Latest / The Philosophy Insights Collection / 02 - The Law - Frederic Bastiat

Transcript

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

• 0:00
  Section two. Another effect of this deplorable perversion of the law is that it
• 0:06
  gives to human passions, and to political struggles, and in general, to
• 0:11
  politics properly so called an exaggerated importance. I could prove this assertion in a
• 0:17
  thousand ways, but I shall confine myself, by way of an illustration,
• 0:22
  to bringing it to bear upon a subject which has of late occupied everybody's mind.
• 0:27
  Universal suffrage, whatever may be thought of it by the adepts of the
• 0:32
  school of Rousseau, which professes to be very far advanced, but which I
• 0:37
  considered twenty centuries behind. Universal suffrage taking the word in its strictest sense is
• 0:43
  not one of those sacred dogmas with respect to which examination and doubt are crimes.
• 0:50
  Serious objections may be made to it. In the first place, the
• 0:55
  word universal conceals a gross sophism. There are, in France the thirty six
• 1:00
  million inhabitants. To make the right of suffrage universal, thirty six million electors
• 1:06
  should be reckoned. The most extended system reckons only nine million, three persons
• 1:11
  out of four then are excluded, and more than this they are excluded by
• 1:17
  the fourth upon what principle is this exclusion founded upon the principle of incapacity.
• 1:25
  Universal suffrage then means universal suffrage of those who are capable. In point of
• 1:30
  fact, who are the capable are age, sex, and judicial condemnations,
• 1:37
  the only conditions to which incapacity is to be attached. On taking a nearer
• 1:44
  view of the subject, we may soon perceive the reason why the right of
• 1:47
  suffrage depends upon the presumption of incapacity, the most extended system differing from the
• 1:53
  most restricted in the conditions on which this incapacity depends, and which constitution not
• 2:00
  a difference in principle, but in degree. This motive is that the elector
• 2:06
  does not stipulate for himself, but for everybody. If, as the republicans
• 2:12
  of the Greek and Roman tone pretend, the right of suffrage has fallen to
• 2:16
  the lot of everyone at his birth, it would be an injustice to adults
• 2:21
  to prevent women and children from voting. Why are they prevented because they are
• 2:27
  presumed to be incapable? And why is in capacity a reason for exclusion?
• 2:32
  Because the elector does not reap alone the responsibility of his vote, Because every
• 2:38
  vote engages and affects the community at large, Because the community has a right
• 2:44
  to demand some assurances as regards the acts upon which its well being and its
• 2:49
  existence depend. I know what might be said in answer to this, I
• 2:54
  know what might be objected. But this is not the place to settle a
• 2:59
  controversy of this kind. What I wish to observe is this that this same
• 3:05
  controversy, in common with the greater part of political questions, that agitates,
• 3:09
  excites, and unsettles the nations, would lose almost all its importance if the
• 3:15
  law had always been what it ought to be. In fact, if law
• 3:20
  were confined to causing all persons, all liberties, and all properties to be
• 3:25
  respected, if it were merely the organization of individual rights and individual defense,
• 3:31
  if it were the obstacle, the check, the chastisement opposed to all oppression,
• 3:38
  to all plunder. Is it likely that we should dispute much as citizens,
• 3:43
  on the subject of greater or lesser universality of suffrage. Is it likely
• 3:49
  that it would compromise that greatest of advantages the public peace. Is it likely
• 3:54
  that the excluded classes would not quietly wait for their turn. Is it likely
• 4:00
  that the enfranchised classes would be very jealous of their privilege? And is it
• 4:06
  not clear that the interest of all being one and the same, some would
• 4:12
  act without much inconvenience to the others. But if the fatal principle should come
• 4:18
  to be introduced, that under pretense of organization, regulation, protection, or
• 4:24
  encouragement, the law may take from one party in order to give to another
• 4:29
  help itself to the wealth acquired by all the classes, that it may increase
• 4:33
  that of one class, whether that of the agriculturists, the manufacturers, the
• 4:39
  ship owners, or artists and comedians. Then certainly, in this case there
• 4:44
  is no class which may not try and with reason to place its hand upon
• 4:48
  the law, that would not demand with fury its right of election and eligibility,
• 4:55
  and that would overturn society rather than not obtain it. Even beggars and
• 5:00
  vagabonds will prove to you that they have an incontestable title to it. They
• 5:05
  will say, we never buy wine, tobacco, or salt without paying the
• 5:10
  tax. And a part of this tax is given by law in perquisites and
• 5:15
  gratuities to men who are richer than we are. Others make use of the
• 5:19
  law to create an artificial rise in the price of bread, meat, iron,
• 5:25
  or cloth. Since everybody traffics in law for his own profit. We
• 5:30
  should like to do the same. We should like to make it produce the
• 5:32
  right to assistance, which is the poor man's plunder. To affect this,
• 5:39
  we ought to be electors and legislators that we may organize on a large scale
• 5:45
  alms for our own class, as you have organized on a large scale protection
• 5:49
  for yours. Don't tell us that you will take our cause upon yourselves and
• 5:56
  throw to us six hundred thousand francs to keep us quiet, like giving us
• 6:00
  a bone to pick. We have other claims, and at any rate we
• 6:04
  wish to stipulate for ourselves as other classes have stipulated for themselves. How is
• 6:12
  this argument to be answered? Yes, as long as it is admitted that
• 6:16
  the law may be diverted from its true mission, that it may violate property
• 6:21
  instead of securing it, everybody will be wanting to manufacture law, either to
• 6:27
  defend himself against plunder or to organize it for his own profit. The political
• 6:33
  question will always be prejudicial, predominant, and absorbing. In a word,
• 6:39
  there will be fighting around the door of the legislative palace. The struggle will
• 6:44
  be no less furious within it. To be convinced of this it is hardly
• 6:48
  necessary to look at what passes in the chambers in France and in England.
• 6:54
  It is enough to know how the question stands. Is there any need to
• 6:59
  prove that this odious perversion of law is a perpetual source of hatred and discord,
• 7:05
  that it even tends to social disorganization? Look at the United States.
• 7:12
  There is no country in the world where the law is kept more within its
• 7:15
  proper domain, which is to secure to everyone his liberty and his property.
• 7:20
  Therefore, there is no country in the world where social order appears to rest
• 7:26
  upon a more solid basis. Nevertheless, even in the United States, there
• 7:31
  are two questions, and only two, that from the beginning have endangered political
• 7:36
  order. And what are these two questions? That of slavery and that of
• 7:43
  tariffs? That is, precisely the only two questions in which, contrary to
• 7:47
  the general spirit of this republic, law has taken the character of a plunderer.
• 7:55
  Slavery is a violation sanctioned by law of the rights of the person.
• 8:00
  Protection is a violation perpetrated by the law upon the rights of property. And
• 8:05
  certainly, it is very remarkable that in the midst of so many other debates
• 8:11
  this double legal scourge, the sorrowful inheritance of the old world, should be
• 8:16
  the only one which can and perhaps will, cause the rupture of the Union.
• 8:22
  Indeed, a more astounding fact in the heart of society cannot be conceived
• 8:28
  than this, that law should have become an instrument of injustice. And if
• 8:33
  this fact occasions consequences so formidable to the United States, where there is but
• 8:39
  one exception, what must it be with us in Europe, where it is
• 8:43
  a principle a system. Mister Monte Lambert, adopting the thought of a famous
• 8:50
  proclamation of mister Carlier, said we must make war against socialism, and by
• 8:56
  socialism, according to the definition of mister Charles, he meant plunder. But
• 9:03
  what plunder did he mean? For there are two sorts extra legal and legal
• 9:09
  plunder. As to extra legal plunder, such as theft or swindling, which
• 9:16
  is defined, foreseen and punished by the penal code, I do not think
• 9:20
  it can be adorned by the name of socialism. It is not this that
• 9:24
  systematically threatens the foundations of society. Besides, the war against this kind of
• 9:31
  plunder has not waited for the signal of mister mount Lambert or mister Carlyier.
• 9:37
  It has gone on since the beginning of the world. France was carrying it
• 9:41
  on long or before the Revolution of February, long before the appearance of socialism,
• 9:46
  with all its ceremonies of magistry, police, gendarmerie, prisons, dungeons
• 9:52
  and scaffolds. It is the law itself that is conducting this war, and
• 9:58
  it is to be wished, in opinion that the law should always maintain this
• 10:03
  attitude with respect to plunder. But this is not the case. The law
• 10:09
  sometimes takes its own part. Sometimes it accomplishes it with its own hands,
• 10:13
  in order to save the parties benefited, the shame, the danger and the
• 10:18
  scruple. Sometimes it places all this ceremony of magistracy, police, gendarmerie and
• 10:24
  prisons at the service of the plunderer, and treats the plundered party when he
• 10:31
  defends himself as a criminal. In a word, there is a legal plunder,
• 10:35
  and it is no doubt this that is meant by mister Montalambert end of
• 10:43
  Section two.