01:56:02.960
If they become burdensome, whose fault is it?

1160
01:56:02.960 --> 01:56:09.500
Thus, there is not a grievance in the nation for which the government does not voluntarily

1161
01:56:09.500 --> 01:56:18.020
They Make Itself Responsible. Is it any wonder that every failure threatens to cause a revolution?

1162
01:56:18.020 --> 01:56:25.060
And what of the remedy proposed? To extend indefinitely the dominion of the law? That

1163
01:56:25.060 --> 01:56:30.380
is the responsibility of government. But if the government undertakes to raise and to

1164
01:56:30.380 --> 01:56:36.500
regulate wages and is not able to do it, if it undertakes to assist all those who are

1165
01:56:36.500 --> 01:56:42.860
are in want and is not able to do it, if it undertakes to provide work for every laborer

1166
01:56:42.860 --> 01:56:49.740
and is not able to do it, if it undertakes to offer to all who wish to borrow easy credit

1167
01:56:49.740 --> 01:56:55.580
and is not able to do it, if in words that we regret should have escaped the pen of Mr.

1168
01:56:55.580 --> 01:57:02.620
Dilla-Martin, the State considers that its mission is to enlighten, to develop, to enlarge,

1169
01:57:02.620 --> 01:57:10.460
to strengthen, to spiritualize, and to sanctify the soul of the people? If it fails in this,

1170
01:57:10.460 --> 01:57:17.380
is it not obvious that after every disappointment, which alas, is more than probable, there will

1171
01:57:17.380 --> 01:57:22.260
be a no less inevitable revolution?

1172
01:57:22.260 --> 01:57:27.900
I shall now resume the subject by remarking that immediately after the economical part

1173
01:57:27.900 --> 01:57:34.320
of the Question. Political economy precedes politics. The former has to discover whether

1174
01:57:34.320 --> 01:57:41.500
human interests are harmonious or antagonistic, a fact which must be settled before the latter

1175
01:57:41.500 --> 01:57:47.440
can determine the prerogatives of government. Well, that immediately after the economical

1176
01:57:47.440 --> 01:57:54.280
part of the question and before the political part, a leading question presents itself.

1177
01:57:54.280 --> 01:58:04.360
It is the following. What is law? What ought it to be? What is its domain? What are its

1178
01:58:04.360 --> 01:58:12.260
limits? Where, in fact, does the prerogative of the legislator stop? I have no hesitation

1179
01:58:12.260 --> 01:58:23.380
in answering. Law is common force organized to prevent injustice. In short, law is justice.

1180
01:58:23.380 --> 01:58:29.540
It is not true that the legislator has absolute power over our persons and property, since

1181
01:58:29.540 --> 01:58:35.900
they pre-exist and his work is only to secure them from injury.

1182
01:58:35.900 --> 01:58:42.260
It is not true that the mission of the law is to regulate our consciences, our ideas,

1183
01:58:42.260 --> 01:58:50.820
our will, our education, our sentiments, our works, our exchanges, our gifts, our enjoyments.

1184
01:58:50.820 --> 01:58:57.200
Its mission is to prevent the rights of one from interfering with those of another in

1185
01:58:57.200 --> 01:59:05.320
any one of these things. Law, because it has force for its necessary sanction, can only

1186
01:59:05.320 --> 01:59:12.880
have the domain of force, which is justice. And as every individual has a right to have

1187
01:59:12.880 --> 01:59:20.460
recourse to force only in cases of lawful defense, so collective force, which is only

1188
01:59:20.460 --> 01:59:28.300
Only the union of individual forces cannot be rationally used for any other end.

1189
01:59:28.300 --> 01:59:36.620
The law, then, is solely the organization of individual rights that existed before law.

1190
01:59:36.620 --> 01:59:39.000
Law is justice.

1191
01:59:39.000 --> 01:59:45.980
So far from being able to oppress the people or to plunder their property, even for a philanthropic

1192
01:59:45.980 --> 01:59:53.980
Its mission is to protect the people and to secure to them the possession of their property.

1193
01:59:53.980 --> 02:00:01.980
It must not be said either that it may be philanthropic, so long as it abstains from all oppression.

1194
02:00:01.980 --> 02:00:08.980
For this is a contradiction. The law cannot avoid acting upon our persons and property.

1195
02:00:08.980 --> 02:00:14.980
If it does not secure them, then it violates them if it touches them.

1196
02:00:14.980 --> 02:00:35.980
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 nor diminution.

1197
02:00:35.980 --> 02:01:03.980
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 impose it upon you.

1198
02:01:03.980 --> 02:01:09.980
For fraternity and philanthropy have no fixed limits as justice has.

1199
02:01:09.980 --> 02:01:13.980
Where will you stop? Where is the law to stop?

1200
02:01:13.980 --> 02:01:21.980
One person, Mr. de Saint-Crick, will only extend his philanthropy to some of the industrial classes

1201
02:01:21.980 --> 02:01:26.980
and will require the law to slight the consumers in favor of the producers.

1202
02:01:26.980 --> 02:01:31.980
Another, like Mr. Consideron, will take up the cause of the working classes

1203
02:01:31.980 --> 02:01:41.980
and claim for them by means of the law at a fixed rate, clothing, lodging, food and everything necessary for the support of life.

1204
02:01:41.980 --> 02:01:54.980
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.

1205
02:01:54.980 --> 02:02:00.700
A fourth will observe that such an arrangement still leaves room for inequality and that

1206
02:02:00.700 --> 02:02:08.140
the law ought to introduce into the most remote hamlets luxury, literature and the arts.

1207
02:02:08.140 --> 02:02:11.380
This is the high road to communism.

1208
02:02:11.380 --> 02:02:18.420
In other words, legislation will be, as it is now, the battlefield for everybody's dreams

1209
02:02:18.420 --> 02:02:21.980
and everybody's covetousness.

1210
02:02:21.980 --> 02:02:25.740
Law is Justice.

1211
02:02:25.740 --> 02:02:32.740
In this proposition, we represent to ourselves a simple, immovable government, and I defy

1212
02:02:32.740 --> 02:02:38.420
anyone to tell me whence the thought of a revolution, an insurrection, or a simple disturbance

1213
02:02:38.420 --> 02:02:46.300
could arise against a public force confined to the repression of injustice.

1214
02:02:46.300 --> 02:02:54.460
Under such a system, there would be more well-being, and this well-being would be more equally distributed.

1215
02:02:54.460 --> 02:03:00.380
And as to the sufferings inseparable from humanity, no one would think of accusing the

1216
02:03:00.380 --> 02:03:06.620
government of them, for it would be as innocent of them as it is of the variations of the

1217
02:03:06.620 --> 02:03:08.340
temperature.

1218
02:03:08.340 --> 02:03:13.380
Have the people ever been known to rise against the Court of Appeals or assail the justices

1219
02:03:13.380 --> 02:03:19.200
of the Peace for the Sake of Claiming the Rate of Wages, Free Credit, Tools of Labor,

1220
02:03:19.200 --> 02:03:24.500
the Advantages of the Tariff or the Social Workshop. They know perfectly well that these

1221
02:03:24.500 --> 02:03:29.240
matters are beyond the jurisdiction of the Justices of the Peace, and they would soon

1222
02:03:29.240 --> 02:03:36.240
learn that they are not within the jurisdiction of the law quite as much. But if the law were

1223
02:03:36.240 --> 02:03:42.980
to be made upon the principle of fraternity, if it were to be proclaimed that from it proceed

1224
02:03:42.980 --> 02:03:48.580
and all benefits and all evils, that it is responsible for every individual grievance

1225
02:03:48.580 --> 02:03:55.060
and for every social inequality, then you open the door to an endless succession of

1226
02:03:55.060 --> 02:04:00.580
complaints, irritations, troubles and revolutions.

1227
02:04:00.580 --> 02:04:03.860
Law is justice.

1228
02:04:03.860 --> 02:04:08.500
And it would be very strange if it could properly be anything else.

1229
02:04:08.500 --> 02:04:16.460
Is not justice right? Are not rights equal? With what show of right can the law interfere

1230
02:04:16.460 --> 02:04:25.040
to subject me to the social plans of M. Mimeurel, de Maloon, Thiers, or Louis Blanc, rather

1231
02:04:25.040 --> 02:04:33.220
than to subject these gentlemen to my plans? Is it to be supposed that nature has not bestowed

1232
02:04:33.220 --> 02:04:47.220
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?

1233
02:04:47.220 --> 02:04:50.220
Law is justice.

1234
02:04:50.220 --> 02:05:00.220
And let it not be said, as it continually is, that the law in this sense would be atheistic, individual and heartless,

1235
02:05:00.220 --> 02:05:19.220
What then? Does it follow that if we are free we shall cease to act? Does it follow that

1236
02:05:19.220 --> 02:05:26.300
if we do not receive an impulse from the law, we shall receive no impulse at all? Does it

1237
02:05:26.300 --> 02:05:36.300
Does it follow that if the law confines itself to securing to us the free exercise of our faculties, our faculties will be paralyzed?

1238
02:05:36.300 --> 02:05:44.300
Does it follow that if the law does not impose upon us forms of religion, modes of association, methods of education,

1239
02:05:44.300 --> 02:05:49.300
rules for labor, directions for exchange and plans for charity,

1240
02:05:49.300 --> 02:06:19.300
Law is justice, and it is under the law of justice.

1241
02:06:19.300 --> 02:06:48.300
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.

1242
02:06:48.300 --> 02:07:12.300
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.

1243
02:07:12.300 --> 02:07:18.820
At whatever point of the scientific horizon I start from, I invariably come to the same

1244
02:07:18.820 --> 02:07:19.820
thing.

1245
02:07:19.820 --> 02:07:26.180
The solution of the social problem is in liberty.

1246
02:07:26.180 --> 02:07:33.320
And have I not experience on my side, cast your eye over the globe, which are the happiest,

1247
02:07:33.320 --> 02:07:40.820
the most moral and the most peaceable nations, those where the law interferes the least with

1248
02:07:40.820 --> 02:07:46.980
with Private Activity, where the government is the least felt, where individuality has

1249
02:07:46.980 --> 02:07:53.540
the most scope and public opinion the most influenced, where the machinery of the administration

1250
02:07:53.540 --> 02:08:01.540
is the least important and the least complicated, where taxation is lightest and least unequal,

1251
02:08:01.540 --> 02:08:06.780
popular discontent the least excited and the least justifiable, where the responsibility

1252
02:08:06.780 --> 02:08:13.180
of Individuals and Classes is the most active, and where, consequently, if morals are not

1253
02:08:13.180 --> 02:08:20.500
in a perfect state, at any rate they tend incessantly to correct themselves, where transactions,

1254
02:08:20.500 --> 02:08:26.540
meetings and associations are the least fettered, where labor, capital and production suffer

1255
02:08:26.540 --> 02:08:33.140
the least from artificial displacements, where mankind follows most completely its own natural

1256
02:08:33.140 --> 02:08:39.740
of course, where the thought of God prevails the most over the inventions of men, those

1257
02:08:39.740 --> 02:08:46.780
in short who realize the most nearly this idea that within the limits of right all should

1258
02:08:46.780 --> 02:08:55.340
flow from the free, perfectible and voluntary action of man. Nothing be attempted by the

1259
02:08:55.340 --> 02:09:10.100
I cannot avoid coming to this conclusion that there are too many great men in the world.

1260
02:09:10.100 --> 02:09:16.540
There are too many legislators, organizers, institutors of society, conductors of the

1261
02:09:16.540 --> 02:09:21.900
people, fathers of nations and so forth and so forth.

1262
02:09:21.900 --> 02:09:28.780
Too many persons place themselves above mankind to rule and patronize it.

1263
02:09:28.780 --> 02:09:32.220
Too many persons make a trade of looking after it.

1264
02:09:32.220 --> 02:09:38.460
It will be answered, you yourself are occupied upon it all this time.

1265
02:09:38.460 --> 02:09:45.620
Very true, but it must be admitted that it is in another sense entirely that I am speaking,

1266
02:09:45.620 --> 02:09:50.920
and if I join the reformers, it is solely for the purpose of inducing them to relax

1267
02:09:50.920 --> 02:10:00.480
I am not doing, as Vocasson did with his automaton, but as a physiologist does with a human frame,

1268
02:10:00.480 --> 02:10:04.000
I would study and admire it.

1269
02:10:04.000 --> 02:10:10.200
I am acting with regard to it in the spirit that animated a celebrated traveler.

1270
02:10:10.200 --> 02:10:15.760
He found himself in the midst of a savage tribe, a child had just been born, and a crowd

1271
02:10:15.760 --> 02:10:22.420
Part of soothsayers, magicians and quacks were around it, armed with rings, hooks, and bandages.

1272
02:10:22.420 --> 02:10:29.140
One said, This child will never smell the perfume of a calumet unless I stretch his nostrils.

1273
02:10:29.140 --> 02:10:33.960
Another said, He will be without the sense of hearing unless I draw his ears down to

1274
02:10:33.960 --> 02:10:35.420
his shoulders.

1275
02:10:35.420 --> 02:10:40.160
A third said, He will never see the light of the sun unless I give his eyes an oblique

1276
02:10:40.160 --> 02:10:41.600
direction.

1277
02:10:41.600 --> 02:10:46.480
A fourth said, he will never be upright unless I bend his legs.

1278
02:10:46.480 --> 02:10:51.240
A fifth said, he will not be able to think unless I press his brain.

1279
02:10:51.240 --> 02:10:53.720
Stop, said the traveler.

1280
02:10:53.720 --> 02:10:56.840
Whatever God does is well done.

1281
02:10:56.840 --> 02:11:00.120
Do not pretend to know more than he.

1282
02:11:00.120 --> 02:11:07.720
And as he has given organs to this frail creature, allow those organs to develop themselves,

1283
02:11:07.720 --> 02:11:15.920
to strengthen themselves by exercise, use, experience and liberty.

1284
02:11:15.920 --> 02:11:22.840
God has implanted in mankind also all that is necessary to enable it to accomplish its

1285
02:11:22.840 --> 02:11:24.560
destinies.

1286
02:11:24.560 --> 02:11:31.600
There is a providential social physiology as well as a providential human physiology.

1287
02:11:31.600 --> 02:11:37.560
The social organs are constituted so as to enable them to develop harmoniously in the

1288
02:11:37.560 --> 02:12:07.560
and the Grand Heir 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,

1289
02:12:07.560 --> 02:12:30.560
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.