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The Law - Frederic Bastiat · Classic Philosophy Library

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  Speaker 1: Forward. Anyone building a personal library of liberty must include
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  Speaker 1: in it a copy of Frederick Bastiat's classic essay The Law,
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  Speaker 1: first published in eighteen fifty by the great French economist
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  Speaker 1: and journalist. It is as clear a statement as has
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  Speaker 1: ever been made of the original American ideal of government,
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  Speaker 1: as proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, that the main
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  Speaker 1: purpose of any government is the protection of the lives, liberties,
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  Speaker 1: and property of its citizens. Bastiat believed that all human
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  Speaker 1: beings possessed the God given natural rights of individuality, liberty, property.
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  Speaker 1: This is man. He wrote, these three gifts from God
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  Speaker 1: precede all human legislation. But even in his time, writing
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  Speaker 1: in the late eighteen forties, Bastiat was alarmed over how
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  Speaker 1: the law had been perverted into an instrument of what
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  Speaker 1: he called legal plunder. Far from protecting individual rights, the
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  Speaker 1: law was increasingly used to deprive one group of cities
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  Speaker 1: of those rights for the benefit of another group, and
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  Speaker 1: especially for the benefit of the state itself. He condemned
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  Speaker 1: the legal plunder of protectionist tariffs, government subsidies of all kinds,
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  Speaker 1: progressive taxation, public schools, government jobs programs, minimum wage laws, welfare,
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  Speaker 1: usury laws, and more. Bastiat's warnings of the dire effects
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  Speaker 1: of legal plunder are as relevant today as they were
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  Speaker 1: the day he first issued them. The system of legal plunder,
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  Speaker 1: which many now celebrate as democracy, will erase from everyone's conscience,
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  Speaker 1: he wrote, the distinction between justice and injustice. The plundered
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  Speaker 1: classes will eventually figure out how to enter the political
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  Speaker 1: game and plunder their fellow man. Legislation will never be
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  Speaker 1: guided by any principles of justice, but only by brute
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  Speaker 1: political force. The great French champion of liberty also forecast
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  Speaker 1: the corruption of education by the state. Those who held
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  Speaker 1: government endowed teaching positions, he wrote, would rarely criticize legal
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  Speaker 1: plunder lest their government endowments be ended. The system of
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  Speaker 1: legal plunder would also greatly exaggerate the importance of politics
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  Speaker 1: and society. That would be a most unhealthy development, as
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  Speaker 1: it would encourage even more citizens to seek to improve
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  Speaker 1: their own well being, not by producing goods and services
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  Speaker 1: for the market place, but by plundering their fellow citizens
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  Speaker 1: through politics. Bastiat was also wise enough to anticipate what
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  Speaker 1: modern economists call rent seeking and rent avoidance behavior. These
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  Speaker 1: two clumsy phrases refer, respectively, to the phenomena of lobbying
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  Speaker 1: for political favors legal plunder, and of engaging in political
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  Speaker 1: activity directed at protecting one's self from being the victim
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  Speaker 1: of plunder seekers. For example, the steel manufacturing industry lobbies
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  Speaker 1: for high tariffs on steel, whereas steel using industries like
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  Speaker 1: the automobile industry can be expected to lobby against high
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  Speaker 1: tariffs on steel. The reason why modern economists are concerned
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  Speaker 1: about rent seeking is the opportunity cost involved. The more time, effort,
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  Speaker 1: and money that is spent by businesses on conniving to
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  Speaker 1: manipulate politics merely transferring wealth, the less time is spent
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  Speaker 1: on producing goods and services, which increases wealth. Thus, legal
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  Speaker 1: plunder impoverishes the entire society, despite the fact that a
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  Speaker 1: small but politically influential part of the society benefits from it.
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  Speaker 1: It is remarkable, in reading the Law how perfectly accurate
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  Speaker 1: Bastiat was in describing the statists of his day, which
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  Speaker 1: it turns out were not much different from the statists
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  Speaker 1: of today or of any other day. The French socialists
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  Speaker 1: of Bastiat's day espoused doctrines that perverted charity, education, and morals.
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  Speaker 1: For one thing, true charity does not begin with the
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  Speaker 1: robbery of taxation. He pointed out, government schooling is inevitably
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  Speaker 1: an exercise in statist brainwashing, not genuine education, and it
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  Speaker 1: is hardly moral for a large gang government too legally
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  Speaker 1: rob one section of the population, keep most of the
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  Speaker 1: loot and share a little of it with various needy individuals.
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  Speaker 1: Socialists want to play god, Bastiat observed, anticipating all the
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  Speaker 1: future tyrants and despots of the world who would try
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  Speaker 1: to remake the world in their image, whether that image
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  Speaker 1: would be communism, fascism, the Glorious Union, or global democracy.
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  Speaker 1: Bastiat also observed that socialists wanted forced conformity, rigid regimentation
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  Speaker 1: of the population through pervasive regulation, forced equality of wealth,
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  Speaker 1: and dictatorship. As such, they were the mortal enemies of liberty.
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  Speaker 1: Dictatorship need not involve an actual dictator. All that was needed,
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  Speaker 1: said Bastiat, was the laws enacted by a congress or
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  Speaker 1: a parliament that would achieve the same effect forced conformity.
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  Speaker 1: Bastiat was also wise to point out that the world
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  Speaker 1: had far too many great men, fathers of their countries,
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  Speaker 1: et cetera, who in reality are usually nothing but petty tyrants.
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  Speaker 1: With a sick and compulsive desire to rule over others.
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  Speaker 1: The defenders of the free society should have a healthy
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  Speaker 1: disrespect for all such men. Bastiat admired America and pointed
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  Speaker 1: to the America of eighteen fifty as being as close
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  Speaker 1: as any society in the world to his ideal of
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  Speaker 1: a government that protected individual rights to life, liberty, and property.
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  Speaker 1: There were two major exceptions, however, the twin evils of
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  Speaker 1: slavery and protectionist tariffs. Frederic Bastiat died on Christmas Eve
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  Speaker 1: eighteen fifty and did not live to observe the convulsions
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  Speaker 1: that the America he admired so much would go through
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  Speaker 1: in the next fifteen years and longer. It is unlikely
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  Speaker 1: that he would have considered the U. S government's military
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  Speaker 1: invasion of the Southern State Rates in eighteen sixty one,
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  Speaker 1: the killing of some three hundred thousand citizens, and the bombing, burning,
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  Speaker 1: and plundering of the region's cities, towns, farms, and businesses
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  Speaker 1: as being consistent in any way with the protection of
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  Speaker 1: the lives, liberties, and properties of those citizens as promised
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  Speaker 1: by the Declaration of Independence. Had he lived to see
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  Speaker 1: all of this, he most likely would have added legal
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  Speaker 1: murder to legal plunder as one of the two great
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  Speaker 1: sins of government. He would likely have viewed the post
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  Speaker 1: war Republican Party, with its fifty percent average tariff rates,
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  Speaker 1: its massive corporate welfare schemes, and its twenty five year
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  Speaker 1: campaign of genocide against the Plains Indians as first rate
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  Speaker 1: plunderers and traders to the American ideal. In the latter
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  Speaker 1: pages of the Law, Bastiat offers the sage advice that
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  Speaker 1: what was really needed was a science of economics that
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  Speaker 1: would explain the harmony or lack thereof, of a free
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  Speaker 1: society as opposed to socialism. He made a major contribution
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  Speaker 1: to this end himself with the publication of his book
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  Speaker 1: Economic Harmonies, which can be construed as a precursor to
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  Speaker 1: the modern literature of the Austrian school of economics. There
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  Speaker 1: is no substitute for a solid understanding of the market
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  Speaker 1: order and of the realities of politics when it comes
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  Speaker 1: to combating the kinds of destructive socialist schemes that plagued
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  Speaker 1: Bastiacht's day as well as ours. Anyone who reads this
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  Speaker 1: great essay, along with other free market classics such as
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  Speaker 1: Henry Hazlitt's Economics in one lesson and Murray Rothbard's Power
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  Speaker 1: and Market will possess enough intellectual ammunition to debunk the
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  Speaker 1: socialist fantasies of this or any other day. Thomas J.
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  Speaker 1: De Lorenzo May two thousand seven. Thomas de Lorenzo is
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  Speaker 1: professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland and a
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  Speaker 1: member of the Senior Faculty of the Mice's Institute. End
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  Speaker 1: of section zero.
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  Speaker 2: On the law perverted the law and in its wake
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  Speaker 2: all the collective forces of the nation. The law, I say,
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  Speaker 2: not only diverted from its proper direction, but made to
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  Speaker 2: pursue one entirely contrary. The law become the tool of
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  Speaker 2: every kind of avarice, instead of being its check, the
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  Speaker 2: law guilty of that very iniquity which it was its
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  Speaker 2: mission to punish. Truly, this is a serious fact, if
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  Speaker 2: it exists, and one to which I feel bound to
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  Speaker 2: call the attention of my fellow citizens. We hold from
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  Speaker 2: God the gift that, as far as we are concerned,
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  Speaker 2: contains all others life, physical, intellectual and moral life. But
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  Speaker 2: life cannot support itself. He who has bestowed it has
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  Speaker 2: entrusted us with the care of supporting it, of developing it,
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  Speaker 2: and of perfecting it. To that end, he has provided
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  Speaker 2: us with a collection of wonderful faculties. He has plunged
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  Speaker 2: us into the midst of a variety of elements. It
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  Speaker 2: is by the application of our faculties to these elements
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  Speaker 2: that the phenomena of assimilation and of appropriation by which
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  Speaker 2: life pursues the circle that has been assigned to it
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  Speaker 2: are realized. Existence faculties, assimilation, in other words, personality, liberty, property.
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  Speaker 2: This is man. It is of these three things that
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  Speaker 2: it may be said, apart from all demagogic subtlety, that
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  Speaker 2: they are anterior and superior to all human legislation. It
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  Speaker 2: is not because men have made laws that personality, liberty,
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  Speaker 2: and a property exist. On the contrary, it is because personality, liberty,
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  Speaker 2: and property exist beforehand that men make laws. What then,
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  Speaker 2: is law? As I have said elsewhere, it is the
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  Speaker 2: collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense. Nature,
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  Speaker 2: or rather, God, has bestowed upon every one of us
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  Speaker 2: the right to defend his person, his liberty, and his property.
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  Speaker 2: Since these are the three constituent or preserving elements of life, elements,
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  Speaker 2: each of which is rendered complete by the others, and
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  Speaker 2: that cannot be understood without them. For what are our
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  Speaker 2: faculties but the extension of our personality? And what is
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  Speaker 2: property but an extension of our faculties. If every man
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  Speaker 2: has the right of defending, even by force, his person,
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  Speaker 2: his liberty, and his property, a number of men have
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  Speaker 2: the right to combine together to extend, to organize a
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  Speaker 2: common force to provide regularly for this defense. Collective right
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  Speaker 2: then has its principle, its reason for existing, its lawfulness
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  Speaker 2: in individual right. And the common force cannot rationally have
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  Speaker 2: any other end, or any other mission, than that of
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  Speaker 2: the isolated forces for which it is substituted. Thus, as
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  Speaker 2: the force of an individual cannot lawfully touch the person,
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  Speaker 2: the liberty, or the property of another individual, for the
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  Speaker 2: same reason, the common force cannot lawfully be used to
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  Speaker 2: destroy the person, the liberty, or the property of individuals
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  Speaker 2: or of classes. For this perversion of force would be,
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  Speaker 2: in one case, as in the other, in contradiction to
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  Speaker 2: our premises. For who will dare to say that force
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  Speaker 2: has been given to us not to defend our rights,
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  Speaker 2: but to annihilate the equal rights of our brethren. And
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  Speaker 2: if this be not true of every individual force acting independently,
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  Speaker 2: How can it be true of the collective, which is
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  Speaker 2: only the organized union of isolated forces. Nothing therefore can
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  Speaker 2: be more evident than this. The law is the organization
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  Speaker 2: of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the
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  Speaker 2: substitution of collective for individual forces for the purpose of
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  Speaker 2: acting in the sphere in which they have a right
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  Speaker 2: to act, of doing what they have a right to do,
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  Speaker 2: to secure persons, liberties, and properties, and to maintain each
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  Speaker 2: in its right, so as to cause justice to reign
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  Speaker 2: over all. And if a people established on this basis
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  Speaker 2: were to exist, it seems to me that order would
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  Speaker 2: prevail among them in their acts as well as in
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  Speaker 2: their ideas. It seems to me that such a people
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  Speaker 2: would have the most simple, the most economical, the least oppressive,
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  Speaker 2: the least to be felt, the most restrained, the most just,
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  Speaker 2: and consequently the most stable government that could be imagined,
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  Speaker 2: whatever its political form might be. For under such an administration,
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  Speaker 2: everyone would feel that he possessed all the fullness, as
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  Speaker 2: well as all the responsibility of his existence, so long
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  Speaker 2: as personal safety was insured, so long as labor was free,
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  Speaker 2: and the fruits of labor secured, against all unjust attacks,
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  Speaker 2: no one would have any difficulties to contend within the state.
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  Speaker 2: When prosperous, we should not, it is true, have to
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  Speaker 2: thank the state for our success. But when unfortunate, we
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  Speaker 2: should no more think of taxing it with our disasters
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  Speaker 2: than our peasants think of attributing to it the arrival
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  Speaker 2: of hail or of frost. We should know it only
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  Speaker 2: by the inestimable blessing of safety. It may further be
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  Speaker 2: affirmed that, thanks to the non intervention of the state
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  Speaker 2: in private affairs, our wants and their satisfactions would develop
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  Speaker 2: themselves in their nets order. We should not see poor
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  Speaker 2: families seeking for literary instruction before they were supplied with bread.
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  Speaker 2: We should not see towns peopled at the expense of
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  Speaker 2: rural districts, nor rural districts at the expense of towns.
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  Speaker 2: We should not see those great displacements of capital, of labor,
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  Speaker 2: and of population that legislative measures occasion, displacements that render
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  Speaker 2: so uncertain and precarious the various sources of existence, and
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  Speaker 2: thus enlarged to such an extent the responsibility of governments. Unhappily,
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  Speaker 2: law is by no means confined to its own sphere.
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  Speaker 2: Nor is it merely in some ambiguous and debatable views,
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  Speaker 2: that it has left its proper sphere. It has done
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  Speaker 2: more than this. It has acted in direct opposition to
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  Speaker 2: its proper end. It has destroyed its own object. It
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  Speaker 2: has been employed in annihilating that justice which it ought
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  Speaker 2: to have established, in effacing amongst rights that limit which
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  Speaker 2: it was its true mission to respect. It has placed
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  Speaker 2: the collective force in the service of those who wished
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  Speaker 2: to traffic without risk and without scruple in the persons,
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  Speaker 2: the liberty and the property of others. It has converted
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  Speaker 2: plunder into a right that it may protect it, and
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  Speaker 2: lawful defense into a crime that it may punish it.
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  Speaker 2: How has this perversion of law been accomplished, and what
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  Speaker 2: has resulted from it? The law has been perverted through
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  Speaker 2: the influence of two very different causes, naked greed and
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  Speaker 2: misconceived philanthropy. Let us speak of the farmer. Self preservation
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  Speaker 2: and development is the common aspiration of all men in
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  Speaker 2: such a way that if everyone enjoyed the free exercise
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  Speaker 2: of his faculties and the free disposition of their fruits,
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  Speaker 2: social progress would be incessant, uninterrupted, inevitable. But there is
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  Speaker 2: also another disposition which is common to them. This is
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  Speaker 2: to live and to develop when they can, at the
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  Speaker 2: expense of one another. This is no rash imputation emanating
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  Speaker 2: from a gloomy, uncharitable spirit. History bears witness to the
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  Speaker 2: truth of it by the incessant wars, the migrations of races,
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  Speaker 2: sectarian oppressions, the universality of slavery, the frauds in trade,
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  Speaker 2: and the monopolies with which the annals abound. This fatal
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  Speaker 2: disposition has its origin in the very constitution of man,
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  Speaker 2: in that primitive and universal and invincible sentiment that urges
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  Speaker 2: it towards its well being and makes it seek to
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  Speaker 2: escape pain. Man can only derive life and enjoyment from
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  Speaker 2: a perpetual search and appropriation, that is, from a perpetual
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  Speaker 2: application of his faculties to objects, or from life labor.
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  Speaker 2: This is the origin of property. But also he may
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  Speaker 2: live and enjoy by seizing and appropriating the productions of
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: the faculties of his fellow men. This is the origin
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  Speaker 2: of plunder. Now, labor being in itself a pain, and
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  Speaker 2: man being naturally inclined to avoid pain, It follows, and
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  Speaker 2: history proves it that wherever plunder is less burdensome than labor,
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  Speaker 2: it prevails, and neither religion nor morality can in this
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  Speaker 2: case prevent it from prevailing. When does plunder cease, then
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  Speaker 2: when it becomes more burdensome and more dangerous than labor.
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  Speaker 2: It is very evident that the proper aim of law
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  Speaker 2: is to oppose the fatal tendency to plunder, with the
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  Speaker 2: powerful obstacle of collective force. That all its measures should
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  Speaker 2: be in favor of property and against plunder. But the
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  Speaker 2: law is made generally by one man or by one
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  Speaker 2: class of men, And as law cannot exist without the
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  Speaker 2: sanction and the support of a p ponderant force, it
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  Speaker 2: must finally place this force in the hands of those
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  Speaker 2: who legislate. This inevitable phenomenon, combined with the fatal tendency
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  Speaker 2: that we have said exists in the heart of man,
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  Speaker 2: explains the almost universal perversion of law. It is easy
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  Speaker 2: to conceive that, instead of being a check upon injustice,
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  Speaker 2: it becomes its most invincible instrument. It is easy to
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  Speaker 2: conceive that, according to the power of the legislator, it
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: destroys for its own profit, and in different degrees, amongst
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  Speaker 2: the rest of the community. Personal independence by slavery, liberty
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: by oppression, and property by plunder. It is in the
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  Speaker 2: nature of man to rise against the injustice of which
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: they are the victims. When therefore plunder is organized by
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  Speaker 2: las law for the profit of those who perpetrate it,
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  Speaker 2: all the plundered classes tend, either by peaceful or revolutionary means,
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  Speaker 2: to enter in some way into the manufacturing of laws.
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  Speaker 2: These classes, according to the degree of enlightenment at which
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: they have arrived, may propose to themselves to very different
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: ends when they thus attempt the attainment of their political rights.
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  Speaker 2: Either they may wish to put an end to lawful plunder,
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  Speaker 2: or they may desire to take part in it. Woe
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  Speaker 2: to the nation where this latter thought prevails among the
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  Speaker 2: masses at the moment when they, in their turn seize
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  Speaker 2: upon the legislative power. Up to that time, lawful plunder
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: has been exercised by the few upon the many, as
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  Speaker 2: in the case in countries where the right of legislating
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  Speaker 2: is confined to a few hands. But now it has
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  Speaker 2: become universal, and the equilibrium is sought in universal plunder.
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  Speaker 2: The injustice that society contains, instead of being rooted out
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  Speaker 2: of it, is generalized. As soon as the injured classes
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  Speaker 2: have recovered their political rights, their first thought is not
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  Speaker 2: to abolish plunder. This would suppose them to possess enlightenment,
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: which they cannot have, but to organize against the other
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  Speaker 2: classes and to their own detriment, a system of reprisals,
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  Speaker 2: as if it were necessary before the reign of justice arrives,
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  Speaker 2: that all should undergo a cruel retribution, some for their
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  Speaker 2: iniquity and some for their ignorance. It would be impossible, therefore,
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  Speaker 2: to introduce into society a greater change, and a greater
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: evil than this, the conversion of the law into an
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: instrument of plunder. What would be the consequences of such
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: a perversion, It would require volumes to describe them all.
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  Speaker 2: We must content ourselves with pointing out the most striking.
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  Speaker 2: In the first place, it effaced from everybody's conscience, the
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  Speaker 2: distinction between justice and injustice. No society can exist unless
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: the laws are respected to a certain degree. But the
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  Speaker 2: safest way to make them respected is to make them respectable.
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  Speaker 2: When law and morality are in contradiction to each other,
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  Speaker 2: the citizen finds himself in the cruel alternative of either
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  Speaker 2: losing his moral sense, or of losing his respect for
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  Speaker 2: the law, two evils of equal magnitude between which it
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: would be difficult to choose. It is so much in
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  Speaker 2: the nature of law to support justice, that in the
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  Speaker 2: minds of the masses they are one and the same.
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  Speaker 2: There is in all of us a strong disposition to
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  Speaker 2: regard what is lawful as legitimate, so much so that
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: many falsely derive all justice from law. It is sufficient,
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  Speaker 2: then for the law to order and sanction plunder, that
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  Speaker 2: it may appear to many consciences just and sacred. Protection
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  Speaker 2: and monopoly find defenders not only in those who profit
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  Speaker 2: by them, but in those who suffer by them. If
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  Speaker 2: you suggest a doubt as to the morality of these institutions,
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  Speaker 2: it is said directly you are a dangerous experimenter, a utopian,
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  Speaker 2: a theorist, a despiser of the laws. You would shake
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  Speaker 2: the basis upon which society rests if you lecture upon
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  Speaker 2: morality or political economy. Official bodies will be found to
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  Speaker 2: make this request to the government, that henceforth science be
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: taught not only with sole reference to free exchange, to liberty, property,
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: and justice, as has been the case up to the
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: present time, but also and especially with reference to the
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: facts and legislation contrary to liberty, property and justice that
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: regulate French industry, that in public lecterns salaried by the Treasury.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: The Professor abstained rigorously from dangering in the slightest degree
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: the respect due to the laws now in force, So
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: that if a law exists that sanctioned slavery or monopoly
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: oppression are plunder in any form whatever, it must not
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: be mentioned, for how can it be mentioned without damaging
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: the respect that it inspires. Still Further, morality and political
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: economy must be taught in connection with this law, that is,
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: under the supposition that it must be just only because
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: it is law. End of Section one, Section two. Another
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: effect of this deplorable perversion of the law is that
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: it gives to human passions and to political struggles, and
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: in general, to politics properly so called an exaggerated importance.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: I could prove this assertion in a thousand ways, but
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: I shall confine myself, by way of an illustration, to
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: bringing it to bear upon a subase which has of
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: late occupied everybody's mind. Universal suffrage, whatever may be thought
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: of it by the Adepts of the School of Rousseau,
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: which professes to be very far advanced, but which I
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: consider twenty centuries behind. Universal suffrage. Taking the word in
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: its strictest sense is not one of those sacred dogmas
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: with respect to which examination and doubt are crimes. Serious
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: objections may be made to it. In the first place,
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: the word universal conceals a gross sophism. There are in
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: France thirty six million inhabitants. To make the right of
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: suffrage universal, thirty six million electors should be reckoned. The
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: most extended system reckons only nine million, three persons out
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: of four then are excluded, and more than this they
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: are excluded by the fourth upon what principle is this
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: exclusion founded upon the principle of incapacity? Universal suffrage then
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: means universal suffrage of those who are capable. In point
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: of fact, who are the capable are age, sex, and
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: judicial condemnations, the only conditions to which incapacity is to
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: be attached. On taking a nearer view of the subject,
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: we may soon perceive the reason why the right of
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: suffrage depends upon the presumption of incapacity. The most extended
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: system differing from the most restricted in the conditions on
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: which this incapacity depends, and which constitutes not a difference
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: in principle, but in degree. This motive is that the
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: elector does not stipulate for himself, but for everybody. If,
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: as the republicans of the Greek and Roman tone pretend,
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: the right of suffrage has fallen to the lot of
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: everyone at his birth, it would be an injustice to
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: adults to prevent women and children from voting. Why are
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: they prevented because they are presumed to be incapable? And
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: why is incapacity a reason for exclusion? Because the elector
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: does not reap alone the responsibility of his vote, Because
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: every vote engages and affects the community at large, because
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: the community has a right to demand some assurances as
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: regards the acts upon which its well being and its
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: existence depend. I know what might be said in answer
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: to this, I know what might be objected, But this
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: is not the place to settle a controversy of this kind.
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: What I wish to observe is this that this same controversy,
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: in common with the greater part of political questions, that agitates, excites,
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: and unsettles the nations, would lose almost all its importance.
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: If the law had always been what it ought to be.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: In fact, if law were confined to causing all persons,
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: all liberty, and all properties to be respected, if it
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: were merely the organization of individual rights and individual defense,
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: if it were the obstacle the check the chastisement opposed
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: to all oppression, to all plunder. Is it likely that
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: we should dispute much as citizens, on the subject of
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: greater or lesser universality of suffrage? Is it likely that
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: it would compromise that greatest of advantages the public peace.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: Is it likely that the excluded classes would not quietly
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: wait for their turn. Is it likely that the enfranchised
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: classes would be very jealous of their privilege? And is
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: it not clear that the interest of all being one
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: and the same, some would act without much inconvenience to
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: the others. But if the fatal principle should come to
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: be introduced, that, under pretense of organization, regulation, protection, or encouragement,
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: the law may take from one party in order to
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: give to another, help itself to the wealth acquired by
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: all the classes, that it may increase that of one class,
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: whether that of the agriculturists, the manufacturers, the shipowners, or
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: artists and comedians, then, certainly in this case, there is
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: no class which may not try, and with reason to
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: place its hand upon the law that would not demand
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: with fury its right of election and eligibility, and that
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: would overturn society rather than not obtain it. Even beggars
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: and vagabonds will prove to you that they have an
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: incontestable title to it. They will say, we never buy wine, tobacco,
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: are salt without paying the tax. And a part of
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: this tax is given by law in perquisites and gratuities
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: to men who are richer than we are. Others make
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: use of the law to create an artificial rise in
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: the price of bread, meat, iron, or cloth. Since everybody
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: traffics in law for his own profit, we should like
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: to do the same. We should like to make it
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: produce the right to assistance, which is the poor man's plunder.
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: To affect this, we ought to be electors and legislators
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: that we may organize on a large scale alms for
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: our own class, as you have organized on a large
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: scale protection for yours. Don't tell us that you will
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: take our cause upon yourselves and throw to us six
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: hundred thousand francs to keep us quiet, Like giving us
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: a bone to pick. We have other claims, and at
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: any rate we wish to stipulate for ourselves as other
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: classes have stipulated for themselves. How is this argument to
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: be answered? Yes, as long as it is admitted that
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: the law may be diverted from its true mission, that
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: it may violate property instead of securing it, everybody will
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: be wanting to manufacture law, either to defend himself against
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: plunder or to organize it for his own profit. The
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: political question will always be prejudicial, predominant, and absorbing. In
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: a word, there will be fighting around the door of
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: the legislative palace. The struggle will be no less furious
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: within it. To be convinced of this, it is hardly
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: necessary to look at what passes in the chambers in
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: France and in England. It is enough to know how
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: the question stands. Is there any need to prove that
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: this odious perversion of law is a perpetual source of
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: hatred and discord, that it even tends to social disorganization?
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: Look at the United States. There is no country in
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: the world where the law is kept more within its
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: proper domain, which is to secure to everyone his liberty
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: and his property. Therefore, there is no country in the
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: world where social order appears to rest upon a more
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: solid basis. Nevertheless, even in the United States, there are
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: two questions, and only two, that from the beginning have
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: endangered political order. And what are these two questions? That
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: of slavery and that of tariffs? That is, precisely the
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: only two questions in which, contrary to the general spirit
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: of this republic, law has taken the character of a plunderer.
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: Slavery is a violation sanctioned by law of the rights
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: of the person. Protection is a violation perpetrated by the
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: law upon the rights of property. And certainly, it is
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: very remarkable that, in the midst of so many other debates,
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: this double legal scourge, the sorrowful inheritance of the old world,
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: should be the only one which can and perhaps will,
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: cause the rupture of the Union. Indeed, a more astoundish
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: in fact in the heart of society cannot be conceived
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: than this, that law should have become an instrument of injustice.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: And if this fact occasions consequences so formidable to the
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: United States, where there is but one exception, what must
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: it be with us in Europe, where it is a
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: principle a system. Mister Montalambert, adopting the thought of a
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: famous proclamation of mister Carlier, said we must make war
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: against socialism and by socialism. According to the definition of
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: mister Charles de Pine, he meant plunder. But what plunder
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: did he mean? For there are two sorts extra legal
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: and legal plunder. As to extra legal plunder, such as
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: theft or swindling, which is defined, foreseen and punished by
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: the penal code, I do not think it can be
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: adorned by the name of socialism. It is not this
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: that systematically threatens the foundations of society. Besides, the war
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: against this kind of plunder has not waited for the
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: signal of mister mount Lambert or mister Carlyier. It has
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: gone on since the beginning of the world. France was
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: carrying it on long or before the Revolution of February,
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: long before the appearance of socialism, with all its ceremonies
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: of magistry, police, gendarmerie, prisons, dungeons and scaffolds. It is
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: the law itself that is conducting this war, and it
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: is to be wished, in my opinion, that the law
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: should always maintain this attitude with respect to plunder. But
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: this is not the case. The law sometimes takes its
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: own part. Sometimes it accomplishes it with its own hands,
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: in order to save the parties benefited, the shame, the danger,
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: and the scruple. Sometimes it places all this ceremony of magistracy, police,
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: gendarmerie and prisons at the service of the plunderer, and
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: treats the plundered party when he defends himself as a criminal.
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: In a word, there is a legal plunder, and it
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: is no doubt this that is meant by mister Montalambert
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: end of Section.
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: Two, Section three. This plunder may be only an exceptional
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: blemish in the legislation of a people. And in this
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: case the best thing that can be done is, without
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: so many speeches and lamentations, to do away with it
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: as soon as possible, notwithstanding the clamors of interested parties.
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: But how is it to be distinguished? Very easily? See
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: whether the law takes from some persons that which belongs
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: to them, to give to others what does not belong
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: to them. See whether the law performs for the benefit
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: of one citizen and to the injury of others, and
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: act that this citizen cannot perform without committing a crime.
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: Abolish this law without delay. It is not merely an iniquity.
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: It is a fertile source of iniquities, for it invites reprisals,
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: and if you do not take care, the exceptional case
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: will extend multiply and become systematic. No doubt, the party
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: benefit will exclaim loudly. He will assert his acquired rights.
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: He will say that the state is bound to protect
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: and encourage his industry. He will plead that it is
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: a good thing for the state to be enriched, that
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: it may spend the more and thus shower down salaries
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: upon the poor workmen. Take care not to listen to
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: this sophistry, for it is just by the systematizing of
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: these arguments that legal plunder becomes systematized. And this is
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: why has taken place. The delusion of the day is
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: to enrich all classes at the expense of each other.
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: It is to generalize plunder under pretense of organizing it.
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: Now Leo plunder may be exercised in an infinite multitude
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: of ways. Hence come an infinite multitude of plans for organization. Tariffs, protection, perquisites, gratuities, encouragements,
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: progressive taxation, free public education, right to work, right to profit,
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: right to ages, right to assistance, right to instruments of labor,
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: gratuity of credit, et cetera, et cetera. And it is
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: all these plans taken as a whole, with what they
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: have in common, Leo, plunder that takes the name of socialism.
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: Now socialism thus defined in forming a doctrinal body, what
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: other war would you make against it than a war
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: of doctrine. You find this doctrine false, absurd, abominable, refute it.
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: This will be all the easier, the more false, absurd
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: and abominable. It is, above all, if you wish to
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: be strong, begin by routing out of your legislation every
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: particle of socialism which may have crept into it. And
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: this will be no light work. Mister Montalambert has been
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: reproached with wishing to turn brute force against socialism. He
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: ought to be exonerated from this reproach, for he has
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: plainly said, quote the war that we must make against
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: socialism must be one that is compatible with the law,
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: honor and justice. Close quote. But how is it that
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: mister Montalambert does not see that he is placing himself
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: in efficient circle you would oppose law to socialism, But
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: it is the law that socialism in folks, It aspires
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: to legal, not extra legal plunder. It is of the
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: law itself, like the monopolist of all kinds, that it
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: wants to make an instrument. And when once it has
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: the law on its side, how will you be able
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: to turn the law against it? How will you place
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: it under the power of your tribunals, your gendarmes, and
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: your prisence. What will you do? Then, you wish to
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: prevent it from taking any part in the making of laws,
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: you would keep it outside the legislative palace. In this
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: you will not succeed. I venture to prophesy. So long
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: as legal plunder is the basis of the legislation within,
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: it is absolutely necessary that this question of legal plunder
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: should be determined. And there are only three solutions of it,
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: one plunder the many, two when everybody plunders everybody else,
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: and three when nobody plunders anybody, partial plunder, universal plunder,
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: absence of plunder. Amongst these we have to make our choice.
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: The law can only produce one of these results, partial plunder.
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: This is the system that prevailed so long as the
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: elective privilege was partial, a system that is resorted to
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: to avoid the invasion of socialism universal plunder. We have
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: been threatened by this system when the elective privilege has
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: become universal, the masses having conceived the idea of making
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: law on the principle of legislators who have preceded them
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: absence of plunder. This is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, conciliation,
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: and of good sin, which I shall proclaim with all
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: the force of my lungs, which is very inadequate alas
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: till the day of my death, and in all sincerity,
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: can anything more be required at the hands of the law.
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: Can the law, whose necessary sanction is forced be reasonably
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: employed upon anything beyond securing to every one his right.
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: I defy anyone to remove it from this circle without
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: perverting it and consequently turning force against right. And as
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: this is the most fatal, the most illogical, social perversion
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: that can possibly be imagined, it must be admitted that
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: the true solution so much sought after of the social
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: problem is contained in these simple words. Law is organized justice. Now,
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: it is important to remark that to organize justice by law,
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: that is to say, by force excludes the idea of
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: organizing by law or by force, any manifestation whatever of
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: human activity labor, charity, agriculture, commerce, industry, instruction, the fine arts,
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: or religion. For any one of these organizings would inevitably
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: destroy the essential organization. How in fact, can we imagine
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: force encroaching upon the liberty of citizens without infringing upon
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: justice and so acting against its proper aim. Here I
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: am taking on the most popular prejudice of our time.
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: It is not considered enough that law should be just.
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: It must be philanthropic. It is not sufficient that it
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: should guarantee to every citizen the free and inoffensive exercise
• 41:52
  Speaker 3: of his faculties apply to his physical, intellectual, and moral development.
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: It is required to extend well being, instruction, and morality
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: directly over the nation. This is a fascinating side of socialism.
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: But I repeat it. These two missions of the law
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: contradict each other. We have to choose between them. A
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: citizen cannot at the same time be free and not free.
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: Mister de Lamartine wrote to me one day thus quote,
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: your doctrine is only the half of my program. You
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: have stopped at liberty. I go on to fraternity close quote,
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: I answered him, quote the second part of your program
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: will destroy the first close quote. And in fact, it
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: is impossible for me to separate the word fraternity from
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: the word voluntary. I cannot possibly conceive fraternity legally enforced
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: without liberty being legally destroyed and just legally trampled underfoot.
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: Legal plunder has two roots. One of them, as we
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: have already seen, is in human greed. The other is
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: in misconceived philanthropy. Before I proceed, I think I ought
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: to explain myself upon the word plunder. I do not
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: take it as it often is taken, in a vague, undefined,
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: relative or metaphorical sense. I use it in its scientific acceptation,
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: and as expressing the opposite idea to property. When a
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: portion of wealth passes out of the hands of him
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: who has acquired it without his consent, and without compensation
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: to him who has not created it, whether by force
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: or by artifice, I say that property is violated, that
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: plunder is perpetrated. I say that this is exactly what
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: the law ought to repress. Always in every where, if
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: the law itself performs the action it ought to repress,
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: I say that plunder is still perpetrated. And even in
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: a social point of view, under aggravated circumstances. In this case, however,
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: he who profits from the plunder is not responsible for it.
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: It is the law, the lawgiver, society itself, and this
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: is where the political danger lies. It is to be
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: regretted that there is something offensive in the word I
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: have sought in vain for another. For I would not
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: wish at any time, and especially just now, to add
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: an irritating word to our disagreements. Therefore, whether I am
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: believed or not, I declare that I do not mean
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: to impugne the intentions nor the morality of anybody. I
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: am attacking an idea that I believe to be false,
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: a system that appears to me to be unjust. And
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: this is so in independent of intentions, that each of
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: us profits by it without wishing it, and suffers from
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: it without being aware of the cause. Any person must write,
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: under the influence of party spirit or of fear, who
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: would call into question the sincerity of protectionism, of socialism,
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: and even of communism, which are the one and the
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: same plant in three different periods of growth. All that
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: can be said is that plunder is more visible by
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: its partiality in protectionism, and by its universality in communism.
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: Whence it follows that of the three systems, socialism is
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: still the most vague, the most undefined, and consequently the
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: most sincere. Be that, as it may, to conclude that
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: legal plunder has one of its roots in misconceived philanthropy,
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: is evidently to put in tensions out of the question.
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: End of Section three, Section four. With this understanding, let
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: us examine the value, the origin, and the tendency of
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: this popular aspiration which pretends to realize the general good
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: by general plunder. The socialists say, since the law organizes justice,
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: why should it not organize labor, instruction and religion. Why
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: because it could not organize labor, instruction and religion without
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: disorganizing justice. For remember that law is force, and that
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: consequently the domain of the law cannot properly extend beyond
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: the domain of force. When law and force keep a
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: man within the bounds of justice, they impose nothing upon
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: him but a mere negation. They only oblige him to
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: abstain from doing harm. They violate neither his personality, his liberty,
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: nor his property. They only guard the personality, the liberty,
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: the property of others. They hold themselves to be on
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: the defensive. They defend the equal right of all. They
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: fulfill the mission whose harmlessness is evident, whose utility is palpable,
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: and whose legitimacy is not to be disputed. This is
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: so true that, as a friend of mine want remarked
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: to me. To say that the aim of the law
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: is to cause justice to reign is to use an
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: expression that is not rigorously exact. It ought to be said,
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: the aim of the law is to prevent injustice from reigning.
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: In fact, it is not justice that has an existence
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: of its own. It is injustice the one results from
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: the absence of the other. But when the law, through
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: the medium of its necessary agent force, impose a form
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: of labor, a method or subject of instruction, a creed,
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: or a worship, it is no longer negative. It acts
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: positively upon men. It substitutes the will of this legislature
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: for their own will, the initiative of the legislator for
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: their own initiative. They have no need to consult, to compare,
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: or to foresee. The law does all that for them.
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: The intellect is for them a useless encumbrance. They cease
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: to be men. They lose their personality, their liberty, and
• 48:35
  Speaker 3: their property. Try to imagine a form of labor imposed
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: by force that is not a violation of liberty, a
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: transmission of will imposed by force, it is not a
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: violation of property. If you cannot succeed in reconciling this,
• 48:52
  Speaker 3: you are bound to conclude that the law cannot organize
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: labor and industry without organizing in just When from the
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: seclusion of his office a politician takes the view of society,
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: he is struck with the spectacle of inequality that presents itself.
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: He mourns over the sufferings that are the lot of
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: so many of our brethren, sufferings whose aspect is rendered
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: yet more sorrowful by the contrast of luxury and wealth.
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: He ought, perhaps to ask himself whether such a social
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: state has not been caused by the plunder of ancient times,
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: exercise in the way of conquests, and by plunder of
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: more recent times effected through the medium of the laws.
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: He ought to ask himself whether, granting the aspiration of
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: all men to well being in improvement, the reign of
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: justice would not suffice to realize the greatest activity of
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: progress and the greatest amount of equality compatible with the
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: individual responsibility that God has awarded as a just retribution
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: of virtue and vice. He never gives this a thought.
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: His mind turns toward combinations, arrangements, legal or factitious organizations.
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: He seeks the remedy in perpetuating and exaggerating what has
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: produced the evil. For justice apart which we have seen,
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: is only a negation. Is there any one of these
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: legal arrangements that does not contain the principle of plunder?
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: You say, there are men who have no money, and
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: you apply the law. But the law is not a
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: self supplied fountain. Whence every stream may obtain supplies independently
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: of its society. Nothing can enter the public treasury in
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: favor of one citizen or one class. But what other
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: citizens and other classes have been forced to send to it?
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: If everyone draws from it only the equivalent of what
• 50:59
  Speaker 3: he has contributed to it. Your law, it is true,
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: is no plunderer. But it does nothing for men who
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: want money. It does not promote equality. It can only
• 51:12
  Speaker 3: be an instrument of equalization as far as it takes
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: from one party to give to another, and then it
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: is an instrument of plunder. Examine in this light the
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: protection of tariffs, subsidies, right to profit, right to labor,
• 51:27
  Speaker 3: right to assistance, free public education, progressive taxation, gratuitousness of credit,
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: social workshops. And you will always find at the bottom
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: legal plunder. Organize injustice. You say, there are men who
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: want knowledge, and you apply to the law. But the
• 51:49
  Speaker 3: law is not a torch that sheds light, that originates
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: within itself. It extends over a society where there are
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: men who have knowledge and others who have not. We
• 52:00
  Speaker 3: want to learn, and others who are disposed to teach.
• 52:04
  Speaker 3: It can only do one of two things. Either allow
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: a free operation to this kind of transaction, that is,
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: let this kind of want satisfy itself freely, or else
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: preempt the will of the people in the matter and
• 52:19
  Speaker 3: take from some of them sufficient to pay professors commissioned
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: to instruct others for free. But in this second case
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: there cannot fail to be a violation of liberty and property.
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: Legal plunder. You say, here are men who are wanting
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: in immorality or religion, and you apply to the law.
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: But the law is force, and need I say, how
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: far it is a violent and absurd enterprise to introduce
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: force in these matters as a result of its systems
• 52:52
  Speaker 3: and of its efforts. It would seem that socialism, notwithstanding
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: all its self complacency, can scare help perceiving the monster
• 53:02
  Speaker 3: of legal plunder. But what does it do. It disguises
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: it cleverly from others and even from itself, under the
• 53:11
  Speaker 3: seductive names of fraternity, solidarity, organization, association. And because we
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: do not ask so much at the hands of the law,
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: because we only ask it for justice. It alleges that
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: we reject fraternity, solidarity, organization and association, and they brand
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: us with the name of individualists. We can assure them
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: that what we repudiate is not natural organization but forced organization.
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: It is not free association, but the forms of association
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: that they would impose upon us. It is not spontaneous
• 53:53
  Speaker 3: fraternity but legal fraternity. It is not providential solidarity but
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: artificial solidarity, which is only an unjust displacement of responsibility. Socialism,
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: like the old policy from which it emanates, confounds government
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: and society. And so every time we object to a
• 54:15
  Speaker 3: thing being done by government, it concludes that we object
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: to its being done at all. We disapprove of education
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: by the state, then we are against education altogether. We
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: object to a state religion, then we would have no
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: religion at all. We object to an equality which is
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: brought about by the state, then we are against equality, etc.
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: Et cetera. They may as well accuse us of wishing
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: men not to eat, because we object to the cultivation
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: of corn by the state. How is it that the
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: strange idea of making the law produce what it does
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: not contain prosperity and a positive sense wealth, science, religion
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: should ever have gained ground in the police world. The
• 55:01
  Speaker 3: modern politicians, particularly those of the socialist school, found their
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: different theories upon one common hypothesis, and surely a more
• 55:11
  Speaker 3: strange and more presumptuous notion could never have entered a
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: human brain. They divide mankind into two parts. Men in general,
• 55:21
  Speaker 3: except one form the first. The politician himself forms the second,
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: which is by far the most important. In fact, they
• 55:31
  Speaker 3: begin by supposing that men are devoid of any principle
• 55:35
  Speaker 3: of action and of any means of discernment in themselves,
• 55:40
  Speaker 3: that they have no initiative, that they are inert matter,
• 55:43
  Speaker 3: passive particles, atoms without impulse at best, a vegetation indifferent
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: to its own mode of existence, susceptible of assuming from
• 55:54
  Speaker 3: an exterior will and hand an infinite number of forms,
• 55:59
  Speaker 3: more or less symmetric, artistic, and perfected. Moreover, every one
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: of these politicians does not hesitate to assume that he
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: himself is under the names of organizer, discoverer, legislator, institutor,
• 56:15
  Speaker 3: or founder. This will and hand, this universal initiative, this
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: creative power, whose sublime mission it is to gather together
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: the scattered materials that is men, into society starting from
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: these data, as a gardener, according to his caprice, shapes
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: his tree into pyramids, parasols, cubes, cones, vases, espalliers, distefs,
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: or fans. So the socialists, following his camera, shapes poor
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: humanity into groups, series, circles, sub circles, honeycombs, or social workshops,
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: with all kinds of variations. And as the gardener to
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: bring his trees into shape needs hatches, pruning hooks, saws,
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: and shears, so the politician to bring society into shape
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: is the forces which he can only find in the laws,
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: the law of tariffs, the law of taxation, the law
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: of assistance, and the law of education. It is so
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: true that the socialists look upon mankind as a subject
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: for social experiments, that if by chance they are not
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: quite certain of the success of these experiments, they will
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: request a portion of mankind as a subject to experiment upon.
• 57:36
  Speaker 3: It is well known how popular the idea of trying
• 57:39
  Speaker 3: all systems is, and one of their chiefs has been
• 57:43
  Speaker 3: known seriously to demand of the constituent assembly a perish
• 57:48
  Speaker 3: with all its inhabitants upon which to make his experiments.
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: It is thus that an inventor will make a small
• 57:57
  Speaker 3: machine before he makes one of the regular size. Thus
• 58:00
  Speaker 3: the chemist sacrifices some substances, the agriculturist some seed, and
• 58:07
  Speaker 3: a corner of his field to make trial of an idea.
• 58:11
  Speaker 3: But think of the difference between the gardener and his trees,
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: between the inventor and his machines, between the chemists and
• 58:18
  Speaker 3: his substances, between the agriculturists and his seed. The socialist
• 58:23
  Speaker 3: things in all sincerity that there is the same difference
• 58:28
  Speaker 3: between himself and mankind. No wonder the politicians of the
• 58:33
  Speaker 3: nineteenth century look upon society as an artificial production of
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: the legislator's genius. This idea, the result of a classical education,
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: has taken possession of all the thinkers and great writers
• 58:48
  Speaker 3: of our country. To all these persons, these relations between
• 58:53
  Speaker 3: mankind and the legislator appear to be the same as
• 58:57
  Speaker 3: those that exist between the clay in the potter. Moreover,
• 59:02
  Speaker 3: if they have consented to recognize in the heart of
• 59:05
  Speaker 3: man a capability of action, and in his intellect a
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: faculty of discernment, they have looked upon this gift of
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: God as a fatal one, and thought that mankind, under
• 59:18
  Speaker 3: these two impulses, tended fatally toward ruin. They have taken
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: it for granted that if abandoned to their own inclinations,
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: men would only occupy themselves with religion to arrive at atheism,
• 59:32
  Speaker 3: with instruction to come to ignorance, and with labor and exchange,
• 59:37
  Speaker 3: to be extinguished in misery end of Section four.
• 59:43
  Speaker 4: Section five. Happily, according to these writers, there are some
• 59:48
  Speaker 4: men termed governors and legislators, upon whom Heaven has bestowed
• 59:52
  Speaker 4: opposite tendencies, not for their own sake only, but for
• 59:56
  Speaker 4: the sake of the rest of the world. Whilst mankind
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 4: tends to evil, they inclined to good. Whilst mankind is
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 4: advancing towards darkness, they are aspiring to enlightenment. Whilst mankind
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 4: is drawn towards vice, they are attracted by virtue, and
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 4: this granted, they demand the assistance of force, by means
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 4: of which they are to substitute their own tendencies for
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 4: those of the human race. It is only needful to open,
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 4: almost at random a book on philosophy, politics, or history
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 4: to see how strongly this idea, the child of classical
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 4: studies and the mother of socialism, is rooted in our country.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 4: That mankind is merely inert matter, receiving life, organization, morality,
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 4: and wealth from power, or rather, and still worse, that
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 4: mankind itself tends towards degradation, and is only arrested in
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 4: its tendency by the mysterious hand of the legislator. Classical
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 4: conventionalism shows us everywhere, behind passive society a hidden power
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 4: under the names of law or legislator, or by a
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 4: mode of expression which refers to some person or persons
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 4: of undisputed weight and authority but not named, which moves, animates,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 4: in riches, and regenerates mankind. We will give a quotation
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 4: from Bousas quote one of the things which was the
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 4: most strongly impressed by whom upon the mind of the
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 4: Egyptians was the love of their country. Nobody was allowed
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 4: to be useless to the state. The law assigned to
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 4: everyone his employment, which descended from father to son. No
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 4: one was permitted to have two professions, nor to adopt
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 4: another end. But there was one occupation which was obliged
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 4: to be common to all. This was the study of
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 4: the laws and of wisdom. Ignorance of religion and the
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 4: political regulations of the country was excused in no condition
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 4: of life. Moreover, every profession had a district assigned to it,
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 4: by whom, amongst good laws, one of the best things
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 4: was that everybody was taught to observe them, by whom
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 4: Egypt abounded with wonderful inventions, and nothing was neglected which
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 4: could render life comfortable and tranquil. Thus, men, according to Beusuat,
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 4: derive nothing from themselves. Patriotism, wealth, inventions, husbandry, science, all
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 4: come to them by the operation of the laws or
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 4: by kings. All they have to do is to be passive.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 4: It is on this ground that Bessuet takes exception when
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 4: Diodorus accuses the Egyptians of rejecting wrestling and music. How
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 4: is that possible says he. Since these arts were invented
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 4: by Trismegistus. It is the same with the Persians. Quote.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 4: One of the first cares of the prince was to
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 4: encourage agriculture. As there were posts established for the regulation
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 4: of the armies, so there were offices for the superintending
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 4: of rural works end quote. The respect with which the
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 4: Persians were inspired for royal authority was excessive. The Greeks,
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 4: although full of mind, were no less strangers to their
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 4: own responsibilities, so much so that of themselves, like dogs
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 4: and horses, they would not have ventured upon the most
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 4: simple games. In a classical sense, it is an undisputed
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 4: thing that everything comes to the people from without quote.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 4: The Greeks, naturally full of spirit and courage, had been
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 4: early cultivated by kings and colonies who had come from Egypt.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 4: From them they had learned the exercises of the body,
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 4: foot races, and horse and chariot races. The best thing
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 4: that the Egyptians had taught them was to become docile
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 4: and to allow themselves to be formed by the laws
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 4: for the public good end quote. Phenelon reared in the
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 4: study and admiration of antiquity and a witness of the
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 4: power of Louis the fourteenth Fenelon naturally adopted the idea
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 4: that mankind should be passive, and that its misfortunes and
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 4: its prospers arities, its virtues, and its vices are caused
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 4: by the external influence that is exercised upon it by
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 4: the law or by the makers of the law. Thus,
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 4: in his utopia of Cilentum, he brings the men, with
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 4: their interests, their faculties, their desires, and their possessions, under
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 4: the absolute direction of the legislator. Whatever the subject may be,
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 4: They themselves have no voice in it. The Prince judges
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 4: for them. The nation is just a shapeless mass, of
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 4: which the Prince is the soul. In him resides the thought,
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 4: the foresight, the principle of all organization, of all progress.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 4: On him. Therefore rests all the responsibility. In proof of
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 4: this assertion, I might transcribe the whole of the Tenth
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 4: Book of Telemachus. I refer the reader to it, and
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 4: shall content myself with quoting some passages taken at random
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 4: from this celebrated work, to which in every other respect
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 4: I am the first to render justice. With the astonishing
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 4: credulity that characterized is the classics. Phaenelon, against the authority
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 4: of reason and of facts, admits the general felicity of
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 4: the Egyptians and attributes it not to their own wisdom,
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 4: but to that of their kings. We could not turn
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 4: our eyes to the two shores without perceiving rich towns
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 4: and country seats agreeably situated, fields that were covered every
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 4: year without intermission, with golden crops, meadows full of flocks,
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 4: laborers bending under the weight of fruits that the earth
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 4: lavished on its cultivators, and shepherds who made the echoes
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 4: around repeat the soft sounds of their pipes and flutes. Happy,
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 4: said Mentor, is that people who is governed by a
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 4: wise king. Mentor afterwards desired me to remark the happiness
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 4: and abundance that was spread over all the country of Egypt,
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 4: where twenty two thousand cities might be counted. He admired
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 4: the excellent police regulations of the cities, the justice administered
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 4: in favor of the poor against the rich, the good
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 4: education of the children, who were accustomed to to obedience, labor,
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 4: and the love of arts and letters. The exactness with
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 4: which all the ceremonies of religion were performed the disinterestedness,
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 4: the desire of honor, the fidelity to men, and the
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 4: fear of the gods with which every father inspired his children.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 4: He could not sufficiently admire the prosperous state of the country. Happy,
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 4: said he is the people whom a wise king rules
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 4: in such a manner end quote Fenelon's idol on crete
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 4: is still more fascinating mentor is made to say, quote
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 4: all that you will see in this wonderful island is
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 4: the result of the laws of minus. The education that
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 4: the children receive renders the body healthy and robust. They
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 4: are accustomed from the first to a frugal and laborious life.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 4: It is supposed that all the pleasures of sense enervate
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 4: the body and the mind. No other pleasure is presented
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 4: to them, but that of being invincible by virtue, that
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 4: of acquiring much glory. There they punish three vices that
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 4: go una punished amongst other people, ingratitude, dissimulation, and avarice.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 4: As to pomp and dissipation. There is no need to
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 4: punish these, for they are unknown in crete. No costly furniture,
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 4: no magnificent clothing, no delicious feasts. No gilded palaces are
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 4: allowed end quote. It is thus that mentor prepares his
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 4: scholar to mold and manipulate, doubtless with the most philanthropic intentions,
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 4: the people of Ithaca, and to confirm him in these ideas,
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 4: he gives him the example of silentum. So we receive
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 4: our first political notions. We are taught to treat men
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 4: very much as Oliver de Sayers teaches farmers to manage
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 4: and to mix the soil montesquie quote. To sustain the
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 4: spirit of commerce, it is necessary that all the laws
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 4: should favor it that these same laws, by their regulations,
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 4: in dividing the fortunes in proportion as commerce enlarges them,
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 4: should place every poor citizen in sufficiently easy circumstances to
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 4: enable him to work like the others, and every rich
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 4: citizen in such mediocrity that he must work in order
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 4: to retain or to acquire end quote. Thus the laws
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 4: are to dispose of all fortunes quote. Although in a
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 4: democracy real equality be the soul of the state, yet
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 4: it is so difficult to establish that an extreme exactness
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 4: in this manner would not always be desirable. It is
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 4: sufficient that a census be established to reduce or fix
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 4: the differences to a certain point, after which it is
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 4: for particular laws to equalize, as it were, the inequality
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 4: by burdens imposed upon the rich and reliefs granted to
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 4: the poor end quote. Here again we see the equalization
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 4: of fortunes by law, that is, by force. Quote. There
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 4: were in Greece two kinds of republics. One was military,
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 4: as Sparta, the other commercial as Athens. In the one
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 4: it was wished by whom that the citizens should be idle.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 4: In the other, the love of labor was encouraged. It
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 4: is worth our while to pay a little attention to
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 4: the extent of genius required by these legislators, that we
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 4: may see how by confounding all the virtues, they showed
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 4: their wisdom to the world. Like Kurgus blending theft with
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 4: the spirit of justice, the hardest slavery with extreme liberty,
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 4: the most atrocious sentiments with the greatest moderation, gave stability
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 4: to his city. He seemed to deprive it of all
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 4: its resources, arts, commerce, money, and walls. There was ambition
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 4: without the hope of rising. There were natural sentiments where
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 4: the individual was neither child nor husband nor father. Chastity
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 4: even was deprived of modesty. By this road, Sparta was
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 4: led on to grandeur and to glory. The phenomenon that
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 4: we observe in the institutions of Greece has been seen
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 4: in the midst of the degeneracy and corruption of our
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 4: modern times. An honest legislator has formed a people where
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 4: probity has appeared as natural as bravery. Among the Spartans.
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 4: Mister Penn is a true, truly Kurgus. And although the
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 4: former had peace for his object and the latter war,
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 4: they resemble each other in the singular path along which
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 4: they have led their people, in their influence over free men,
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 4: in the prejudices which they have overcome, the passions which
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 4: they have subdued. Paraguay furnishes us with another example. Society
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 4: has been accused of the crime of regarding the pleasure
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 4: of commanding as the only good of life, But it
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 4: will always be a noble thing to govern men by
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 4: making them happy. Those who desire to form similar institutions
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 4: will establish community of property, as in the Republic of Plato.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 4: The same reverence as he enjoined for the gods, separation
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 4: from strangers, for the preservation of morality and make the city,
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 4: and not the citizens create commerce. They should give our
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 4: arts without our luxury, our wants, without our desires. En
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 4: vulgar infatuation may exclaim, if it likes it is Montesquieu magnificent, sublime.
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 4: I am not afraid to express my opinion and to say,
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 4: quote what you have the gall to call that fine?
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 4: It is frightful, it is abominable. And these extracts, which
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 4: I might multiply, show that, according to Montesquieu, the persons,
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 4: the liberties, the property mankind itself are nothing but grist
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 4: for the mill of the sagacity of lawgivers. End quote
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 4: end of section.
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 3: Five, Section six Rousseau. Although this politician, the paramount authority
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 3: of the Democrats, makes the social edifice rest upon the
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 3: general will, no one has so completely admitted the hypothesis
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 3: of the entire passiveness of human nature in the presence
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 3: of the lawgiver. If it is true that a great
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 3: prince is a rare thing, how much more so must
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 3: a great lawgiver be. The former has only to follow
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 3: the pattern opposed to him by the latter. This latter
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 3: is the engineer who invents the machine. The former is
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 3: merely the workman who sets it in motion. And what
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 3: part have men to act in all this? That of
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 3: the machine which is set in motion? Or rather, are
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 3: they not the brute matter of which the machine is made. Thus,
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 3: between the legislator and the prince, between the prince and
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 3: his subjects, there are the same relations as those that
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 3: exist between the agricultural writer and the agriculturist, the agriculturist
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 3: and the cloud. At what a vast height, then, is
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 3: the politician placed who rules over legislators themselves and teaches
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 3: them their trade in such imperative terms as the following.
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 3: Would you give consistency to the state. Bring the extremes
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 3: together as much as possible, suffer. Neither will healthy persons
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 3: nor beggars. If the soil is poor and barren, or
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 3: the country too much confined for the inhabitants, turn to
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 3: industry and the arts which productions you will exchange for
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 3: the provisions which you require on a good soil. If
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 3: you are short of inhabitants, give all your attention to agriculture,
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 3: which multiplies men, and banish the arts which only serve
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 3: to depopulate the country. Pay attention to extensive and convenient coasts.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 3: Cover the sea with vessels, and you will have a
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 3: brilliant and short experience. If your seas wash only inaccessible rocks.
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 3: Let the people be barbarous and eat fish. They will
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 3: live more quietly, perhaps better, and most certainly more happily.
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 3: In short, besides those maxims which are common to all,
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 3: every people has its own particular circumstances which demand a
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 3: legislation peculiar to itself. It was thus that the Hebrews
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 3: formerly and the Arabs more recently, had religion for their
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 3: principal object. That of the Athenians was literature, that of Carthage,
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 3: entire commerce, of roades, naval affairs, of Sparta war, and
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 3: of Rome virtue. The author of the Spirit of laws
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 3: has shown the art by which the legislator should frame
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 3: his institutions toward each of these objects. But if the legislator,
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 3: mistaking his object, should take up a principle different from
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 3: that which arises from the nature of things, If one
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 3: should tend to slavery and the other to liberty, if
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 3: one to wealth and the other to population, one to
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 3: peace and the other to conquests, the laws will insensibly
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 3: become enfeebled. The constitution will be impaired, and the state
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 3: will be subject to incessant agitations until it is destroyed
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 3: or becomes changed and invincible nature regains her empire. But
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 3: if nature is sufficiently invincible to regain its empire, why
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 3: does not Rousseau admit that it has no need of
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 3: the legislature to gain its empire from the beginning? Why
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 3: does he not allow that, by obeying their own impulse,
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 3: men would of themselves apply agriculture to a fertile district
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 3: and commerce to extensive and commodious coasts without the interference
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 3: of a the surgis, a Solon or a Rousseau, who
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 3: would undertake it at the risk of deceiving themselves. Be
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 3: that as it may, we see with what a terrible
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 3: responsibility Rousseau invests inventors, institutors, conductors, and manipulators of societies.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 3: He is therefore very exacting with regard to them. He
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 3: who dares to undertake the institutions of a people ought
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 3: to feel that he can, as it were, transform every
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 3: individual who is by himself a perfect and solitary whole,
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 3: receive in his life and being from a larger whole
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 3: of which he forms a part, he must feel that
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 3: he can change the constitution of man, to fortify it
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 3: and substitute a social and moral existence for the physical
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 3: and independent one that we have all received from nature.
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 3: In a word, he must deprive men of his own
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 3: powers to give him others that are foreign to him.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 3: Poor human nature, what would become of its dignity if
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 3: it were entrusted to the disciples of rosseau Raynal. The climate,
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 3: that is, the air in the soil, is the first
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 3: element for the legislator. His resources prescribe him his duties. First,
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 3: he must console his local position. A population dwelling upon
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 3: maritime shores must have laws fitted for navigation. If the
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 3: colony is located in an inland region, a legislator must
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 3: provide for the nature of the soil and for its
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 3: degree of fertility. It is more especially in the distribution
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 3: of property that the wisdom of legislation will appear as
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 3: a general rule. And in every country. When a new
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 3: colony is founded, land should be given to each man
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 3: sufficient for the support of his family. In an uncultivated
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 3: island which you are colonizing with children, it will only
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 3: be needful to let the germs of truth expand in
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 3: the development of reason. But when you establish old people
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 3: in a new country, the skill consists in only allowing
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 3: it those injurious opinions and customs which it is impossible
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 3: to cure and correct. If you wish to prevent them
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 3: from being perpetuated, you will act upon the rising generation
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 3: by a general and public education of the children. A
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 3: prince or a legislator ought never to found a colony
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 3: without previously sending wise men there to instruct the youth.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 3: In a new colony, every facility is open to the
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 3: precautions of the legislator who desires to purify the tone
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 3: and manners of the people. If he has genius and virtue,
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 3: the lands and the men that are at his disposal
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 3: will inspire his soul with a plan of society that
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 3: a writer can only vaguely trace, and in a way
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 3: that would be subject to the instability of all hypotheses,
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 3: which are varied and complicated by an infinity of circumstances
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 3: too difficult to foresee and to combine. One would think
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 3: it was a professor of agriculture who was saying to
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 3: his pupils, the climate is the only rule for the agriculturist.
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 3: His resources dictate to him his duties. The first thing
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 3: he has to consider is his local position. If he
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 3: is on a clayey soil, he must do so, and
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 3: so if he has to contend with sand, this is
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 3: the way in which he must set about it. Every
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 3: facility is open to the agriculturist who wishes to clear
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 3: and improve his soil, if he only has the skill.
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 3: The manure which he has at his disposal will suggest
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 3: to him a plan of operation which professor can only
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 3: vaguely trace, and in a way that would be subject
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 3: to the uncertainty of all hypotheses, which vary and are
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 3: complicated by an infinity of circumstances too difficult to foresee
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 3: and too combined. But oh sublime writers to remember sometimes
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 3: that this clay, this said, this manure of which you
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 3: are disposing in so arbitrary a manner, are men your equals,
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 3: intelligent and free beings like yourselves, who have received from God,
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 3: as you have, the faculty of seeing, of foreseeing, of thinking,
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 3: and of judging for themselves. Maybly he is supposing the
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 3: laws to be worn out by time and by the
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 3: neglect of security, and continues thus under these circumstances we
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 3: must be convinced that the bonds of government are slack,
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 3: give them a new tension. It is the reader who
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 3: is addressed, and the evil will be remedied. Think less
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 3: of punishing the faults than of encouraging the virtues that
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 3: you want. By this method, you will bestow upon your
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 3: republic the vigor of youth. Through ignorance of this, a
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 3: free people has lost its liberty. But if the evil
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 3: has made so much way that the ordinary magistrates are
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 3: unable to remedy, it effectually have recourse to an extraordinary magistracy,
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 3: whose time should be short and its power considerable. The
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 3: imagination of the citizens requires to be impressed in this style.
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 3: He goes on through twenty volumes. There was a time when,
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 3: under the influence of teaching like this, which is a
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 3: foundation of classical education, everyone was for placing himself beyond
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 3: an above mankind, for the sake of arranging, organizing, and
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 3: instituting it in his own way. Condilect take upon yourself,
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 3: my lord, the character of Lycurgus, or so long before
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 3: you finish reading this essay, amuse yourself with giving laws
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 3: to some wild people in America or in Africa. Establish
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 3: those roving men in fixed dwellings. Teach them to keep flocks,
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 3: endeavor to develop the social qualities that nature has implanted
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 3: in them, Make them begin to practice the duties of humanity.
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 3: Cause the pleasures of the passions to become distasteful to
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 3: them by punishments. And you will see these barbarians, with
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 3: every plan of your legislation, lose advice and gain a virtue.
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 3: All these people have had laws, but few among them
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 3: have been happy. Why is this because the legisleaders have
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 3: almost always been ignorant of the object of society, which
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 3: is to unite families by a common interest. Impartiality in
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 3: law consists in two things, in establishing equality in the
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 3: fortunes and in the dignity of the citizens. In proportion
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 3: to the degree of equality as established by the laws,
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 3: the dear will they become to every citizen. How can avarice, ambition, dissipation, idleness, sloth,
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 3: in the hatred or jealousy agitate men who are equal
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 3: in fortune and dignity, and to whom the laws leave
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 3: new hope of disturbing their equality. What has been told
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 3: to you of the Republic of Sparta are to enlighten
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 3: you on this question. No other state has had laws
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 3: more in accordance with the order of nature or of equality.
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 3: It is not to be wondered at that the seventeenth
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 3: and eighteenth centuries should have looked upon the human race
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 3: as inert matter, ready to receive everything, form, figure, impulse,
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 3: movement in life from a great prince, or a great legislator,
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 3: or a great genius. These ages were rearly in the
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 3: study of antiquity, and antiquity presents everywhere in Egypt, Persia, Greece, Pece,
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 3: in Rome the spectacle of a few men molding mankind
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 3: according to their fancy, and men kind to this end
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 3: enslaved by force or by imposture. And what does this
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 3: prove that, because men in society are improvable, error, ignorance, despotism, slavery,
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 3: and superstition must be more prevalent in early times. The
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 3: mistake of the writers quoted above is not that they
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 3: have asserted this fact, but that they have proposed it
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 3: as a rule for the admiration and imitation of future generations.
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 3: Their mistake has been with an inconceivable absence of discernment,
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 3: and upon the faith of a puerile conventionalism that they
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 3: have admitted what is inadmissible visualized the grandeur, dignity, morality,
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 3: and well being of the artificial societies of the ancient world.
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 3: They have not understood that time produces and spreads enlightenment,
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 3: and that in proportion to the increase of enlightenment, right
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 3: ceases to be upheld by force, and society regains possession
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 3: of her self. And in fact, what is the political
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 3: work that we are endeavoring to promote. It is no
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 3: other than the instinctive effort of every people towards liberty.
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 3: And what is liberty whose name can make every heartbeat,
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 3: and which can agitate the world, But the union of
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 3: all liberties, the liberty of conscience, of education, of association,
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 3: of the press, of movement, of labor, and of exchange,
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 3: in other words, the free exercise for all of all
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 3: the inoffensive faculties. And again, in other words, the destruction
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 3: of all despotisms, even of legal despotism, and the reduction
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 3: of law to its only rational sphere, which is to
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 3: regulate the individual right of legitimate defense or to repress injustice.
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 3: This tendency of the human race, it must be admitted,
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 3: is greatly thwarted, particularly in our country by the fatal
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 3: disposition resulting from classical teaching, and common to all politicians,
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 3: of placing themselves beyond mankind to arrange, organize, and regulate
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 3: it according to their fancy. For whilst society is struggling
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 3: to realize liberty, the great men who place themselves at
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 3: its head, imbued with the principles of the seventeenth and
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 3: eighteenth centuries, think only of subjecting it to the philanthropic
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 3: despotism of their social inventions, and making it bearwith facility.
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 3: According to the expression of Rousseau, the yoke of public
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 3: felicity is pictured in their own imaginations. This was particularly
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 3: the case in seventeen eighty nine. No sooner was the
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 3: old system destroyed than society was to be submitted to
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 3: other artificial arrangements, always with the same starting point, the
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 3: omnipotence of the law.
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 5: End of Section six, Section seven, Saint just the legislator
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 5: commands the future, and as for him to will for
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 5: the good of mankind, it is for him to make
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 5: men what he wishes them to be. Perhaps Pierre, the
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 5: function of government is to direct the physical and moral
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 5: powers of the nation towards the object of its institution.
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 5: Bilow varens. A people who are to be restored to
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 5: liberty must be formed anew Ancient prejudices must be destroyed,
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 5: antiquated customs changed, depraved affections corrected, and venerate vices eradicated.
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 5: For this, a strong force and a vehement impulse will
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 5: be necessary citizens. The inflexible austerity of Lycurgus created the
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 5: firm basis of the Spartan republic. The feeble and trusting
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 5: disposition of Salon plunged Athens into slavery. This parallel contains
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 5: the whole science of government. Le Pelletier, considering the extent
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 5: of human degradation, I am convinced of the necessity of
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 5: affecting an entire regeneration of the race, and if I
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 5: may so express myself, of creating a new people. Men therefore,
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 5: are nothing but raw material. It is not for them
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 5: to will their own improvement. They are not capable of it.
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 5: According to Saint just it is only the legislator, who
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 5: is merely to be what he wills, that they should be.
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 5: According to Robespierre, who copies for Soau, literally, the legislature
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 5: is to begin by assigning the aim of the institutions
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 5: of the nation. After this, the government has only to
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 5: direct all its physical and moral forces towards this end.
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 5: All this time, the nation itself is to remain perfectly passive,
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 5: and Billo Vain would teach us that it ought to
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 5: have no prejudices, affections, nor wants, but such as are
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 5: authorized by the legislator. He even goes so far as
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 5: to say that the inflexible austerity of a man is
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 5: the basis of a republic. We have seen that in
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 5: cases where the evil is so great that the ordinary
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 5: magistrates are unable to remedy, it maybly recommends a dictatorship
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 5: to promote virtue. Havevery course, says he, to an extraordinary magistracy,
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 5: whose time should be short and is power considerable. The
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 5: imagination of the people requires to be impressed. This doctrine
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 5: has not been neglected. Listened to Robespierre, the principle of
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 5: the republican government is a virtue, and the means to
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 5: be adopted during its establishment as terror. We want to
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 5: substitute in our country morality for self indulgence, probity for honor,
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 5: principles for customs, duties for decorum, the empire of reason
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 5: for the tyranny of fashion, contempt of vice for contempt
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 5: of misfortune, Pride for insolence, greatness of soul for vanity,
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 5: love of glory for love of money, good people for
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 5: good company, merit for intrigue, genius for wit, truth for glitter,
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 5: the charm of happiness for the weariness of pleasure, the
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 5: greatness of man for the littleness of the great, A magnanimous, powerful,
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 5: happy people for one that is easy, frivolous, degraded. That
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 5: is to say, we would substitute all the virtues and
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 5: miracles of a republic for all the vices and absurdities
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 5: of monarchy. At what a vast height above the rest
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 5: of mankind? Does Robespierre place himself here? And observe the
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 5: arrogance with which he speaks. He is not content with
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 5: expressing a desire for a great renovation of the human heart.
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 5: He does not even expect such a result from a
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 5: regular government. No, he intends to affect it himself, and
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 5: by means of terror. The object of the discourse from
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 5: which this puerile and laborious mass of antithesis is extracted
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 5: was to exhibit the principles of morality that ought to
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 5: direct a revolutionary government Moreover, when Robespierre asks for a dictatorship,
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 5: is not merely for the purpose of repelling a foreign
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 5: enemy or of putting down factions, and is that he
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 5: may establish, by means of terror, and as a preliminary
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 5: to the operation of the Constitution, his own principles of morality.
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 5: He pretends to nothing short of extirpating from the country
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 5: by means of terror, self interest, honor, customs, decorum, fashion, vanity,
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 5: the love of money, good company, intrigue, wit, luxury, and misery.
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 5: It is not until after he rose Pierre shall have
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 5: accomplished these miracles, as he rightly calls them, that he
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 5: will allow the law to regain her empire. Truly, it
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 5: would be well if these visionaries, who think so much
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 5: of themselves and so little of mankind, who want to
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 5: renew everything, would only be content with trying to reform themselves.
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 5: The task would be arduous enough for them. In general. However,
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 5: these gentlemen, the reformers, legislators and politicians, do not desire
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 5: to exercise an immediate despotism over mankind. No, they are
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 5: too moderate and too philanthropic for that. They only contend
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 5: for the despotism the absolutism, the omnipotence of the law.
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 5: They aspire only to make the law. To show how
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 5: universal this strange disposition has been in France, I had
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 5: need not only to have copied the whole of the
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 5: works of Maybli, ray nall Rousseau Fenelon, and to have
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 5: made long extracts from Beaussuays and Montesquieu, but to have
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 5: given the entire transactions of the sittings of the Convention.
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 5: I shall do no such thing, however, but merely refer
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 5: the reader to them. No wonder. This idea suited Buonaparte
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 5: so well. He embraced it with ardor and put it
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 5: in practice with energy, playing the part of a chemist.
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 5: Europe was to him the material for his experiments, but
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 5: this material reacted against him more than half undeceived. Bonaparte
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 5: at Saint Helena seemed to admit that there is an
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 5: initiative in every people, and he became less hostile to liberty.
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 5: Yet this did not prevent him from giving this lesson
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 5: to his son. In his will to govern is to
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 5: diffuse morality, education, and well being. After all this I
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 5: highly need show by Festudi's quotations, the opinions of Morelli,
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 5: babeuf Owen, Saint Simon, and Fourier. I shall confine myself
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 5: to a few extracts from Louis Blanc's book on the
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 5: Organization of Labor. In our project, society received the impulse
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 5: of power. In what does the impulse that power gives
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 5: to society consist in imposing upon it? The project of
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 5: mister Louis Blanc. On the other hand, society is the
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 5: human race. The human race, then, is to receive its
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 5: impulse from mister Louis Blanc. It is at liberty to
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 5: do so or not. It will be said, of course,
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 5: the human race is at liberty to take advice from anybody,
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 5: whoever it may be. But this is not the way
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 5: in which mister Louis Blanc understands a thing. He means
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 5: that his project should be converted into law and consequently
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 5: forcibly imposed by power. In our project, the state has
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 5: only to give a legislation to labor, by means of
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 5: which the industrial movement may and ought to be accomplished.
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 5: In all liberty it the state merely plays society on
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 5: an incline, that is all that it may descend when
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 5: once it is placed there by the mere force of
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 5: things and by the natural course of the established mechanism.
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 5: But what is this incline one indicated by mister Louis Blanc.
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 5: Does it not lead to an abyss? No, it leads
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 5: to happiness. Why then does not society go there of itself?
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 5: Because it does not know what it wants, and it
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 5: requires an impulse. What is to give it this impulse power?
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 5: And who is to give the impulse to power? The
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 5: inventor of the machine, mister Louis Blanc, We shall never
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 5: get out of the circle mankind passive and a great
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 5: man moving it by the intervention of the law. Once
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 5: on this incline will society enjoy something like liberty without
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 5: a debt? And what is liberty? Once?
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 2: For all?
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 5: Liberty consists not only in the right granted, but in
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 5: the power given to man to exercise, to develop his
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 5: faculties under the empire of justice and under the protection
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 5: of the law. And this is no vain distinction. There
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 5: is a deep meaning in it, and its consequences are imponderable.
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 5: For when once it is admitted that man to be
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 5: truly free must have the power to exercise and develop
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 5: his faculties, it follows that every member of society has
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 5: a claim upon it for such education as shall enable
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 5: his faculties to display themselves, and for the tools of labor,
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 5: without which human activity can find no scope. Now, by
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 5: whose intervention is society to give to each of its
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 5: members the requisite education and the necessary tools of labour,
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 5: unless by that of the state. Thus liberty is power.
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 5: In what does this power consist in possessing education and
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 5: tools of labor? Who is to give education and tools
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 5: of labor society who owes them? By whose intervention is
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 5: society to give tools of labor to those who do
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 5: not possess them by the intervention of the state. From
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 5: whom is a state to obtain them? It is for
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 5: the reader to answer this question and to notice whither
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 5: all this tends. End of Section seven.
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 2: Section eight. One of the strangest phenomena of our time,
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 2: and one that will probably be a matter of astonishment
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 2: to our descendants, is the doctrine which is founded upon
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 2: this triple hypothesis, the radical passiveness of mankind, the omnipotence
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 2: of the law, the infallibility of the legislature. This is
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 2: the sacred symbol of the party that proclaims itself exclusively democratic.
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 2: It is true that it professes also to be social.
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 2: So far as it is democratic, it has an unlimited
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 2: faith in mankind. So far as it is social, it
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 2: places mankind beneath the mud our political rights under discussion.
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 2: Is a legislator to be chosen? Oh? Then, the people
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 2: possess science by instinct. They are gifted with an admirable discernment.
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 2: Their will is always right. The general will cannot err
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 2: Suffrage cannot be too universal. Nobody is under any responsibility
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 2: to society. The will and the capacity to choose well
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 2: are taken for granted. Can the people be mistaken? Are
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 2: we not living in an age of enlightenment? What are
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 2: the people to be forever led about by the nose?
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 2: Have they not acquired their rights at the cost of
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 2: effort and sacrifice? Have they not given sufficient proof of
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 2: intelligence and wisdom? Are they not arrived at maturity? Are
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 2: they not in a state to judge for themselves? Do
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 2: they not know their own interest? Is there a man
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 2: or a class who would dare to claim the right
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 2: of putting himself in the place of the people, of
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 2: deciding and of acting for them. No? No, the people
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 2: would be free, and they shall be so. They wish
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 2: to conduct their own affairs, and they shall do so.
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 2: But when once the legislator is duly elected, then indeed
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 2: the style of his speech alters. The nation is sent
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 2: back into passiveness, inertness, nothingness, and the legislator takes possession
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 2: of omnipotence. It is for him to invent, for him
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 2: to direct, for him to impel, for him to organize.
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 2: Mankind has nothing to do but to submit. The hour
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 2: of despotism has struck, and we must observe that this
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 2: is decisive for the people. Just before, so enlightened, so moral,
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 2: so perfect, have no inclinations at all, or if they
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 2: have any, these all lead them downwards towards degradation. And
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 2: yet they ought to have a little liberty. But are
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 2: we not assured by mister Considerate that liberty leads fatally
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 2: to monopoly. Are we not told that liberty is competition,
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 2: and that competition, according to mister Louis Blanc, is a
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 2: system of extermination for the people and of ruination for trade.
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 2: For that reason, people are exterminated and ruined in proportion
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 2: as they are free. Take for example, Switzerland, Holland, England,
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 2: and the United States does not. Mister Louis Blanc tell
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 2: us again that competition leads to monopoly, and that for
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 2: the same reason, cheapness leads to exorbitant prices, that competition
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 2: tends to drain the sources of consumption and diverts production
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 2: to a destructive activity. That competition forces production to increase
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 2: and consumption to decrease. Whence it follows that free people
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 2: produce for the sake of not consuming, that there is
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 2: nothing but oppression and madness among them, and that it
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 2: is absolutely necessary for mister Louis Blanc to see to
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 2: it what sort of liberty should be allowed to men.
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 2: Liberty of conscience, but we should see them all profiting
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 2: by the permission to become atheists. Liberty of education, but
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 2: parents would be paying professors to teach their sons immorality
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 2: and error. Besides, if we are to believe mister Thier's education,
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 2: if left to the national liberty would cease to be national,
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 2: and we should be educating our children in the ideas
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 2: of the Turks are the Hindus, instead of which, thanks
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 2: to the legal despotism of the universities, they have the
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 2: good fortune to be educated in the noble ideas of
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 2: the Romans liberty of labor. But this is only competition,
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 2: whose effect is to leave all products unconsumed, to exterminate
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 2: the people, and to ruin the tradesmen. The liberty of exchange. Ah,
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 2: but it is well known that the protectionists have shown
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 2: over and over again that a man will inevitably be
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 2: ruined when he exchanges freely, and that to become rich
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 2: it is necessary to exchange without liberty liberty of association.
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 2: But according to the socialist doctrine, liberty and association exclude
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 2: each other, for the liberty of men is attacked just
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 2: to force them to associate. You must see, then, that
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 2: the socialist democrats cannot in conscience allow men any liberty,
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 2: because by their own nature they tend in every instance
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 2: to all kinds of degradation and demoralization. We are therefore
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 2: left to conjecture in this case upon what foundation a
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 2: universal suffrage is claimed for them with so much importunity.
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 2: The pretensions of organizers suggest another question, which I have
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 2: often asked them, and to which I am not aware
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 2: that I ever received an answer. Since the natural tendencies
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 2: of mankind are so bad that it is not safe
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 2: to allow them liberty. How comes it to pass that
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 2: the tendencies of organizers are always good? Do not legislators
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 2: and their agents form a part of the human race.
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 2: Do they consider that they are composed of different materials
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 2: from the rest of mankind. They say that society, when
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 2: loved to itself, rushes to inevitable destruction because its instincts
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 2: are perverse. They presume to stop it in its downward course,
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 2: and to give it a better direction. They have therefore
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 2: received from Heaven intelligence and virtues that place them beyond
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 2: and above mankind. Let them show their title to this superiority.
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 2: They would be our shepherds, and we are to be
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 2: their flock. This arrangement presupposes in them a natural superiority,
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 2: the right to which we are fully justified in calling
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 2: upon them to prove you must observe that I am
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 2: not contending against their right to invent social combinations, to
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 2: propagate them, to recommend them, and to try them upon
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 2: themselves at their own expense and risk. But I do
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 2: dispute their right to impose them upon us through the
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 2: medium of the law, that is, by force and by
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 2: public taxes. I would not insist upon the cabitists the Foiariists,
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 2: the Prudonians, the academics, and the protectionists renouncing their own
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 2: particular ideas, I would only have them renounce the idea
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 2: that is common to them all, viz. That of subjecting
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 2: us by force to their own categories and rankings, to
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 2: their social laboratories, to their ever inflating bank, to their
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 2: Greco Roman morality, and to their commercial restrictions. I would
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 2: ask them to allow us the faculty of judging of
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 2: their plans, and not to oblige us to adopt them
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 2: if we find that they hurt our interests or are
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 2: repugnant to our consciences. To presume to have recourse to
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 2: power and taxation, besides being oppressive and unjust, implies further
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 2: the pernicious assumption that the organized is infallible and mankind incompetent.
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 2: And if mankind is not competent to judge for itself,
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 2: why do they talk so much about universal suffrage. This
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 2: contradiction in ideas is unhappily to be found also in facts.
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 2: And whilst the French nation has preceded all others in
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 2: obtaining its rights, or rather its political claims, this has
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 2: by no means prevented it from being more governed and directed,
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 2: and imposed upon, and fettered and cheated than any other nation.
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 2: It is all so the one of all others, where
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 2: revolutions are constantly to be dreaded, And it is perfectly
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 2: natural that it should be so, so long as this
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 2: idea is retained, which is admitted by all our politicians,
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 2: and so energetically expressed by Monsieur Leuis Blanc in these words,
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 2: society receives its impulse from power so long as men
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 2: consider themselves as capable of feeling, yet passive, incapable of
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 2: raising themselves by their own discernment and by their own energy,
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 2: to any morality or well being. And while they expect
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 2: everything from the law, in a word, while they admit
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 2: that their relations with the state are the same as
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 2: those of the flock with the shepherd. It is clear
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 2: that the responsibility of power is immense. Fortune and misfortune,
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 2: wealth and destitution, equality and inequality all proceed from it.
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 2: It is charged with everything, It undertakes, everything, it does everything. Therefore,
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 2: it has to answer for everything. If we are happy,
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 2: it has a right to claim our gratitude. But if
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 2: we are miserable, it alone must bear the blame. Are
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 2: not our persons and property. In fact, at its disposal,
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 2: is not the law omnipotent. In creating the educational monopoly,
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 2: it has undertaken to answer the expectations of fathers of
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 2: families who have been deprived of liberty. And if these
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 2: expectations are disappointed, whose fault is it? In regulating industry
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 2: it has undertaken to make it prosper, Otherwise it would
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 2: have been absurd to deprive it of its liberty. And
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 2: if it suffers, whose fault is it? In pretending to
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 2: adjust the balance of commerce by the game of tariffs
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 2: it undertakes to make commerce prosper. And if so far
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 2: from prospering it is destroyed, whose fault is it? In
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 2: granting its protection to maritime armaments in exchange for their
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 2: liberty it is undertaken to render themselves sufficient. If they
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 2: become burdensome, whose fault is it? Thus, there is not
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 2: a grievance in the nation for which the government does
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 2: not voluntarily make itself responsible. Is it any wonder that
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 2: every failure threatens to cause a revolution? And what is
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 2: the remedy proposed to extend indefinitely the dominion of the
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 2: law i e. The responsibility of government. But if the
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 2: government undertakes to raise and to regulate wages and is
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 2: not able to do it. If it undertakes to assist
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 2: all those who are in want and is not able
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 2: to do it. If it undertakes to provide work for
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 2: every labor and is not able to do it. If
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 2: it undertakes to offer to all who wish to borrow
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 2: easy credit and is not able to do it. If
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 2: in words that we regret should have escaped the pen
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 2: of Monsieur de la Martine quote, the state considers that
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 2: its mission is to enlighten, to develop, to enlarge, to strengthen,
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 2: to spiritualize, and to sanctify the soul of the people.
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 3: End quote.
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 2: If it fails in this, is it not obvious that
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 2: after every disappointment, which alas is more than probable, there
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 2: will be a no less inevitable revolution. End of Section eight.
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 2: Section nine. I shall now resume the subject by remarking
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 2: that immediately after the economical part of the question and
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 2: before the political part, a leading question presents itself. It
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 2: is the following, What is law? What ought it to be?
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 2: What is its domain? What are its limits? Where? In fact,
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 2: does the prerogative of the legislators stop. I have no
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 2: hesitation in answering. Law is common force organized to prevent injustice.
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 2: In short, law is justice. It is not true that
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 2: the legislator has absolute power over our persons and property,
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 2: since they pre exist and his work is only to
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 2: secure them from injury. It is not true that the
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 2: mission of the law is to regulate our consciences, our ideas,
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 2: our will, our education, our sentiments, our works, our exchanges,
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 2: our gifts, our enjoyments. Its mission is to prevent the
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 2: rights of one from interfering with those of another in
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 2: any one of these things. Law, because it has force
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 2: for its necessary sanction, can only have the domain of force,
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 2: which is justice. And as every individual has a right
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 2: to the recourse to force only in case of lawful defense,
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 2: so collective force, which is only the union of individual forces,
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 2: cannot be rationally used for any other end. The law, then,
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 2: is solely the organization of individual rights that existed before law.
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 2: Law is justice, so far from being able to oppress
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 2: the people or to plunder their property, even for a
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 2: philanthropic end, its mission is to protect the people and
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 2: to secure to them the possession of their property. It
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 2: must not be said either, that it may be philanthropic
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 2: so long as it abstains from all oppression, for this
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 2: is a contradition. The law cannot avoid acting upon our
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 2: persons and property. If it does not secure them, then
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 2: it violates them if it touches them. The law is justice.
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 2: Nothing can be more clear and simple, more perfectly defined
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 2: and bounded, or more visible to every eye. For justice
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 2: is a given quantity, immutable and unchangeable, and which admits
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 2: of neither increase nor diminution. Depart from this point make
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 2: the law religious, fraternal, equal life, industrial, literary or artistic,
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 2: and you will be lost in vagueness and uncertainty. You
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 2: will be upon unknown ground, in a forced utopia, or
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 2: what is worse, in the midst of a multitude of
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 2: contending utopias, each striving to gain possession of the law
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 2: and to impose it upon you. For fraternity and philanthropy
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 2: have no fixed limits, as justice has. Where will you stop?
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 2: Where is the law to stop? One person, mister de
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 2: Saint Crique, will only extend his philanthropy to some of
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 2: the industrial classes, and will require the law to slight
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 2: the consumers in favor of the producers. Another like mister Considerant,
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 2: will take up the cause of the working classes and
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 2: claim for them, by means of the law, at a
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 2: fixed strate, clothing, lodging, food, and everything necessary for the
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 2: support of life. A third, mister Louis Blanc, will say,
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 2: and with reason, that this would be an incomplete fraternity,
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 2: and that the law ought to provide them with tools
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 2: of labor and education. A fourth will observe that such
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 2: an arrangement still leaves room for inequality, and that the
• 1:54:12
  Speaker 2: law ought to introduce into the most remote hamlets luxury,
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 2: literature and arts. This is the high road to communism.
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 2: In other words, legislation will be, as it now is,
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 2: the battlefield for everybody's dreams and everybody's covetousness. Law is justice.
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 2: In this proposition, we represent to ourselves a simple, immovable government.
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 2: And I defy anyone to tell me whence the thought
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 2: of a revolution and insurrection are a simple disturbance could
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 2: arise against a public force confined to the repression of injustice.
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 2: Under such a system, there would be more well being,
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 2: and this well being would be more equally distributed. And
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 2: as to the sufferings inseparable from humanity, no one would
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 2: think of accusing the government of them, for it would
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 2: be as innocent of them as it is of the
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 2: variations of the temperature. Have the people ever been known
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 2: to rise against the Court of Appeals or assail the
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 2: justices of the peace for the sake of claiming the
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 2: rate of wages, free credit, tools of labor, the advantages
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 2: of the tariff, or the social workshop. They know perfectly
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 2: well that these matters are beyond the jurisdiction of the
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 2: justices of the peace, and they would soon learn that
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 2: they are not within the jurisdiction of the law quite
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 2: as much. But if the law were to be made
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 2: upon the principle of fraternity, if it were to be
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 2: proclaimed that from it precedes all benefits and all evils,
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 2: that it is responsible for every individual grievance and for
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 2: every social inequality, then you open the door to an
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 2: endless succession of complaints, irritations, troubles, and revolutions. Law is justice,
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 2: and it would be very strange if it could properly
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 2: be anything else is not justice? Right are not rights equal?
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 2: With what show of right? Can the law interfere to
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 2: subject me to the social plans of Mensieur's memorial de
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 2: Meloune Thierres or Louis Blanc, rather than to subject these
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 2: gentlemen to my plans. Is it to be supposed that
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 2: nature has not bestowed upon me sufficient imagination to invent
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 2: a utopia? Too? Is it for the law to make
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 2: choice of one amongst so many fancies and to make
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 2: use of the public force in its service? Law is justice?
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 2: And let it not be said, as it continually is,
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 2: that the law in this sense would be a theistic
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 2: individual and heartless, and that it would mold mankind in
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 2: its own image. This is an absurd conclusion, quite worthy
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 2: of the governmental infatuation which sees mankind in the law. What, then,
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 2: does it follow that if we are free, we shall
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 2: cease to act. Does it follow that if we do
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 2: not receive an impulse from the law, we shall receive
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 2: no impulse at all. Does it follow that if the
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 2: law confines itself to securing to us the free exercise
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 2: of our faculties, our faculties will be paralyzed. Does it
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 2: follow that if the law does not impose upon us
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 2: forms of religion, modes of association, methods of education, rules
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 2: for labor, directions for exchange, and plans for charity, we
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 2: shall plunge headlong into atheism, isolation, ignorance, misery, and greed.
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 2: Does it follow that we shall no longer recognize the
• 1:57:41
  Speaker 2: power and goodness of God, that we shall cease to
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 2: associate together, to help each other, to love and assist
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 2: our unfortunate brethren, to study the secrets of nature, and
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 2: to aspire after perfection In our existence. Law is justice,
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 2: And it is under the law of justice, under the
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 2: reign of right, under the influence of liberty, security, stability,
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 2: and responsibility, that every man will attain to the fullness
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 2: of his worth, to all the dignity of his being,
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 2: and that mankind will accomplish with order and with calmness. Slowly,
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 2: it is true, but with certainty the progress ordained for it.
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 2: I believe that my theory is correct. For whatever be
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 2: the question upon which I am arguing, whether it be religious, philosophical, political,
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 2: or economical, whether it affects well being, morality, equality, right, justice, progress, responsibility, property, labor, exchange, capital, wages, taxes, population, credit,
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 2: or government. At whatever point of the scientific horizon I
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 2: start from, I invariably come to the same thing. The
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 2: solution of the social problem is in liberty, And have
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 2: I not experienced on my cast your eye over the globe.
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 2: Which are the happiest, the most moral, and the most
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 2: peaceable nations. Those where the law interferes the least with
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 2: private activity, Where the government is the least felt, Where
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 2: individuality has the most scope and public opinion the most influence,
• 1:59:20
  Speaker 2: Where the machinery of the administration is the least important
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 2: and the least complicated, Where taxation is lightest and least unequal,
• 1:59:29
  Speaker 2: popular discontent the least excited and least justifiable. Where the
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 2: responsibility of individuals and classes is the most active, and
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 2: where consequently, if morals are not in a perfect state
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 2: at any rate, they tend incessantly to correct themselves. Where transactions, meetings,
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 2: and associations are the least fettered, Where labor, capital, and
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 2: production suffer the least from artificial displacements, Where mankind follows
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 2: most completely its own natural core, Where the thought of
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 2: God prevails the most over the inventions of men. Those
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 2: in short, who realize the most nearly this idea, that
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 2: within the limits of right, all should flow from the free, perfectible,
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 2: and voluntary action of man, nothing to be attempted by
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 2: the law or by force, except the administration of universal justice.
• 2:00:23
  Speaker 2: I cannot avoid coming to this conclusion that there are
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 2: too many great men in the world. There are too
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 2: many legislators, organizers, institutors of society, conductors of the people,
• 2:00:35
  Speaker 2: fathers of nations, et cetera, et cetera. Too many persons
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 2: place themselves above mankind to rule and patronize it. Too
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 2: many persons make a trade of looking after it. It
• 2:00:47
  Speaker 2: will be answered, you yourself are occupied upon it all
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 2: this time. Very true, But it must be admitted that
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 2: it is in another sense entirely that I am speaking.
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 2: And if I join the reformers, it is so for
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 2: the purpose of inducing them to relax their hold. I
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 2: am not doing as Vaucauson did with his automation, but
• 2:01:08
  Speaker 2: as a physiologist does with the human frame. I would
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 2: study and admire it. I am acting with regard to it.
• 2:01:15
  Speaker 2: In the spirit that animated a celebrated traveler. He found
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 2: himself in the midst of a savage tribe. A child
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 2: had just been born, and a crowd of soothsayers, magicians,
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 2: and quacks were around it, armed with rings, hooks, and bandages.
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 2: One said, this child will never smell the perfume of
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 2: a calumet unless I stretch his nostrils. Another said he
• 2:01:38
  Speaker 2: will be without the sense of hearing unless I draw
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 2: his ears down to his shoulders. A third said he
• 2:01:44
  Speaker 2: will never see the light of the sun unless I
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 2: give his eyes an oblique direction. A fourth said he
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 2: will never be upright unless I bend his legs. A
• 2:01:55
  Speaker 2: fifth said he will not be able to think unless
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 2: I press his brain stuck up, said the traveler. Whatever
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 2: God does is well done. Do not pretend to know
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 2: more than he. And as He has given organs to
• 2:02:08
  Speaker 2: this frail creature, allow those organs to develop themselves, to
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 2: strengthen themselves by exercise, use, experience, and liberty. God has
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 2: implanted in mankind also all that is necessary to enable
• 2:02:23
  Speaker 2: it to accomplish its destinies. There is a providential social
• 2:02:27
  Speaker 2: physiology as well as a providential human physiology. The social
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 2: organs are constituted so as to enable them to develop
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 2: harmoniously in the grand air of liberty. Away then with
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 2: quacks and organizers, Away with their rings and their chains,
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 2: and their hooks and their pinchers, Away with their artificial methods,
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 2: Away with their social laboratories, their governmental whims, their centralization,
• 2:02:55
  Speaker 2: their tariffs, their universities, their state religions, their inflationary they
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 2: are monopolizing banks, their limitations, their restrictions, their moralizations, and
• 2:03:06
  Speaker 2: their equalization by taxation. And now, after having vainly inflicted
• 2:03:13
  Speaker 2: upon the social body so many systems, let them end
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 2: where they ought to have begun. Reject all systems, and
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 2: try liberty. Liberty which is an act of faith in
• 2:03:25
  Speaker 2: God and in his work. End of section nine. And
• 2:03:32
  Speaker 2: this is the end of the law. By Frederic Bastia