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08 - The Law - Frederic Bastiat · The Philosophy Insights Collection

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  Section eight. One of the strangest phenomena of our time, and one that
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  will probably be a matter of astonishment to our descendants, is the doctrine which
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  is founded upon this triple hypothesis. The radical passiveness of mankind, the omnipotence
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  of the law, the infallibility of the legislator. This is the sacred symbol
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  of the party that proclaims itself exclusively democratic. It is true that it professes
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  also to be social. So far as it is democratic, it has an
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  unlimited faith in mankind. So far as it is social, it places mankind
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  beneath the mud our political rights under discussion. Is a legislator to be chosen?
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  Oh? Then, the people possess science by instinct. They are gifted
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  with an admirable discernment. Their will is always right. The general will cannot
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  err Suffrage cannot be too universal. Is under any responsibility to society? The
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  will and the capacity to choose well are taken for granted. Can the people
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  be mistaken? Are we not living in an age of enlightenment? What are
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  the people to be forever led about by the nose? Have they not acquired
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  their rights at the cost of effort and sacrifice. Have they not given sufficient
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  proof of intelligence and wisdom? Are they not arrived at maturity? Are they
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  not in a state to judge for themselves? Do they not know their own
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  interest? Is there a man or a class who would dare to claim the
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  right of putting himself in the place of the people, of deciding and of
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  acting for them. No? No, the people would be free, and
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  they shall be so. They wish to conduct their own affairs, and they
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  shall do so. But when once the legislator is duly elected, then indeed
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  the style of his speech alters. The nation is sent back into passiveness,
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  inertness, nothingness, and the legislator takes possession of omnipotence. It is for
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  him to invent, for him to direct, for him to impel, for
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  him to organize. Mankind has nothing to do but to submit. The hour
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  of despotism has struck, and we must observe that this is decisive for the
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  people just before, so enlightened, so moral, so perfect, have no
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  inclinations at all, or if they have any, these all lead them downwards
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  towards degradation. And yet they ought to have a little liberty. But are
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  we not assured by mister considerate that liberty leads fatally to monopoly. Are we
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  not told that liberty is competition and that competition, according to mister Louis Blanc,
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  is a system of extermination for the people and of ruination for trade.
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  For that reason, people are exterminated and ruined in proportion as they are free.
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  Take for examples Zzerland, Holland, England, and the United States.
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  Does not mister Louis Blanc tell us again that competition leads to monopoly, and
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  that for the same reason, cheapness leads to exorbitant prices, that competition tends
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  to drain the sources of consumption and diverts production to a destructive activity, That
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  competition forces production to increase and consumption to decrease. Whence it follows that free
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  people produce for the sake of not consuming, that there is nothing but oppression
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  and madness among them, and that it is absolutely necessary for mister Louis Blanc
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  to see to it what sort of liberty should be allowed to men. Liberty
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  of conscience, but we should see them all profiting by the permission to become
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  atheists. Liberty of education, but parents would be paying professors to teach their
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  sons immorality and error. Besides, if we are to believe mister Thier's education,
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  if left to the national liberty would cease to be national, and we
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  should be educating our children in the ideas of the Turks or the Hindus,
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  instead of which, thanks to the legal despotism of the universities, they have
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  the good fortune to be educated in the noble ideas of the Romans. Liberty
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  of labor. But this is only competition, whose effect is to leave all
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  products unconsumed, to exterminate the people, and to ruin the tradesmen. The
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  liberty of exchange. Ah, But it is well known that the protectionists have
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  shown over and over again that a man will inevitably be ruined when he exchanges
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  freely, and that to become rich it is necessary to exchange without liberty liberty
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  of association. But according to the socialist doctrine, liberty and association exclude each
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  other, for the liberty of men is attacked just to force them to associate.
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  You must see, then, that the socialist democrats cannot in conscience allow
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  men any liberty, because by their own nature they tend in every instance to
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  all kinds of degradation and demoralization. We are therefore left to conjecture in this
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  case upon what foundation universal suffrage is claimed for them with so much importunity.
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  The pretensions of organizers suggest another question, which I have often asked them,
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  and to which I am not aware that I ever received an answer. Since
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  the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to allow
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  them liberty, how comes it to pass that the tendencies of organizers are always
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  good? Do not legislators and their agents form a part of the human race?
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  Do they consider that they are composed of different materials from the rest of
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  mankind. They say that society, when levet to itself, rushes to inevitable
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  deruction, because its instincts are perverse. They presume to stop it in its
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  downward course, and to give it a better direction. They have therefore received
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  from Heaven intelligence and virtues that place them beyond and above mankind. Let them
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  show their title to this superiority. They would be our shepherds, and we
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  are to be their flock. This arrangement presupposes in them a natural superiority,
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  the right to which we are fully justified in calling upon them to prove.
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  You must observe that I am not contending against their right to invent social combinations,
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  to propagate them, to recommend them, and to try them upon themselves
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  at their own expense and risk. But I do dispute their right to impose
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  them upon us through the medium of the law, that is, by force
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  and by public taxes. I would not insist upon the cabitists, the Foiariists,
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  the Prudonians, the academics, and the protectionists renouncing their own particular ideas.
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  I would only have them renounce the idea that is common to them all,
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  viz. That of subjecting us by force to their own categories and rankings,
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  to their social laboratories, to their ever inflating bank, to their Greco
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  Roman morality, and to their commercial restrictions. I would ask them to allow
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  us the faculty of judging of their plans, and not to oblige us to
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  adopt them if we find that they hurt our interests or are repugnant to our
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  consciences. To presume to have recourse to power and taxation, besides being oppressive
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  and unjust, implies further the pernicious assumption that the organized is infallible and mankind
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  incompetent. And if mankind is not competent to judge for itself, why do
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  they talk so much about universal suffrage. This contradiction in ideas is unhappily to
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  be found also in facts. And whilst the French nation has preceded all others
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  in obtaining its rights, or rather its political claims, this has by no
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  means prevented it from being more governed and directed, and imposed upon, and
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  fettered and cheated than any other nation. It is also the one of all
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  others where revolutions are constantly to be dreaded, and it is perfectly natural that
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  it should be so, so long as this idea is retained, which is
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  admitted by all our politicians, and so energetically expressed by Monsieur Leuis Blanc in
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  these words, society receives its impulse from power so long as men consider themselves
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  as capable of feeling, yet passive, incapable of raising themselves by their own
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  discernment and by their own energy, to any morality or well being. And
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  while they expect everything from the law. In a word, while they admit
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  that their relations with the state are the same as those of the flock with
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  the shepherd. It is clear that the responsibility of power is immense. Fortune
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  and misfortune, wealth and destitution, equality and inequality all proceed from it.
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  It is charged with everything, It undertakes, everything, it does everything.
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  Therefore, it has to answer for everything. If we are happy, it
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  has a right to claim our gratitude. But if we are miserable, it
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  alone must bear the blame. Are not our persons and property? In fact,
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  at its disposal, is not the law omnipotent. In creating the educational
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  monopoly, it is undertaken to answer the expectations of fathers of families who have
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  been deprived of liberty. And if these expectations are disappointed, whose fault is
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  it? In regulating industry it has undertaken to make it prosper, Otherwise it
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  would have been absurd to deprive of its liberty. And if it suffers,
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  whose fault is it? In pretending to adjust the balance of commerce by the
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  game of tariffs it undertakes to make commerce prosper. And if so far from
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  prospering it is destroyed, whose fault is it? In granting its protection to
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  maritime armaments in exchange for their liberty? It is undertaken to render themselves sufficient
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  if they become burdensome, whose fault is it. Thus there is not a
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  grievance in the nation for which the government does not voluntarily make itself responsible.
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  Is it any wonder that every failure threatens to cause a revolution, And what
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  is the remedy proposed to extend indefinitely the dominion of the law i e.
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  The responsibility of government. But if the government undertakes to raise and to regulate
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  wages and is not able to do it, If it undertakes to assist all
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  those who are in want and is not able to do it. If it
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  undertakes to provide work for every labor and is not able to do it.
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  If it undertakes to offer to all who wish to borrow easy credit and is
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  not able to do it. If in words that we regret should have escaped
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  the pen of Monsieur de la Martine quote. The state considers that its mission
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  is to enlighten, to develop, to enlarge, to strengthen, to spiritualize,
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  and to sanctify the soul of the people. End quote. If it
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  fails in this, is it not obvious that after every disappointment which alas is
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  more than probable, there will be a no less inevitable revolution. End of Section eight