Opening…

Translator’S Preface

The favour with which the English public has received the First Edition of this translation of Bastiat’s ‹Harmonies Économiques›, published originally in separate parts, has induced me to have the whole reprinted in a cheaper and more accessible form, in the hope of giving the work a wider circulation, and rendering it more generally useful.

The first ten chapters were all that appeared in the lifetime of the gifted author, or that had the benefit of his finishing touch. It was Bastiat’s intention, had he lived, to recast the work, and to give it a wider and more comprehensive scope; embracing in his design not only the principles of Political Economy, but their applications to Social Philosophy. Prior to his departure for Italy, on what he foresaw might be his last journey, he had communicated to his friends MM. de Fontenay and Paillottet a list of the new chapters in the order in which they will be found in the subjoined Notice of his Life.[1] To the same friends, in his last moments, he entrusted the manuscripts intended for the continuation of the work. The duty thus committed to them they discharged very judiciously, by arranging the new portions in the order pointed out, without altering the text, and, except in a very few instances, without additions of their own, contenting themselves with adding some explanatory notes, consisting chiefly of references to the author’s other works. [p004]

Some of the chapters thus added are unfortunately mere fragments, but most of the others indicate very clearly Bastiat’s opinions on the subjects to which they relate, and several of them display a breadth, a vigour, and an originality worthy of the best days of their lamented author.

Many of the questions purely economical which are discussed in the posthumous portions of the work,—such, for instance, as those of Wages, Population, and the relations of Labour and Capital, etc.,—are still deeply engaging public attention in England, as well as on the other side of the Channel; and on subjects of such vast practical importance it is surely desirable that the opinions of so profound and fearless a thinker as Bastiat should be as widely disseminated as possible.

In conclusion, I may perhaps be permitted to refer to the great interest taken in this translation by the late Mr Cobden, who was the correspondent and personal friend of Bastiat, and was, I need not say, so eminently qualified to form and pronounce an opinion on the merits of his last great work. A short time after the appearance of the first ten chapters (26th March 1860), writing from Paris, where he was then engaged in negotiating the Commercial Treaty, Mr Cobden says, “My enthusiasm for Bastiat, founded as much on a love of his personal qualities as on an admiration for his genius, dates back nearly twenty years. I need not, therefore, express any astonishment at the warmth with which you speak of his productions. They are doing their work silently but effectually. M. Guillaumin [the eminent publisher] tells me the sale of the last edition has been steady and continuous, and a new one is now in hand. The works of Bastiat, which are selling not only in France, but throughout Europe, are gradually teaching those who, by their commanding talents, are capable of becoming the teachers of others; for Bastiat speaks with the greatest force to the highest order of intellects. At the same time, he is almost the only political economist whose style is brilliant and fascinating, whilst his irresistible logic is [p005] relieved by sallies of wit and humour which make his ‹Sophismes› as amusing as a novel. No critic who has read Bastiat will dare to apply again to Political Economy the sarcastic epithet of the ‘dreary science.’ His fame is so well established, that I think it would be presumptuous to do anything to increase it by any other means than the silent but certain dissemination of his works by the force of their own great merits.”

A word as to my mode of rendering Bastiat. I have not aimed at giving a literal translation. Indeed, the language often employed by Bastiat hardly admits of literal translation. But the more important object, I trust, has been attained of conveying fully, plainly, and intelligibly the author’s precise meaning.

The materials of the following notice of the life and writings of Bastiat have been borrowed partly from a short account of him in the ‹Dictionnaire de l’Économie Politique›, partly from the Memoir and Correspondence prefixed to the author’s ‹Œuvres Complètes›, and partly from an able article in the ‹Revue des Deux Mondes› from the pen of M. Louis Reybaud.

P. J. S.

NOTICE OF THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF FRÉDÉRIC BASTIAT.

«Frédéric Bastiat», whose last and greatest, though, alas! unfinished work—the ‹Harmonies Économiques›—I now venture to introduce to the English public, was born at Bayonne, on the 19th of June 1801. His father, an eminent merchant of Bayonne, died young, and his wife having died before him, Frédéric, their only child, was left an orphan at the early age of nine years.

The care of his education devolved on his paternal grandfather, who was proprietor of a land estate near Mugron, in the arrondissement of Saint-Sever. His aunt, Mademoiselle Justine Bastiat, acted towards him the part of a mother, and her affection was warmly reciprocated by Bastiat, who, to the day of his death, never ceased to regard her with filial love and reverence.

Bastiat’s education was begun at Bayonne, continued at Saint-Sever, and finished at the College of Sorèze. Here his course of study was occasionally interrupted by indisposition; but, on his recovery, his quick parts and steady application soon enabled him to overtake and keep pace with his fellow-students. At Sorèze. Bastiat formed a boyish friendship with M. Calmètes, to whom his earliest letters are addressed. The attachment of the youths was so remarkable, that the masters permitted them to prepare their exercises together, and sign them with their joint names. In this way they gained a prize for poetry. The prize was a gold medal, which, of course, could not be divided. “Keep it,” said Bastiat to his friend: “I am an orphan; you have both father and mother, and the medal of right falls to them.”

In 1818, Bastiat left College, and, in compliance with the wishes of his family, entered his uncle’s counting-house at Bayonne. His [p010] tastes, however, were for study rather than for business, and while at Bayonne he devoted his leisure hours by turns to French, English, and Italian literature. “I aim at nothing less,” he said, “than to become acquainted with politics, history, geography, mathematics, mechanics, natural history, botany, and four or five languages.” He was fond of music, sang agreeably, and played well on the violoncello.

In 1824, he began to study the works of the leading Economists of France and England—Adam Smith, Jean Baptiste Say, and Destutt de Tracy; and even at this early period he took an interest in the English free-trade measures of Mr Huskisson. From this time he may be said to have devoted his life to his favourite science.

On the death of his grandfather, in 1825, he gave up commerce as a profession, and took up his residence on his paternal estate at Mugron, in the cultivation of which he was at first induced to engage, but without much success, and he soon relinquished agriculture, as he had before abandoned trade. Business, in truth, was not his vocation; he had no turn for details; he cared little for money; his wants were few and simple; and he had no intention, as he says in one of his letters, to undergo irksome labour for three-fourths of his life to ensure for the remainder a useless superfluity.

It was at this period, and at Mugron, that he formed his lifelong friendship with M. Felix Coudroy, to whom so much of his correspondence is addressed, and to whom, a short time before his death, he had thought of committing the task of finishing the second volume of the ‹Harmonies›. The two friends, whose tastes and pursuits were the same, were constantly together,—reading, walking, or conversing. If Bastiat, whose ardent nature was impatient of plodding and systematic application, received a new book from Paris, he immediately carried it to Coudroy, who examined it, and noted the remarkable passages, which he read afterwards to his friend. Bastiat would often content himself with such fragments; and it was only when the book interested him deeply, that he would carry it off to read it carefully by himself. On these days, says his biographer, music was laid aside, and the violoncello was mute. It was thus, he continues, that the two friends passed their lives together, lodging a few paces from each other, seeing one another three times a-day, sometimes in their chambers, sometimes in long walks, sauntering together, book in hand. Works of philosophy, history, politics, religion, poetry, travels, biography, political economy, socialist [p011] works of the day,—all passed under the ordeal of this double intelligence. It was in these conversations that the ideas of Bastiat were developed, and his thoughts matured. When anything struck him particularly, he would set to work of a morning and put it into shape without effort. In this way he wrote his ‹Sophismes›, his article on the French and English tariffs, etc. It was this literary friendship, which lasted for more than twenty years, without being once clouded by the slightest disagreement, which prepared the mind of Bastiat for the gigantic efforts he was destined afterwards to make, and enabled him, during the last five years of his life, amid disease and distraction, to give to the world that mass of original and varied ideas which compose the six volumes of his collected works.[2]

In the events to which the expulsion of the elder branch of the Bourbons gave rise in 1830, Bastiat took an active interest. Bayonne had pronounced in favour of the new order of things. The citadel alone held out, and continued to display the white flag; and a concentration of Spanish troops on the frontier was spoken of. Bastiat did not hesitate. Quitting Mugron, he hurried to Bayonne to take part in the movement. In conjunction with some of his friends, he prepared a proclamation, formed an association of six hundred determined young men, and did not despair of reducing the citadel by a ‹coup de main›. Happily their martial ardour was not put to the proof. Before the march of events all resistance gave way, and that same day the citadel opened its gates. In place of a battle, there was a feast;—punch, wine, and Béranger enlivened the evening;—and the officers, like horses just let loose from the stable, were the merriest of the party.[3] Such was the beginning and the end of Bastiat’s military career.

In 1831, he became ‹Juge de Paix› of the Canton of Mugron, and, in 1832, a Member of the Council-General of the Landes. The confidence and esteem of his neighbourhood would have invested him with a trust still more important, by sending him as a representative to the Chamber of Deputies; but in this, after three fruitless attempts, his friends were defeated, and Bastiat did not succeed in becoming a legislator until after the Revolution of February 1848.

He published, in 1834, ‹Réflexions sur les Pétitions de Bordeaux, le Havre et Lyon, concernant les douanes›,—a brochure of great vigour, and which contains the germ of the theory of Value developed fifteen years afterwards in the ‹Harmonies›. [p012]

In 1840, Bastiat visited Spain and Portugal; and after a sojourn of some months at Madrid, and afterwards at Lisbon, with great benefit to his health, he sailed thence for England, and spent a few weeks in London. On his return to Mugron, he wrote his pamphlet, ‹Le Fisc et la Vigne›, in which he protests against certain new duties with which the wine-trade of his native province was threatened. In this brochure[4] he gives a characteristic anecdote of Napoleon. At the outset, the duties imposed were so moderate that the receipts would scarcely defray the cost of collection. The Minister of Finance remonstrated, and represented that these imposts were making the Government unpopular, without any benefit to the revenue. “You are a noodle, Monsieur Maret,” said the Emperor; “since the nation grumbles at some light burdens, what would have been the consequence had I added heavy taxes? Accustom them, first of all, to the exercise; and then we can reform the tariff.” The great captain, adds Bastiat, was also a skilful financier. Begin by inserting the thin end of the wedge—accustom them to the exercise—such is the history of all taxes.

In 1843, appeared another pamphlet, entitled ‹Mémoire sur la question vinicole›; and in 1844, ‹Mémoire sur la répartition de l’impôt foncier dans le Département des Landes›,—both productions of extraordinary ability, but having reference principally to questions of local interest and importance. The great subject of Free Trade, to which he was afterwards to devote his vast powers, had then assumed in his mind rather the form of a vague dream of what might perchance be realized under favourable circumstances at some far distant day, than of a thing in sober reality to be expected or hoped for. It was an accidental circumstance which first directed his attention to what was then passing in England under the auspices of the Anti-corn-law League.

Among the circle which Bastiat frequented at Mugron there prevailed a strong prejudice, or rather an inveterate hatred, against England; and Bastiat, who had cultivated English literature, and imbibed English ideas, had often to break a lance with his acquaintances on the subject of this unfounded dislike. One of these ‹Anglophobes›, accosting him one day, handed him a newspaper. “Read that,” said he with bitterness, “and see how your friends are treating us!” It was a translation of a speech of Sir Robert Peel in the House of Commons, which concluded with the words—“If we adopt this course, we shall fall, ‹like France›, to the lowest rank among nations.” His country was insulted, and Bastiat had not a word to say. On reflection, however, it did [p013] appear strange to him that the Prime Minister of England should entertain such an opinion of France, and still more so, that, entertaining it, he should express it openly and offensively in his place in Parliament. To clear up the matter, Bastiat wrote instantly to Paris, and became a subscriber to an English newspaper, requesting that all the numbers for the preceding month might be sent to him. In a few days the ‹Globe and Traveller› made its appearance at Mugron, containing Sir Robert Peel’s speech, when it was discovered that the words “like France,” maliciously introduced into the French version of it, were ‹not› there, and, in fact, had never been uttered.

Bastiat continued to read the ‹Globe›, and soon made the more important discovery that a formidable agitation was at that time going on in England to which the French newspapers never once alluded. The Anti-corn-law League was shaking the basis of the old commercial legislation of England. For two years Bastiat was thus enabled to watch the progress of the movement, and at length began to entertain the idea of making known to his countrymen—and, perhaps, of inducing them to imitate—the important reform about to be accomplished on the other side of the channel.

It was this feeling which prompted him to send to the ‹Journal des Économistes› his first contribution, ‹Sur l’influence des tarifs Anglais et Français›. This article, bearing a signature till then unknown, and coming from the remote Department of the Landes, was at once accepted, and created a profound impression. Like Lord Byron, after the publication of ‹Childe Harold›, Bastiat “awoke one morning and found himself famous.” Compliments and encouragements showered in upon him from every side. Further contributions were solicited, and were sent. The ice was broken, and he was fairly afloat as an author. Whilst contributing various articles to the ‹Journal›—among others, the first series of the ‹Sophismes Économiques›—Bastiat began to write the history of the English Anti-corn-law League; and, in order to obtain fuller information and more copious materials, he opened a correspondence with Mr Cobden, with whom he continued to exchange letters at frequent intervals during the remainder of his life.

It was in 1845 that Bastiat went to Paris to superintend the printing of this work, which he entitled ‹Cobden et la Ligue, où l’agitation Anglaise pour la liberté des Échanges›. A luminous and spirited introduction, giving an account of the economical and political state of England prior to the Anti-corn-law agitation, and describing the origin, objects, and progress of the league, is [p014] followed by extracts from the more prominent speeches of Cobden, Bright, Fox, Thompson, and the other leaders. All this was new in France,—to the popular mind of that country it might almost be called a revelation. “I have distributed a hundred copies in Paris,” writes Bastiat to Cobden, “and they have produced the best impression. Men who, by their position and pursuits, ought to know what is going on in England have been surprised on reading it. They could not believe their eyes. . . . . . If I had combated directly their prejudices, I should not have succeeded; but, by allowing the free-traders to speak and act for themselves—in a word, by simply ‹translating› you—I hope to have given these prejudices a blow which they cannot recover—if the book be read.” In a subsequent letter, he says,—“Since my last letter an unexpected movement has manifested itself in the French press. All the Parisian, and many of the provincial journals, in reviewing my book, have given an account of the Anti-corn-law agitation. They do not, it is true, perceive all its bearings, but public opinion is awakened, which is the essential point.”

To this work, and the service which it rendered to the cause of Free Trade, and of sound economic ideas, Bastiat some months afterwards owed his nomination as a Corresponding Member of the Institute. “I believe this nomination to be in itself of little importance,” he writes to M. Calmètes, “and I fear many mediocrities have boasted of the title; but the peculiar circumstances which preceded my nomination do not permit me to reject your friendly felicitations. I have published only one book, and of that book the preface alone is my work. Having returned to seclusion, that preface has worked for me, and unknown to me; for the same letter which apprized me of my candidature announced my election. I had never in my life dreamt of this honour. The book is entitled ‹Cobden et la Ligue›. I now send it to you, which will save my saying more about it. In 1842 and 1843 I endeavoured to attract attention to the subject of which it treats. I addressed articles to the ‹Presse›, to the ‹Mémorial Bordelais›, and other journals. They were rejected. I saw that my cause was about to break down under this ‹conspiracy of silence›, and I had no resource but to write a book. You see, then, why I have become an author. And now, engaged in that career, I regret it extremely; for although always fond of Political Economy, I am reluctant to devote my attention exclusively to that science, and would rather wander freely over the whole field of human knowledge. Yet in this science a single question—freedom of international relations—fascinates and is about to absorb me,—for, perhaps, you may [p015] have seen that I have been assigned a place in the association which has just been formed at Bordeaux. Such is the age; you can take no part in public life without being garrotted in a speciality.”

At Paris, Bastiat had been introduced to all the leading Economists, and he was delighted with his reception. “Not one of these gentlemen,” he says to M. Coudroy, “but had read, re-read, and perfectly understood my three articles. I might have written a thousand years in the ‹Chalosse›, the ‹Sentinelle›, and the ‹Mémorial›, without finding a single true reader but yourself. Here one is read, studied, and understood.” By the whole circle Bastiat was welcomed and feasted. A desire was expressed that he should become conductor of the ‹Journal des Économistes›, and there was a proposal to find him a chair of Political Economy.

From Paris he passed over to England, where, in July 1845, he met with Mr Cobden, Mr Bright, and the other chiefs of the Anti-corn-law League. In a letter to his friend Coudroy, he thus describes his reception in London:—“Having installed myself at the hotel (at 10s. a-day), I sat down to write six letters, to Cobden, Bright, Fox, Thompson, Wilson, and the Secretary of the League. Then I wrote six inscriptions on as many copies of my book, and went to bed. This morning I carried my six volumes to the apartments of the League, desiring that they might be sent to the parties for whom they were intended. I was told that Mr Cobden was in town, and was to leave London to-day for Manchester, and that I should find him in the midst of preparations for his journey. (An Englishman’s preparations consist in swallowing a beef-steak, and stuffing a couple of shirts into a carpet-bag.) I hastened to Cobden’s residence, where I met him, and had two hours’ talk. He knows French very well, speaks it a little, and, moreover, I understood his English. I explained to him the state of opinion in France, the effects I expected from my work, etc. He was sorry to leave London, and was on the point of giving up his intended journey. Then he remarked, ‘The League is free-masonry, except that everything is public. We have a house here, which we have hired to accommodate our friends during the bazaar; it is empty at present, and we must instal you there.’ I made some difficulty about this; and he rejoined, ‘This arrangement may not be agreeable to you, but it will be of use to the cause, for Messrs Bright, Moore, and other members of the League pass their evenings there, and we must have you always in the midst of them.’ However, as I am to join him at Manchester the day after to-morrow, I thought it [p016] hardly worth while to shift my quarters for a couple of days. He took me afterwards to the Reform Club, a magnificent establishment, and left me in the library while he took a bath. He afterwards wrote letters to Bright and Moore, and I accompanied him to the railway. In the evening I called on Mr Bright. . . . . . Obliged to speak slowly, in order to make myself understood, and upon subjects which were familiar to me, and with men who had all our ideas, I found myself placed in the most favourable circumstances. He took me afterwards to the Parliament,” etc.

On his return from England, Bastiat again took refuge in his retreat at Mugron, where he had his time entirely at his own disposal; but he was not long suffered to enjoy his literary leisure. In February 1846, he assisted in organizing a Free-Trade Association at Bordeaux, and afterwards went to Paris with a similar object. In this he was destined to experience innumerable difficulties, not the least of which arose from his supposed attachment to English opinions. He imagined the reform of the English tariff might be the means of furthering a similar reform in France, but in this he soon found that he was greatly mistaken.

“Of all the prejudices which reign among us,” says M. Louis Reybaud, in his admirable notice of Bastiat in the ‹Revue des Deux Mondes›,[5] “there is none more deeply rooted than distrust of England. It is enough that England leans to one side to induce us to incline to the other. Everything which England proposes is suspected by us, and we not unwillingly detect an ambush in all her measures. In matters of trade this disposition is especially manifested. In vain we imagine that England in her reforms has only her own interest in view,—her true object is only to mislead and ruin us by her seductions! If we give way we shall be fools or dupes. Such is the language of national opinion; and although enlightened men resist it, that opinion does not the less prevail and exhibit itself on all occasions. Better informed in regard to this bias of public opinion, Bastiat would have seen that the moment was not opportune, and that in the face of the English agitation he would have done better to delay, than to hasten, any agitation in France which might seem to be inspired by the spirit or example of England.”

In fact, it was upon this rock mainly that Bastiat’s Free-trade enterprise ultimately foundered, and he soon became convinced of the intensity of the prejudice against which he had to struggle. In a letter to Mr Cobden, written in December 1846, he says,—“This cry against England stifles us, and gives rise to formidable [p017] obstacles. If this hatred to ‹perfidious Albion› were only the fashion of the day, I should wait patiently until it passed away. But it has deep root in men’s hearts. It is universal, and I believe I told you that my friends dare no longer talk of me in my own village, but ‹en famille›. This blind passion, moreover, is found so convenient by protected interests and political parties, that they avail themselves of it in the most shameless manner.”

Other circumstances contributed to discourage Bastiat: “I suffer from my poverty,” he tells Mr Cobden. “If, instead of running from one to another on foot, splashed and bespattered to the back, in order to meet only one or two people a-day, and obtain evasive and dilatory answers, I could assemble them at my table in a rich ‹salon›, how many difficulties would be removed! I want neither head nor heart, but I feel that this superb Babylon is not the place for me, and I must hasten back to my solitude.” His heart was constantly reverting to the happy and peaceful days he had passed at Mugron. “I suffer,” he says in a letter to Coudroy, “from leaving Mugron, and my old habits, my desultory labours, and our nice little chats. It is a frightful ‹déchirement›; but can I recede?” “Paris and I are not made for each other.” “Often I think of Mugron, its philosophic calm, and its fruitful leisure. Here life is wasted in doing nothing, or at least in producing nothing.”

Bastiat’s appearance in Paris at this epoch is thus described by one of his friends. “He had not had time to call in the assistance of a Parisian hatter and tailor,” says M. de Molinari; “and with his long hair, his tiny hat, his ample frock-coat, and his family umbrella, you would have been apt to mistake him for an honest peasant, who had come to town for the first time to see the wonders of the metropolis. But the physiognomy of this apparent clown was arch and spiritual; his large black eye was luminous, and his square well-proportioned forehead bore the impress of thought.”

“I remember, as if it were yesterday,” says M. Louis Reybaud, “the impression which he produced. It was impossible to see a more characteristic specimen of a provincial scholar, simple in his manner, and plain in his attire. But, under that homely garb, and that air of ‹bonhomie›, there were flashes of intelligence, and a native dignity of deportment; and you were not long in discovering an honest heart and a generous soul. The eye, above all, was lighted up with singular brightness and fire. His emaciated features and livid complexion betrayed already the ravages of that disease which, in a few years, was destined to carry him off. His [p018] voice was hollow, and formed a contrast with the vivacity of his ideas and the briskness of his gestures. When the conversation was animated, his voice became feebler, and his lungs performed their office with difficulty. Better taken care of, his constitution, feeble as it was, might have lasted a long time. But Bastiat took counsel only of his energy. He never thought of how many days he had to live, but how he might employ them well.”[6]

“I accept resolutely the hard life on which I am about to enter,” he says in one of his letters. “What gives me courage is not the ‹non omnis moriar› of Horace, but the thought that, perhaps, my life may not have been useless to mankind.”[7]

During the eighteen months that the Free-trade Association lasted, Bastiat’s life was one of feverish activity and incessant unremitting toil. Before the doors of the Association could be opened to the public, a Government ‹autorisation› had to be obtained; and it was obtained at length with much difficulty and after long delay. On Bastiat, as secretary, the care of all the arrangements devolved. He had to communicate with journalists, wait upon ministers, issue manifestoes, organize committees, obtain subscriptions, correspond with branch associations, undertake journeys to Lyons, to Marseilles, to Havre, attend meetings, make speeches, besides conducting a weekly newspaper, called the ‹Libre-Échange›—the organ of the Association—and contributing numerous articles to other newspapers, and to the ‹Journal des Économistes›. “If at daybreak he observed a Protectionist sophism appear in a newspaper of any reputation,” says M. de Molinari, “he would immediately seize his pen, demolish the sophism before breakfast, and our language counted one ‹chef-d’œuvre› the more.”

It is to the marvellous exertions of this period that we owe the ‹Sophismes Économiques›,—a work which arose out of the circumstances in which Bastiat found himself placed; and which, although written from day to day, amid the distractions we have described, exhibits his genius in its most brilliant light. “As examples of dialectical skill in reducing an opponent to absurdity,” says Professor Cairnes, “of simple and felicitous illustration, of delicate and polished raillery, attaining occasionally the pitch of a refined irony, the ‹Sophismes Économiques› may almost claim a place beside the ‹Provincial Letters›.” Sprightly, lucid, and conclusive, full of fire and irony, playfulness and wit, these two little volumes afford the most unanswerable reply ever given to the [p019] fallacies of the Protectionist school; and, had Bastiat written nothing else, they would have conferred on him a just title to be regarded as the most distinguished economist of his day. The ‹Sophismes› have been translated into four languages, and are the best known, if not the most original, of all the works of their lamented author.

The success of the work was instant and complete. Bastiat at first complained that “three or four pleasantries had made the fortune of the book, while the serious parts were neglected;” but he afterwards confessed that “parables and pleasantries had more success, and effected more good, than the best treatises.” Of these pleasantries, ‹The Candlemakers’ Petition›, in the first series of the ‹Sophismes›, is perhaps the happiest, and I cannot forbear presenting the reader with a translation of this choice morsel:—

«Petition» of the Manufacturers of Candles, Wax-Lights, Lamps, Candlesticks, Street Lamps, Snuffers, Extinguishers, and of the Producers of Oil, Tallow, Rosin, Alcohol, and, generally, of everything connected with Lighting,

«To Messieurs the Members of the Chamber of Deputies.»

«Gentlemen»,—You are on the right road. You reject abstract theories, and have little consideration for cheapness and plenty. Your chief care is the interest of the producer. You desire to emancipate him from external competition, and reserve the ‹national market› for ‹national industry›.

We are about to offer you an admirable opportunity of applying your—what shall we call it? your theory? No; nothing is more deceptive than theory; your doctrine? your system? your principle?—but you dislike doctrines, you abhor systems, and as for principles, you deny that there are any in Social Economy: we shall say, then, your practice, your practice without theory and without principle.

We are suffering from the intolerable competition of a foreign rival, placed, it would seem, in a condition so far superior to ours for the production of light, that he absolutely ‹inundates› our ‹national market› with it at a price fabulously reduced. The moment he shows himself, our trade leaves us—all consumers apply to him; and a branch of native industry, having countless ramifications, is all at once rendered completely stagnant. This rival, who is no other than the Sun, wages war to the knife against us, and we suspect he has been raised up by ‹perfidious Albion› (good policy as times go); inasmuch as he displays towards that haughty island a circumspection with which he dispenses in our case.

What we pray for is, that it may please you to pass a law ordering the shutting up of all Windows, Sky-lights, Dormer-windows, Outside and Inside Shutters, Curtains, Blinds, Bull’s-eyes; in a word, of all Openings, Holes, Chinks, Clefts, and Fissures, by or through which the light of the Sun has been allowed to enter houses, to the prejudice of the meritorious manufactures with which we flatter ourselves we have accommodated our country,—a country which, in gratitude, ought not to abandon us now to a strife so unequal.

We trust, Gentlemen, that you will not regard this our request as a satire, or refuse it without at least previously hearing the reasons which we have to urge in its support.

And, first, if you shut up as much as possible all access to natural light, and create a demand for artificial light, which of our French manufactures will not be encouraged by it?

If more tallow is consumed, then there must be more oxen and sheep; and, consequently, we shall behold the increase of artificial meadows, meat, wool, hides, and, above all, manure, which is the basis and foundation of all agricultural wealth.

If more oil is consumed, then we shall have an extended cultivation of the poppy, of the olive, and of rape. These rich and exhausting plants will come at the right [p020] time to enable us to avail ourselves of the increased fertility which the rearing of additional cattle will impart to our lands.

Our heaths will be covered with resinous trees. Numerous swarms of bees will, on the mountains, gather perfumed treasures, now wasting their fragrance on the desert air, like the flowers from which they are derived. No branch of agriculture but will then exhibit a cheering development.

The same remark applies to navigation. Thousands of vessels will proceed to the whale fishery; and, in a short time, we shall possess a navy capable of maintaining the honour of France, and gratifying the patriotic aspirations of your petitioners, the undersigned Candlemakers and others.

But what shall we say of the manufacture of ‹articles de Paris›? Henceforth you will behold gildings, bronzes, crystals, in candlesticks, in lamps, in lustres, in candelabra, shining forth, in spacious warerooms, compared with which those of the present day can be regarded but as mere shops.

No poor ‹Resinier› from his heights on the sea-coast, no Coal-miner from the depth of his sable gallery, but will rejoice in higher wages and increased prosperity.

Only have the goodness to reflect, Gentlemen, and you will be convinced that there is, perhaps, no Frenchman, from the wealthy coal-master to the humblest vender of lucifer matches, whose lot will not be ameliorated by the success of this our Petition.

We foresee your objections, Gentlemen, but we know that you can oppose to us none but such as you have picked up from the effete works of the partisans of Free Trade. We defy you to utter a single word against us which will not instantly rebound against yourselves and your entire policy.

You will tell us that, if we gain by the protection which we seek, the country will lose by it, because the consumer must bear the loss.

We answer:

You have ceased to have any right to invoke the interest of the consumer; for, whenever his interest is found opposed to that of the producer, you sacrifice the former. You have done so for the purpose of ‹encouraging labour› and ‹increasing employment›. For the same reason, you should do so again.

You have yourselves obviated this objection. When you are told that the consumer is interested in the free importation of iron, coal, corn, textile fabrics,—yes, you reply, but the producer is interested in their exclusion. Well, be it so;—if consumers are interested in the free admission of natural light, the producers of artificial light are equally interested in its prohibition.

But, again, you may say that the producer and consumer are identical. If the manufacturer gain by protection, he will make the agriculturist also a gainer; and, if agriculture prospers, it will open a vent to manufactures. Very well; if you confer upon us the monopoly of furnishing light during the day,—first of all, we shall purchase quantities of tallow, coals, oils, resinous substances, wax, alcohol,—besides silver, iron, bronze, crystal—to carry on our manufactures; and then we and those who furnish us with such commodities, having become rich, will consume a great deal, and impart prosperity to all the other branches of our national industry.

If you urge that the light of the Sun is a gratuitous gift of nature, and that to reject such gifts is to reject wealth itself under pretence of encouraging the means of acquiring it, we would caution you against giving a death-blow to your own policy. Remember that hitherto you have always repelled foreign products, ‹because› they approximate more nearly than home products to the character of gratuitous gifts. To comply with the exactions of other monopolists, you have only ‹half a motive›; and to repulse us simply because we stand on a stronger vantage ground than others, would be to adopt the equation, + × + = -; in other words, it would be to heap ‹absurdity› upon ‹absurdity›.

Nature and human labour co-operate in various proportions (depending on countries and climates) in the production of commodities. The part which nature executes is always gratuitous; it is the part executed by human labour which constitutes value, and is paid for.

If a Lisbon orange sells for half the price of a Paris orange, it is because natural, and consequently gratuitous heat, does for the one, what artificial, and therefore expensive heat, must do for the other.

When an orange comes to us from Portugal, we may conclude that it is furnished in part gratuitously, in part for an onerous consideration; in other words, it comes to us at ‹half-price› as compared with those of Paris.

Now, it is precisely the ‹gratuitous half› (pardon the word) which we contend should be excluded. You say, how can national labour sustain competition with foreign labour, when the former has all the work to do, and the latter only does one-half,—the Sun supplying the remainder? But if this ‹half›, being ‹gratuitous›, determines [p021] you to exclude competition, how should the ‹whole›, being ‹gratuitous›, induce you to admit competition? If you were consistent, you would, while excluding as hurtful to native industry what is half gratuitous, exclude, ‹a fortiori› and with double zeal, that which is altogether gratuitous.

Once more, when products, such as coal, iron, corn, or textile fabrics, are sent us from abroad, and we can acquire them with less labour than if we made them ourselves, the difference is a free gift conferred upon us. The gift is more or less considerable in proportion as the difference is more or less great. It amounts to a quarter, a half, or three-quarters of the value of the product, when the foreigner only asks us for three-fourths, a half, or a quarter of the price we should otherwise pay. It is as perfect and complete as it can be, when the donor (like the Sun in furnishing us with light) asks us for nothing. The question, and we ask it formally, is this, Do you desire for our country the benefit of gratuitous consumption, or the pretended advantages of onerous production? Make your choice, but be logical; for as long as you exclude as you do, coal, iron, corn, foreign fabrics, ‹in proportion› as their price approximates to ‹zero›, what inconsistency would it be to admit the light of the Sun, the price of which is already at ‹zero› during the entire day!

In addition to his other engrossing avocations in Paris, Bastiat, in the end of 1847 and beginning of 1848, delivered a course of lectures to young men on the principles of Political Economy and the Harmony of the Social Laws. He had no opportunity of committing these lectures to writing, as he wished, but we have doubtless the substance of them in his published works, especially in the ‹Harmonies Économiques›. “Something tells me,” he says in one of his letters to M. Coudroy, “that this course addressed to the young, who have logic in their heads, and warmth and fervour in their hearts, will not be useless.” “My auditors,” he says elsewhere, “are not very numerous; but they attend assiduously, and take notes. The seed falls into good ground.”

It was in the midst of these harassing occupations and herculean exertions that the Revolution of February came to surprise Bastiat,—to put an end to the Free-trade Association,—and to bring a far more formidable set of agitators—namely, the Socialists and Communists—to the surface of society. Bastiat doubted if his country was ripe for a Republic; but when it came, he gave in his adhesion to it, and was returned by his native Department of the Landes as a Deputy to the Constituent, and afterwards to the Legislative Assembly. He took his seat on the left, says his accomplished friend and biographer M. de Fontenay, in an attitude of moderation and firmness; and, whilst remaining somewhat isolated, he was surrounded with the respect of all parties. A Member of the Committee of Finance, of which he was named Vice-President eight times in succession, he exercised a very marked influence on that department, although quietly and within doors. The increasing feebleness of his lungs prevented his often ascending the tribune or addressing the Assembly, although it was often a hard trial for him to be thus, as it were, nailed to his seat.[8] It is to this he alludes in the second chapter [p022] of the ‹Harmonies›:—“If, when the much-loved vessel of the State is beaten by the tempest, I sometimes appear to absent myself from my post in order to collect my scattered thoughts, it is because I feel my feeble hands unfitted for the work. Is it, besides, to betray my mission to reflect upon the causes of the tempest itself, and endeavour to act upon these causes? And then, what I find I cannot do to-day, who knows but it may be given me to accomplish to-morrow?”

In a letter to M. Coudroy, in June 1848, Bastiat thus describes his daily occupations:—“I rise at six o’clock, dress, shave, breakfast, and read the newspapers; this occupies me till seven, or half-past seven. About nine, I am obliged to go out, for at ten commences the sitting of the Committee of Finance, of which I am a member. It continues till one, and then the public sitting begins, and continues till seven. I return to dinner, and it very rarely happens that there are not after-dinner meetings of Sub-Committees charged with special questions. The only hour at my disposal is from eight to nine in the morning, and it is at that hour that I receive visitors. . . . . I am profoundly disgusted with this kind of life.”

But the grand work of Bastiat in 1848 and 1849—a work to which he devoted the best energies of his mind and genius—was the open and incessant war which he waged with the Socialist and Communist writers and agitators whom the Revolution had let loose on French society, and who were then shaking the social and political fabric to its centre. Bastiat, like the porcupine, had a quill pointed against every assailant. To each error he opposed a pamphlet. With Louis Blanc and the national workshops, he did battle in the brochure entitled ‹Propriété et Loi›, in which he exposes the illusions with which the public mind had been stuffed by the Socialists. The doctrine of Concidérant he attacked in another little volume, bearing the title, ‹Propriété et Spoliation›. In another, ‹Justice et Fraternité›, he demolished the absurdities of Pierre Leroux’s democratic and social constitution. Proudhon’s doctrine he disposed of in ‹Capital et Rente›, where he refutes the foolish notions in vogue in 1848 on the subject of gratuitous loans—a subject which he again discussed in 1850, in the larger volume entitled ‹Gratuité du Credit›. In ‹Protectionisme et Communisme›, Bastiat demonstrated that what is called ‹protection› is nothing else than practical communism or spoliation. ‹Paix et Liberté, ou le Budget Républicain›, another brochure from his prolific pen, is a brilliant and vigorous onslaught on the excessive taxation of that day, and the overgrown military and naval armaments which gave [p023] rise to it. Many passages of this admirable production, full of force and practical good sense, might be read with benefit at the present day, as applicable not only to France as it was, but to France as it is, and not to France alone, but to the other nations of Europe.

In the tract entitled ‹L’État›, Bastiat maintains his favourite doctrine that all which a Government owes to its subjects is security; that, as it acts necessarily through the intervention of force, it can equitably enforce nothing save Justice; and that its duty consists in holding the balance equal among various interests, by guarding the liberty of all, by protecting person and property, by enforcing covenants, and thereby upholding credit, but leaving Demand and Supply in all cases to perform their appropriate functions without restraint and without encouragement. He exposes the absurdity of men expecting everything from Government, and trusting to public employments rather than to individual exertion. He shows that, since the State is only an aggregate of individuals, it can give nothing to the people but what it has previously taken from them. ‹Tout le monde›, as he says elsewhere, ‹veut vivre aux dépens de l’état, et on oublie que l’état vit aux dépens de tout le monde›.

To this tract another is appended, to which he gives the quaint title of ‹Maudit Argent!› in which he exposes the popular errors which arise from confounding capital with money, and money with inconvertible paper. In this little work, Bastiat of course could not treat the subject systematically and in detail, as M. Michel Chevalier has since done in his philosophical treatise ‹Sur la Monnaie›;[9] but Bastiat’s tract contains many excellent passages. The effect of an enlargement of the volume of currency on the value of money, for instance, is thus happily illustrated:—

Ten men sat down to play a game, in which they agreed to stake 1000 francs. Each man was provided with ten counters—each counter representing ten francs. When the game was finished, each received as many times ten francs as he happened to have counters. One of the party, who was more of an arithmetician than a logician, remarked that he always found at the end of the game that he was richer in proportion as he had a greater number of counters, and asked the others if they had observed the same thing. What holds in my case, said he, must hold in yours, for what is true of each must be true of all. He proposed, therefore, that each should have double the former number of counters. No sooner said than done. Double the number of counters were distributed; but, when the party finally rose from play they found themselves no richer than before. The stake had not been increased, and fell to be proportionally divided. Each man, no doubt, had double the number of counters, but each counter, instead of being worth ten francs, was found to be worth only five; and it was at length discovered that what is true of each is ‹not› always true of all.

The pamphlets, ‹Baccalauréat et Socialisme›, and ‹Ce qu’on voit et ce qu’on ne voit pas›, belong to the following year, 1850, the last [p024] of the author’s life. In the first of these, Bastiat complains of the monopoly of university degrees, and the too exclusive addiction of his countrymen to classical learning—especially Greek and Roman history—to which he attributes much of that democratic and revolutionary fervour which was ever and anon breaking out in France.

The second, ‹Ce qu’on voit et ce qu’on ne voit pas›, is a masterpiece worthy of the author of the ‹Sophismes›, and well deserves its second title of “Political Economy in One Lesson.” The following extract from the first chapter of this admirable little work will give the reader some idea of the argument, and of Bastiat’s lively manner of treating a subject in itself so dry and uninviting:—

«The Broken Pane.»

Have you ever had occasion to witness the fury of the honest burgess, Jacques Bonhomme, when his scapegrace son has broken a pane of glass? If you have, you cannot fail to have observed that all the bystanders, were there thirty of them, lay their heads together to offer the unfortunate proprietor this never-failing consolation,—“There is some good in every misfortune—such accidents give a fillip to trade. Everybody must live. If no windows were broken, what would become of the glaziers?”

Now, this formula of condolence contains a theory, which it is proper to lay hold of, ‹flagrante delicto›, in this very simple case, because it is exactly the same theory which unfortunately governs the greater part of our economic institutions.

Assuming that it becomes necessary to expend six francs in repairing the damage, if you mean to say that the accident brings in six francs to the glazier, and to that extent encourages his trade, I grant it fairly and frankly, and allow that you reason justly. The glazier arrives, does his work, pockets his money, rubs his hands, and blesses the scapegrace son. This is ‹what we see›.

But if, by way of deduction, you come to conclude, as is too often done, that it is a good thing to break windows, that it makes money circulate, and that encouragement to trade in general is the result, I am obliged to cry halt! Your theory stops at ‹what we see›, and takes no account of ‹what we don’t see›.

‹We don’t see› that, since our burgess has been obliged to spend his six francs on one thing, he can no longer spend them on another—‹We don’t see› that, if he had not had this pane to replace, he would have replaced, for example, his shoes, which are down at the heels, or placed a new book on his shelf. In short, he would have employed his six francs in a way in which he cannot now employ them.

Let us see, then, how the account stands with trade ‹in general›.

The pane being broken, the glazier’s trade is benefited to the extent of six francs. This is ‹what we see›.

If the pane had not been broken, the shoemaker’s (or some other) trade would have been encouraged to the extent of six francs. That is what ‹we don’t see›.

And if we take into account what ‹we don’t see›, which is a negative fact, as well as what ‹we do see›, which is a positive fact, we shall discover that trade ‹in general›, or the aggregate of ‹national industry›, has no interest, one way or other, whether windows are broken or not.

Let us see, again, how the account stands with Jacques Bonhomme.

On the last hypothesis—that of the pane being broken—he spends six francs, and gets neither more nor less than he had before,—namely, the use and enjoyment of a pane of glass.

On the other hypothesis,—namely, that the accident had not happened, he would have expended six francs on shoes, and would have had the use and enjoyment both of the shoes and of the pane of glass.

Now, as the good burgess, Jacques Bonhomme constitutes a fraction of society at large, we are forced to conclude that society, taken in the aggregate, and after all accounts of labour and enjoyment have been squared, has lost the value of the pane which has been broken.

Whence, on generalizing, we arrive at this unexpected conclusion, that “Society loses the value of things uselessly destroyed;” and we arrive also at this aphorism, which will make the hair of the prohibitionists stand on end, that “to smash, break, [p025] and dissipate is not to encourage national industry;” or, more briefly, that “there is no profit in destruction.”

The reader will take notice that there are not two persons only, but three, in the little drama to which we have called his attention. One of them—namely, Jacques Bonhomme—represents the consumer, reduced by destruction to one enjoyment in place of two. The glazier represents the producer, whose trade is encouraged by the accident. The third is the shoemaker (or some other tradesman), whose trade is discouraged to the same extent by the same cause. It is this third personage who is always kept in the shade, and who, as representing ‹what we don’t see›, is a necessary element in the problem. It is he who enables us to discover how absurd it is to try to find profit in destruction. It is he who will soon teach us that it is not less absurd to try to discover profit in restriction, which is, after all, only partial destruction. Go to the bottom of all the arguments which are urged in favour of restriction, and you will find only a paraphrase of the vulgar saying,—“‹If no windows were broken, what would the glaziers do?›”

The distinction thus established between immediate effects and ultimate consequences, between surface appearances and substantial realities, between ‹what we see and what we don’t see›, the author proceeds, in the same happy vein, to apply to taxation, the proceeds of which are said to come back to the labour-market like refreshing showers,—to overgrown and unnecessary armaments, and extravagant public works, which are defended as affording employment to the working-classes,—to industrial and commercial restrictions, which are justified on the same ground,—to the questions of machinery, of credit, of colonization, of luxury and unproductive consumption, etc. The entire work does not extend to eighty pages, and in every one of its twelve short chapters Bastiat demolishes a specious fallacy or a pernicious error.

But Bastiat had been for some time meditating a greater, more elaborate, and more systematic work than any of those of which we have hitherto spoken; and it is curious to trace in his correspondence the progress of the ideas which were at length developed in the ‹Harmonies Économiques›. Writing to M. Coudroy in June 1845, he says—“If my little treatise of the ‹Sophismes Économiques› is successful, we may follow it up by another entitled ‹Harmonies Sociales›. It would be of the greatest utility; for it would meet the desires of an age in search of artificial harmonies and organizations, by demonstrating the beauty, order, and progressive principle of the natural and providential harmonies.” In June 1846, he writes to Mr Cobden, “I must bring out a second edition of my ‹Sophismes›, and I should wish much to write a little book to be entitled ‹Harmonies Économiques›. It will be the counterpart of the other—the first pulls down, the second will build up.” In another letter, written the year after, he exclaims—“Oh, that the Divine Goodness would give me yet one year of strength, and permit me to explain to my young fellow-citizens what I regard as the true social theory, under the twelve following heads:—‹Wants›, ‹production›, ‹property›, ‹competition›, ‹population›, ‹liberty›, [p026] ‹equality›, ‹responsibility›, ‹solidarity›, ‹fraternity›, ‹unity›, ‹province of public opinion›. I should then without regret, with joy, resign my life into His hands!”

On the eve of being elected a Deputy to the National Assembly in 1848, he writes from Mugron, “Here I am in my solitude. Would that I could bury myself here for ever, and work out peacefully this Economic synthesis which I have in my head, and which will never leave it! For, unless there occur some sudden change in public opinion, I am about to be sent to Paris charged with the terrible mandate of a Representative of the People. If I had health and strength, I should accept this mission with enthusiasm. But what can my feeble voice, my sickly and nervous organization, accomplish in the midst of revolutionary tempests? How much wiser it had been to devote my last days to working out in silence the great problem of the social destinies, for something tells me I should have arrived at a solution! Poor village, humble home of my fathers, I am about to bid you an eternal adieu; and I quit you with the presentiment that my name and my life, lost amidst storms, will not have even that modest utility for which you had prepared me!” . . . .

In his letters to M. Coudroy at this period, we discover the same idea working and fermenting in the mind of Bastiat, and struggling for vent and utterance. Amid the anxieties and distractions in which his duties as a Deputy involved him, he writes—“I am still convinced that the practice of affairs excludes the possibility of producing a work truly scientific, and yet I cannot conceal from you that I always retain that old chimera of my ‹Social Harmonies›; and I cannot divest myself of the thought that, if I had remained with you, I should have succeeded in imparting to the world a useful idea. I long much to make my retreat.” In another letter to the same friend, after describing his feebleness, and intimating his intention to leave Paris to try what effect a change to his native air might produce, he adds—“I must renounce public life, and all my ambition now is to have three or four months of tranquillity to write my poor ‹Harmonies Économiques›. They are in my head, but I fear they will never leave it.” “The crystal,” he says elsewhere, “is formed drop by drop in silence and obscurity; but retirement, quiet, time, freedom from care—all are wanting to me.”

In April 1849, he writes again to M. Coudroy, “I have my theory to work out, and powerful encouragements have reached me opportunely. I read those words yesterday in an English Review,—‘In Political Economy, the French school has had [p027] three phases, expressed by the three names, Quesnay, Say, Bastiat.’ They assign me this rank and this part prematurely; but it is certain that I have in my head a new and suggestive idea, which I believe to be true. This idea I have never developed methodically. It runs accidentally through some of my articles, and as that has been enough to attract the attention of the ‹savants›, and as it has already had the honour conferred on it of being considered as forming an ‹epoch› in the science, I am certain now that, when I give that theory in its complete state to the world, it will at least be examined. Is not that all I could desire? With what ardour I am about to turn to account my retirement in order to elaborate that doctrine, certain as I am to have judges who can understand it, and who are waiting for it!”

The three months of leisure, so long and so anxiously wished for, came at last; and in the beginning of 1850 the ‹Harmonies› (or rather the portions which the author had intended should form the first volume of that work) made their appearance. The reception of the work was not at first what might have been expected; and Bastiat, again in Paris, writes to his friend M. Coudroy, “The ‹Harmonies› pass unnoticed here, unless by some dozen connoisseurs. I expected this—it could not be otherwise. I have not even in my favour the wonted zeal of our own little circle, who accuse me of heterodoxy; but in spite of this, I am confident that the book will make its way by degrees. In Germany it has been very differently received. . . . . I pray Heaven to vouchsafe me a year to write the second volume; after which I shall sing, ‹Nunc dimittis›.”

To Mr Cobden, in August 1850, he writes—“I went to my native country to try to cure these unfortunate lungs, which are to me very capricious servants. I have returned a little better, but afflicted with a disease of the larynx, accompanied with a complete extinction of voice. The doctor enjoins absolute silence; and, in consequence, I am about to pass two months in the country, near Paris. There I shall try to write the second volume of the ‹Harmonies Économiques›. The first has been nearly unnoticed by the learned world. I should not be an ‹author› if I gave in to that judgment. I appeal to the future, for I am conscious that that book contains an important idea, ‹une idée mère›, and time will come to my assistance.”

This great work, the child of Bastiat’s anxious hopes, the subject of his dying thoughts, although at first but coldly received, is perhaps the most important and the most original contribution which the science of Political Economy has received since the days [p028] of Adam Smith. On that most abstruse and difficult subject, the first principles of Value, it opens up entirely new views; while on almost every other branch of the subject, it either propounds a new theory, or corrects and improves the nomenclature of the science. Throughout, it treats Political Economy (and it is perhaps the only work which does so, at least systematically) in connexion with final causes, and demonstrates the Wisdom and Goodness of God in the economy of civil society. On some questions we may venture to differ from Bastiat. On the question of Rent, for instance, he would seem to have followed too implicitly the theory of Mr Carey, the able American Economist; but Bastiat’s work, as a whole, has a freshness, a vigour, and an originality which all must admire. He writes like a man thoroughly in earnest,—a devout believer in the doctrines which he teaches, and he seldom fails to carry conviction to the mind of his readers. The leading idea of the work—the harmony of the social laws—is admirable, and is admirably worked out. The motto of the book, in fact, might have been the well-known lines of Dryden,—

From harmony, from heavenly harmony, This universal frame began: From harmony to harmony Through all the compass of the notes it ran, The diapason ending full in Man.

Bastiat undertakes to demonstrate the harmony of the Economic laws,—that is to say, their tendency towards a common design, which is the progressive improvement of the human race. He proves convincingly that individual interests, taken in the aggregate, far from being antagonistic, aid each other mutually; and that, so far is it from being true that the gain of one is necessarily the loss of another, each individual, each family, each country has an interest in the prosperity of all others. He shows that, between agriculturist and manufacturer, capitalist and labourer, producer and consumer, native and foreigner, there is in reality no antagonism, but, on the contrary, a community of interest; and that, in order that the natural Economic laws should act constantly so as to produce this result, one thing alone is necessary—namely, respect for Liberty and Property. His design is best explained in his own words: “I undertake in this work,” he says, “to demonstrate the Harmony of those laws of Providence which govern human society. What makes these laws harmonious and not discordant is, that all principles, all motives, all springs of action, all interests, co-operate towards a grand final result, which humanity will never reach by reason of its native ‹imperfection›, [p029] but to which it will always approximate more and more by reason of its unlimited ‹capability of improvement›. And that result is, the indefinite approximation of all classes towards a level, which is always rising; in other words, the ‹equalization› of individuals in the general ‹amelioration›.”

Bastiat was not one of those pessimists who persist in looking at the existing fabric of Society as if it were some ill-made, ill-going clock, requiring constantly to be wound up, and to have its springs adjusted, its wheels lubricated, and its hands altered and set right. Far from this, he regarded Society as a self-acting, self-regulating mechanism, bearing the stamp of the Divine hand by which it was constructed, and subject to laws and checks not less wise, not less immutable, not less trustworthy, than the laws which govern the inanimate and material world.

“God made the country, but man made the towns,” was the exclamation of an amiable but a morbid poet. He might as well have said—God made the blossom, but bees make the comb. Reason asks, who then made the bees? Who made man, with all his noble instincts, and admirable inventive reasoning and reflective faculties?

A manlier, because a juster, philosophy enabled Bastiat rather to say with Edmund Burke, “Art is man’s nature.” Looking at the existing fabric and mechanism of Society, and the beautiful harmony of the Economic laws which regulate it, he could see nothing to warrant constant legislative tampering with the affairs of trade. He had faith in moral and material progress under the empire of Freedom. Sweeping away all Socialist Utopias and artificial systems of social organization, he pointed to Society as it exists, and exclaimed, ‹Digitus Dei est hic›. Unlike the sickly poet, he believed that the same Good and Wise Being who created both town and country, upholds and sustains them both; and that the laws of Value and Exchange, left to their own free and beneficent action, are as much His ordinance, as the laws of motion, attraction, or chemical affinity.[10]

Engaged upon the second volume of the ‹Harmonies›, Bastiat found his subject growing upon him, and discovered, as he thought, when too late, that he had not in the first instance perceived all its bearings. He felt, as he said, crushed by the mass [p030] of harmonies which presented themselves to him on every side; and a posthumous note, found among his papers, informs us that this expansion of his subject under his hand had led him to think of recasting the entire work. “I had thought at first,” he says, “to begin with the exposition of ‹Economic Harmonies›, and, consequently, to treat only of subjects purely economical—‹Value›, ‹Property›, ‹Wealth›, ‹Competition›, ‹Wages›, ‹Population›, ‹Money›, ‹Credit›, etc. Afterwards, if I had had time and strength, I should have directed the attention of the reader to the larger subject of ‹Social Harmonies›, and treated of the ‹Human Constitution›, ‹Social Motives›, ‹Responsibility›, ‹Solidarity›, etc. The work thus conceived[11] had been begun, when I saw that it was better to mingle together than to separate these two classes of considerations. But then logic required that the study of Man should precede the Economic investigations; and—there was no longer time.”

Alas! the hours of Bastiat were numbered. He ran a desperate steeple-chase with death, to use the expression of his biographer, and he lost the day. His mind, his genius, shone as brightly, worked as intensely, as ever; but the material frame-work was shattered and in ruins. By the advice of his physicians, after resorting to the waters of the Pyrenees without benefit, he repaired to Italy in the autumn of 1850, and took up his residence at Pisa. Scarcely had he arrived there, when he read in the newspapers a premature announcement of his own death, and common-place expressions of regret for the loss of the “great Economist” and “illustrious author.” He wrote immediately to a friend to contradict the report. “Thank God,” he says, “I am not dead, or even much [p031] worse. And yet if the news were true, I must just accept it and submit. I wish all my friends could acquire in this respect the philosophy I have myself acquired. I assure you I should breathe my last without pain, and almost with joy, if I were certain of leaving to the friends who love me, not poignant regrets, but a gentle, affectionate, somewhat melancholy remembrance of me.”

After lingering some time at Pisa without improvement, he went on to Rome. From Rome he writes to M. Coudroy—“Here I am in the Eternal City, but not much disposed to visit its marvels. I am infinitely better that I was at Pisa, surrounded as I am with excellent friends. . . . . I should desire only one thing, to be relieved of the acute pain which the disease of the windpipe occasions. This continuity of suffering torments me. Every meal is a punishment. To eat, drink, speak, cough, are all painful operations. Walking fatigues me—carriage airings irritate the throat—I can no longer work, or even read, seriously. You see to what I am reduced. I shall soon be little better than a dead body, retaining only the faculty of suffering.” . . . . Even in this state of extreme debility he was thinking of his favourite but unfinished work. He adds, “If health is restored to me, and I am enabled to complete the second volume of the ‹Harmonies›, I shall dedicate it to you. If not, I shall prefix a short dedication to the second edition of the first volume. On this last hypothesis, which implies the end of my career, I can explain my plan, and bequeath to you the task of fulfilling it.”

Bastiat’s career was in reality fast drawing to a close. His end was calm and serene. He seemed himself to regard it as an indifferent spectator, conversing with his friends on his favourite topics,—Political Economy, Philosophy, and Religion. He desired to die as a Christian. To his cousin the Abbé Monclar, and his friend M. Paillottet, who stood by, he said—“On looking around me, I observe that the most enlightened nations of the world have been of the Christian faith, and I am very happy to find myself in communion with that portion of the human race.” “His eye,” says M. Paillottet, “sparkled with that peculiar expression which I had frequently noticed in our conversations, and which intimated the solution of a problem.” He beckoned his friends to come near him, as if he had something to say to them—he murmured twice the words ‹La verité›—and passed away.

His death took place at Rome, on the 24th of December 1850, in the fiftieth year of his age. His obsequies were celebrated in the church of Saint Louis des Français. It was in the year 1845 that he took up his residence in Paris, so that his career as an [p032] Economist had extended over little more than five years. He died a martyr to his favourite science, and we may well apply to him the beautiful lines of Lord Byron,—

Oh! what a noble heart was here undone, When Science’ self destroy’d her favourite son! Yes, she too much indulged his fond pursuit, She sow’d the seeds, but death has reap’d the fruit. ’Twas his own genius gave the final blow, And help’d to plant the wound that laid him low: So the struck eagle, stretch’d upon the plain, No more through rolling clouds to soar again, View’d his own feather on the fatal dart, And wing’d the shaft that quiver’d in his heart; Keen were his pangs, but keener far to feel He nursed the pinion which impell’d the steel; While the same plumage that had warm’d his nest Drank the last life-drop of his bleeding breast.

TO THE YOUTH OF FRANCE.

Love of study, and lack of fixed opinions,—a mind free from prejudice, a heart devoid of hate, zeal for the propagation of truth,—ardent sympathies, disinterestedness, devotion, candour,—enthusiasm for all that is good and fair, simple and great, honest and religious,—such are the precious attributes of youth. It is for this reason that I dedicate my work to you. And the seed must have in it no principle of life if it fail to take root in a soil so generous.

I had thought to offer you a picture, and all I have given you is a sketch; but you will pardon me; for who, in times like the present,[12] can sit down to finish a grave and important work? My hope is that some one among you, on seeing it, will be led to exclaim, with the great artist, ‹Anch’ io son pittore!› and, seizing the pencil, impart to my rude canvas colour and flesh, light and shade, sentiment and life.

You may think the title of the work somewhat ambitious; and assuredly I make no pretension to reveal the designs of Providence in the social order, and to explain the mechanism of all the forces with which God has endowed man for the realization of progress. All that I have aimed at is to put you on the right track, and make you acquainted with the truth, that ‹all legitimate interests are in harmony›. That is the predominant idea of my work, and it is impossible not to recognise its importance.

For some time it has been the fashion to laugh at what has been called the ‹social problem›: and no doubt some of the solutions which have been proposed afford but too much ground for raillery. But in the problem itself there is nothing laughable. It is the ghost of Banquo at the feast of Macbeth—and no dumb ghost either; for in formidable accents it calls out to terror-stricken society—a solution or death! [p034]

Now this solution, you will at once see, must be different according as men’s interests are held to be naturally harmonious or naturally antagonistic.

In the one case, we must seek for the solution in Liberty—in the other, in Constraint. In the one case, we have only to be passive—in the other, we must necessarily offer opposition.

But Liberty assumes only one shape. Once convinced that each of the molecules which compose a fluid possesses in itself the force by which the general level is produced, we conclude that there is no surer or simpler way of seeing that level realized than not to interfere with it. All, then, who set out with this fundamental principle, that ‹men’s interests are harmonious›, will agree as to the practical solution of the social problem,—to abstain from displacing or thwarting those interests.

Constraint, on the other hand, may assume a thousand shapes, according to the views which we take of it, and which are infinitely varied. Those schools which set out with, the principle, that ‹men’s interests are antagonistic›, have done nothing yet towards the solution of the problem, unless it be that they have thrust aside Liberty. Among the infinite forms of Constraint, they have still to choose the one which they consider good, if indeed any of them be so. And then, as a crowning difficulty, they have to obtain universal acceptance, among men who are free agents, for the particular form of Constraint to which they have awarded the preference.

But, on this hypothesis, if human interests are, by their very nature, urged into fatal collision, and if this shock can be avoided only by the accidental invention of an artificial social order, the destiny of the human race becomes very hazardous, and we ask in terror,

1st, If any man is to be found who has discovered a satisfactory form of Constraint?

2d, Can this man bring to his way of thinking the innumerable schools who give the preference to other forms?

3d, Will mankind give in to that particular form which, by hypothesis, runs counter to all individual interests?

4th, Assuming that men will allow themselves to be rigged out in this new attire, what will happen if another inventor presents himself, with a coat of a different and improved cut? Are we to persevere in a vicious organization, knowing it to be vicious; or must we resolve to change that organization every morning according as the caprices of fashion and the fertility of inventors’ brains may dictate? [p035]

5th, Would not all the inventors whose plans have been rejected unite together against the particular organization which had been selected, and would not their success in disturbing society be in exact proportion to the degree in which that particular form of organization ran counter to all existing interests?

6th, And, last of all, it may be asked, Does there exist any human force capable of overcoming an antagonism which we presuppose to be itself the very essence of human force?

I might multiply such questions ‹ad infinitum›, and propose, for example, this difficulty:

If individual interest is opposed to the general interest, where are we to place the active principle of Constraint? Where is the fulcrum of the lever to be placed? Beyond the limits of human society? It must be so if we are to escape the consequences of your law. If we are to intrust some men with arbitrary power, prove first of all that these men are formed of a different clay from other mortals; that they in their turn will not be acted upon by the fatal principle of self-interest; and that, placed in a situation which excludes the idea of any curb, any effective opposition, their judgments will be exempt from error, their hands from rapacity, and their hearts from covetousness.

The radical difference between the various Socialist schools (I mean here, those which seek the solution of the social problem in an artificial organization) and the Economist school, does not consist in certain views of detail or of governmental combination. We encounter that difference at the starting point, in the preliminary and pressing question—Are human interests, when left to themselves, antagonistic or harmonious?

It is evident that the Socialists have set out in quest of an artificial organization only because they judge the natural organization of society bad or insufficient; and they have judged the latter bad and insufficient, only because they think they see in men’s interests a radical antagonism, for otherwise they would not have had recourse to Constraint. It is not necessary to constrain into harmony what is in itself harmonious.

Thus they have discovered antagonism everywhere:

Between the proprietor and the ‹prolétaire›;[13] Between capital and labour; Between the masses and the ‹bourgeoisie›; Between agriculture and manufactures; Between the rustic and the burgess; Between the native and the foreigner; Between the producer and the consumer; Between civilisation and organization; In a word, Between Liberty and Harmony.

And this explains why it happens that, although a certain kind of sentimental philanthropy finds a place in their hearts, gall and bitterness flow continually from their lips. Each reserves all his love for the new state of society he has dreamt of; but as regards the society in which we actually live and move, it cannot, in their opinion, be too soon crushed and overthrown, to make room for the New Jerusalem they are to rear upon its ruins.

I have said that the ‹Economist› school, setting out with the natural harmony of interests, is the advocate of Liberty.

And yet I must allow that if Economists in general stand up for Liberty, it is unfortunately not equally true that their principles establish solidly the foundation on which they build—the harmony of interests.

Before proceeding further, and to forewarn you against the conclusions which will no doubt be drawn from this avowal, I must say a word on the situations which Socialism and Political Economy respectively occupy.

It would be folly in me to assert that Socialism has never lighted upon a truth, and that Political Economy has never fallen into an error.

What separates, radically and profoundly, the two schools is their difference of methods. The one school, like the astrologer and the alchemist, proceeds on hypothesis; the other, like the astronomer and the chemist, proceeds on observation.

Two astronomers, observing the same fact, may not be able to arrive at the same result.

In spite of this transient disagreement, they feel themselves united by the common process which sooner or later will cause that disagreement to disappear. They recognise each other as of the same communion. But between the astronomer, who observes, and the astrologer, who imagines, the gulf is impassable, although accidentally they may sometimes approximate.

The same thing holds of Political Economy and Socialism.

The Economists observe man, the laws of his organization, and the social relations which result from those laws. The Socialists conjure up an imaginary society, and then create a human heart to suit that society. [p037]

Now, if philosophy never errs, philosophers often do. I deny not that Economists may make false observations; I will add, that they must necessarily begin by doing so.

But, then, what happens? If men’s interests are harmonious, it follows that every incorrect observation will lead logically to antagonism. What, then, are the Socialist tactics? They gather from the works of Economists certain incorrect observations, follow them out to their consequences, and show those consequences to be disastrous. Thus far they are right. Then they set to work upon the observer, whom we may assume to be Malthus or Ricardo. Still they have right on their side. But they do not stop there. They turn against the science of Political Economy itself, accusing it of being heartless, and leading to evil. Here they do violence to reason and justice, inasmuch as science is not responsible for incorrect observation. At length they proceed another step. They lay the blame on society itself:—they threaten to overthrow it for the purpose of reconstructing the edifice:—and why? Because, say they, it is proved by science that society as now constituted is urged onwards to destruction. In this they outrage good sense—for either science is not mistaken, and then why attack it?—or it is mistaken, and in that case they should leave society in repose, since society is not menaced.

But these tactics, illogical as they are, have not been the less fatal to economic science, especially when the cultivators of that science have had the misfortune, from a chivalrous and not unnatural feeling, to render themselves liable, ‹singuli in solidum›, for their predecessors and for one another. Science is a queen whose gait should be frank and free:—the atmosphere of the ‹coterie› stifles her.

I have already said that in Political Economy every erroneous proposition must lead ultimately to antagonism. On the other hand, it is impossible that the voluminous works of even the most eminent economists should not include some erroneous propositions. It is ours to mark and to rectify them in the interest of science and of society. If we persist in maintaining them for the honour of the fraternity, we shall not only expose ourselves, which is of little consequence, but we shall expose truth itself, which is a serious affair, to the attacks of Socialism.

To return: the conclusion of the Economists is for Liberty. But in order that this conclusion should take hold of men’s minds and hearts, it must be solidly based on this fundamental principle, that interests, left to themselves, tend to harmonious combinations, and to the progressive preponderance of the general good. [p038]

Now many Economists, some of them writers of authority, have advanced propositions, which, step by step, lead logically to ‹absolute evil›, necessary injustice, fatal and progressive inequality, and inevitable pauperism, etc.

Thus, there are very few of them who, so far as I know, have not attributed ‹value› to natural agents, to the gifts which God has vouchsafed ‹gratuitously› to His creatures. The word ‹value› implies that we do not give away the portion of it which we possess except for an equivalent consideration. Here, then, we have men, especially proprietors of land, bartering for effective labour the gifts of God, and receiving recompense for utilities in the creation of which their labour has had no share—an evident, but a necessary, injustice, say these writers.

Then comes the famous theory of Ricardo, which may be summed up in a few words: The price of the necessaries of life depends on the labour required to produce them on the least productive land in cultivation. Then the increase of population obliges us to have recourse to soils of lower and lower fertility. Consequently mankind at large (all except the landowners) are forced to give a larger and larger amount of labour for the same amount of subsistence; or, what comes to the same thing, to receive a less and less amount of subsistence for the same amount of labour,—whilst the landowners see their rentals swelling by every new descent to soils of an inferior quality. Conclusion: Progressive opulence of men of leisure—progressive poverty of men of labour; in other words, fatal inequality.

Finally, we have the still more celebrated theory of Malthus, that population has a tendency to increase more rapidly than the means of subsistence, and that at every given moment of the life of man. Now, men cannot be happy, or live in peace, if they have not the means of support; and there are but two obstacles to this increase of population which is always threatening us, namely, a diminished number of births, or an increase of mortality in all its dreadful forms. Moral restraint, to be efficacious, must be universal, and no one expects that. There remains, then, only the repressive obstacles—vice, poverty, war, pestilence, famine; in other words, pauperism and death.

I forbear to mention other systems of a less general bearing, which tend in the same way to bring us to a dead-stand. Monsieur de Tocqueville, for example, and many others, tell us, if we admit the right of primogeniture, we arrive at the most concentrated aristocracy—if we do not admit it, we arrive at ruin and sterility. [p039]

And it is worthy of remark, that these four melancholy theories do not in the least decree run foul of each other. If they did, we might console ourselves with the reflection that they are alike false, since they refute each other. But no,—they are in unison, and make part of one and the same general theory, which, supported by numerous and specious facts, would seem to explain the spasmodic state of modern society, and, fortified by the assent of many masters in the science, presents itself with frightful authority to the mind of the confused and discouraged inquirer.

We have still to discover how the authors of this melancholy theory have been able to lay down, as their principle, the ‹harmony of interests›, and, as their conclusion, Liberty.

For if mankind are indeed urged on by the laws of Value towards Injustice,—by the laws of Rent towards Inequality,—by the laws of Population towards Poverty,—by the laws of Inheritance towards Sterility,—we can no longer affirm that God has made the moral as He has made the natural world—a harmonious work; we must bow the head and confess that it has pleased Him to base it on revolting and irremediable dissonance.

You must not suppose, young men, that the Socialists have refuted and repudiated what, in order to wound no one’s susceptibilities, I shall call the theory of dissonances. No; let them say as they will, they have assumed the truth of that theory, and it is just because they have assumed its truth that they propose to substitute Constraint for Liberty, artificial for natural organization, their own inventions for the work of God. They say to their opponents (and in this, perhaps, they are more consistent than the latter),—if, as you have told us, human interests when left to themselves tend to harmonious combination, we cannot do better than welcome and magnify Liberty as you do. But you have demonstrated unanswerably that those interests, if allowed to develop themselves freely, urge mankind towards injustice, inequality, pauperism, and sterility. Your theory, then, provokes reaction precisely because it is true. We desire to break up the existing fabric of society just because it is subject to the fatal laws which you have described; we wish to make trial of our own powers, seeing that the power of God has miscarried.

Thus they are agreed as regards the premises, and differ only on the conclusion.

The Economists to whom I have alluded say that ‹the great providential laws urge on society to evil›; but that we must take care not to disturb the action of those laws, because such action is happily impeded by the secondary laws which retard the final [p040] catastrophe; and arbitrary intervention can only enfeeble the embankment, without stopping the fatal rising of the flood.

The Socialists say that ‹the great providential laws urge on society to evil›; we must therefore abolish them, and select others from our inexhaustible storehouse.

The Catholics say that ‹the great providential laws urge on society to evil›; we must therefore escape from them by renouncing worldly interests, and taking refuge in abnegation, sacrifice, asceticism, and resignation.

It is in the midst of this tumult, of these cries of anguish and distress, of these exhortations to subversion, or to resignation and despair, that I endeavour to obtain a hearing for this assertion, in presence of which, if it be correct, all difference of opinion must disappear—‹it is not true that the great providential laws urge on society to evil›.

It is with reference to the conclusions to be deduced from their common premises that the various schools are divided and combat each other. I deny those premises, and I ask, Is not that the best way of putting an end to these disputes?

The leading idea of this work, the harmony of interests, is ‹simple›. Is simplicity not the touchstone of truth? The laws of light, of sound, of motion, appear to us to be all the truer for being simple—Why should it be otherwise with the law of interests?

This idea is ‹conciliatory›. What is more fitted to reconcile parties than to demonstrate the harmony of the various branches of industry: the harmony of classes, of nations, even of doctrines?

It is ‹consoling›, seeing that it points out what is false in those systems which adopt, as their conclusion, progressive evil.

It is ‹religious›, for it assures us that it is not only the celestial but the social mechanism which reveals the wisdom of God, and declares His glory.

It is ‹practical›, for one can scarcely conceive anything more easily reduced to practice than this,—to allow men to labour, to exchange, to learn, to associate, to act and react on each other,—for, according to the laws of Providence, nothing can result from their intelligent spontaneity but order, harmony, progress, good, and better still; better ‹ad infinitum›.

Bravo, you will say; here we have the optimism of the Economists with a vengeance! These Economists are so much the slaves of their own systems that they shut their eyes to facts for fear of seeing them. In the face of all the poverty, all the injustice, all the oppressions which desolate humanity, they coolly deny the existence of evil. The smell of revolutionary gunpowder does not [p041] reach their blunted senses—the pavement of the barricades has no voice for them; and were society to crumble to pieces before their eyes, they would still keep repeating, “All is for the best in the best of worlds.”

No indeed,—we do not think that all is for the best; but I have faith in the wisdom of the laws of Providence, and for the same reason I have faith in Liberty.

The question is, Have we Liberty?

The question is, Do these laws act in their plenitude, or is their action not profoundly troubled by the countervailing action of human institutions?

Deny evil! deny suffering! Who can? We must forget that our subject is man. We must forget that we are ourselves men. The laws of Providence may be regarded as harmonious without their necessarily excluding evil. Enough that evil has its explanation and its mission, that it checks and limits itself, that it destroys itself by its own action, and that each suffering prevents a greater suffering by repressing the cause of suffering.

Society has for its element man, who is a ‹free› agent; and since man is free, he may choose,—since he may choose, he may be mistaken,—since he may be mistaken, he may suffer.

I go further. I say he must be mistaken and suffer—for he begins his journey in ignorance, and for ignorance there are endless and unknown roads, all of which, except one, lead to error.

Now, every Error engenders suffering; but either suffering reacts upon the man who errs, and then it brings Responsibility into play,—or, if it affects others who are free from error, it sets in motion the marvellous reactionary machinery of Solidarity.

The action of these laws, combined with the faculty which has been vouchsafed to us of connecting effects with their causes, must bring us back, by means of this very suffering, into the way of what is good and true.

Thus, not only do we not deny the existence of evil, but we acknowledge that it has a mission in the social, as it has in the material world.

But, in order that it should fulfil this mission, we must not stretch Solidarity artificially, so as to destroy Responsibility,—in other words, we must respect Liberty.

Should human institutions step in to oppose in this respect the divine laws, evil would not the less flow from error, only it would shift its position. It would strike those whom it ought not to strike. It would be no longer a warning and a monitor. It would no longer have the tendency to diminish and die away by its own [p042] proper action. Its action would be continued, and increase, as would happen in the physiological world if the imprudences and excesses of the men of one hemisphere were felt in their unhappy effects only by the inhabitants of the opposite hemisphere.

Now this is precisely the tendency not only of most of our governmental institutions, but likewise, and above all, of those which we seek to establish as remedies for the evils which we suffer. Under the philanthropical pretext of developing among men a factitious Solidarity, we render Responsibility more and more inert and inefficacious. By an improper application of the public force, we alter the relation of labour to its remuneration, we disturb the laws of industry and of exchange, we offer violence to the natural development of education, we give a wrong direction to capital and labour, we twist and invert men’s ideas, we inflame absurd pretensions, we dazzle with chimerical hopes, we occasion a strange loss of human power, we change the centres of population, we render experience itself useless,—in a word, we give to all interests artificial foundations, we set them by the ears, and then we exclaim that—Interests are antagonistic: Liberty has done all the evil,—let us denounce and stifle Liberty.

And yet, as this sacred word has still power to stir men’s hearts and make them palpitate, we despoil Liberty of its ‹prestige› by depriving it of its name, and it is under the title of ‹Competition› that the unhappy victim is led to the sacrificial altar, amid the applause of a mob stretching forth their hands to receive the shackles of servitude.

It is not enough, then, to exhibit, in their majestic harmony, the natural laws of the social order; we must also explain the disturbing causes which paralyze their action; and this is what I have endeavoured to do in the second part of this work.

I have striven to avoid controversy; and, in doing so, I have no doubt lost an opportunity of giving to the principles which I desire to disseminate the stability which results from a thorough and searching discussion. And yet, might not the attention of the reader, seduced by digressions, have been diverted from the argument taken as a whole? If I exhibit the edifice as it stands, what matters it in what light it has been regarded by others, even by those who first taught me to look at it?

And now I would appeal with confidence to men of all schools, who prefer truth, justice, and the public good to their own systems.

Economists! like you, I am the advocate of «Liberty»; and if I succeed in shaking some of those premises which sadden your generous hearts, perhaps you will see in this an additional incentive to love and to serve our sacred cause. [p043]

Socialists! you have faith in «Association». I conjure you, after having read this book, to say whether society as it is now constituted, apart from its abuses and shackles, that is to say, under the condition of Liberty, is not the most beautiful, the most complete, the most durable, the most universal, the most equitable, of all Associations.

‹Egalitaires!› you admit but one principle, the «Mutuality of Services». Let human transactions be free, and I assert that they are not and cannot be anything else than a reciprocal exchange of ‹services›,—services always diminishing in ‹value›, always increasing in ‹utility›.

Communists! you desire that men, become brothers, should enjoy in common the goods which Providence has lavished on them. My aim is to demonstrate that society as it exists has only to acquire freedom in order to realize and surpass your wishes and your hopes. For all things are common to all, on the single condition that each man takes the trouble to gather what God has given, which is very natural; or remunerate freely those who take that trouble for him, which is very just.

Christians of all communions! unless you stand alone in casting doubt on the divine wisdom, manifested in the most magnificent of all God’s works which have come within the range of our knowledge, you will find in this book no expression which can shock the severest morals, or the most mysterious dogmas of your faith.

Proprietors! whatever be the extent of your possessions, if I establish that your rights, now so much contested, are limited, like those of the most ordinary workman, to the receiving of services in exchange for real and substantial services which have been actually rendered by you, or by your forefathers, those rights will henceforth repose on a basis which cannot lie shaken.

‹Prolétaires!› men who live by wages! I undertake to demonstrate that you obtain the fruits of the land of which you are not the owners with less pain and effort than if you were obliged to raise those fruits by your own direct labour,—with less than if that land had been given to you in its primitive state, and before being prepared for cultivation by labour.

Capitalists and labourers! I believe myself in a position to establish the law that, in proportion as capital is accumulated, the ‹absolute› share of the total product falling to the capitalist increases, and his ‹proportional› share is diminished; while both the ‹absolute› and ‹relative› share of the product falling to the labourer is augmented,—the reverse effects being produced when capital is lessened or dissipated.[14] If this law be established, the obvious deduction is, [p044] a harmony of interests between labourers and those who employ them.

Disciples of Malthus! sincere and calumniated philanthropists, whose only fault has been in warning mankind against the effects of a law which you believe to be fatal, I shall have to submit to you another law more reassuring:—“‹Cæteris paribus›, increasing density of population is equivalent to increasing facility of production.” And if it be so, I am certain it will not be you who will grieve to see a stumbling-block removed from the threshold of our favourite science.

Men of spoliation! you who, by force or fraud, by law or in spite of law, batten on the people’s substance; you, who live by the errors you propagate, by the ignorance you cherish, by the wars you light up, by the trammels with which you hamper trade; you who tax labour after having rendered it unproductive, making it lose a sheaf for every handful you yourselves pluck from it; you who cause yourselves to be paid for creating obstacles, in order to get afterwards paid for partially removing those obstacles; incarnations of egotism in its worst sense; parasitical excrescences of a vicious policy, prepare for the sharpest and most unsparing criticism. To you alone I make no appeal, for the design of this book is to sacrifice you, or rather to sacrifice your unjust pretensions. In vain we cherish conciliation. There are two principles which can never be reconciled—Liberty and Constraint.

If the laws of Providence are harmonious, it is when they act with freedom, without which there is no harmony. Whenever, then, we remark an absence of harmony, we may be sure that it proceeds from an absence of liberty, an absence of justice. Oppressors, spoliators, contemners of justice, you can have no part in the universal harmony, for it is you who disturb it.

Do I mean to say that the effect of this work may be to enfeeble power, to shake its stability, to diminish its authority? My design is just the opposite. But let me not be misunderstood.

It is the business of political science to distinguish between what ought and what ought not to fall under State control; and in making this important distinction we must not forget that the State always acts through the intervention of Force. The services which it renders us, and the services which it exacts from us in return, are alike imposed upon us under the name of contributions. [p045]

The question then comes back to this: What are the things which men have a right to impose upon each other ‹by force›? Now, I know but one thing in this situation, and that is ‹Justice›. I have no right to ‹force› any one whatever to be religious, charitable, well educated, or industrious; but I have a right to ‹force› him to be ‹just›,—this is a case of legitimate defence.

Now, individuals in the aggregate can possess no right which did not pre-exist in individuals as such. If, then, the employment of individual force is justified only by legitimate defence, the fact that the action of government is always manifested by Force should lead us to conclude that it is essentially limited to the maintenance of order, security, and justice.

All action of governments beyond this limit is a usurpation upon conscience, upon intelligence, upon industry; in a word, upon human liberty.

This being granted, we ought to set ourselves unceasingly and without compunction to emancipate the entire domain of private enterprise from the encroachments of power. Without this we shall not have gained Freedom, or the free play of those laws of harmony which God has provided for the development and progress of the human race.

Will Power by this means be enfeebled? Will it have lost in stability because it has lost in extent? Will it have less authority because it has fewer functions to discharge? Will it attract to itself less respect because it calls forth fewer complaints? Will it be more the sport of factions, when it has reduced those enormous budgets and that coveted influence which are the baits and allurements of faction? Will it encounter greater danger when it has less responsibility?

To me it seems evident, that to confine public force to its one, essential, undisputed, beneficent mission,—a mission desired and accepted by all,—would be the surest way of securing to it respect and universal support. In that case, I see not whence could proceed systematic opposition, parliamentary struggles, street insurrections, revolutions, sudden changes of fortune, factions, illusions, the pretensions of all to govern under all forms, those dangerous and absurd systems which teach the people to look to government for everything, that compromising diplomacy, those wars which are always in perspective, or armed truces which are nearly as fatal, those crushing taxes which it is impossible to levy on any equitable principle, that absorbing and unnatural mixing up of politics with everything, those great artificial displacements of capital and labour, which are the source of fruitless heartburnings, fluctuations, stoppages, and commercial crises. All these causes of trouble, of [p046] irritation, of disaffection, of covetousness, and of disorder, and a thousand others, would no longer have any foundation, and the depositaries of power, instead of disturbing, would contribute to the universal harmony,—a harmony which does not indeed exclude evil, but which leaves less and less room for those ills which are inseparable from the ignorance and perversity of our feeble nature, and whose mission it is to prevent or chastise that ignorance and perversity.

Young men! in these days in which a grievous Scepticism would seem to be at once the effect and the punishment of the anarchy of ideas which prevails, I shall esteem myself happy if this work, as you proceed in its perusal, should bring to your lips the consoling words, «I believe»,—words of a sweet-smelling savour, which are at once a refuge and a force, which are said to remove mountains, and stand at the head of the Christian’s creed—I believe. “I believe, not with a blind and submissive faith, for we are not concerned here with the mysteries of revelation, but with a rational and scientific faith, befitting things which are left to man’s investigation.—I believe that He who has arranged the material universe has not withheld His regards from the arrangements of the social world.—I believe that He has combined, and caused to move in harmony, free agents as well as inert molecules.—I believe that His overruling Providence shines forth as strikingly, if not more so, in the laws to which He has subjected men’s interests and men’s wills, as in the laws which He has imposed on weight and velocity.—I believe that everything in human society, even what is apparently injurious, is the cause of improvement and of progress.—I believe that Evil tends to Good, and calls it forth, whilst Good cannot tend to Evil; whence it follows that Good must in the end predominate.—I believe that the invincible social tendency is a constant approximation of men towards a common moral, intellectual, and physical level, with, at the same time, a progressive and indefinite elevation of that level.—I believe that all that is necessary to the gradual and peaceful development of humanity is that its tendencies should not be disturbed, but have the liberty of their movements restored.—I believe these things, not because I desire them, not because they satisfy my heart, but because my judgment accords to them a deliberate assent.”

Ah! whenever you come to pronounce these words, «I believe», you will be anxious to propagate your creed, and the social problem will soon be resolved, for, let them say what they will, it is not of difficult solution. Men’s interests are harmonious,—the solution, then, lies entirely in this one word—«Liberty». [p047]

HARMONIES OF POLITICAL ECONOMY.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

I. NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL ORGANIZATION.[15]

Is it quite certain that the mechanism of society, like the mechanism of the heavenly bodies, or that of the human frame, is subject to general laws? Does it form a harmoniously ‹organized› whole? Or rather, do we not remark in it the absence of all ‹organization›? Is not an ‹organization› the very thing which all men of heart and of the future, all advanced publicists, all the pioneers of thought, are in search of at the present day? Is society anything else than a multitude of individuals placed in juxtaposition, acting without concert, and given up to the movements of an anarchical liberty? Are our countless masses, after having with difficulty recovered their liberties one after the other, not now awaiting the advent of some great genius to arrange them into a harmonious whole? Having pulled down all, must we not now set about laying the foundation of a new edifice.

And yet, it may be asked, have these questions any other meaning than this: Can society dispense with written laws, rules, and repressive measures? Is every man to make an unlimited use of his faculties, even when in so doing he strikes at the liberties of [p048] another, or inflicts injury on society at large? In a word, must we recognise in the maxim, ‹laissez faire, laissez passer›, the absolute formula of political economy? If that were the question, no one could hesitate about the solution. The economists do not say that a man may kill, sack, burn, and that society has only to be quiescent,—‹laisser faire›. They say that even in the absence of all law, society would resist such acts; and that consequently such resistance is a general law of humanity. They say that civil and penal laws must regulate, and not counteract, those general laws the existence of which ‹they presuppose›. There is a wide difference between a social organization, founded on the general laws of human nature, and an artificial organization, invented, imagined,—which takes no account of these laws, or repudiates and despises them,—such an organization, in short, as many modern schools would impose upon us.

For, if there be general laws which act independently of written laws, and of which the latter can only regulate the action, we must study these ‹general laws›. They can be made the object of a science, and Political Economy exists. If, on the other hand, society is a human invention, if men are regarded only as inert matter, to which a great genius, like Rousseau, must impart sentiment and will, movement and life, then there is no such science as Political Economy. There are only an indefinite number of possible and contingent arrangements, and the fate of nations must depend upon the ‹Founder› to whom chance shall have committed their destinies.

In order to prove that society is subject to general laws, no elaborate dissertation is necessary. All I shall do is to notice certain facts, which, although trite, are not the less important.

Rousseau has said, ‹Il faut beaucoup de philosophie pour observer les faits qui sont trop près de nous›—“Much philosophy is needed to observe accurately things which are too near us.” And such are the social phenomena in the midst of which we live and move. Habit has so familiarized us with these phenomena that we cease to observe them, unless something striking and exceptional forces them on our attention.

Let us take, by way of illustration, a man in the humble walks of life—a village carpenter, for instance,—and observe the various services he renders to society, and receives from it; we shall not fail to be struck with the enormous disproportion which is apparent.

This man employs his day’s labour in planing boards, and making tables and chests of drawers. He complains of his condition; yet in truth what does he receive from society in exchange for his work? [p049]

First of all, on getting up in the morning, he dresses himself; and he has himself personally made none of the numerous articles of which his clothing consists. Now, in order to put at his disposal this clothing, simple as it is, an enormous amount of labour, industry, and locomotion, and many ingenious inventions, must have been employed. Americans must have produced cotton, Indians indigo, Frenchmen wool and flax, Brazilians hides; and all these materials must have been transported to various towns where they have been worked up, spun, woven, dyed, etc.

Then he breakfasts. In order to procure him the bread which he eats every morning, land must have been cleared, enclosed, laboured, manured, sown; the fruits of the soil must have been preserved with care from pillage, and security must have reigned among an innumerable multitude of people; the wheat must have been cut down, ground into flour, kneaded, and prepared; iron, steel, wood, stone, must have been converted by industry into instruments of labour; some men must have employed animal force, others water power, etc.; all matters, of which each, taken singly, presupposes a mass of labour, whether we have regard to space or time, of incalculable amount.

In the course of the day this man will have occasion to use sugar, oil, and various other materials and utensils.

He sends his son to school, there to receive an education, which, although limited, nevertheless implies anterior study and research, and an extent of knowledge which startles the imagination.

He goes out. He finds the street paved and lighted.

A neighbour goes to law with him. He finds advocates to plead his cause, judges to maintain his rights, officers of justice to put the sentence in execution; all which implies acquired knowledge, and, consequently, intelligence and means of subsistence.

He goes to church. It is a stupendous monument, and the book which he carries thither is a monument perhaps still more stupendous, of human intelligence. He is taught morals, he has his mind enlightened, his soul elevated; and in order to this we must suppose that another man had previously frequented schools and libraries, consulted all the sources of human learning, and while so employed had been able to live without occupying himself directly with the wants of the body.

If our artizan undertakes a journey, he finds that, in order to save him time and exertion, other men have removed and levelled the soil, filled up valleys, hewed down mountains, united the banks of rivers, diminished friction, placed wheeled carriages on blocks [p050] of sandstone or bands of iron, and brought the force of animals and the power of steam into subjection to human wants.

It is impossible not to be struck with the measureless disproportion which exists between the enjoyments which this man derives from society and what he could obtain by his own unassisted exertions. I venture to say that in a single day he consumes more than he could himself produce in ten centuries.

What renders the phenomenon still more strange is, that all other men are in the same situation. Every individual member of society has absorbed millions of times more than he could himself produce; yet there is no mutual robbery. And, if we regard things more nearly, we perceive that the carpenter has paid, in services, for all the services which others have rendered to him. If we bring the matter to a strict reckoning, we shall be convinced that he has received nothing which he has not paid for by means of his modest industry; and that every one who, at whatever interval of time or space, has been employed in his service has received, or will receive, his remuneration.

The social mechanism, then, must be very ingenious and very powerful, since it leads to this singular result, that each man, even he whose lot is cast in the humblest condition, has more enjoyment in one day than he could himself produce in many ages.

Nor is this all. The mechanism of society will appear still more ingenious, if the reader will be pleased to turn his regards upon himself.

I suppose him a plain student. What is his business in Paris? How does he live? It cannot be disputed that society places at his disposal food, clothing, lodging, amusements, books, means of instruction, a multitude of things, in short, which would take a long time not only to produce, but even to explain how they were produced. And what services has this student rendered to society in return for all these things which have exacted so much labour, toil, fatigue, physical and intellectual effort, so many inventions, transactions, and conveyances hither and thither? None at all. He is only preparing to render services. Why, then, have so many millions of men abandoned to him the fruits of their positive, effective, and productive labour? Here is the explanation:—The father of this student, who was a lawyer, perhaps, or a physician, or a merchant, had formerly rendered services—it may be to society in China,—and had been remunerated, not by immediate services, but by a ‹title› to demand services, at the time, in the place and under the form that might be most suitable and convenient to him. [p051] It is of these past and distant services that society is now acquitting itself, and (astonishing as it seems) if we follow in thought the infinite range of transactions which must have had place in order to this result being effected, we shall see that every one has been remunerated for his labour and services; and that these ‹titles› have passed from hand to hand, sometimes divided into parts, sometimes grouped together, until, in the consumption of this student, the entire account has been squared and balanced. Is not this a very remarkable phenomenon?

We should shut our eyes to the light of day, did we fail to perceive that society could not present combinations so complicated, and in which civil and penal laws have so little part, unless it obeyed the laws of a mechanism wonderfully ingenious. The study of that mechanism is the business of ‹Political Economy›.

Another thing worthy of observation is, that of the incalculable number of transactions to which the student owed his daily subsistence, there was not perhaps a millionth part which contributed to it directly. The things of which he has now the enjoyment, and which are innumerable, were produced by men the greater part of whom have long since disappeared from the earth. And yet they were remunerated as they expected to be, although he who now profits by the fruits of their labours had done nothing for them. They knew him not; they will never know him. He who reads this page, at the very moment he is reading it, has the power, although perhaps he has no consciousness of it, to put in motion men of every country, of all races, I had almost said of all time—white, black, red, tawny—to make bygone generations, and generations still unborn, contribute to his present enjoyments; and he owes this extraordinary power to the services which his father had formerly rendered to other men, who apparently had nothing in common with those whose labour is now put in requisition. Yet despite all differences of time and space, so just and equitable a balance has been struck, that every one has been remunerated, and has received exactly what he calculated he ought to receive.

But, in truth, could all this have happened, and such phenomena been witnessed, unless society had had a natural and wise ‹organization›, which acts, as it were, unknown to us?

Much has been said in our day of inventing a new ‹organization›. Is it quite certain, that any thinker, whatever genius we may attribute to him, whatever power we may suppose him to possess, could imagine and introduce an organization superior to that of which I have just sketched some of the results? [p052]

But what would be thought of it if I described its machinery, its springs, and its motive powers?

The machinery consists of men, that is to say, of beings capable of learning, reflecting, reasoning, of being deceived and undeceived, and consequently of contributing to the amelioration or deterioration of the mechanism itself. They are capable of pleasure and pain; and it is that which makes them not only the wheels but the springs of the mechanism. They are also the motive power; for it is in them that the active principle resides. More than that, they are themselves the very end and object of the mechanism, since it is into individual pains and enjoyments that the whole definitely resolves itself.

Now it has been remarked, and it is unhappily obvious enough, that in the action, the development, and even the progress (by those who acknowledge progress) of this powerful mechanism, many of the wheels have been inevitably, fatally injured; and that, as regards a great number of human beings, the sum of unmerited suffering surpasses by much the sum of enjoyment.

This view of the subject has led many candid minds, many generous hearts, to suspect the mechanism itself. They have repudiated it, they have refused to study it, they have attacked, often with passion, those who have investigated and explained its laws. They have risen against the nature of things, and at length they have proposed to ‹organize› society upon a new plan, in which injustice and suffering and error shall have no place.

God forbid that I should set myself against intentions manifestly pure and philanthropical! But I should desert my principles, and do violence to the dictates of my own conscience, did I not declare that these men are in my opinion upon a wrong path.

In the first place, they are reduced, by the very nature of their propagandism, to the melancholy necessity of disowning the good which society develops, of denying its progress, of imputing to it all sufferings, of hunting after these with avidity, and exaggerating them beyond measure.

When a man believes that he has discovered a social organization different from that which results from the ordinary tendencies of human nature, it is quite necessary, in order to obtain acceptance for his invention, to paint the organization he wishes to abolish in the most sombre colours. Thus the publicists to whom I am alluding, after having proclaimed enthusiastically, and perhaps with exaggeration, the perfectibility of man, fall into the strange contradiction of maintaining that society is becoming more [p053] and more deteriorated. According to them, men are a thousand times more unhappy than they were in ancient times under the feudal ‹régime›, and the yoke of slavery. The world is become a hell. Were it possible to conjure up the Paris of the tenth century, I venture to think that such a thesis would be found untenable.

Then they are led to condemn the very mainspring of human action—I mean a regard to ‹personal interest›, because it has brought about such a state of things. Let us remark that man is so organized as to seek for enjoyment and avoid suffering. From this source I allow that all social evils take their rise—war, slavery, monopoly, privilege; but from the same source springs all that is good, since the satisfaction of wants and repugnance to suffering are the motives of human action. The business then is to discover whether this incitement to action, by its universality—from individual becoming social—is not in itself a principle of progress.

At all events, do the inventors of new organizations not perceive that this principle, inherent in the very nature of man, will follow them into their systems, and that there it will make greater havoc than in our natural organization, in which the interest and unjust pretensions of one are at least restrained by the resistance of all? These writers always make two inadmissible suppositions—the first is, that society, such as they conceive it, will be directed by infallible men denuded of this motive of self-interest; and, secondly, that the masses will allow themselves to be directed by these men.

Finally, these system-makers appear to give themselves no trouble about the means of execution. How are they to establish their system? How are they to induce all mankind at once to give up the principle upon which they now act—the attraction of enjoyment, and the repugnance to pain? It would be necessary, as Rousseau has said, ‹to change the moral and physical constitution of man›.

In order to induce men at once to throw aside, as a worn-out garment, the existing social order in which the human race has lived and been developed from the beginning to our day, to adopt an organization of human invention and become docile parts of another mechanism, there are, it seems to me, only two means which can be employed—Force, or Universal Consent.

The founder of the new system must have at his disposal a force capable of overcoming all resistance, so that humanity shall be in his hands only as so much melting wax to be moulded and [p054] fashioned at his pleasure—or he must obtain by persuasion an assent so complete, so exclusive, so blind even, as to render unnecessary the employment of force.

I defy any one to point out to me a third means of establishing or introducing into human practice a ‹Phalanstère›,[16] or any other artificial social organization.

Now, if there be only two assumed means, and if we have demonstrated that the one is as impracticable as the other, we have proved that these system-makers are losing both their time and their trouble.

As regards the disposal of a material force which should subject to them all the kings and peoples of the earth, this is what these dotards, senile as they are, have never dreamt of. King Alphonsus had presumption and folly enough to exclaim, that “If he had been taken into God’s counsels, the planetary system should have been better arranged.” But although he set his ‹wisdom› above that of the Creator, he was not mad enough to wish to struggle with the ‹power› of Omnipotence, and history does not tell us that he ever actually tried to make the stars turn according to the laws of his invention. Descartes likewise contented himself with constructing a tiny world with dice and strings, knowing well that he was not ‹strong› enough to remove the universe. We know no one but Xerxes who, in the intoxication of his power, dared to say to the waves, “Thus far shall ye come, and no farther.” The billows did not recede before Xerxes, but Xerxes retreated before the billows; and without this humiliating but wise precaution he would certainly have been drowned.

Force, then, is wanting to the organizers who would subject humanity to their experiments. When they shall have gained over to their cause the Russian autocrat, the shah of Persia, the khan of Tartary, and all the other tyrants of the world, they will find that they still want the power to distribute mankind into groups and classes, and to annihilate the general laws of property, exchange, inheritance, and family; for even in Russia, in Persia, and in Tartary, it is necessary to a certain extent to consult the feelings, habits, and prejudices of the people. Were the emperor of Russia to take it into his head to set about ‹altering the moral and physical constitution of his subjects›, it is probable that he would soon have a successor, and that his successor would be better advised than to pursue the experiment.

But since ‹force› is a means quite beyond the reach of our [p055] numerous system-makers, no other resource remains to them but to obtain ‹universal consent›.

There are two modes of obtaining this—namely, Persuasion and Imposture.

Persuasion! but have we ever found two minds in perfect accord upon all the points of a single science? How then are we to expect men of various tongues, races, and manners, spread over the surface of the globe, most of them unable to read, and destined to die without having even heard the name of the ‹reformer›, to accept with unanimity the universal science? What is it that you aim at? At changing the whole system of labour, exchanges, and social relations, domestic, civil, and religious; in a word, at altering the whole physical and moral constitution of man; and you hope to rally mankind, and bring them all under this new order of things, by conviction!

Verily you undertake no light or easy duty.

When a man has got the length of saying to his fellows:

“For the last five thousand years there has been a misunderstanding between God and man;

“From the days of Adam to our time, the human race have been upon a wrong course—and, if only a little confidence is placed in me. I shall soon bring them back to the right way;

“God desired mankind to pursue a different road altogether, but they have taken their own way, and hence evil has been introduced into the world. Let them turn round at my call, and take an opposite direction, and universal happiness will then prevail.”

When a man sets out in this style it is much if he is believed by five or six adepts; but between that and being believed by one thousand millions of men the distance is great indeed.

And then, remember that the number of social inventions is as vast as the domain of the imagination itself; that there is not a publicist or writer on social economy who, after shutting himself up for a few hours in his library, does not come forth with a ready-made plan of artificial organization in his hand; that the inventions of Fourier, Saint Simon, Owen, Cabet, Blanc, etc., have no resemblance whatever to each other; that every day brings to light a new scheme; and that people are entitled to have some little time given them for reflection before they are called upon to reject the social organization which God has vouchsafed them, and to make a definite and irrevocable choice among so many newly invented systems. For what would happen if, after having selected one of these plans, a better should present itself! Can the institutions [p056] of property, family, labour, exchange, be placed every day upon a new basis? Are we to be forced to change the organization of society every morning?

“Thus, then,” says Rousseau, “the legislator being able to employ effectively neither force nor persuasion, he is under the necessity of having recourse to an authority of another kind, which carries us along without violence, and persuades without convincing us.”

What is that authority? Imposture. Rousseau dares not give utterance to the word, but, according to his invariable practice in such a case, he places it behind the transparent veil of an eloquent tirade.

“This is the reason,” says he, “which in all ages has forced the Fathers of nations to have recourse to the intervention of heaven, and to give the credit of their own wisdom to the gods, in order that the people, submitting to the laws of the state as to those ‹of nature›, and acknowledging the same power in the formation of man and of the commonwealth, should obey ‹freely› and bear willingly the yoke of the public felicity. This ‹sublime› reason, which is above the reach of vulgar souls, is that ‹whose decisions the legislator puts into the mouth of the immortals›, in order to ‹carry along› by divine authority those who cannot be moved by considerations of human prudence. But it is not for every man to make ‹the gods› speak,” etc.

And in order that there may be no mistake, he cites Machiavel, and allows him to complete the idea: “Mai non fu alcuno ordinatore de leggi «STRAORDINARIE» in un popolo che non ricorresse a Dio.”

But why does Machiavel counsel us to have recourse to ‹God›, and Rousseau to ‹the gods›, to the ‹immortals›? The reader can answer that question for himself.

I do not indeed accuse the modern ‹Fathers of nations› of making use of these unworthy deceptions. But when we place ourselves in their point of view, we see that they readily allow themselves to be hurried along by the desire of success. When an earnest and philanthropical man is deeply convinced that he possesses a social secret by means of which all his fellow-men may enjoy in this world unlimited happiness,—when he sees clearly that he can practically establish that idea neither by force nor by reasoning, and that deception is his only resource, he is laid under a very strong temptation. We know that the ministers of religion themselves, who profess the greatest horror of untruth, have not rejected ‹pious frauds›; and we see by the example of Rousseau [p057] (that austere writer, who has inscribed at the head of all his works the motto, ‹Vitam impendere vero›), that even a proud philosophy can allow itself to be seduced by the attraction of a very different maxim, namely, ‹The end justifies the means›. Why then should we be surprised that modern ‹organisateurs› should think also “‹to place their own wisdom to the credit of the gods, to put their decisions in the mouths of the immortals, hurrying us along without violence and persuading without convincing us›!”

We know that, after the example of Moses, Fourier has preceded his Deuteronomy by a Genesis. Saint Simon and his disciples had gone still farther in their apostolic senilities. Others, more discreet, attached themselves to a latitudinarian faith, modified to suit their views, under the name of ‹néochristianisme›; and every one must be struck with the tone of mystic affectation which nearly all our modern reformers have introduced into their sermons.

Efforts of this kind have served only to prove one thing, and it is not unimportant—namely, that in our days the man is not always a prophet who wishes to be one. In vain he proclaims himself a god; he is believed by no one; neither by the public, nor by his compeers, nor by himself.

Since I have spoken of Rousseau, I may be permitted to make here some observations on that manufacturer of systems, inasmuch as they will serve to point out the distinctions between artificial and natural organization. This digression, besides, is not out of place, as the ‹Contrat Social› has again for some time been held forth as the oracle of the future.

Rousseau was convinced that ‹isolation› was man’s ‹natural state›, and, consequently, that ‹society› was a human invention. “‹The social order›,” he says in the outset, “‹comes not from nature›, and is therefore founded on convention.”

This philosopher, although a passionate lover of liberty, had a very low opinion of men. He believed them to be quite incapable of forming for themselves good institutions. The intervention of a founder, a legislator, a father of nations, was therefore indispensable.

“A people subjected to laws,” says he, “should be the authors of them. It belongs alone to those who associate to adjust the conditions of their association; but how are they to regulate them? By common consent, or by sudden inspiration? How should a blind multitude, who frequently know not what they want, because they rarely know what is good for them, accomplish of themselves an enterprise so great and so difficult as the formation of a system [p058] of laws? . . . Individuals perceive what is good, and reject it—the public wishes for what is good, but cannot discover it:—all are equally in want of guides. . . . Hence the necessity of a legislator.”

That legislator, as we have already seen, “not being able to employ force or reason, is under the necessity of having recourse to an authority of another kind;” that is to say, in plain terms, to deception.

It is impossible to give an idea of the immense height at which Rousseau places his legislator above other men:

“Gods would be necessary in order to give laws to men. . . . He who dares to found a nation must feel himself in a condition to change human nature, so to speak, . . . to alter the constitution of man in order to strengthen it. . . . He must take from man his own force, in order to give him that which is foreign to him. . . . The lawgiver is in all respects an extraordinary man in the state, . . . his employment is a peculiar and superior function which has nothing in common with ordinary government. . . . If it be true that a great prince is a rare character, what must a great lawgiver be? The first has only to follow the model which the other is to propose to him. The one is the mechanician who invents the machine—the other merely puts it together and sets it in motion.”

And what is the part assigned to human nature in all this? It is but the base material of which the machine is composed.

In sober reality, is this anything else than pride elevated to madness? Men are the materials of a machine, which the prince, the ruling power, sets in motion. The lawgiver proposes the model. The philosopher governs the lawgiver, placing himself thus at an immeasurable distance above the vulgar herd, above the ruler, above the lawgiver himself. He soars far above the human race, actuates it, transforms it, moulds it, or rather he teaches the Fathers of nations how they are to do all this.

But the founder of a nation must propose to himself a design. He has his human material to set in motion, and he must direct its movements to a definite result. As the people are deprived of the initiative, and all depends upon the legislator, he must decide whether the nation is to be commercial or agricultural, or a barbarous race of hunters and fishers; but it is desirable at the same time that the legislator should not himself be mistaken, and so do too much violence to the nature of things.

Men in ‹agreeing› to enter into an association, or rather in associating under the fiat of a lawgiver, have a precise and definite design. “Thus,” says Rousseau, “the Hebrews, and, more recently, the Arabs, had for their principal object religion; the [p059] Athenians, letters; Carthage and Tyre, commerce; Rhodes, navigation; Sparta, war; and Rome, virtue.”

What object is to determine us Frenchmen to leave the state of isolation and of nature, in order to form a society? Or rather—as we are only so much inert matter—the materials of a machine,—towards what object shall our great founder direct us?

Following the ideas of Rousseau, there could be but little room for learning, commerce, or navigation. War is a nobler object, and virtue still more so. But there is another, the noblest of all: “The end of every system of legislation is ‹liberty and equality›.”

But we must first of all discover what Rousseau understands by liberty. To enjoy liberty, according to him, is not to be free, but to ‹exercise the suffrage›, when we are “borne along without violence, and persuaded without being convinced;” for then “we obey with freedom, and bear willingly the yoke of the public felicity.”

“Among the Greeks,” he says, “all that the people had to do they did for themselves, they were constantly assembled in the market-place; they inhabited a genial climate; they were not avaricious; ‹slaves did all their work; their grand concern was their liberty›.”

“The English people,” he remarks in another place, “believe themselves free,—they are much mistaken. They are so only during the election of their members of parliament; the moment the election is over, they are slaves—they are nothing.”

The people, if they will be free, must, then, themselves perform all duties in connexion with the public service, for it is in that that liberty consists. They must be always voting and electing, always in the market-place. Woe to him who takes it into his head to work for his living! the moment a citizen begins to mind his own affairs, that instant (to use Rousseau’s favourite phrase) ‹tout est perdu›—all is over with him.

And yet the difficulty is by no means trifling. How are we to manage? for, after all, before we can either practise virtue, or exercise liberty, we must have the means of living.

We have already remarked the rhetorical veil under which Rousseau conceals the word ‹Imposture›. We shall now see how, by another dash of eloquence, he evades the conclusion of his whole work, which is ‹Slavery›.

“Your ungenial climate entails upon you additional wants. For six months of the year you cannot frequent the market-place, your hoarse voices cannot make themselves audible in the open air, and you fear poverty more than slavery.”

“You see clearly that you cannot be free.” [p060]

“What! liberty maintain itself only by the aid of servitude? Very likely!”

Had Rousseau stopt short at this dreadful word, the reader would have been shocked. It was necessary therefore to have recourse to imposing declamation, and Rousseau never fails in that.

“All things that are unnatural (it is society he is speaking of) are inconvenient, and civil society more so than all the rest. There are unfortunate situations in which one man cannot maintain his liberty but at the expense of another, and where the citizen cannot be entirely free unless the rigours of slavery are extreme. As for you, modern people, you have no slavery, but you are yourselves slaves. You purchase other men’s liberty with your own. In vain you boast of this advantage. I see in it rather cowardice than humanity.”

I ask, does not this mean: Modern people, you would do infinitely better not to be slaves, but to possess slaves?

I trust the reader will have the goodness to pardon this long digression, which is by no means useless or inopportune. Rousseau and his disciples of the Convention have been held up to us of late as the apostles of human fraternity. Men for materials, a ruler for mechanician, a father of nations for inventor, a philosopher above them all—imposture for means, slavery for result,—is this the fraternity which is promised us?

This work of Rousseau to which I have referred—the ‹Contrat Social›—appears to me well fitted to exhibit the characteristics of these artificial social organizations. The inventors of such systems set out with the idea that society is a state contrary to nature, and they seek to subject humanity to different combinations. They forget that its motive power, its spring of action, is in itself. They regard men as base materials, and aspire to impart to them movement and will, sentiment and life; placing themselves at an immeasurable height above the whole human race. These are features common to all the inventors of social organizations. The inventions are different—the inventors are alike.

Among the new arrangements which feeble mortals are invited to make trial of, there is one which is presented to us in terms worthy of attention. Its formula is: ‹Association voluntary and progressive›.

But ‹Political Economy› is founded exactly on the datum, that ‹society› is nothing else than ‹association› (such as the above three words describe it)—association, very imperfect at first, because man is imperfect; but improving as man improves, that is to say, ‹progressive›. [p061]

Is your object to effect a more intimate association between labour, capital, and talent, insuring thereby to the members of the human family a greater amount of material enjoyment—enjoyment more equally distributed? If such associations are ‹voluntary›; if force and constraint do not intervene; if the cost is defrayed by those who enter these associations, without drawing upon those who refuse to enter them, in what respect are they repugnant to Political Economy? Is it not the business of Political Economy, as a science, to examine the various forms in which men may unite their powers, and divide their employments, with a view to greater and more widely diffused prosperity? Does trade not frequently afford us examples of two, three, or four persons uniting to form such associations? Is ‹Métayage›[17] not a sort of informal association of capital and labour? Have we not in recent times seen joint stock companies formed which afford to the smallest capitals the opportunity of taking part in the most extensive enterprizes? Have we not certain manufactures in which it is sought to give the labourers an interest in the profits? Does Political Economy condemn those efforts of men to make their industry more productive and profitable? Does she affirm anywhere that human nature has reached perfection? Quite the contrary. I believe that there is no science which demonstrates more clearly that society is still in its infancy.

But whatever hopes we may entertain as to the future, whatever ideas we may conceive as to the measures that men may adopt for the improvement of their mutual relations, and the diffusion of happiness, knowledge, and morality, we must never forget that society is an organization which has for its element a moral and intelligent agent, endued with free will, and susceptible of improvement. If you take away Liberty from man, he becomes nothing else than a rude and wretched machine.

Liberty would seem not to be wanted in our days. In France, the privileged land of fashion, freedom appears to be no longer in repute. For myself, I say that he who rejects liberty has no faith in human nature. Of late the distressing discovery seems to have been made that liberty leads inevitably to monopoly.[18] This monstrous union, this unnatural conjunction, does not exist; it is the imaginary fruit of an error which the light of Political Economy speedily [p062] dissipates. Freedom engender monopoly! Oppression the offspring of liberty! To affirm this is to affirm that the tendencies of human nature are radically bad—bad in themselves, in their nature, in their essence. It is to affirm that the natural bent of man is to deterioration; that the human mind is irresistibly attracted towards error. To what end, then, our schools, our studies, our inquiries, our discussions, unless to accelerate our progress towards that fatal descent; since to teach men to judge, to distinguish, to select, is only to teach them to commit suicide? And if the tendencies of human nature are essentially perverse, where are the organizers of new social systems to place the fulcrum of that lever by which they hope to effect their changes? It must be somewhere beyond the limits of the present domain of humanity. Do they search for it in themselves—in their own minds and hearts? They are not gods yet; they are men, and tending, consequently, along with the whole human race, towards the fatal abyss. Shall they invoke the intervention of the state? The state also is composed of men. They must therefore prove that they form a distinct class, for whom the general laws of society are not intended, since it is their province to make these laws. Unless this be proved the difficulty is not removed, it is not even diminished.

Let us not thus condemn human nature before studying its laws, its forces, its energies, its tendencies. Newton, after he discovered attraction, never pronounced the name of God without uncovering his head. Yet the celestial mechanism is subject to laws of which it has no consciousness; and the social world is as much superior to that which called forth the admiration of Newton as mind is superior to matter. How much more reason, then, have we to bow before Omniscience when we behold the social mechanism, which universal intelligence no less pervades (‹mens agitat molem›); and which presents, moreover, this extraordinary phenomenon, that every atom of which it is composed is an animated thinking being, endued with marvellous energy, and with that principle of all morality, all dignity, all progress, the exclusive attribute of man—«Liberty». [p063]

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

II. WANTS, EFFORTS, SATISFACTIONS.[19]

What a profoundly afflicting spectacle France presents to us!

It would be difficult to say if anarchy has passed from ideas to facts, or from facts to ideas, but it is certain that it pervades all, and abounds everywhere.

The poor rise up against the rich, men without fortune or profession against property; the populace against the bourgeoisie; labour against capital; agriculture against manufactures; the country against the town; the provinces against the metropolis; the denizen against the stranger.

And theorists step in, and form a system of this antagonism. “It is the ‹inevitable› result, they say, of the nature of things, that is to say, of Liberty. Man is endued with ‹self-love›, and hence comes all the evil; for since he is endued with self-love, he seeks to better his own condition, and he can only do so by entailing misery on his brethren. Let us hinder him, then, from following his inclinations; let us stifle his liberty, change the human heart, substitute other motives for those which God has placed there: let us invent and constitute an artificial society!”

When they have got this length, an unlimited career opens itself to their reason or imagination. If they are possessed of a disputatious turn and a peevish temper, they enter with eagerness into an analysis of Evil. They dissect it, they put it in the crucible, they interrogate it, they remount to its causes, they pursue it to its consequences; and, as by reason of our native imperfection there is nothing in which Evil is not present, they asperse and disparage everything. They exhibit to us Property, Family, Capital, Labour, Competition, Liberty, Personal Interest, only in one of their aspects, and always on the dark side, the side which injures or [p064] destroys. Their lectures on the natural history of man are, if I may use the expression, clinical lectures—the subject is always on his deathbed. They impiously defy God to reconcile what is said of His infinite goodness with the existence of evil. They stain and sully everything; they disgust us with everything; they dispute everything; and yet they obtain only a melancholy and dangerous success with those classes whom suffering disposes but too much to despair.

If, on the other hand, such theorists have a heart open to benevolence, a mind which is pleased with illusions, they rush to the region of chimeras. They dream of an Oceania, an Atlantis, a Salente, a Spensonie, an Icarie, a Utopia, a Phalanstère,[20] and they people these imaginary regions with a docile, loving, devoted race who always avoid setting themselves up against the fancies of the dreamer. He installs himself complacently in the seat of Providence. He arranges, he disposes, he moulds men after his own fancy. Nothing stops him. He never encounters deceit. He resembles the Roman preacher, who, after having transformed his square cap into Rousseau, refuted warmly the ‹Contrat Social›, and triumphantly reduced his adversary to silence. It is thus that our Reformers dazzle those who suffer by means of seductive pictures of ideal felicity, well fitted to disgust them with the hard necessities of real life.

The theorist, however, rarely confines himself to such innocent chimeras. The moment he aims at leading mankind, he finds the people impatient of attempted transformations. Men resist, they get angry. In order to gain them over, he harangues them not only on the happiness they reject, but more especially on the evils from which he professes to deliver them. He finds it impossible to make too striking a picture. He is continually charging his palette and deepening his colours. He hunts out the evils of existing society with as much zeal as another employs in discovering the good. He sees nothing but sufferings, rags, leanness, starvation, pain, oppression. He is enraged that society has not a deeper sense of its misery. He neglects no means of making it throw off its insensibility, and, having begun with benevolence, he ends with misanthropy.[21]

God forbid that I should call in question the sincerity of any one. But, in truth, I cannot explain to myself how these writers, [p065] who see a radical antagonism in the natural order of things, can ever taste a moment’s calm or repose. Discouragement and despair would seem to be their unhappy portion. For, to sum up all, if nature is mistaken in making ‹personal interest› the mainspring of human society (and the mistake is manifest if it be admitted that the interests of society are fatally antagonistic), how do they not perceive that the evil is without remedy? Being men ourselves, and being able to have recourse only to men, where can be our ‹point d’appui› for changing the tendencies of human nature? Shall we invoke the Police, the Magistracy, the State, the Legislature? That would only be to invoke men, that is to say, beings subject to the common infirmity. Shall we address ourselves to Universal Suffrage? That would be to give the freest course to the universal tendency.

Only one expedient remains to these gentlemen. It is to hold themselves out as discoverers, as prophets, made of different clay from their fellow-men, and deriving their inspiration from a different source. This is the reason, no doubt, why we find them so frequently enveloping their systems and their councils in a mystic phraseology. But if they are ambassadors of God, let them exhibit their credentials. In effect, what they demand is sovereign power, despotism the most absolute that ever existed. They not only wish to govern our acts, but to revolutionize our thoughts. Do they hope that mankind will believe them on their word, when they are not able to agree among themselves?

But before even examining their projects of artificial societies, is there not one point upon which it is necessary to assure ourselves, namely, whether they are not mistaken in the very foundation of their argument? Is it quite certain that «MEN’S INTERESTS ARE NATURALLY ANTAGONISTIC»; that an irremediable cause of inequality is fatally developed in the natural order of human society under the influence of personal interest, and that Providence is manifestly in error in ordaining that the progress of man should be towards ease and competency?

This is what I propose to inquire into.

Taking man as it has pleased God to constitute him, capable of foresight and experience, perfectible, endued with self-love, it is true,—but self-love qualified by the sympathetic principle, and at all events restrained and balanced by encountering an analogous sentiment universally prevailing in the medium in which it acts,—I proceed to inquire what social order must necessarily result from the combination and free play of such elements.

If we find that this result is nothing else than a progressive [p066] march towards prosperity, improvement, and equality,—a sustained approximation of all classes towards the same physical, intellectual, and moral level, accompanied by a constant elevation of that level, the ways of God to man will be vindicated. We shall learn with delight that there is no gap, no blank, in creation, and that the social order, like everything else, attests the existence of those ‹harmonic laws› before which Newton bowed his head, and which elicited from the Psalmist the exclamation, “‹The heavens declare the glory of God.›”

Rousseau has said, “If I were a prince or a legislator, I should not lose my time in pointing out what was necessary to be done—I should do it or hold my tongue.”

I am not a ‹prince›, but the confidence of my fellow-citizens has made me a ‹legislator›. Perhaps they will tell me that this is the time for me to act and not to write.

Let them pardon me. Whether it be truth itself which urges me on, or that I am the dupe of an illusion. I have never ceased to feel the want of concentrating those ideas which have hitherto failed to find acceptance when presented in detached portions. I think I discover in the play of the natural laws of society sublime and consoling ‹harmonies›. What I see, or think I see, ought I not to try to exhibit to others, in order to rally round a sentiment of concord and fraternity many unsettled minds, many imbittered hearts? If, when the much-loved vessel of the state is beat by the tempest, I sometimes appear to absent myself from my post, in order to collect my scattered thoughts, it is because I feel my feeble hands unfitted for the work. Is it, besides, to betray my mission, to reflect upon the causes of the tempest itself, and endeavour to act upon these causes? And then, what I find I cannot do to-day, who knows but it may be given me to accomplish to-morrow?

I shall begin by establishing some Economical ideas. Availing myself of the works of my predecessors, I shall endeavour to sum up the science in one principle—true, simple, and prolific—of which we have had a glimpse from the beginning, to which we are constantly drawing nearer and nearer, and of which, perhaps, the time is now come to fix the formula. By the light thus afforded, I shall afterwards essay the solution of some yet disputed problems—Competition, Machinery, Foreign trade, Luxury, Capital, Rent, etc. I shall note some of the relations, or, I should rather say, the harmonies of Political Economy, with the other moral and social sciences, glancing at the important subjects indicated by the terms—Personal Interest, Property, Community, Liberty, [p067] Equality, Responsibility, Solidarity, Fraternity, Unity. Last of all, I shall invite attention to the artificial obstacles which the pacific, regular, and progressive development of human society encounters. From these two ideas—Natural harmonic Laws—Artificial disturbing Causes—will be deduced the solution of the Social Problem.

It is easy to see that there are two rocks ahead upon which this undertaking may founder. In the middle of the vortex in which we are carried along, if this work is abstruse, it will not be read; if it obtains readers, the questions of which it treats will be but glanced at. How are we to reconcile the exactions of the reader with the requirements of science? To satisfy all conditions both in form and substance, each word would require to be weighed, and have its proper place assigned to it. It is thus that the crystal is formed drop by drop in silence and obscurity. Retirement, quiet, time, freedom from care—all are wanting to me—and I am forced to trust to the sagacity of the public, and throw myself on its indulgence.

The subject of Political Economy is Man.

But it does not embrace the whole range of human affairs. The science of morals has appropriated all that comes within the attractive regions of Sympathy—the religious sentiment, paternal and maternal tenderness, filial piety, love, friendship, patriotism, charity, politeness. To Political Economy is left only the cold domain of Personal interest. This is unjustly forgotten when Economical science is reproached with wanting the charm and unction of morals. How can it be otherwise? Dispute its right to existence as a science, but don’t force it to counterfeit what it is not, and cannot be. If human transactions which have wealth for their object are vast enough, complicated enough, to afford materials for a special science, leave to it its own attractions, such as they are, and don’t force it to speak of men’s Interests in the language of Sentiment. For my own part, I believe that little good has been effected of late in exacting from writers on Political Economy a tone of enthusiastic sentimentality which in their mouth can only be declamation. Of what do they treat? Of transactions which take place between people who know nothing of each other, who owe each other nothing but common Justice, who seek to defend or advance certain interests. It has to do with claims and pretensions which limit and restrain each other, and with which disinterestedness and devotion have nothing to do. Take a lyre, and chant such themes! As well might Lamartine sing his odes with the aid of the logarithm tables. [p068]

Not that Political Economy is without its poetry. There is poetry wherever order and harmony exist. But it is in the results, not in the demonstrations. It is brought out, not created. Kepler did not give himself out as a poet, and yet the laws which he discovered are the true poetry of mind.

Thus, Political Economy regards man only in one aspect, and our first care must be to study man in that point of view. This is the reason why we cannot avoid going back to the primary phenomena of human ‹Sensibility› and ‹Activity›. Start not, gentle reader! We shall not detain you long in those cloudy regions of metaphysics, and we shall borrow from that science only such notions as are clear, simple, and, if possible, incontestable.

The soul, or (to get rid of the spiritual question) man, is endued with ‹Sensibility›. Let this sensibility be either in the soul or in the body, man, as a ‹passive› being, always experiences ‹sensations› either painful or agreeable. As an ‹active› being, he makes an effort to drive away the one set of sensations and to multiply the other. The result, which affects him again as a ‹passive› being, may be called ‹Satisfaction›.

The general idea of ‹Sensibility› springs from other ideas which are more precise: pain, want, desire, taste, appetite, on one side; and, on the other, pleasure, enjoyment, competence.

Between these two extremes a middle term is interposed, and from the general idea of ‹Activity› spring the more precise ideas of pain, effort, fatigue, labour, production.

In analyzing ‹Sensibility› and ‹Activity› we encounter a word common to both; the word ‹Pain›. To experience certain sensations is a ‹pain›, and we cannot put an end to it but by an effort, which is also a ‹pain›. We ‹feel pains›; we ‹take pains›. This advertises us that here below we have only a choice of evils.

In the aggregate of these phenomena all is ‹personal›, as well the Sensation which precedes the effort, as the Satisfaction which follows it.

We cannot doubt, then, that ‹Personal interest› is the great mainspring of human nature. It must be perfectly understood, however, that this term is here employed as the expression of a universal fact, incontestable, and resulting from the organization of man,—and not of a critical judgment on his conduct and actions, as if, instead of it, we should employ the word ‹egotism›. Moral science would be rendered impossible, if we were to pervert beforehand the terms of which it is compelled to make use.

Human effort does not always come necessarily to place itself between the sensation and the satisfaction. Sometimes the [p069] satisfaction comes of its own accord. More frequently the effort is exercised upon ‹materials›, by the intervention of ‹forces› which nature has placed gratuitously at our disposal.

If we give the name of ‹Utility› to all which effects the satisfaction of wants, there are, then, utilities of two kinds:—one, vouchsafed to us gratuitously by Providence; the other (if I may use the expression), requiring to be purchased by an ‹Effort›.

Thus the complete evolution embraces, or may embrace, these four ideas:

Wants {Gratuitous Utility, Onerous Utility} Satisfaction.

Man is endued with progressive faculties. He compares, he foresees, he learns, he reforms himself, by experience. If want is a ‹pain›, effort is a ‹pain› also, and there is therefore no reason why he should not seek to diminish the latter, when he can do so without diminishing the satisfaction, which is his ultimate object. This is the reason of his success when he comes to replace ‹onerous› by ‹gratuitous Utility›, which is the perpetual object of his search.

It follows from the ‹interested› nature of the human heart, that we constantly seek to increase the proportion which our Satisfactions bear to our Efforts; and it results from the intelligent nature of our mind that we manage at each step to augment the proportion which gratuitous bears to onerous Utility.

Every time a success of this nature is achieved, a part of our efforts is, so to speak, rendered disposable, and we have the option of either indulging ourselves with longer repose, or of working for the satisfaction of new desires, if these are strong enough to stimulate our activity.

Such is the principle of all economic progress; and it is easy to see that it is the principle also of all deception; for progress and error have both their root in that marvellous gift of God to man—‹Free will›.

We are endued with the faculty of comparing, of judging, of choosing, and of acting in consequence; which implies that we may form a right or a wrong judgment, and make a good or a bad choice. It is never useless to remind men of this when they talk of Liberty.

We never deceive ourselves, it is true, regarding the particular nature of our sensations, and we discern with an infallible instinct whether they are painful or agreeable. But how many various forms may our errors take! We may be labouring under a mistake as to the cause, and pursue with ardour, as likely to afford us enjoyment, what can only indict pain upon us; or we may be [p070] mistaken as to the chain of consequences, and be ignorant that an immediate satisfaction will be followed by greater ulterior pain; or, again, we may mistake the relative importance of our wants and our desires.

Not only may we thus give a false direction to our efforts through ignorance, but also through a perverse will. “Man,” says M. Bonald, “is an intelligence served by organs.” What! is there nothing else in us? Have we no passions?

When we speak of harmony, then, we must not be understood to mean that the natural arrangement of the social world is such that error and vice have been excluded from it. To maintain that thesis in the face of plain facts would be to carry the love of system to madness. To have harmony without dissonance man must either be devoid of free will or he must be infallible. All we say is this, that the great social tendencies are harmonious, inasmuch as—all error leading to deception and all vice to chastisement—the dissonances have a continual tendency to disappear.

* * * * *

A first and vague notion of property may be deduced from these premises. Since it is the individual who experiences the sensation, the desire, the want,—since it is he who makes the ‹Effort›,—the satisfaction must necessarily redound to him, for otherwise the effort would be without cause or reason.

The same may be said of ‹Inheritance›. No theory, no declamation, is required in order to make fathers love their children. People who sit down to manufacture imaginary societies may think it strange, but it is so;—a father makes as many ‹Efforts› for the ‹satisfaction› of his children as for his own. Perhaps he makes more. If, then, an unnatural law should interdict the transmission of property, not only would that law violate property by the very act, but it would hinder its formation by abandoning to inaction one-half at least of our ‹Efforts›.

We shall have occasion to return to the subjects of Personal interest, Property, and Inheritance. Let us, in the first instance, mark out the limits of the science with which we have more immediately to do.

I am not one of those who think that a science, as such, has natural and unalterable boundaries. In the domain of ideas, as in that of facts, all things are bound up and linked together; truths run into one another; and there is no science which, in order to be complete, might not be made to include all. It has been said with reason that to an infinite intelligence there is but a single verity. It is, then, our weakness which obliges us to study separately a [p071] certain order of phenomena, and the classifications which result from it cannot escape a certain decree of arbitrariness.

The true merit is to explain accurately the facts, their causes, and their consequences. It is also a merit, although a much less and a purely relative one, to determine, not rigorously—for that is impossible—but rationally, the order of the facts which we propose to study.

I say this in order that it may not be supposed that I intend to criticise my predecessors if I give to Political Economy limits somewhat different from those which they have assigned to that science.

Economists have of late been reproached with addicting themselves too much to the study of ‹Wealth›. It has been wished that they had found a place in their science for all that, directly or indirectly, contributes to the happiness or sufferings of humanity. They have even been supposed to deny everything which they did not profess to teach—for example, the phenomena of sympathy, which is as natural to the heart of man as the principle of self-interest. It is as if they accused the mineralogist of denying the existence of the animal kingdom. What! Wealth, the laws of its production, of its distribution, of its consumption,—is not this a subject vast enough, and important enough, to be made the object of a special science? If the conclusions of the Economist were at variance with those of morals and politics. I could conceive ground for the accusation. One might say to him, “In limiting your science you are mistaken, for it is not possible for two verities to run counter to each other.” Perhaps one result of the work which I now submit to the public may be, that the Science of Wealth will be found to be in perfect harmony with all the other sciences.

Of the three terms comprehended in the human destinies—Sensation, Effort, Satisfaction—the first and the last are always and necessarily confounded in the same individuality. It is impossible to imagine them separated. We can conceive a sensation unsatisfied, a want unappeased, but it is quite impossible to suppose the ‹want› to be in one man and the ‹satisfaction› to be in another.

If the same observation applied to the middle term, ‹Effort›, man would be a being completely solitary. The Economic phenomena would then manifest themselves in an isolated individual. There might be a juxtaposition of persons, but there could be no society; there might be a Personal, but not a Political, Economy.

But it is not so. It is very possible, and very often happens, that the ‹wants› of one owe their ‹satisfaction› to the ‹efforts› of [p072] another. This is a fact. If any one of us were to pass in review all the satisfactions he enjoys, he would acknowledge that he owes them chiefly to efforts which he has not himself made; and in the same way, the labour which we undergo, each in his own profession, goes almost always to satisfy the desires of others.

This tells us, that it is neither in the wants nor in the satisfactions (phenomena essentially personal and intransmissible), but in the nature of the mean term, ‹human Efforts›, that we must search for the ‹social› principle—the origin of Political Economy.

It is in fact to this faculty, given to men, and to men alone, among all creatures, to ‹work the one for the other›; it is this transmission of efforts, this exchange of services, with all the infinite and involved combinations to which it gives rise, through time and through space, it is «THIS» precisely which constitutes Economic Science, points out its origin, and determines its limits.

I say, then:

‹Every effort, capable of satisfying, on condition of a return, the wants of a person other than the man who makes the effort, and consequently the wants and satisfactions relative to this species of effort, constitute the domain of Political Economy.›

Thus, to give an example: the act of breathing, although it includes the three terms which constitute the Economic phenomenon, does not pertain to that science, and we see the reason. What we have here to do with is a series of facts, of which not only the two extremes—want and satisfaction—are incapable of transmission (they are always so); but the mean term, ‹Effort›, is also incapable of transmission. To enable us to respire we invoke the assistance of no one; in that there is neither a service to be received nor a service to render. The fact is in its nature individual, not ‹social›, and consequently cannot enter into a science which is essentially one of relation, as its very name indicates.

But if, in peculiar circumstances, people were to render each other assistance to enable them to breathe, as when a workman descends in a diving-bell, when a physician treats a patient for pulmonary complaints, or when the police take measures for purifying the air, in such cases there is a want satisfied by a person other than the person who experiences the want; there is a service rendered; and respiration itself, as far at least as concerns assistance and remuneration, is brought within the sphere of Political Economy.

It is not necessary that the transaction should be completed, it is sufficient that it is possible, in order to impart to the ‹labour› employed an ‹economic› character. The labourer who raises corn [p073] for his own use accomplishes an economic fact in this respect that the corn is capable of being exchanged.

To make an effort in order to satisfy another’s wants is to render him a ‹service›. If a service is stipulated in return, there is an exchange of ‹services›; and as this is the most ordinary case, Political Economy may be defined ‹the theory of Exchange›.

Whatever may be for one of the contracting parties the urgency of the want, or for the other the intensity of the effort, if the exchange is free, the two services exchanged are ‹worth each other›. Value, then, consists in the comparative appreciation of reciprocal ‹services›, and Political Economy again may be defined ‹the theory of Value›.

I have just defined Political Economy, and marked out its domain, without mentioning an essential element, ‹gratuitous Utility›.

All authors have remarked that we derive a multitude of satisfactions from this source. They denominate these utilities, such as air, water, the light of the sun, etc., ‹natural wealth›, in contradistinction to ‹social wealth›, and having done so, they take no more notice of them; and in fact it would seem that, as they give rise to no effort, to no exchange, to no service, as (being destitute of value) they figure in no inventory of goods, they should not be admitted into the domain of Political Economy.

This exclusion would be rational if ‹gratuitous› utility were a fixed invariable quantity, always separated from ‹onerous› utility; but they are constantly mixed up, and in inverse proportions. Man’s constant endeavour is to substitute the one for the other, that is to say, to arrive, by means of natural and gratuitous agents, at the same results as by efforts. He accomplishes by the wind, by gravitation, by heat, by the elasticity of the air, what he accomplished at first only by muscular exertion.

Now what happens? Although the effect is equally useful, the effort is less. Less effort implies less service, and less service implies less value. Each step of progress, then, annihilates value; but how? Not by suppressing the useful effect, but by substituting gratuitous for onerous utility, natural for social wealth. In one sense the portion of value thus annihilated is excluded from the domain of Political Economy, just as it is excluded from our inventories. It is no longer exchanged, bought, or sold, and mankind enjoy it without effort and almost without consciousness. It is no longer accounted relative wealth, but is ranked among the gifts of God.

But, on the other hand, if science takes it no longer into account, the error is assuredly committed of losing sight of what [p074] under all circumstances is the main, the essential thing—the result, the ‹useful effect›. In that case we overlook the strongest tendencies towards community and equality, and discover much less of harmony in the social order. If this book is destined to advance Political Economy a single step, it will be by keeping constantly before the eyes of the reader that portion of ‹value› which is successively annihilated, and recovered, under the form of ‹gratuitous utility›, by mankind at large.

I shall here make an observation which will prove how frequently the sciences unite and nearly run into each other.

I have just defined ‹service›. It is the ‹effort› in one man, while the ‹want› and the ‹satisfaction› are in another. Sometimes the service is rendered gratuitously, without remuneration, without any service being exacted in return. It proceeds, then, from the principle of sympathy rather than from the principle of self-interest. It constitutes gift, not exchange. Consequently it would seem to appertain not to Political Economy (which is the theory of exchange), but to morals. In fact, acts of that nature, by reason of their motive, are rather moral than economical. We shall see, however, that, by reason of their effects, they concern the science which now engages us. On the other hand, services rendered for an onerous consideration, on condition of a return, and, by reason of that motive (essentially economic), do not on that account remain excluded from the domain of morals, in so far as their effects are concerned.

Thus these two branches of knowledge have an infinite number of points of contact; and as two truths cannot be antagonistic, when the economist ascribes to a phenomenon injurious consequences, and the moralist ascribes to it beneficial effects, we may affirm that one or other of them is mistaken. It is thus that the sciences verify and fortify one another. [p075]

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

III. WANTS OF MAN

It is perhaps impossible, and, at any rate, it would not be of much use, to present a complete and methodical catalogue of human wants. Nearly all those which are of real importance are comprised in the following enumeration:—

Respiration (I retain here that want, as marking the boundary where the transmission of labour or exchange of services begins)—Food—Clothing—Lodging—Preservation or re-establishment of Health—Locomotion—Security—Instruction—Diversion—Sense of the beautiful.

Wants exist. This is a fact. It would be puerile to inquire whether we should have been better without wants, and why God has made us subject to them.

It is certain that man ‹suffers›, and even dies, when he cannot satisfy the wants which belong to his organization. It is certain that he ‹suffers›, and may even die, when in satisfying certain of his wants he indulges to excess.

We cannot satisfy the greater part of our wants without pain or trouble, which may be considered as ‹suffering›. The same may be said of the act by which, exercising a noble control over our appetites, we impose on ourselves a privation.

Thus, ‹suffering› is inevitable, and there remains to us only a choice of evils. Nothing comes more home to us than suffering, and hence ‹personal interest›—the sentiment which is branded now-a-days with the names of egotism and individualism—is indestructible. Nature has placed ‹sensibility› at the extremity of our nerves, and at all the avenues to the heart and mind, as an advanced guard, to give us notice when our satisfactions are either defective or in excess. Pain has, then, a purpose, a mission. We are asked frequently, whether the existence of evil can be reconciled with the infinite goodness of the Creator—a formidable [p076] problem that philosophy will always discuss, and never probably be able to solve. As far as Political Economy is concerned, we must take man as he is, inasmuch as it is not given to imagination to figure to itself—far less can the reason conceive—a sentient and mortal being exempt from pain. We should try in vain to comprehend sensibility without pain, or man without sensibility.

In our days, certain sentimentalist schools reject as false all social science which does not go the length of establishing a system by means of which suffering may be banished from the world. They pass a severe judgment on Political Economy because it admits, what it is impossible to deny, the existence of suffering. They go farther—they make Political Economy responsible for it. It is as if they were to attribute the frailty of our organs to the physiologist who makes them the object of his study.

Undoubtedly we may acquire a temporary popularity, attract the regards of suffering classes, and irritate them against the natural order of society, by telling them that we have in our head a plan of artificial social arrangement which excludes pain in every form. We may even pretend to appropriate God’s secret, and to interpret His presumed will, by banishing evil from the world. And there will not be wanting those who will treat as ‹impious› a science which exposes such pretensions, and who will accuse it of overlooking or denying the foresight of the Author of things.

These schools, at the same time, give us a frightful picture of the actual state of society, not perceiving that if it be ‹impious› to foresee suffering in the future, it is equally so to expose its existence in the past or in the present. For the infinite admits of no limits; and if a single human being has since the creation experienced suffering, that fact would entitle us to admit, without ‹impiety›, that suffering has entered into the plan of Providence.

Surely it is more philosophical and more manly to acknowledge at once great natural facts which not only exist, but apart from which we can form no just or adequate conception of human nature.

Man, then, is subject to suffering, and consequently society is also subject to it.

Suffering discharges a function in the individual, and consequently in society.

An accurate investigation of the social laws discloses to us that the mission of suffering is gradually to destroy its own causes, to circumscribe suffering itself within narrower limits, and finally to assure the preponderance of the Good and the Fair, by enabling us to purchase or merit that preponderance. [p077]

The nomenclature we have proposed places material wants in the foreground.

The times in which we live force me to put the reader on his guard against a species of sentimental affectation which is now much in vogue.

There are people who hold very cheap what they disdainfully term ‹material wants›, ‹material satisfactions›: they will say, as Belise says to Chrysale,

“Le corps, cette guenille, est-il d’une importance, D’un prix à mériter seulement qu’on y pense?”

And although, in general, pretty well off themselves, they will blame me for having indicated as one of our most pressing wants, that of ‹food›, for example.

I acknowledge undoubtedly that moral advancement is a higher thing than physical sustenance. But are we so stuffed with declamatory affectation that we can no longer venture to say, that before we can set about moral culture, we must have the means of living. Let us guard ourselves against these puerilities, which obstruct science. In wishing to pass for philanthropical we cease to be truthful; for it is contrary both to reason and to fact to represent moral development, self-respect, the cultivation of refined sentiments, as preceding the requirements of simple preservation. This sort of prudery is quite modern. Rousseau, that enthusiastic panegyrist of the ‹State of Nature›, steered clear of it; and a man endued with exquisite delicacy, of a tenderness of heart full of unction, a spiritualist even to quietism, and, towards himself, a stoic—I mean Fénélon—has said that, “After all, solidity of mind consists in the desire to be exactly instructed as to how those things are managed which lie at the foundation of human life—all great affairs turn upon that.”

Without pretending, then, to classify our wants in a rigorously exact order, we may say, that man cannot direct his efforts to the satisfaction of moral wants of the highest and most elevated kind until after he has provided for those which concern his preservation and sustenance. Whence, without going farther, we may conclude that every legislative measure which tells against the material well-being of communities injures the moral life of nations,—a ‹harmony› which I commend, in passing, to the attention of the reader.

And since the occasion presents itself, I will here mark another.

Since the inexorable necessities of material life are an obstacle to moral and intellectual culture, it follows that we ought to find more virtue among wealthy than among poor nations and classes. [p078] Good Heaven! what have I just said, and with what clamour shall I be assailed! But the truth is, it is a perfect mania of our times to attribute all disinterestedness, all self-sacrifice, all which constitutes the greatness and moral beauty of man, to the poorer classes, and this mania has of late been still more developed by a revolution, which, bringing these classes to the surface of society, has not failed to surround them with a crowd of flatterers.

I don’t deny that wealth, opulence, especially where it is very unequally spread, tends to develop certain special vices.

But is it possible to admit as a general proposition that virtue is the privilege of poverty, and vice the unhappy and unfailing companion of ease? This would be to affirm that moral and intellectual improvement, which is only compatible with a certain amount of leisure and comfort, is detrimental to intelligence and morality.

I appeal to the candour of the suffering classes themselves. To what horrible ‹dissonances› would such a paradox conduct us!

We must then conclude, that human nature has the frightful alternative presented to it, either to remain eternally wretched, or advance gradually on the road to vice and immorality. Then all the forces which conduct us to wealth—such as activity, economy, skill, honesty—are the seeds of vice; while those which tie us to poverty—improvidence, idleness, dissipation, carelessness—are the precious germs of virtue. Could we conceive in the moral world a dissonance more discouraging? Or, were it really so, who would dare to address or counsel the people? You complain of your sufferings (we must say to them), and you are impatient to see an end of these sufferings. You groan at finding yourselves under the yoke of the most imperious material wants, and you sigh for the hour of your deliverance, for you desire leisure to make your voice heard in the political world and to protect your interests. You know not what you desire, or how fatal success would prove to you. Ease, competence, riches, develop only vice. Guard, then, religiously your poverty and your virtue.

The flatterers of the people, then, fall into a manifest contradiction when they point to the region of opulence as an impure sink of egotism and vice, and, at the same time, urge them on—and frequently in their eagerness by the most illegitimate means—to a region which they deem so unfortunate.

Such discordances are never encountered in the natural order of society. It is impossible to suppose that all men should aspire to competence, that the natural way to attain it should be by the exercise of the strictest virtue, and that they should reach it [p079] nevertheless only to be caught in the snares of vice. Such declamations are calculated only to light up and keep alive the hatred of classes. If true, they place human nature in a dilemma between poverty and immorality. If untrue, they make falsehood the minister of disorder, and set to loggerheads classes who should mutually love and assist each other.

Factitious inequality—inequality generated by law, by disturbing the natural order of development of the different classes of society—is, for all, a prolific source of irritation, jealousy, and crime. This is the reason why it is necessary to satisfy ourselves whether this natural order leads to the progressive amelioration and progressive equalization of all classes; and we should be arrested in this inquiry by what lawyers term a ‹fin de non-recevoir›, a peremptory exception, if this double material progress implied necessarily a double moral degradation.

Upon the subject of human wants I have to make an important observation,—and one which, in Political Economy, may even be regarded as fundamental,—it is, that wants are not a fixed immutable quantity. They are not in their nature stationary, but progressive.

We remark this characteristic even in our strictly physical wants; but it becomes more apparent as we rise to those desires and intellectual tastes which distinguish man from the inferior animals.

It would seem that if there be anything in which men should resemble each other, it is in the want of food, for, unless in exceptional cases, men’s stomachs are very much alike.

And yet aliments which are ‹recherchés› at one period become vulgar at another, and the regimen which suits a Lazzarone would subject a Dutchman to torture. Thus the want which is the most immediate, the grossest of all, and consequently the most uniform of all, still varies according to age, sex, temperament, climate, custom.

The same may be said of all our other wants. Scarcely has a man found shelter than he desires to be lodged, scarcely is he clothed than he wishes to be decorated, scarcely has he satisfied his bodily cravings than study, science, art, open to his desires an unlimited field.

It is a phenomenon well worthy of remark, how quickly, by continuous satisfaction, what was at first only a vague desire becomes a taste, and what was only a taste is transformed into a want, and even a want of the most imperious kind.

Look at that rude artizan. Accustomed to poor fare, plain [p080] clothing, indifferent lodging, he imagines he would be the happiest of men, and would have no farther desires, if he could but reach the step of the ladder immediately above him. He is astonished that those who have already reached it should still torment themselves as they do. At length comes the modest fortune he has dreamt of, and then he is happy, very happy—for a few days.

For soon he becomes familiar with his new situation, and by degrees he ceases to feel his fancied happiness. With indifference he puts on the fine clothing after which he sighed. He has got into a new circle, he associates with other companions, he drinks of another cup, he aspires to mount another step, and if he ever turns his reflections at all upon himself, he feels that if his fortune has changed, his soul remains the same, and is still an inexhaustible spring of new desires.

It would seem that nature has attached this singular power to ‹habit›, in order that it should be in us what a rochet-wheel is in mechanics, and that humanity, urged on continually to higher and higher regions, should not be able to rest content, whatever degree of civilisation it attains to.

The ‹sense of dignity›, the feeling of self-respect, acts with perhaps still more force in the same direction. The stoic philosophy has frequently blamed men for desiring rather to ‹appear› than to ‹be›. But, taking a broader view of things, is it certain that to ‹appear› is not for man one of the modes of ‹being›?

When, by exertion, order, and economy, a family rises by degrees towards those social regions where tastes become nicer and more delicate, relations more polished, sentiments more refined, intelligence more cultivated, who can describe the acute suffering which accompanies a forced return to their former low estate? The body does not alone suffer. The sad reverse interferes with habits which have become as it were a second nature; it clashes with the sense of dignity, and all the feelings of the soul. It is by no means uncommon in such a case to see the victim sink all at once into degrading sottishness, or perish in despair. It is with the social medium as with the atmosphere. The mountaineer, accustomed to the pure air of his native hills, pines and moulders away in the narrow streets of our cities.

But I hear some one exclaim, Economist, you stumble already. You have just told us that your science is in accord with morals, and here you are justifying luxury and effeminacy. Philosopher, I say in my turn, lay aside these fine clothes, which were not those of primitive man, break your furniture, burn your books, dine on raw flesh, and I shall then reply to your objection. It is too much [p081] to quarrel with this power of habit, of which you are yourself the living example.

We may find fault with this disposition which Nature has given to our organs; but our censure will not make it the less universal. We find it existing among all nations, ancient and modern, savage and civilized, at the antipodes as at home. We cannot explain civilisation without it; and when a disposition of the human heart is thus proved to be universal and indestructible, social science cannot put it aside, or refuse to take it into account.

This objection will be made by publicists who pride themselves on being the disciples of Rousseau; but Rousseau has never denied the existence of the phenomenon. He establishes undeniably the indefinite elasticity of human wants, and the power of habit, and admits even the part which I assign to them in preventing the human race from retrograding; only, that which I admire is what he deplores, and he does so consistently. Rousseau fancied there was a time when men had neither rights, nor duties, nor relations, nor affections, nor language; and it was then, according to him, that they were happy and perfect. He was bound, therefore, to abhor the social machinery which is constantly removing mankind from ideal perfection. Those, on the contrary, who are of opinion that perfection is not at the beginning, but at the end, of the human evolution, will admire the spring and motive of action which I place in the foreground. But as to the existence and play of the spring itself we are at one.

“Men of leisure,” he says, “employed themselves in procuring all sorts of conveniences and accommodations unknown to their forefathers, and that was the first yoke which, without intending it, they imposed upon themselves, and the prime source of the inconveniences which they prepared for their descendants. For, not only did they thus continue to emasculate both mind and body, but these luxuries having ‹by habit› lost all their relish, and degenerated into ‹true wants›, their being deprived of them caused more pain than the possession of them had given pleasure: they were unhappy at losing what they had no enjoyment in possessing.”

Rousseau was convinced that God, nature, and humanity were wrong. That is still the opinion of many; but it is not mine.

After all, God forbid that I should desire to set myself against the noblest attribute, the most beautiful virtue of man, self-control, command over his passions, moderation in his desires, contempt of show. I don’t say that he is to make himself a slave to this or that factitious want. I say that wants (taking a broad and general [p082] view of them as resulting from man’s mental and bodily constitution), combined with the power of habit, and the sense of dignity, are indefinitely expansible, because they spring from an inexhaustible source—namely, desire. Who should blame a rich man for being sober, for despising finery, for avoiding pomp and effeminacy? But are there not more elevated desires to which he may yield? Has the desire for instruction, for instance, any limits? To render service to his country, to encourage the arts, to disseminate useful ideas, to succour the distressed,—is there anything in these incompatible with the right use of riches?

For the rest, whatever philosophers may think of it, human wants do not constitute a fixed immutable quantity. That is a certain, a universal fact, liable to no exception. The wants of the fourteenth century, whether with reference to food, or lodging, or instruction, were not at all the wants of ours, and we may safely predict that ours will not be the wants of our descendants.

The same observation applies to all the elements of Political Economy—Wealth, Labour, Value, Services, etc.,—all participate in the extreme versatility of the principal subject, Man. Political Economy has not, like geometry or physics, the advantage of dealing with objects which can be weighed or measured. This is one of its difficulties to begin with, and it is a perpetual source of errors throughout; for when the human mind applies itself to a certain order of phenomena, it is naturally on the outlook for a ‹criterion›, a common measure, to which everything can be referred, in order to give to that particular branch of knowledge the character of an ‹exact science›. Thus we observe some authors seeking for fixity in ‹value›, others in ‹money›, others in ‹corn›, others in ‹labour›, that is to say, in things which are themselves all liable to fluctuation.

Many errors in Political Economy proceed from authors thus regarding human wants as a fixed determinate quantity; and it is for this reason that I have deemed it my duty to enlarge on this subject. At the risk of anticipating, it is worth while to notice briefly this mode of reasoning. Economists take generally the enjoyments which satisfy men of the present day, and they assume that human nature admits of no other. Hence, if the bounty of nature, or the power of machinery, or habits of temperance and moderation, succeed in rendering disposable for a time a portion of human labour, this progress disquiets them, they consider it as a disaster, and they retreat behind absurd but specious formulas, such as these: ‹Production is superabundant›,—‹we suffer from plethora›,—‹the power of producing outruns the power of consuming›, etc. [p083]

It is not possible to discover a solution of the question of ‹machinery›, or that of ‹external competition›, or that of ‹luxury›, if we persist in considering our ‹wants› as a fixed invariable quantity, and do not take into account their indefinite expansibility.

But if human ‹wants› are indefinite, progressive, capable of increase, like desire, which is their never failing source, we must admit, under pain of introducing discordance and contradiction into the economical laws of society, that nature has placed in man and around him indefinite and progressive means of ‹satisfaction›;—equilibrium between the means and the end being the primary condition of all harmony. This is what we shall now examine.

I said at the outset of this work that the object of Political Economy is ‹man›, considered with reference to his wants, and his means of satisfying these wants.

We must then begin with the study of man and his organization.

But we have also seen that he is not a solitary being. If his ‹wants› and his ‹satisfactions› are, from the very nature of sensibility, inseparable from his being, the same thing cannot be said of his ‹efforts›, which spring from the active principle. The latter are susceptible of transmission. In a word, men work for one another.

Now a very strange thing takes place.

If we take a general, or, if I may be allowed the expression, abstract view, of man, his wants, his efforts, his satisfactions, his constitution, his inclinations, his tendencies, we fall into a train of observation which appears free from doubt and self-evident,—so much so, that the writer finds a difficulty in submitting to the public judgment truths so vulgar and so palpable. He is afraid of provoking ridicule; and thinks, not without reason, that the impatient reader will throw away his book, exclaiming, “I shall not waste time on such trivialities.”

And yet these truths which, when presented to us in an abstract shape, we regard as so incontrovertible that we can scarce summon patience to listen to them, are considered only as ridiculous errors and absurd theories the moment they are applied to man in his social state. Regarding man as an isolated being, who ever took it into his head to say, “Production is superabundant—the power of consumption cannot keep pace with the power of production—luxury and factitious tastes are the source of wealth—the invention of machinery annihilates labour,” and other apophthegms of the same sort,—which, nevertheless, when applied to mankind in the aggregate, we receive as axioms so well established that they are actually made the basis of our commercial and industrial legislation? ‹Exchange› produces in this respect an illusion of which [p084] even men of penetration and solid judgment find it impossible to disabuse themselves, and I affirm that Political Economy will have attained its design, and fulfilled its mission, when it shall have conclusively demonstrated this:—that what is true of an individual man is true of society at large. Man in an isolated state is at once producer and consumer, inventor and projector, capitalist and workman. All the economic phenomena are accomplished in his person—he is, as it were, society in miniature. In like manner, humanity, viewed in the aggregate, may be regarded as a great, collective, complex individual, to whom you may apply exactly the same truths as to man in a state of isolation.

I have felt it necessary to make this remark, which I hope will be justified in the sequel, before continuing what I had to say upon man. I should have been afraid, otherwise, that the reader might reject, as superfluous, the following developments, which in fact are nothing else than veritable ‹truisms›.

I have just spoken of the ‹wants› of man, and after presenting an approximate enumeration of them, I observed that they were not of a stationary, but of a progressive nature; and this holds true, whether we consider these wants each singly, or all together, in their physical, intellectual, and moral order. How could it be otherwise? There are wants the satisfaction of which is exacted by our organization under pain of death, and up to a certain point we may represent these as fixed quantities, although that is not rigorously exact, for however little we may desire to neglect an essential element—namely, the ‹force of habit›—however little we may condescend to subject ourselves to honest self-examination, we shall be forced to allow that wants, even of the plainest and most homely kind (the desire for food, for example), undergo, under the influence of habit, undoubted transformations. The man who declaims against this observation as materialist and epicurean, would think himself very unfortunate, if, taking him at his word, we should reduce him to the black broth of the Spartans, or the scanty pittance of an anchorite. At all events, when wants of this kind have been satisfied in an assured and permanent way, there are others which take their rise in the most expansible of our faculties, desire. Can we conceive a time when man can no longer form even reasonable desires? Let us not forget that a desire which might be unreasonable in a former state of civilisation—at a time when all the human faculties were absorbed in providing for low material wants—ceases to be so when improvement opens to these faculties a more extended field. A desire to travel at the rate of thirty miles an hour would have been unreasonable [p085] two centuries ago—it is not so at the present day. To pretend that the wants and desires of man are fixed and stationary quantities, is to mistake the nature of the human soul, to deny facts, and to render civilisation inexplicable.

It would still be inexplicable if, side by side with the indefinite development of wants, there had not been placed, as possible, the indefinite development of the means of providing for these wants. How could the expansible nature of our wants have contributed to the realization of progress, if, at a certain point, our faculties could advance no farther, and should encounter an impassable barrier?

Our wants being indefinite, the presumption is that the means of satisfying these wants should be indefinite also, unless we are to suppose Nature, Providence, or the Power which presides over our destinies, to have fallen into a cruel and shocking contradiction.

I say indefinite, not infinite, for nothing connected with man is infinite. It is precisely because our faculties go on developing themselves ‹ad infinitum›, that they have no assignable limits, although they may have absolute limits. There are many points above the present range of humanity, which we may never succeed in attaining, and yet for all that, the time may never come when we shall cease to approach nearer them.[22]

I don’t at all mean to say that ‹desire›, and the ‹means› of satisfying desire, march in parallel lines and with equal rapidity. The former runs—the latter limps after it.

The prompt and adventurous nature of desire, compared with the slowness of our faculties, shews us very clearly that in every stage of civilisation, at every step of our progress, suffering to a certain extent is, and ever must be, the lot of man. But it shews us likewise that this suffering has a mission, for desire could no longer be an incentive to our faculties if it followed, in place of preceding, their exercise. Let us not, however, accuse nature of cruelty in the construction of this mechanism, for we cannot fail to remark that desire is never transformed into want, strictly so called, that is, into ‹painful desire›, until it has been made such by ‹habit›; in other words, until the ‹means› of satisfying the desire have been found and placed irrevocably within our reach.[23] [p086]

We have now to examine the question,—What means have we of providing for our wants?

It seems evident to me that there are two—namely, Nature and Labour, the gifts of God, and the fruits of our efforts—or, if you will, the application of our faculties to the things which Nature has placed at our service.

No school that I know of has attributed the satisfaction of our wants to Nature ‹alone›. Such an assertion is clearly contradicted by experience, and we need not learn Political Economy to perceive that the intervention of our ‹faculties› is necessary.

But there are schools who have attributed this privilege to Labour alone. Their axiom is, “All wealth comes from labour—labour is wealth.”

I cannot help anticipating, so far as to remark, that these formulas, taken literally, have led to monstrous errors of doctrine, and, consequently, to deplorable legislative blunders. I shall return to this subject. I confine myself here to establishing, as a fact, that ‹Nature› and ‹Labour› co-operate for the satisfaction of our wants and desires.

Let us examine the facts.

The first want which we have placed at the head of our list is that of ‹breathing›. As regards respiration, we have already shown that ‹nature› in general is at the whole cost, and that human ‹labour› intervenes only in certain exceptional cases, as where it becomes necessary to purify the atmosphere.

Another want is that of quenching our ‹thirst›, and it is more or less satisfied by Nature, in as far as she furnishes us with water, more or less pure, abundant, and within reach; and Labour concurs in as far as it becomes necessary to bring water from a greater distance, to filter it, or to obviate its scarcity by constructing wells and cisterns.

The liberality of Nature towards us in regard to ‹food› is by no means uniform; for who will maintain, that the labour to be furnished is the same when the land is fertile, or when it is sterile, when the forest abounds with game, the river with fish, or in the opposite cases?

As regards ‹lighting›, human labour has certainly less to do when the night is short than when it is long.

I dare not lay it down as an absolute rule, but it appears to me that in proportion as we rise in the scale of wants, the co-operation of Nature is lessened, and leaves us more room for the exercise of our faculties. The painter, the sculptor, and the author even, are forced to avail themselves of materials and instruments which Nature alone [p087] furnishes, but from their own genius is derived all that makes the charm, the merit, the utility, and the value of their works. ‹To learn› is a want which the well-directed exercise of our faculties almost alone can satisfy. Yet here ‹Nature› assists, by presenting to us in divers degrees objects of observation and comparison. With an equal amount of application, may not botany, geology, or natural history, make everywhere equal progress?

It would be superfluous to cite other examples. We have already shown undeniably that Nature gives us the means of satisfaction, in placing at our disposal things possessed of higher or lower degrees of ‹utility› (I use the word in its etymological sense, as indicating the ‹property of serving›, of being ‹useful›). In many cases, in almost every case, labour must contribute, to a certain extent, in rendering this ‹utility› complete; and we can easily comprehend that the part which labour has to perform is greater or less in proportion as Nature had previously advanced the operation in a less or greater degree.

We may then lay down these two formulas:

1. ‹Utility is communicated sometimes by Nature alone, sometimes by Labour alone, but almost always by the co-operation of both›.

2. ‹To bring anything to its highest degree of› «UTILITY», ‹the action of Labour is in an inverse ratio to the action of Nature›.

From these two propositions, combined with what I have said of the indefinite expansibility of our wants, I may be permitted to deduce a conclusion, the importance of which will be demonstrated in the sequel. Suppose two men, having no connexion with each other, to be unequally situated in this respect, that Nature had been liberal to the one, and niggardly to the other; the first would evidently obtain a given amount of satisfaction at a less expense of labour. Would it follow that the part of his forces thus left ‹disposable›, if I may use the expression, would be abandoned to inaction? and that this man, on account of the liberality of Nature, would be reduced to compulsory idleness? Not at all. It would follow that he could, if he wished it, dispose of these forces to enlarge the circle of his enjoyments; that with an equal amount of labour he could procure two satisfactions in place of one; in a word, that his progress would become more easy.

I may be mistaken, but it appears to me that no science, not even geometry, is founded on truths more unassailable. Were any one to prove to me that all these truths were so many errors, I should not only lose confidence in them, but all faith in evidence itself; for what reasoning could one employ which should better deserve the acquiescence of our judgment than the evidence thus [p088] overturned? The moment an axiom is discovered which shall contradict this other axiom—that a straight line is the shortest road from one point to another—that instant the human mind has no other refuge, if it be a refuge, than absolute scepticism.

I positively feel ashamed thus to insist upon first principles which are so plain as to seem puerile. And yet we must confess that, amid the complications of human transactions, such simple truths have been overlooked; and in order to justify myself for detaining the reader so long upon what the English call ‹truisms›, I shall notice here a singular error by which excellent minds have allowed themselves to be misled. Setting aside, neglecting entirely, the ‹co-operation of Nature› in relation to the satisfaction of our wants, they have laid down the absolute principle that ‹all wealth comes from labour›. On this foundation they have reared the following erroneous syllogism:

“All wealth comes from labour:

“Wealth, then, is in proportion to labour.

“But labour is in an inverse ratio to the liberality of Nature:

“‹Ergo›, wealth is inversely as the liberality of Nature.”

Right or wrong, many economical laws owe their origin to this singular reasoning. Such laws cannot be otherwise than subversive of every sound principle in relation to the development and distribution of wealth; and this it is which justifies me in preparing beforehand, by the explanation of truths very trivial in appearance, for the refutation of the deplorable errors and prejudices under which society is now labouring.

Let us analyze the co-operation of Nature of which I have spoken. Nature places two things at our disposal—‹materials› and ‹forces›.

Most of the material objects which contribute to the satisfaction of our wants and desires are brought into the state of ‹utility› which renders them fit for our use only by the intervention of labour, by the application of the human faculties. But the elements, the atoms, if you will, of which these objects are composed, are the gifts, I will add the ‹gratuitous› gifts, of Nature. This observation is of the very highest importance, and will, I believe, throw a new light upon the theory of wealth.

The reader will have the goodness to bear in mind that I am inquiring at present in a general way into the moral and physical constitution of man, his wants, his faculties, his relations with Nature—apart from the consideration of Exchange, which I shall enter upon in the next chapter. We shall then see in what respect, and in what manner, social transactions modify the phenomena. [p089]

It is very evident, that if man in an isolated state must, so to speak, ‹purchase› the greater part of his satisfactions by an exertion, by an effort, it is rigorously exact to say that prior to the intervention of any such exertion, any such effort, the materials which he finds at his disposal are the ‹gratuitous› gifts of Nature. After the first effort on his part, however slight it may be, they cease to be ‹gratuitous›; and if the language of Political Economy had been always exact, it would have been to material objects in this state, and before human labour had been bestowed upon them, that the term ‹raw materials› (‹matières premières›) would have been exclusively applied.

I repeat that this ‹gratuitous› quality of the gifts of Nature, anterior to the intervention of labour, is of the very highest importance. I said in my second chapter that Political Economy was the ‹theory of value›; I add now, and by anticipation, that things begin to possess ‹value› only when it is given to them by labour. I intend to demonstrate afterwards that everything which is ‹gratuitous› for man in an isolated state is gratuitous for man in his social condition, and that the gratuitous gifts of Nature, ‹whatever be their› «UTILITY», have no value. I say that a man who receives a benefit from Nature, directly and without any effort on his part, cannot be considered as rendering himself an ‹onerous service›, and, consequently, that he cannot render to another any service with reference to things which are common to all. Now, where there are no services rendered and received there is no ‹value›.

All that I have said of ‹materials› is equally applicable to the ‹forces› which Nature places at our disposal. Gravitation, the elasticity of air, the power of the winds, the laws of equilibrium, vegetable life, animal life, are so many forces which we learn to turn to account. The pains and intelligence which we bestow in this way always admit of remuneration, for we are not bound to devote our efforts to the advantage of others gratuitously. But these natural forces, in themselves, and apart from all intellectual or bodily exertion, are ‹gratuitous› gifts of Providence, and in this respect they remain destitute of ‹value› through all the complications of human transactions. This is the leading idea of the present work.

This observation would be of little importance, I allow, if the co-operation of Nature were constantly uniform, if each man, at all times, in all places, in all circumstances, received from Nature equal and invariable assistance. In that case, science would be justified in not taking into account an element which, remaining always and everywhere the same, would affect the services [p090] exchanged in equal proportions on both sides. As in geometry we eliminate portions of lines common to two figures which we compare with each other, we might neglect a co-operation which is invariably present, and content ourselves with saying, as we have done hitherto, “There is such a thing as natural wealth—Political Economy acknowledges it, and has no more concern with it.”

But this is not the true state of the matter. The irresistible tendency of the human mind, stimulated by self-interest and assisted by a series of discoveries, is to substitute natural and gratuitous co-operation for human and onerous concurrence; so that a given utility, although remaining the same as far as the result and the satisfactions which it procures us are concerned, represents a smaller and smaller amount of labour. In fact, it is impossible not to perceive the immense influence of this marvellous phenomenon on our notion of value. For what is the result of it? This, that in every product the ‹gratuitous› element tends to take the place of the ‹onerous›; that ‹utility›, being the result of two ‹collaborations›, of which one is remunerated and the other is not, Value, which has relation only to the first of these united forces, is diminished, and makes room for a ‹utility› which is identically the same, and this in proportion as we succeed in constraining Nature to a more efficacious co-operation. So that we may say that mankind have as many more ‹satisfactions›, as much more ‹wealth›, as they have less ‹value›. Now, the majority of authors having employed these three terms, ‹utility›, ‹wealth›, ‹value›, as synonymous, the result has been a theory which is not only not true, but the reverse of true. I believe sincerely that a more exact description of this combination of natural forces and human forces in the business of production, in other words, a juster definition of Value, would put an end to inextricable theoretical confusion, and would reconcile schools which are now divergent; and if I am now anticipating somewhat in entering on this subject here, my justification with the reader is the necessity of explaining in the outset certain ideas of which otherwise he would have difficulty in perceiving the importance.

Returning from this digression, I resume what I had to say upon man considered exclusively in an economical point of view.

Another observation, which we owe to J. B. Say, and which is almost self-evident, although too much neglected by many authors, is, that man ‹creates› neither the ‹materials› nor the ‹forces› of nature, if we take the word ‹create› in its exact signification. These materials, these forces, have an independent existence. Man can only combine them or displace them, for his own benefit or that [p091] of others. If for his own, ‹he renders a service to himself›,—if for the benefit of others, ‹he renders service to his fellows›, and has the right to exact an ‹equivalent› service. Whence it also follows that ‹value› is proportional to the service rendered, and not at all to the absolute ‹utility› of the thing. For this ‹utility› may be in great part the result of the ‹gratuitous› action of Nature, in which case the human service, the onerous service, the service to be remunerated, is of little value. This results from the axiom above established—namely, that ‹to bring a thing to the highest degree of utility, the action of man is inversely as the action of Nature›.

This observation overturns the doctrine which places value in the ‹materiality› of things. The contrary is the truth. The materiality is a quality given by Nature, and consequently ‹gratuitous›, and devoid of ‹value›, although of incontestable utility. Human action, which can never succeed in ‹creating› matter, constitutes alone the service which man in a state of isolation renders to himself, or that men in society render to each other; and it is the free appreciation of these ‹services› which is the foundation of ‹value›. Far, then, from concluding with Adam Smith that it is impossible to conceive of value otherwise than as residing in material substance, we conclude that between Matter and Value there is no possible relation.

This erroneous doctrine Smith deduced logically from his principle, that those classes alone are ‹productive› who operate on material substances. He thus prepared the way for the modern error of the ‹socialists›, who have never done representing as ‹unproductive› parasites those whom they term ‹intermediaries› between the producer and consumer—the merchant, the retail dealer, etc. Do they render services? Do they save us trouble by taking trouble for us? In that case they create ‹value›, although they do not create matter; and as no one can create matter, and we all confine our exertions to rendering reciprocal services, we pronounce with justice that all, including agriculturists and manufacturers, are ‹intermediaries› in relation one to another.

This is what I had to say at present upon the co-operation of Nature. Nature places at our disposal, in various degrees, depending on climate, seasons, and the advance of knowledge, but ‹always gratuitously›, materials and forces. Then these materials and forces are devoid of ‹value›; it would be strange if they had any. According to what rule should we estimate them? In what way could Nature be paid, remunerated, compensated? We shall see afterwards that ‹exchange› is necessary in order to determine ‹value›. We don’t purchase the goods of Nature—we gather them; and if, in order to appropriate them, a certain amount of effort is [p092] necessary, it is in this ‹effort›, not in the gifts of Nature, that the principle of ‹value› resides.

Let us now consider that action of man which we designate, in a general way, by the term ‹labour›.

The word ‹labour›, like almost all the terms of Political Economy, is very vague. Different authors use it in a sense more or less extended. Political Economy has not had, like most other sciences, Chemistry for example, the advantage of constructing her own vocabulary. Treating of subjects which have been familiar to men’s thoughts since the beginning of the world, and the constant subject of their daily talk, she has found a nomenclature ready made, and has been forced to adopt it.

The meaning of the word ‹labour› is often limited exclusively to the muscular action of man upon materials. Hence those who execute the mechanical part of production are called the ‹working classes›.

The reader will comprehend that I give to this word a more extended sense. I understand by ‹labour› the application of our faculties to the satisfaction of our wants. ‹Wants›, ‹efforts›, ‹satisfactions›, this is the circle of Political Economy. ‹Effort› may be physical, intellectual, or even moral, as we shall immediately see.

It is not necessary to demonstrate in this place that all our organs, all or nearly all our faculties, may concur, and, in point of fact, do concur, in production. Attention, sagacity, intelligence, imagination, have assuredly their part in it.

M. Dunoyer, in his excellent work, ‹Sur la Liberté du Travail›, has included, and with scientific exactness, our moral faculties among the elements to which we are indebted for our wealth—an idea as original and suggestive as it is just. It is destined to enlarge and ennoble the field of Political Economy.

I shall not dwell here upon that idea farther than as it may enable me to throw a faint light upon the origin of a powerful agent of production, of which I shall have occasion to speak hereafter—I mean ‹Capital›.

If we examine in succession the material objects which contribute to the satisfaction of our wants, we shall discover without difficulty that all or nearly all require, in order to their being brought to perfection, more time, a larger portion of our life, than a man can expend without recruiting his strength, that is to say, without satisfying his wants. This supposes that those who had made those things had previously reserved, set aside, accumulated, provisions, to enable them to subsist during the operation. [p093]

The same observation applies to satisfactions which have nothing material belonging to them.

A clergyman cannot devote himself to preaching, a professor to teaching, a magistrate to the maintenance of order, unless, by themselves, or by others, they are put in possession of means of subsistence previously created.

Let us go a little higher. Suppose a man isolated and forced to live by the chase. It is easy to comprehend that if every night he consumed the whole game which his day’s hunting had furnished, he could never set himself to any other work, to build a cottage, for example, or repair his arms or implements. All progress would be interdicted in his case.

This is not the proper place to define the nature and functions of Capital. My sole object at present is to show that certain moral virtues co-operate very directly in the amelioration of our condition, even when viewed exclusively with reference to wealth,—among other virtues, order, foresight, self-control, economy.

To ‹foresee› is one of our noblest privileges, and it is scarcely necessary to say that, in all situations of life, the man who most clearly foresees the probable consequences of his acts and determinations has the best chance of success.

To ‹control his appetites›, to govern his passions, to sacrifice the present to the future, to submit to privations for the sake of greater but more distant advantages—such are the conditions essential to the formation of capital; and capital, as we have already partially seen, is itself the essential condition of all labour that is in any degree complicated or prolonged. It is quite evident that if we suppose two men placed in identically the same position, and possessed of the same amount of intelligence and activity, that man would make the most progress who, having accumulated provisions, had placed himself in a situation to undertake protracted works, to improve his implements, and thus to make the forces of nature co-operate in the realization of his designs.

I shall not dwell longer on this. We have only to look around us to be convinced that all our forces, all our faculties, all our virtues, concur in furthering the advancement of man and of society.

For the same reason, there are none of our vices which are not directly or indirectly the causes of poverty. Idleness paralyzes efforts, which are the sinews of production. Ignorance and error give our efforts a false direction. Improvidence lays us open to deceptions. Indulgence in the appetites of the hour prevents the accumulation of capital. Vanity leads us to devote our efforts to factitious enjoyments, in place of such as are real. Violence and [p094] fraud provoke reprisals, oblige us to surround ourselves with troublesome precautions, and entail a great waste and destruction of power.

I shall wind up these preliminary observations on man with a remark which I have already made in relation to his wants. It is this, that the elements discussed and explained in this chapter, and which enter into and constitute economical science, are in their nature flexible and changeable. Wants, desires, materials and powers furnished by Nature, our muscular force, our organs, our intellectual faculties, our moral qualities, all vary with the individual, and change with time and place. No two men, perhaps, are entirely alike in any one of these respects, certainly not in all—nay more, no man entirely resembles himself for two hours together. What one knows another is ignorant of—what one values another despises—here nature is prodigal, there niggardly—a virtue which it is difficult to practise in one climate or latitude becomes easy in another. Economical science has not, then, like the exact sciences, the advantage of possessing a fixed measure, and absolute unconditional truths—a graduated scale, a standard, which can be employed in measuring the intensity of desires, of efforts, and of satisfactions. Were we even to devote ourselves to solitary labour, like certain animals, we should still find ourselves placed in circumstances in some degree different; and were our external circumstances alike, were the medium in which we act the same for all, we should still differ from each other in our desires, our wants, our ideas, our sagacity, our energy, our manner of estimating and appreciating things, our foresight, our activity—so that a great and inevitable inequality would manifest itself. In truth, absolute isolation, the absence of all relations among men, is only an idle fancy coined in the brain of Rousseau. But supposing that this antisocial state, called the ‹state of nature›, had ever existed, I cannot help inquiring by what chain of reasoning Rousseau and his adepts have succeeded in planting Equality there? We shall afterwards see that Equality, like Wealth, like Liberty, like Fraternity, like Unity, is the end; it is not the starting point. It rises out of the natural and regular development of societies. The tendency of human nature is not away from, but towards, Equality. This is most consoling and most true.

Having spoken of our ‹wants›, and our ‹means› of providing for them, it remains to say a word respecting our ‹satisfactions›. They are the result of the entire mechanism we have described.

It is by the greater or less amount of physical, intellectual, and moral ‹satisfactions› which mankind enjoy, that we discover whether [p095] the machine works well or ill. This is the reason why the word ‹consommation› [‹consumption›[24]], adopted by our Economists would have a profound meaning if we used it in its etymological signification as synonymous with ‹end›, or ‹completion›. Unfortunately, in common, and even in scientific, language, it presents to the mind a gross and material idea, exact without doubt when applied to our physical wants, but not at all so when used with reference to those of a more elevated order. The cultivation of corn, the manufacture of woollen cloth, terminate in ‹consumption› [consommation]. But can this be said with equal propriety of the works of the artist, the songs of the poet, the studies of the lawyer, the prelections of the professor, the sermons of the clergyman? It is here that we again experience the inconvenience of that fundamental error which caused Adam Smith to circumscribe Political Economy within the limits of a material circle; and the reader will pardon me for frequently making use of the term ‹satisfaction›, as applicable to all our wants and all our desires, and as more in accordance with the larger scope which I hope to be able to give to the science.

Political Economists have been frequently reproached with confining their attention exclusively to the ‹interests of the consumer›. “You forget the producer,” we are told. But satisfaction being the end and design of all our efforts—the grand ‹consummation› or termination of the economic phenomena—is it not evident that it is there that the touchstone of progress is to be found? A man’s happiness and well-being are not measured by his ‹efforts›, but by his ‹satisfactions›, and this holds equally true of society in the aggregate. This is one of those truths which are never disputed when applied to an individual, but which are constantly disputed when applied to society at large. The phrase to which exception has been taken only means this, that Political Economy estimates the worth of what we do, not by the labour which it costs us to do it, but by the ultimate result, which resolves itself definitively into an increase or diminution of the general prosperity.

We have said, in reference to our wants and desires, that there are no two men exactly alike. The same thing may be said of our ‹satisfactions›: they are not held in equal estimation by all, which verifies the common saying, that ‹tastes differ›. Now it is by the intensity of our desires, and the variety of our tastes, that the direction of our efforts is determined. It is here that the influence of morals upon industry becomes apparent. Man, as an individual, may be the slave of tastes which are factitious, puerile, and [p096] immoral. In this case it is self-evident that, his powers being limited, he can only satisfy his depraved desires at the expense of those which are laudable and legitimate. But when society comes into play, this evident axiom is marked down as an error. We are led to believe that artificial tastes, illusory satisfactions, which we acknowledge as the source of individual poverty, are nevertheless the cause of national wealth, as opening a vent to manufactures. If it were so, we should arrive at the miserable conclusion, that the social state places man between poverty and vice. Once more, Political Economy reconciles, in the most rigorous and satisfactory manner, these apparent contradictions. [p097]

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