 section 12 of essays on political economy this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org essays on political economy by Frédéric Bastia section 12 Mabli he is supposing the laws to be worn out by time and by the neglect of security and continues thus under these circumstances we must be convinced that the springs of government are relaxed give them a new tension it is the reader who is addressed and the evil will be remedied think less of punishing the faults than of encouraging the virtues which you want by this method you will bestow upon your republic the vigor of youth through ignorance of this a free people has lost its liberty but if the evil has made so much way that the ordinary magistrates are unable to remedy it effectually have recourse to an extraordinary magistracy whose time should be short and its power considerable the imagination of the citizens requires to be impressed in this style he goes on through 20 volumes there was a time when under the influence of teaching like this which is the root of classical education everyone was for placing himself beyond and above mankind's for the sake of arranging organizing and instituting it in his own way kandilac take upon yourself my lord the character of lycurgis or of solan before you finish reading this essay amuse yourself with giving laws to some wild people in america or in africa establish these roving men in fixed dwellings teach them to keep flocks endeavor to develop the social qualities which nature has implanted in them make them begin to practice the duties of humanity cause the pleasures of the passions to become distasteful to them by punishments and you will see these barbarians with every plan of your legislation loose of ice and gain of virtue all these people have had laws but few among them have been happy why is this because legislators have almost always been ignorant of the object of society which is to unite families by a common interest impartiality and law consistent two things in establishing equality in the fortunes and in the dignity of the citizens in proportion to the degree of equality established by the laws the dearer will they become to every citizen how can avarice ambition dissipation idleness sloth envy hatred or jealousy agitate men who are equal in fortune and dignity and to whom the laws leave no hope of disturbing their equality what has been told you of the republic of sparta ought to enlighten you on this question no other state has had laws more in accordance with the order of nature or of equality it is not to be wondered at that the 17th and 18th centuries should have looked upon the human race as inert matter ready to receive everything form figure impulse movement and life from a great prince or a great legislator or a great genius these ages were reared in the study of antiquity and antiquity presents everywhere in egypt persia greece and rome the spectacle of a few men molding mankind according to their fancy and mankind to this end enslaved by force or by imposture and what does this prove that because men and society are improvable ever ignorance despotism slavery and superstition must be more prevalent in early times the mistake of the writers quoted above is not that they have asserted this fact but that they have proposed it as a rule for the administration and imitation of future generations their mistake has been with an inconceivable absence of discernment and upon the faith of a purile conventionalism that they have admitted what is inadmissible is the grander dignity morality and well-being of the artificial societies of the ancient world they have not understood that time produces and spreads enlightenment and that in proportion to the increase of enlightenment right ceases to be upheld by force and society regains possession of herself and in fact what is the political work which we are endeavoring to promote it is no other than the instinctive effort of every people towards liberty and what is liberty whose name can make every heart beat and which can agitate the world but the union of all liberties the liberty of conscience of instruction of association of the press of locomotion of labor and of exchange in other words the free exercise for all of all the inoffensive faculties and again in other words the destruction of all despotism's even of legal despotism and the reduction of law to its only rational sphere which is to regulate the individual right of legitimate defense or to repress injustice this tendency of the human race it must be admitted is greatly thwarted particularly in our country by the fatal disposition resulting from classical teaching and common to all politicians of placing themselves beyond mankind to arrange organize and regulate it according to their fancy for whilst society is struggling to realize liberty the great men who place themselves at its head imbued with the principles of the 17th and 18th centuries think only of subjecting it to the philanthropic despotism of their social inventions and making it bear with docility according to the expression of raso the yoke of public felicity as pictured in their own imaginations this was particularly the case in 1789 no sooner was the old system destroyed than society was to be submitted to other artificial arrangements always with the same starting point the omnipotence of the law saint just the legislature commands the future it is for him to will the good of mankind it is for him to make men what he wishes them to be the function of government is to direct the physical and moral powers of the nation towards the object of its institution a people who are to be restored to liberty must be formed anew ancient prejudices must be destroyed antiquated customs changed depraved affectations corrected inveterate vices eradicated for this a strong force and a vehement impulse will be necessary citizens the inflexible austerity of like urges created the firm basis of the spartan republic the feeble and trusting disposition of solan plunged Athens into slavery this parallel contains the whole science of government the pelotia considering the extent of human degradation i am convinced of the necessity of effecting an entire regeneration of the race and if i may so express myself of creating a new people men therefore are nothing but raw material it is not for them to will their own improvement they are not capable of it according to saint just it is only the legislature who is men are merely to be what he wills that they should be according to roms pierre who copies rasso literally the legislature is to begin by assigning the aim of the institutions of the nation after this the government has only to direct all its physical and moral forces towards this end all this time the nation itself is to remain perfectly passive and bio foren would teach us that it ought to have no prejudices affections nor ones but such as are authorized by the legislature he even goes so far as to say that the inflexible austerity of a man is the basis of a republic we have seen that in cases where the evil is so great that the ordinary magistrates are unable to remedy it may be recommends a dictatorship to promote virtue have recourse says he to an extraordinary magistracy whose time shall be short and his power considerable the imagination of the people requires to be impressed this doctrine has not been neglected listen to roms pierre the principle of the republican government is virtue and the means to be adopted during its establishment is terror we want to substitute in our country morality for egotism probity for honor principles for customs duties for decorum the empire of reason for the tyranny of fashion contempt of vice for contempt of misfortune pride for insolence greatness of soul for vanity love of glory for love of money good people for good company merit for intrigue genius for wit truth for glitter the charm of happiness for the weariness of pleasure the greatness of man for the littleness of the great a magnanimous powerful happy people for one that is easy frivolous degraded that is to say we would substitute all the virtues and miracles of a republic for all the vices and absurdities of monarchy at what a vast height above the rest of mankind does roms pierre place himself here and observe the arrogance with which he speaks he is not content with expressing a desire for a great renovation of the human heart he does not even expect such a result from a regular governments no he intends to affect it himself and by means of terror the object of the discourse from which this purile and laborious mass of antithesis is extracted was to exhibit the principles of morality which ought to be direct revolutionary governments moreover when roms pierre asks for dictatorship it is not merely for the purpose of repelling a foreign enemy or putting down factions it is that he may establish by means of terror and as a preliminary to the game of the constitution his own principles of morality he pretends to nothing short of extirpating from the country by means of terror egotism honor customs decorum fashion vanity the love of money good company intrigue wit luxury and misery it is not until after he roms pierre shall have accomplished these miracles as he rightly calls them that he will allow the law to regain her empire truly it would be well of these visionaries who think so much of themselves and so little of mankind who want to renew everything would only be content with trying to reform themselves the task would be arduous enough for them in general however these gentlemen the reformers legislators and politicians do not desire to exercise an immediate despotism over mankind no they are too moderate and too philanthropic for that they only contend for the despotism the absolutism the omnipotence of the law they aspire only to make the law to show how universal this strange disposition has been in france i had need not only to have copied the whole of the works of mably reynal russo fenolin and to have made long extracts from boss away and montesquieu but to have given the entire transactions of the sittings of the convention i shall do no such thing however but merely refer the reader to them it is not to be wondered at that this idea should have suited bonaparte exceedingly well he embraced it with ardor and put it in practice with energy playing the part of a chemist europe was to him the material for his experiments but this material reacted against him more than half undeceived bonaparte at saint olina seemed to admit that there is an initiative in every people and he became less hostile to liberty yet this did not prevent him from giving this lesson to his son in his will to govern is to diffuse morality education and well-being after all this i hardly need show by fastidious quotations the opinions of morelly baboff owen saint simon and four year i shall confine myself to a few extracts from louis blanks book on the organization of labor in our project society receives the impulse of power page 126 in what does the impulse which power gives to society consist in imposing upon it the project of m louis blank on the other hand society is the human race the human race then is to receive its impulse from m louis blank it is at liberty to do so or not it will be said of course the human race is at liberty to take advice from anybody whoever it may be but this is not the way in which m louis blank understands the thing he means that his project should be converted into law and consequently forcibly imposed by power in our project the state has only to give a legislation to labor by means of which the industrial movement may and ought to be accomplished in all liberty it the state merely places society on an incline that is all that it may descend when once it is placed there by the mere force of things and by the natural course of the established mechanism but what is this incline one indicated by m louis blank does it not lead to an abyss no it leads to happiness why then does not society go there of itself because it does not know what it wants and it requires an impulse what is to give it this impulse power and who is to give the impulse to power the inventor of the machine m louis blank we shall never get out of this circle mankind passive and a great man moving it by the intervention of the law once on this incline will society enjoy something like liberty without a doubt and what is liberty once for all liberty consists not only in the right granted but in the power given to men to exercise to develop his faculties under the empire of justice and under the protection of the law and this is no vain distinction there is a deep meaning in it and its consequences are not to be estimated for when once it is admitted that man to be truly free must have the power to exercise and develop his faculties it follows that every member of society has a claim upon it for such instruction as shall enable it to display itself and for the instruments of labor without which human activity can find no scope now by Hughes intervention is society to give each of its members the requisite instruction and the necessary instruments of labor unless by that of the state thus liberty is power in what does this power consist in possessing instruction and instruments of labor who is to give instruction and instruments of labor society who owns them by whose intervention is society to give instruments of labor to those who do not possess them by the intervention of the state from whom is the state to obtain them it is for the reader to answer this question and to notice whether all this tends one of the strangest phenomena of our time and one which will probably be a matter of astonishment to our descendants is the doctrine which is founded upon this triple hypothesis the radical passiveness of mankind the omnipotence of the law the infallibility of the legislator this is the sacred symbol of the party which proclaims itself exclusively democratic it is true that it professes also to be social so far as it is democratic it has an unlimited faith in mankind so far as it is social it places it beneath the mud our political rights under discussion is a legislator to be chosen oh then the people possess science by instinct they are gifted with an admirable tact their will is always right the general will cannot dare suffrage cannot be too universal nobody is under any responsibility to society the will and the capacity to choose well are taken for granted can the people be mistaken are we not living in an age of enlightenment what are the people to be always kept in leading strings have they not acquired their rights at the cost of effort and sacrifice have they not given sufficient proof of intelligence and wisdom are they not arrived at maturity are they not in a state to judge for themselves do they not know their own interest is there a man or a class who would dare to claim the right of putting himself in the place of the people of deciding and of acting for them no no the people would be free and they shall be so they wish to conduct their own affairs and they shall do so but when once the legislature is duly elected then indeed the style of his speech alters the nation is sent back into passiveness inertness nothingness and the legislature takes possession of omnipotence it is for him to invent for him to direct for him to impel for him to organize mankind has nothing to do but to submit the hour of despotism has struck and we must observe that this is decisive for the people just before so enlightened so moral so perfect have no inclinations at all or if they have any they all lead them downwards toward degradation and yet they ought to have a little liberty but are we not assured by m considerance that liberty leads fatally to monopoly are we not told that liberty is competition and that competition according to m louis blank is a system of extermination for the people and a ruination for trade for that reason people are exterminated and ruined in proportion as they are free take for example switzerland holland england and the united states does not m louis blank tell us again that competition leads to monopoly and that for the same reason cheapness leads to exorbitant prices that competition tends to drain the sources of consumption and urges production to a destructive activity that competition forces production to increase and consumption to decrease once it follows that free people produce for the sake of not consuming that there is nothing but oppression and madness among them and that it is absolutely necessary for m louis blank to see to it what sort of liberty should be allowed to men liberty of conscience but we should see them all profiting by the permission to become atheists liberty of education but parents would be paying professors to teach their sons immorality and error besides if we are to believe m the air education if left to the national liberty would cease to be national and we should be educating our children in the ideas of the turks or hindus instead of which thanks to the legal despotism of the universities they have the good fortune to be educated in the noble ideas of the romans liberty of labor but this is only competition whose effect is to leave all productions and consumes to exterminate the people and to ruin the tradesmen the liberty of exchange but it is well known that the protectionists have shown over and over again that a man must be ruined when he exchanges freely and that to become rich it is necessary to exchange without liberty liberty of association but according to the socialist doctrine liberty and association exclude each other for the liberty of men is attacked just to force them to associate you must see then that the socialist democrats cannot in conscience allow men any liberty because by their own nature they tend in every instance to all kinds of degradation and demoralization we are therefore left to conjecture in this case upon what foundation universal suffrage is claimed for them with so much opportunity the pretensions of organizers suggest another question which I have often asked them and to which I am not aware that I ever received an answer since the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to allow them liberty how comes it to pass that the tendencies of organizers are always good do not the legislators and their agents form a part of the human race do they consider that they are composed of different materials from the rest of mankind's they say that society when left to itself rushes to inevitable destruction because its instincts are perverse they pretend to stop it in its downward course and to give it a better direction they have therefore received from heaven intelligence and virtues which place them beyond and above mankind's let them show their title to the superiority they would be our shepherds and we are to be their flock this arrangement presupposes in them a natural superiority the right to which we are fully justified in calling upon them to prove you must observe that I am not contending against their right to invent social combinations to propagate them to recommend them and to try them upon themselves at their own expense and risk but I do dispute their right to impose them upon us through the medium of the law that is by force and by public taxes I would not insist upon the cabaists the four year lists the proud honnions the universities and the protectionists renouncing their own particular ideas I would have them renounce that idea which is common to them all is that of subjecting us by force to their own groups and series to their social workshops to their gratuitous bank to their Greco-Roman morality and to their commercial restrictions I would ask them to allow us the faculty of judging their plans and not to oblige us to adopt them if we find that they hurt our interests or are repugnant to our consciences to presume to have recourse to power and taxation besides being oppressive and unjust implies further the injurious supposition that the organizer is infallible and mankind incompetent and if mankind is not competent to judge for itself why do they talk so much about universal suffrage this contradiction in ideas is unhappily to be found also in facts and whilst the French nation has proceeded all others in obtaining its rights or rather its political claims this has by no means prevented it from being more governed and directed and imposed upon and fettered and cheated than any other nation it is also the one of all others where revolutions are constantly to be dreaded and it is perfectly natural that it should be so so long as this idea is retained which is admitted by all our politicians and so energetically expressed by Emily blank in these words society receives its impulse from power so long as men consider themselves as capable of feeling yet passive incapable of raising themselves by their own discernment and by their own energy to any morality or well-being and while they expect everything from the law in a word while they admit that their relations with the state are the same as those of the flock with the shepherd it is clear that the responsibility of power is immense fortune and misfortune wealth and destitution equality and inequality all proceed from it it is charged with everything it undertakes everything it does everything therefore it has to answer for everything if we are happy it has a right to claim our gratitude but if we are miserable it alone must bear the blame are not our persons and property in fact at its disposal is not the law omnipotent in creating the universal monopoly it has engaged to answer the expectations of fathers of families who have been deprived of liberty and if these expectations are disappointed whose fault is it in regulating industry it has engaged to make it prosper otherwise it would have been absurd to deprive it of its liberty and if it suffers whose fault is it in pretending to adjust the balance of commerce by the game of tariffs it engages to make it prosper and if so far from prospering it is destroyed whose fault is it in granting its protection to maritime armaments in exchange for their liberty it has engaged to render them lucrative if they become burdensome whose fault is it thus there is not a grievance in the nation for which the government does not voluntarily make itself responsible is it to be wondered at that every failure threatens to cause a revolution and what is the remedy proposed to extend indefinitely the dominion of the law i.e. the responsibility of government but if the government engages to raise and to regulate wages and is not able to do it if it engages to assist all those who are in want and is not able to do it if it engages to provide an asylum for every laborer and is not able to do it if it engages to offer to all such as our eager to borrow gratuitous credit and is not able to do it if in words which we regret should have escaped the pen of emdylam routine the state considers that its mission is to enlighten to develop to enlarge to strengthen to spiritualize and to sanctify the soul of the people if it fails in this is it not evident that after every disappointment which alas is more than probable there will be a no less inevitable revolution i shall now resume the subject by remarking that immediately after the economical part of the question and at the entrance of the political part a leading question presents itself it is the following what is law what audit to be what is its domain what are its limits where in fact does the prerogative of the legislator stop i have no hesitation in answering law is common force organized to prevent injustice in short law is justice it is not true that the legislator has absolute power over our persons and property since they pre exist and his work is only to secure them from injury it is not true that the mission of the law is to regulate our consciences our ideas our will our education our sentiments our works our exchanges our gifts our enjoyments its mission is to prevent the rights of one from interfering with those of another in any one of these things law because it has force for its necessary sanction can only have as its lawful domain the domain of force which is justice and as every individual has a right to have recourse to force only in cases of lawful defense so collective force which is only the union of individual forces cannot be rationally used for any other ends the law then is solely the organization of individual rights which existed before legitimate defense law is justice so far from being able to oppress the persons of the people or to plunder their property even for a philanthropic end its mission is to protect the former and to secure to them the possession of the latter it must not be said either that it may be philanthropic so long as it abstains from all oppression for this is a contradiction the law cannot avoid acting upon our persons and property if it does not secure them it violates them if it touches them the law is justice nothing can be more clear and simple more perfectly defined and bounded more more visible to every eye for justice is the given quantity immutable and unchangeable and which admits of neither increase nor diminution depart from this point make the laws 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 which is worse in the midst of a multitude of utopias striving to gain possession of the law and to impose it upon you for fraternity and philanthropy have no fixed limits like justice where will you stop where is the law to stop one person as am de saint criss will only extend his philanthropy to some of the industrial classes and will require the law to dispose of the consumers in favor of the producers another like am considerance will take up the cause of the working classes and claim for them by means of the law and a fixed rate clothing lodging food and everything necessary for the support of life a third as am louis blank will say and with reason that this would be an incomplete fraternity and that the law ought to provide them with instruments of labor and to the means of instruction a fourth will observe that such an arrangement still leaves room for inequality and that the law ought to introduce into the most remote hamlets luxury literature and the arts this is the high road to communism in other words legislation will be what it now is the battlefield for everybody's dreams and everybody's covetousness law is justice in this proposition we represent to ourselves a simple immovable government and i defy anyone to tell me once the thought of a revolution and insurrection or a simple disturbance could arise against a public force confined to the repression of injustice under such a system there would be more well-being and this well-being would be more equally distributed and as to the sufferings inseparable from humanity no one would think of accusing the governments of them for it would be as innocent of them as it is of the variations of the temperature have the people ever been known to rise against the court of appeals or assail the justices of the peace for the sake of claiming the rate of wages gratuitous credit instruments of labor the advantages of the tariff or the social workshop they know perfectly well that these combinations are beyond the jurisdiction of the justices of the peace and they would soon learn that they are not within the jurisdiction of the law but if the law were to be made upon the principle of fraternity if it were to be proclaimed that from it perceived all benefits and all evils that it is responsible for every individual grievance and for every social inequality then you open the door to an endless succession of complaints irritations troubles and revolutions law is justice and it would be very strange if it could properly be anything else is not justice right are not rights equal with what show of right can the law interfere to subject me to the social plans of mm-memorel dimulin theirs or louis blank rather than to subject these gentlemen to my plans is it to be supposed that nature has not bestowed upon me sufficient imagination to invent a utopia to is it for the law to make choice of one amongst so many fancies and to make use of the public force in its service law is justice and let it not be said as it continually is that the law in this sense would be atheistic individual and heartless and that it would make mankind wear its own image this is an absurd conclusion quite worthy of the governmental infatuation which sees mankind in the law what then does it follow that if we are free we shall cease to act does it follow that if we do not receive an impulse from the law we shall receive no impulse at all and does it follow that if the law confines itself to securing to us the free exercise of our faculties our faculties will be paralyzed does it follow that if the law does not impose upon us forms of religion modes of association methods of instruction roles for labor directions for exchange and plans for charity we shall plunge eagerly into atheism isolation ignorance misery and egotism does it follow that we shall no longer recognize the power and goodness of god that we shall cease to associate together to help each other to love and assist our unfortunate brethren to study the secrets of nature and to aspire after perfection in our existence law is justice and it is under the law of justice under the reign of right under the influence of liberty security stability and responsibility that every man will attain to the measure 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 decreed to it i believe that my theory is correct for whatever be the question upon which i am arguing whether it be religious philosophical political or economical whether it affects well-being morality equality right justice progress responsibility property labor exchange capital wages taxes population credits or government at whatever point of the scientific horizon i start from i invariably come to the same thing the solution of the social problem is in liberty and have i not experience on my side cast your eye over the globe which are the happiest the most moral and the most peaceable nations those where the law interferes the least with private activity where the government is the least felt where individuality has the most scope the public opinion the most influence where the machinery of the administration is the least important and the least complicated where taxation is lightest and least unequal where the responsibility of individuals and classes is the most active and where consequently if morals are not in a perfect state at any rate they tend incessantly to correct themselves where transactions meetings and associations are the least fettered where labor capital and production suffer the least from artificial displacements where mankind follows most completely its own natural course where the thought of god prevails the most over the inventions of men those in short who realize the most nearly this idea that within the limits of right all should flow from the free perfectible and voluntary action of man nothing be attempted by the law or by force except the administration of universal justice i cannot avoid coming to this conclusion that there are too many great men in the world there are too many legislators organizers instituters of society conductors of the people fathers of nations etc etc too many persons place themselves above mankind to rule and patronize it too many persons make a trade of attending to it it will be answered you yourself are occupied upon it all this time very true but it must be admitted that it is in another sense entirely that i am speaking and if i join the reformers it is solely for the purpose of inducing them to relax their hold i am not doing as valkissan did with his automaton but as a physiologist does with the organization of the human frame i would study and admire it i am acting with regard to it in the spirit which animated a celebrated traveler he found himself in the midst of a savage tribe a child had just been born and a crowd of soothsayers magicians and quacks were around it armed with rings hooks and bandages one said this child will never smell the perfume of a calamet unless i stretch his nostrils another said he will be without the sense of hearing unless i draw his ears down to his shoulders a third said he will never see the light of the sun unless i give his eyes in a bleak direction a fourth said he will never be upright unless i bend his legs a fifth said he will not be able to think unless i press his brain stop said the traveler whatever god does is well done do not pretend to know more than he and as he has given organs to this frail creature allow those organs to develop themselves to strengthen themselves by exercise use experience and liberty god has implanted in mankind also all that is necessary to enable it to accomplish its destinies there is a providential social physiology as well as a providential human physiology the social organs are constituted so as to enable them to develop harmoniously in the grand air of liberty away then with quacks and organizers away with their rings and their chains and their hooks and their pincers away with their artificial methods away with their social workshops their governmental whims their centralization their tariffs their universities their state religions their gratuitous or monopolizing banks their limitations their restrictions their moralizations and their equalization by taxation and now after having vainly inflicted upon the social body so many systems let them end where they ought to have begun reject all systems and make trial of liberty of liberty which is an act of faith in god and in his work end of section 12 and of essays on political economy by frédéric bastia recording by katie riley march 2010