I. In the name of justice Proudhon rejects, not law indeed, but almost all individual legal norms, and the State laws in particular.

The State makes laws, and "as many laws as the interests which it meets with; and, since interests are innumerable, the legislation-machine must work uninterruptedly. Laws and ordinances fall like hail on the poor populace. After a while the political soil will be covered with a layer of paper, and all the geologists will have to do will be to list it, under the name of papyraceous formation, among the epochs of the earth's history. The Convention, in three years one month and four days, issued eleven thousand six hundred laws and decrees; the Constituent and Legislative Assemblies had produced hardly less; the empire and the later governments have wrought as industriously. At present the 'Bulletin des Lois' contains, they say, more than fifty thousand; if our representatives did their duty this enormous figure would soon be doubled. Do you believe that the populace, or the government itself, can keep its sanity in this labyrinth?"[136]

"But what am I saying? Laws for him who thinks for himself, and is responsible only for his own acts! laws for him who would be free, and feels himself destined to become free! I am ready to make terms, but I will have no laws; I acknowledge none; I protest against every order which an ostensibly necessary authority shall please to impose on my free will. Laws! we know what they are and what they are worth. Cobwebs for the powerful and the rich, chains which no steel can break for the little and the poor, fishers' nets in the hands of the government."[137]

"You say they shall make few laws, make them simple, make them good. But it is impossible. Must not government adjust all interests, decide all disputes? Now interests are by the nature of society innumerable, relationships infinitely variable and mobile; how is it possible that only a few laws should be made? how can they be simple? how can the best law escape soon being detestable?"[138]

II. Justice requires that only one legal norm be in force: to wit, the norm that contracts must be lived up to.

"What do we mean by a contract? A contract, says the civil code, art. 1101, is an agreement whereby one or more persons bind themselves to one or more others to do or not to do something."[139] "That I may remain free, that I may be subjected to no law but my own, and that I may govern myself, the edifice of society must be rebuilt upon the idea of Contract."[140] "We must start with the idea of contract as the dominant idea of politics."[141] This norm, that contracts must be lived up to, is to be based not only on its justice, but at the same time on the fact that among men who live together there prevails a will to enforce the keeping of contracts, if necessary, with violence;[142] so it is to be not only a commandment of morality, but also a legal norm.

"Several of your fellow-men have agreed to treat each other with good faith and fair play,—that is, to respect those rules of action which the nature of things points out to them as being alone capable of assuring to them, in the fullest measure, prosperity, safety, and peace. Are you willing to join their league? to form a part of their society? Do you promise to respect the honor, the liberty, the goods, of your brothers? Do you promise never to appropriate to yourself, neither by violence, by fraud, by usury, nor by speculation, another's product or possession? Do you promise never to lie and deceive, neither in court, in trade, nor in any of your dealings? You are free to accept or to refuse.

"If you refuse, you form a part of the society of savages. Having left the fellowship of the human race, you come under suspicion. Nothing protects you. At the least insult anybody you meet may knock you down, without incurring any other charge than that of cruelty to animals.

"If you swear to the league, on the contrary, you form a part of the society of free men. All your brothers enter into an engagement with you, promising you fidelity, friendship, help, service, commerce. In case of infraction on their part or on yours, through negligence, hot blood, or evil intent, you are responsible to one another, for the damage and also for the scandal and insecurity which you have caused; this responsibility may extend, according to the seriousness of the perjury or the repetition of the crime, as far as to excommunication and death."[143]