Services are exchanged for services.

The equivalence of services results from voluntary exchange, and the free bargaining and discussion which precede it.

In other words, each service rendered to society is worth as much as any other service of which it constitutes the equivalent, provided supply and demand are in all respects perfectly free.

It is in vain to carp and refine upon it; it is impossible to conceive the idea of value without associating with it the idea of liberty.

When the equivalence of services is not impaired by violence, restriction, or fraud, we may pronounce that justice prevails.

I do not mean to say that the human race will then have reached the extreme limit of improvement, for liberty does not exclude the errors of individual appreciations—man is frequently the dupe of his judgments and passions, nor are his desires always arranged in the most rational order. We have seen that the value of a service may be appreciated without there being any reasonable proportion between its value and its utility; and this arises from our giving certain desires precedence over others It is the progress of intelligence, of good sense, and of manners, which establishes this fair and just proportion by putting each service, if I may so express myself, in its right moral place. A frivolous object, a puerile show, an immoral pleasure, may have much value in one country, and may be despised or repudiated in another. The equivalence of services, then, is a different thing from a just appreciation of their utility. But still, as regards this, it is liberty and the sense of responsibility which correct and improve our tastes, our desires, our satisfactions, and our appreciations.

In all countries of the world, there exists one class of services, which, as regards the manner in which they are distributed and [p426] remunerated, accomplishes an evolution quite different from that of private or free services. I allude to public services.

When a want assumes a character so universal and so uniform that one can describe it as a public want, it may be convenient for those people who form part of the same agglomeration (be it district, province, or country) to provide for the satisfaction of that want by collective action, or a collective delegation of power. In that case, they name functionaries whose duty it is to render to the community, and distribute among them, the service in question, and whose remuneration they provide for by a contribution which is, at least in principle, proportionate to the means of each member of the society.

In reality, the primordial elements of the social economy are not necessarily impaired or set aside by this peculiar form of exchange,—above all, when the consent of all parties is assumed. It still resolves itself into a transmission of efforts, a transmission of services. These functionaries labour to satisfy the wants of the taxpayers, and the taxpayers labour to satisfy the wants of the functionaries. The relative value of their reciprocal services is determined by a method which we shall have afterwards to examine; but the essential principles of the exchange, speaking in the abstract at least, remain intact.

Those authors, then, are wrong, who, influenced by their dislike of unjust and oppressive taxes, regard as lost all values devoted to the public service.94 This unqualified condemnation will not bear examination. In so far as loss or gain is concerned, the public service, scientifically considered, differs in nothing from private service. Whether I protect my field myself, or pay a man for protecting it or pay the State for causing it to be protected, there is always a sacrifice with a corresponding benefit. In both ways, no doubt, I lose this amount of labour, but I gain security. It is not a loss, but an exchange.

Will it be said that I give a material object, and receive in return a thing without body or form? This is just to fall back upon the erroneous theory of value. As long as we attribute value to matter, not to services, we must regard every public service as being without value, or lost. Afterwards, when we begin to shift [p427] about between what is true and what is false, on the subject of value, we shift about between what is true and what is false on the subject of taxation.

If taxation is not necessarily a loss, still less is it necessarily spoliation.95 No doubt, in modern societies, spoliation by means of taxation is perpetrated on a great scale. We shall afterwards see that it is one of the most active of those causes which disturb the equivalence of services and the harmony of interests. But the best way of combating and eradicating the abuses of taxation, is to steer clear of that exaggeration which would represent all taxation as being essentially, and in itself, spoliation.

Thus, considered in themselves, in their own nature, in their normal state, and apart from abuses, public services, like private services, resolve themselves into pure exchanges.

But the modes in which, in these two forms of exchange, services are compared, bargained for, and transmitted, the modes in which they are brought to an equilibrium or equivalence, and in which their relative value is manifested, are so different in themselves, and in their effects, that the reader will bear with me if I dwell at some length on this difficult subject, one of the most interesting which can be presented to the consideration of the economist and the statesman. It is here, in truth, that we have the connecting link between politics and social economy. It is here that we discover the origin and tendency of the most fatal error which has ever infected the science, the error of confounding society with Government; society being the grand whole, which includes both private and public services, and Government, the fraction which includes public services alone.

Unfortunately, when, by following the teaching of Rousseau, and his apt scholars the French republicans, we employ indifferently the words Government and Society, we pronounce, implicitly, beforehand, and without examination, that the State can and ought to absorb private exertion altogether, along with individual liberty and responsibility. We conclude that all private services ought to be converted into public services. We conclude that the social order is a conventional and contingent fact which owes its existence to the law. We pronounce the lawgiver [p428] omnipotent, and mankind powerless, as having forfeited their rights.

In fact, we see public services, or governmental action, extended or restrained according to circumstances of time and place, from the Communism of Sparta, or the Missions of Paraguay, to the individualism of the United States, and the centralization of France.

The question which presents itself on the threshold of Politics, as a science, then, is this:—

What are the services which should remain in the domain of private activity? And what are the services which should fall within that of public or collective activity?

The problem, then, is this:—

In the great circle called society, to trace accurately the inscribed circle called government.

It is evident that this problem belongs to Political Economy, since it implies the comparative examination of two very different forms of exchange.

This problem once solved, there remains another, namely, what is the best organization of public services? This last belongs to pure Politics, and we shall not enter upon it.

Let us examine, then, first of all, the essential differences by which public and private services are characterized, which is a preliminary inquiry necessary to enable us to fix accurately the line which should divide them.

The whole of the preceding portion of this work has been devoted to exhibit the evolution of private services. We have had a glimpse of it in this formal or tacit proposition: Do this for me, and I shall do that for you; which implies, whether as regards what we give away or what we receive, a double and reciprocal consent. We can form no correct notion, then, of barter, exchange, appreciation, value, apart from the consideration of liberty, nor of liberty apart from responsibility. In having recourse to exchange, each party consults, on his own responsibility, his wants, his tastes, his desires, his faculties, his affections, his convenience, his entire situation; and we have nowhere denied that to the exercise of free will is attached the possibility of error, the possibility of a foolish and irrational choice. The error belongs not to exchange, but to human imperfection; and the remedy can only reside in responsibility itself (that is to say, in liberty), seeing that liberty is the source of all experience. To establish restraint in the business of exchange, to destroy free will under the pretext that man may err, would be no improvement, unless it were [p429] first proved to us that the agent who organizes the restraint does not himself participate in the imperfection of our nature, and is subject neither to the passions nor to the errors of other men. On the contrary, is it not evident that this would be, not only to displace responsibility, but to annihilate it, at least as regards all that is valuable in its remunerative, retributive, experimental, corrective, and, consequently, progressive character? Again, we have seen that free exchanges, or services voluntarily rendered and received, are, under the action of competition, continually extending the co-operation of gratuitous forces, as compared with that of onerous forces, the domain of community as compared with the domain of property, and thus we have come to recognise in liberty that power which promotes progressive equality, or social harmony.

We have no need to describe the form which exchanges assume when thus left free. Restraint takes a thousand shapes; liberty has but one. I repeat once more, that the free and voluntary transmission of private services is defined by the simple words: “Give me this, and I will give you that; do this for me, and I shall do that for you”—Do ut des; facio ut facias.96

The same thing does not hold with reference to the exchange of public services. Here constraint is to a certain extent inevitable, and we encounter an infinite number of different forms, from absolute despotism, down to the universal and direct intervention of all the citizens.

Although this ideal order of things has never been anywhere actually realized, and perhaps may never be so, except in a very elusory shape, we may nevertheless assume its existence. What is the object of our inquiry? We are seeking to discover the modifications which services undergo when they enter the public domain; and for the purposes of science we must discard the consideration of individual and local acts of violence, and regard the public service simply as such, and as existing under the most legitimate circumstances. In a word, we must investigate the transformation which it undergoes from the single circumstance of its having become public, apart from the causes which have made it so, and of the abuses which may mingle with the means of execution.

The process is this:—

The citizens name mandatories. These mandatories meet, and decide, by a majority, that a certain class of wants—the want of education, for example—can no longer be supplied by free exertions [p430] and free exchanges made by the citizens themselves, and they decree that education shall be provided by functionaries specially delegated and intrusted with the work of instruction. So much for the service rendered. As regards the services received, as the State has secured the time and abilities of these new functionaries for the benefit of the citizens, it must also take from the citizens a part of their means for the benefit of the functionaries. This is effected by an assessment or general contribution.

In all civilized communities such contributions are paid in money. It is scarcely necessary to say that behind this money there is labour. In reality, it is a payment in kind. In reality, the citizens work for the functionaries, and the functionaries work for the citizens, just as, in free and private transactions, the citizens work for one another.

We set down this observation here, in order to elude a very widely-spread sophism which springs from the consideration of money. We hear it frequently said that money received by public functionaries falls back like refreshing rain on the citizens. And we are led to infer that this rain is a second benefit added to that which results from the service. Reasoning in this way, people have come to justify the existence of functions the most parasitical. They do not consider that if this service had remained in the domain of private activity, the money (which, in place of going to the treasury, and from the treasury to the functionaries) would have gone directly to men who voluntarily undertook the duty, and in the same way would have fallen back like rain upon the masses. This sophism will not stand examination, when we extend our regards beyond the mere circulation of money, and see that at the bottom it is labour exchanged for labour, services for services. In public life, it may happen that functionaries receive services without rendering any in return; and then there is a loss entailed on the taxpayer, however we may delude ourselves with reference to this circulation of specie.

Be this as it may, let us resume our analysis:—

We have here, then, an exchange under a new form. Exchange includes two terms—to give, and to receive. Let us inquire then how this transaction, which from being private has become public, is affected in the double point of view of services rendered and services received.

In the first place, it is proved beyond doubt that public services always, or nearly always, extinguish, in law or in fact, private services of the same nature. The State, when it undertakes a service, generally takes care to decree that no other body shall render it, [p431] more especially if one of its objects be to derive a revenue from it. Witness the cases of postage, tobacco, gunpowder, etc. Did the State not take this precaution, the result would be the same. What manufacturer would engage to render to the public a service which the State renders for nothing? We scarcely meet with any one who seeks a livelihood by teaching law or medicine privately, by the formation of high-roads, by rearing thoroughbred horses, by founding schools of arts and design, by clearing lands in Algeria, by establishing museums, etc. And the reason is this, that the public will not go to purchase what the State gives it for nothing. As M. de Cormenin has said, the trade of the shoemakers would soon be put an end to, even were it declared inviolable by the first article of the constitution, if Government took it into its head to furnish shoes to everybody gratuitously.

In truth, in the word gratuitous, as applied to public services, there lurks the grossest and most puerile of sophisms.

For my own part, I wonder at the extreme gullibility of the public in allowing itself to be taken in with this word. What! it is said, do you not wish gratuitous education? gratuitous studs?

Certainly I wish them, and I should also wish to have gratuitous food and gratuitous lodging—if it were possible.

But there is nothing really gratuitous but what costs nothing to any one. Now public services cost something to everybody; and it is just because everybody has paid for them beforehand that they no longer cost anything to the man who receives the benefit. The man who has paid his share of the general contribution will take good care not to pay for the service a second time by calling in the aid of private industry.

Public service is thus substituted for private service. It adds nothing either to the general labour of the nation or to its wealth. It accomplishes by means of functionaries, what would have been effected by private industry. The question, then, is, Which of these arrangements entails the greatest amount of inconvenience? and the solution of that question is the object of the present chapter.

The moment the satisfaction of a want becomes the subject of a public service, it is withdrawn, to a great extent, from the domain of individual liberty and responsibility. The individual is no longer free to procure that satisfaction in his own way, to purchase what he chooses and when he chooses, consulting only his own situation and resources, his means, and his moral appreciations; nor can he any longer exercise his discretion in regard to the order in which he may judge it reasonable to provide for [p432] his various wants. Whether he will or not, his wants are now supplied by the public, and he obtains from society, not that measure of service which he judges useful, as he did in the case of private services, but the amount of service which the Government thinks it proper to furnish, whatever be its quantity and quality. Perhaps he is in want of bread to satisfy his hunger, and part of the bread of which he has such urgent need is withheld from him, in order to furnish him with education, or with theatrical entertainments, which he does not want. He ceases to exercise free control over the satisfaction of his own wants, and having no longer any feeling of responsibility, he no longer exerts his intelligence. Foresight has become as useless to him as experience. He is less his own master; he is deprived, to some extent, of free will, he is less progressive, he is less a man. Not only does he no longer judge for himself in a particular case; he has got out of the habit of judging for himself in any case. The moral torpor which thus gains upon him, gains, for the same reason, on all his fellow-citizens, and in this way we have seen whole nations abandon themselves to a fatal inaction.97

As long as a certain class of wants and of corresponding satisfactions remains in the domain of liberty, each, in so far as this class is concerned, lays down a rule for himself, which he can modify at pleasure. This would seem to be both natural and fair, seeing that no two men find themselves in exactly the same situation; nor is there any one man whose circumstances do not vary from day to day. In this way, all the human faculties remain in exercise, comparison, judgment, foresight. In this way, too, every good and judicious resolution brings its recompense and every error its chastisement; and experience, that rude [p433] substitute for foresight, so far at least fulfils its mission that society goes on improving.

But when the service becomes public, all individual rules of conduct and action disappear, and are mixed up and generalized in a written, coercive, and inflexible law, which is the same for all, which makes no allowance for particular situations, and strikes the noblest faculties of human nature with numbness and torpor.

If State intervention deprive us of all self-government with reference to the services we receive from the public, it deprives us in a still more marked degree of all control with reference to the services which we render in return. This counterpart, this supplementary element in the exchange, is likewise a deduction from our liberty, and is regulated by uniform inflexible rules, by a law passed beforehand, made operative by force, and of which we cannot get rid. In a word, as the services which the State renders us are imposed upon us, those which it demands in return are also imposed upon us, and in all languages take the name of imposts.

And here a multitude of theoretical difficulties and inconveniences present themselves; for practically the State surmounts all obstacles by means of an armed force, which is the necessary sequence of every law. But, to confine ourselves to the theory, the transformation of a private into a public service gives rise to these grave questions:—

Will the State under all circumstances demand from each citizen an amount of taxation equivalent to the services rendered? This were but fair; and this equivalence is exactly the result which we almost infallibly obtain from free and voluntary transactions, and the bargaining which precedes them. If the design of the State, then, is to realize this equivalence (which is only justice), it is not worth while taking this class of services out of the domain of private activity. But equivalence is never thought of, nor can it be. We do not stand higgling and chaffering with public functionaries. The law proceeds on general rules, and cannot make conditions applicable to each individual case. At the utmost, and when it is conceived in a spirit of justice, it aims at a sort of average equivalence, an approximate equivalence, between the two services exchanged. Two principles—namely, the proportionality and the progression of taxation—have appeared in many respects to carry this approximation to its utmost limit. But the slightest reflection will convince us that proportional taxation cannot, any more than progressive taxation, realize the exact equivalence of services exchanged. Public services, after having forcibly deprived the citizens of their liberty, as regards services [p434] both rendered and received, have, then, this farther fault of unsettling the value of these services.

Another, and not less grave, inconvenience is, that they destroy, or at least displace, responsibility. To man responsibility is all-important. It is his mover and teacher, his rewarder and avenger. Without it man is no longer a free agent, he is no longer perfectible, no longer a moral being, he learns nothing, he is nothing. He abandons himself to inaction, and becomes a mere unit of the herd.

If it be a misfortune that the sense of responsibility should be extinguished in the individual, it is no less a misfortune that it should be developed in the State in an exaggerated form. Man, however degraded, has always as much light left him as to see the quarter from whence good or evil comes to him; and when the State assumes the charge of all, it becomes responsible for all. Under the dominion of such artificial arrangements, a people which suffers can only lay the blame on its Government, and its only remedy, its only policy, is to overturn it. Hence an inevitable succession of revolutions. I say inevitable, for under such a rÉgime the people must necessarily suffer; and the reason of it is that public services, besides disturbing and unsettling values, which is injustice, lead also to the destruction of wealth, which is ruin; ruin and injustice, suffering and discontent—four fatal causes of effervescence in society, which, combined with the displacement of responsibility, cannot fail to bring about political convulsions like those from which we have been suffering for more than half a century.

Without desiring to indulge in digressions, I cannot help remarking, that when things are organized in this fashion, when Government has assumed gigantic proportions by the successive transformation of free and voluntary transactions into public services, it is to be feared that revolutions, which constitute in themselves so great an evil, have not even the advantage of being a remedy, unless the remedy is forced upon us by experience. The displacement of responsibility has perverted public opinion. The people, accustomed to expect everything from the State, never accuse Government of doing too much, but of not doing enough. They overturn it, and replace it by another, to which they do not say, “Do less,” but “Do more;” so that, having fallen into one ditch, they set to work to dig another.

At length the moment comes when their eyes are opened, and it is felt to be necessary to curtail the prerogatives and responsibilities of Government. Here we are stopped by difficulties of another kind. Functionaries alleging vested rights rise up and [p435] coalesce, and we are averse to bear hard on numerous interests to which we have given an artificial existence. On the other hand, the people have forgotten how to act for themselves. At the moment they have succeeded in reconquering the liberty of which they were in quest, they are afraid of it, and repudiate it. Offer them a free and voluntary system of education:98 they believe that all science is about to be extinguished. Offer them religious liberty: they believe that atheism is about to invade us,—so often has it been dinned into their ears that all religion, all wisdom, all science, all learning, all morality, resides in the State or flows from it.

But we shall find a place for such reflections elsewhere, and must now return to the argument.

We set ourselves to discover the true part which competition plays in the development of wealth, and we found that it consisted in giving an advantage in the first instance to the producer; then turning this advantage to the profit of the community; and constantly enlarging the domain of the gratuitous, and consequently the domain of equality.

But when private services become public services, they escape competition, and this fine harmony is suspended. In fact, the functionary is divested of that stimulant which urges on to progress, and how can progress turn to the public advantage when it no longer exists? A public functionary does not act under the spur of self-interest, but under the influence of the law. The law says to him, “You will render to the public such or such a determinate service, and you will receive from it in return a determinate recompense.” A little more or a little less zeal has no effect in changing these two fixed terms. On the contrary, private interest whispers in the ear of the free labourer, “The more you do for others, the more others will do for you.” In this case, the recompense depends entirely on the efforts of the workman being more or less intense, and more or less skilful. No doubt esprit de corps, the desire for advancement, devotion to duty, may prove active stimulants with the functionary; but they never can supply the place of the irresistible incitement of personal interest. All experience confirms this reasoning. Everything which has fallen within the domain of Government routine has remained almost stationary. It is doubtful whether our system of education now is better than it was in the reign of Francis the First; and no one would think of comparing the activity of a government office with the activity of a manufactory. [p436]

In proportion, then, as private services enter into the class of public services, they become, at least to a certain extent, sterile and motionless, not to the injury of those who render these services (their salaries are fixed), but to the detriment of the public at large.

Along with these inconveniences, which are immense, not only in a moral and political, but in an economical point of view—inconveniences which, trusting to the sagacity of the reader, I have only sketched—there is sometimes an advantage in substituting collective for individual action. In some kinds of services, the chief merit is regularity and uniformity. It may happen that, under certain circumstances, such a substitution gives rise to economy, and saves, in relation to a given satisfaction, a certain amount of exertion to the community. The question to be resolved, then, is this: What services should remain in the domain of private exertion? What services should pertain to collective or public exertion? The inquiry, which we have just finished, into the essential differences which characterize these two kinds of services, will facilitate the solution of this important problem.

And, first of all, it may be asked, is there any principle to enable us to distinguish what may legitimately enter the circle of collective action, and what should remain in the circle of private action?

I begin by intimating that what I denominate here public action is that great organization which has for rule the law, and for means of execution, force; in other words, the Government. Let it not be said that free and voluntary associations display likewise collective exertion. Let it not be supposed that I use the term private action as synonymous with isolated action. What I say is, that free and voluntary association belongs still to the domain of private action, for it is one of the forms of exchange, and the most powerful form of all. It does not impair the equivalence of services, it does not affect the appreciation of values, it does not displace responsibilities, it does not exclude free will, it does not destroy competition nor its effects; in a word, it has not constraint for its principle.

But the action of Government is made general by constraint. It necessarily proceeds on the compelle intrare. It acts in form of law, and every one must submit to it, because a law implies a sanction. No one, I think, will dispute these premises; which are supported by the best of all authorities, the testimony of universal fact. On all sides we have laws, and force to restrain the refractory. [p437]

Hence, no doubt, has come the saying that “men, in uniting in society, have sacrificed part of their liberty in order to preserve the remainder,”—a saying in great vogue with those who, confounding government with society, conclude that the latter is artificial and conventional like the former.

It is evident that this saying does not hold true in the region of free and voluntary transactions. Let two men, determined by the prospect of greater profit and advantage, exchange their services, or unite their efforts, in place of continuing their isolated exertions—is there in this any sacrifice of liberty? Is it to sacrifice liberty to make a better use of it?

The most that can be said is this, that men sacrifice part of their liberty to preserve the remainder, not when they unite in society, but when they subject themselves to a Government, since the necessary mode of action of every Government is force.

Now, even with this modification, the pretended principle is erroneous, as long as Government confines itself to its legitimate functions.

But what are these functions?

It is precisely this special character of having force for their necessary auxiliary which marks out to us their extent and their limits. I affirm that as Government acts only by the intervention of force, its action is legitimate only where the intervention of force is itself legitimate.

Now, where force interposes legitimately, it is not to sacrifice liberty, but to make it more respected. So that this pretended axiom, which has been represented as the basis of political science, and which has been shown to be false as far as society is concerned, is equally false as regards Government. It is always gratifying to me to see these melancholy theoretical discordances disappear before a closer and more searching examination.

In what cases is the employment of force legitimate? In one case, and, I believe, in only one—the case of legitimate defence. If this be so, the foundation of Government is fully established, as well as its legitimate limits.99

What is individual right?

The right which an individual possesses to enter freely and voluntarily into bargains and transactions with his fellow-citizens, which give rise, as far as they are concerned, to a reciprocal right. When is this right violated? When one of the parties encroaches [p438] on the liberty of the other. In that case, it is incorrect to say, as is frequently done, “There is an excess, an abuse of liberty.” We should say, “There is a want, a destruction of liberty.” An excess of liberty, no doubt, if we regard only the aggressor, but a destruction of liberty, if we regard the victim, or even if we regard the phenomenon as a whole, as we ought to do.

The right of the man whose liberty is attacked, or, which comes to the same thing, whose property, faculties, or labour is attacked, is to defend them even by force; and this is in fact what men do everywhere, and always, when they can.

Hence may be deduced the right of a number of men of any sort to take counsel together, and associate, in order to defend, even by their joint force, individual liberty and property.

But an individual has no right to employ force for any other purpose. I cannot legitimately force my neighbours to be industrious, sober, economical, generous, learned, devout; but I can legitimately force them to be just.

For the same reason the collective force cannot be legitimately applied to develop the love of industry, of sobriety, of economy, of generosity, of science, of religious belief; but it may be legitimately applied to ensure the predominance of justice, and vindicate each man’s right.

For where can we seek for the origin of collective right but in individual right?

The deplorable mania of our times is the desire to give an independent existence to pure abstractions, to imagine a city without citizens, a human nature without human beings, a whole without parts, an aggregate without the individuals who compose it. They might as well say, “Here is a man, suppose him without members, viscera, organs, body, soul, or any of the elements of which he is composed—still here is a man.”

If a right does not exist in any of the individuals of what for brevity’s sake we call a nation, how should it exist in the nation itself? How, above all, should it exist in that fraction of a nation which exercises delegated rights of government? How could individuals delegate rights which they do not themselves possess?

We must, then, regard as a fundamental principle in politics, this incontestable truth, that between individuals the intervention of force is legitimate only in the case of legitimate defence; and that a collective body of men cannot have recourse to force legally, but within the same limit.

Now, it is of the very essence of Government to act upon [p439] individuals by way of constraint. Then it can have no other rational functions than the legitimate defence of individual rights, it can have no delegated authority except to secure respect to the lives and property of all.

Observe that when a Government goes beyond these bounds, it enters on an illimited career, and cannot escape this consequence, not only that it goes beyond its mission, but annihilates it, which constitutes the most monstrous of contradictions.

In truth, when the State has caused to be respected this fixed and invariable line which separates the rights of the citizens, when it has maintained among them justice, what could it do more without itself breaking through that barrier, the guardianship of which has been intrusted to it—in other words, without destroying with its own hands, and by force, that very liberty and property which had been placed under its safeguard? Beyond the administration and enforcement of justice, I defy you to imagine an intervention of Government which is not an injustice. Allege, as long as you choose, acts inspired by the purest philanthropy, encouragements held out to virtue and to industry, premiums, favour, and direct protection, gifts said to be gratuitous, initiatives styled generous; behind all these fair appearances, or, if you will, these fair realities, I will show you other realities less gratifying; the rights of some persons violated for the benefit of others, liberties sacrificed, rights of property usurped, faculties limited, spoliations consummated. And can the people possibly behold a spectacle more melancholy, more painful, than that of the collective force employed in perpetrating crimes which it is its special duty to repress?

In principle, it is enough that the Government has at its disposal, as a necessary instrument, force, in order to enable us to discover what the private services are which can legitimately be converted into public services. They are those which have for their object the maintenance of liberty, property, and individual right, the prevention of crime—in a word, everything which involves the public security.

Governments have yet another mission.

There are in all countries a certain amount of common property, enjoyed by the citizens jointly—rivers, forests, roads. On the other hand, unfortunately, there are also debts. It is the duty of Government to administer this active and passive portion of the public domain.

In fine, from these two functions there flows another,—that of levying the contributions which are necessary for the public service. [p440]

Thus:

To watch over the public security.

To administer common property.

To levy taxes.

Such I believe to be the legitimate circle within which Government functions ought to be circumscribed, and to which they should be brought back if they have gone beyond it.

This opinion, I know, runs counter to received opinions. “What!” it will be said, “you wish to reduce Government to play the part of a judge and a police-officer! You would take away from it all initiative! You would restrain it from giving a lively impulse to learning, to arts, to commerce, to navigation, to agriculture, to moral and religious ideas; you would despoil it of its fairest attribute, that of opening to the people the road of progress!”

To people who talk in this way, I should like to put a few questions.

Where has God placed the motive spring of human conduct, and the aspiration after progress? Is it in all men? or is it exclusively in those among them who have received, or usurped, the delegated authority of a legislator, or the patent of a placeman? Does every one of us not carry in his organization, in his whole being, that boundless, restless principle of action called desire? When our first and most urgent wants are supplied, are there not formed within us concentric and expansive circles of desires of an order more and more elevated? Does the love of arts, of letters, of science, of moral and religious truth, does a thirst for the solution of those problems which concern our present and future existence, descend from collective bodies of men to individuals, from abstractions to realities, from mere words to living and sentient beings?

If you set out with this assumption—absurd upon the face of it—that moral energy resides in the State, and that the nation is passive, do you not place morals, doctrines, opinions, wealth, all which constitutes individual life, at the mercy of men in power?

Then, in order to enable it to discharge the formidable duty which you would intrust to it, has the State any resources of its own? Is it not obliged to take everything of which it disposes, down to the last penny, from the citizens themselves? If it be from individuals that it demands the means of execution, individuals have realized these means. It is a contradiction, then, to pretend that individuality is passive and inert. And why have individuals created these resources? To minister to their own [p441] satisfactions. What does the State do when it seizes on these resources? It does not bring satisfactions into existence, it displaces them. It deprives the man who earned them in order to endow a man who has no right to them. Charged to chastise injustice, it perpetrates it.

Will it be said that in displacing satisfactions it purifies them, and renders them more moral?—that the wealth which individuals had devoted to gross and sensual wants the State has devoted to moral purposes? Who dare affirm that it is advantageous to invert violently, by force, by means of spoliation, the natural order according to which the wants and desires of men are developed?—that it is moral to take a morsel of bread from the hungry peasant, in order to bring within the reach of the inhabitants of our large towns the doubtful morality of theatrical entertainments?

And then it must be remembered, that you cannot displace wealth without displacing labour and population. Any arrangement you can make must be artificial and precarious when it is thus substituted for a solid and regular order of things reposing on the immutable laws of nature.

There are people who believe that by circumscribing the province of Government you enfeeble it. Numerous functions and numerous agents, they think, give the State the solidity of a broader basis. But this is pure illusion. If the State cannot overstep the limits of its proper and determinate functions without becoming an instrument of injustice, of ruin, and of spoliation—without unsettling the natural distribution of labour, of enjoyments, of capital, and of population—without creating commercial stoppages, industrial crises, and pauperism—without enlarging the proportion of crimes and offences—without recurring to more and more energetic means of repression—without exciting discontent and disaffection,—how is it possible to discover a guarantee for stability in these accumulated elements of disorder?

You complain of the revolutionary tendencies of men, but without sufficient reflection. When in a great country we see private services invaded and converted into public services, the Government laying hold of one-third of the wealth produced by the citizens, the law converted into an engine of spoliation by the citizens themselves, thus impairing, under pretence of establishing, the equivalence of services—when we see population and labour displaced by legislation, a deeper and deeper gulf interposed between wealth and poverty, capital, which should give employment to an increasing population, prevented from accumulating, [p442] entire classes ground down by the hardest privations—when we see Governments taking to themselves credit for any prosperity which may be observable, proclaiming themselves the movers and originators of everything, and thus accepting responsibility for all the evils which afflict society,—we are only astonished that revolutions do not occur more frequently, and we admire the sacrifices which are made by the people to the cause of public order and tranquillity.

But if laws and the Governments which enact laws confined themselves within the limits I have indicated, how could revolutions occur? If each citizen were free, he would doubtless be less exposed to suffering; and if, at the same time, the feeling of responsibility were brought to bear on him from all sides, how should he ever take it into his head to attribute his sufferings to a law, to a Government which concerned itself no farther with him than to repress his acts of injustice and protect him from the injustice of others? Do we ever find a village rising against the authority of the local magistrate?

The influence of liberty on the cause of order is sensibly felt in the United States. There, all, save the administration of justice and of public property, is left to the free and voluntary transactions of the citizens; and there, accordingly, we find fewer of the elements and chances of revolution than in any other country of the world. What semblance of interest, could the citizens of such a country have in changing the established order of things by violence, when, on the one hand, this order of things clashes with no man’s interests, and, on the other, may be legally and readily modified if necessary?

But I am wrong. There are two active causes of revolution at work in the United States—slavery and commercial restriction. It is notorious that these two questions are constantly placing in jeopardy the public peace and the federal union. Now, is it possible to conceive a more decisive argument in support of the thesis I am now maintaining? Have we not here an instance of the law acting in direct antagonism to what ought to be the design and aim of all laws? Is not this a case of law and public force sanctioning, strengthening, perpetuating, systematizing, and protecting oppression and spoliation, in place of fulfilling its legitimate mission of protecting liberty and property? As regards slavery, the law says, “I shall create a force, at the expense of the citizens, not to maintain each in his rights, but to annihilate altogether the rights of a portion of the inhabitants.” As regards tariffs, the law says, “I shall create a force, at the expense of the citizens, not to ensure the freedom of their bargains and transactions, but to [p443] destroy that freedom, to impair the equivalence of services, to give to one citizen the liberty of two, and to deprive another of liberty altogether. My function is to commit injustice, which I nevertheless visit with the severest punishment when committed by the citizens themselves without my interposition.”

It is not, then, because we have few laws and few functionaries, or, in other words, because we have few public services, that revolutions are to be feared; but, on the contrary, because we have many laws, many functionaries, and many public services. Public services, the law which regulates them, the force which establishes them, are from their nature never neutral. They may be enlarged without danger, on the contrary with advantage, when they are necessary to the vigorous enforcement of justice; but carried beyond this point they are so many instruments of legal oppression and spoliation, so many causes of disorder and revolutionary ferment.

Shall I venture to describe the poisonous immorality which is infused into all the veins of the body politic, when the law thus sets itself, upon principle, to indulge the plundering propensities of the citizens? Attend a meeting of the national representatives when the question happens to turn on bounties, encouragements, favours, or restrictions. See with what shameless rapacity all endeavour to secure a share of the spoil,—spoil which, as individuals, they would blush to touch. The very man who would regard himself as a highway robber, if, meeting me on the frontier and clapping a pistol to my head, he prevented me from concluding a bargain which was for my advantage, makes no scruple whatever in proposing and voting a law which substitutes the public force for his own, and subjects me to the very same restriction at my own expense. In this respect, what a melancholy spectacle France presents at this very moment! All classes are suffering, and in place of demanding the abolition for ever of all legal spoliation, each turns to the law, and says, “You who can do everything, you who have the public force at your disposal, you who can bring good out of evil, be pleased to rob and plunder all other classes, to put money in my pocket. Force them to come to my shop, or pay me bounties and premiums, give my family gratuitous education, lend me money without interest,” etc.

It is in this way that the law becomes a source of demoralization, and if anything ought to surprise us, it is that the propensity to individual plunder does not make more progress, when the moral sense of the nation is thus perverted by legislation itself.

The deplorable thing is, that spoliation, when thus sanctioned by [p444] law, and opposed by no individual scruple, ends by becoming quite a learned theory with an attendant train of professors, journals, doctors, legislators, sophisms, and subtleties. Among the traditional quibbles which are brought forward in its support we may remark this one, namely, that, cÆteris paribus, an enlargement of demand is of advantage to those by whom labour is supplied, seeing that the new relation between a more active demand and a supply which is stationary is what increases the value of the service. From these premises the conclusion follows that spoliation is of advantage to everybody: to the plundering class, which it enriches directly; to the plundered class, by its reflex influence. The plundering class having become richer finds itself in a situation to enlarge the circle of its enjoyments, and this it cannot do without creating a larger demand for the services of the class which has been robbed. Now, as regards each service, an enlargement of demand is an increase of value. The classes, then, who are legally plundered are too happy to be robbed, since the profit arising from the theft thus redounds to them, and helps to find them employment.

As long as the law confined itself to robbing the many for the benefit of the few, this quibble appeared specious, and was never invoked but with success. “Let us hand over to the rich,” it was said, “the taxes levied from the poor, and we shall thus augment the capital of the wealthy classes. The rich will indulge in luxury, and luxury will give employment to the poor.” And all, poor included, regarded this recipe as infallible; and for having exposed its hollowness, I have been long regarded, and am still regarded, as an enemy of the working classes.

But since the revolution of February the poor have had a voice in the making of our laws. Have they required that the law should cease to sanction spoliation? Not at all. The sophism of the rebound, of the reflex influence, has got too firmly into their heads. What is it they have asked for? That the law should become impartial, and consent to rob all classes in their turn. They have asked for gratis education, gratis advances of capital, friendly societies founded by the State, progressive taxation, etc. And then the rich have set themselves to cry out, “How scandalous! All is over with us! New barbarians threaten society with an irruption!” To the pretensions of the poor they have opposed a desperate resistance, first with the bayonet and then with the ballot-box. But for all this, have the rich given up spoliation? They have not even dreamt of that; and the argument of the rebound still serves as the pretext. [p445]

Were this system of spoliation carried on by them directly, and without the intervention of the law, the sophism would become transparent. Were you to take from the pocket of the workman a franc to pay your ticket to the theatre, would you have the face to say to him, “My good friend, this franc will circulate and give employment to you and others of your class?” Or if you did, would he not be justified in answering, “The franc will circulate just as well if you do not steal it from me. It will go to the baker instead of the scene-painter. It will procure me bread in place of procuring you amusement.”

We may remark, also, that the sophism of the rebound may be invoked by the poor in their turn. They may say in their turn to the rich, “Let the law assist us in robbing you. We shall consume more cloth, and that will benefit your manufactures; more meat, and that will benefit your land estates; more sugar, and that will benefit your shipping.”

Unhappy, thrice unhappy, nation in which such questions are raised, in which no one thinks of making the law the rule of equity, but an instrument of plunder to fill his own pockets, and applies the whole power of his intellect to try to find excuses among the more remote and complicated effects of spoliation. In support of these reflections it may not be out of place to add here an extract from the debate which took place at a meeting of the Conseil gÉnÉral des Manufactures, de l’Agriculture, et du Commerce, on Saturday the 27th April 1850.100 [p446]