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Page 32
Apart from this reason, others present themselves without disguise, by
which the debate between the exchequer and poor James becomes much
simplified. If the State says to him, "I take your crown to pay the
gendarme, who saves you the trouble of providing for your own personal
safety; for paving the street which you are passing through every day;
for paying the magistrate who causes your property and your liberty to
be respected; to maintain the soldier who maintains our
frontiers,"--James B., unless I am much mistaken, will pay for all this
without hesitation. But if the State were to say to him, "I take this
crown that I may give you a little prize in case you cultivate your
field well; or that I may teach your son something that you have no wish
that he should learn; or that the Minister may add another to his score
of dishes at dinner; I take it to build a cottage in Algeria, in which
case I must take another crown every year to keep an emigrant in it, and
another hundred to maintain a soldier to guard this emigrant, and
another crown to maintain a general to guard this soldier," &c., &c.,--I
think I hear poor James exclaim, "This system of law is very much like a
system of cheat!" The State foresees the objection, and what does it do?
It jumbles all things together, and brings forward just that provoking
reason which ought to have nothing whatever to do with the question. It
talks of the effect of this crown upon labour; it points to the cook and
purveyor of the Minister; it shows an emigrant, a soldier, and a
general, living upon the crown; it shows, in fact, _what is seen_, and
if James B. has not learned to take into the account _what is not seen_,
James B. will be duped. And this is why I want to do all I can to
impress it upon his mind, by repeating it over and over again.
As the public expenses displace labour without increasing it, a second
serious presumption presents itself against them. To displace labour is
to displace labourers, and to disturb the natural laws which regulate
the distribution of the population over the country. If 50,000,000
francs are allowed to remain in the possession of the tax-payers since
the tax-payers are everywhere, they encourage labour in the 40,000
parishes in France. They act like a natural tie, which keeps every one
upon his native soil; they distribute themselves amongst all imaginable
labourers and trades. If the State, by drawing off these 60,000,000
francs from the citizens, accumulates them, and expends them on some
given point, it attracts to this point a proportional quantity of
displaced labour, a corresponding number of labourers, belonging to
other parts; a fluctuating population, which is out of its place, and I
venture to say dangerous when the fund is exhausted. Now here is the
consequence (and this confirms all I have said): this feverish activity
is, as it were, forced into a narrow space; it attracts the attention of
all; it is _what is seen_. The people applaud; they are astonished at
the beauty and facility of the plan, and expect to have it continued and
extended. _That which they do not see_ is, that an equal quantity of
labour, which would probably be more valuable, has been paralyzed over
the rest of France.
XI.--Frugality and Luxury.
It is not only in the public expenditure that _what is seen_ eclipses
_what is not seen_. Setting aside what relates to political economy,
this phenomenon leads to false reasoning. It causes nations to consider
their moral and their material interests as contradictory to each other.
What can be more discouraging or more dismal?
For instance, there is not a father of a family who does not think it
his duty to teach his children order, system, the habits of carefulness,
of economy, and of moderation in spending money.
There is no religion which does not thunder against pomp and luxury.
This is as it should be; but, on the other hand, how frequently do we
hear the following remarks:--
"To hoard, is to drain the veins of the people."
"The luxury of the great is the comfort of the little."
"Prodigals ruin themselves, but they enrich the State."
"It is the superfluity of the rich which makes bread for the poor."
Here, certainly, is a striking contradiction between the moral and the
social idea. How many eminent spirits, after having made the assertion,
repose in peace. It is a thing I never could understand, for it seems to
me that nothing can be more distressing than to discover two opposite
tendencies in mankind. Why, it comes to degradation at each of the
extremes: economy brings it to misery; prodigality plunges it into moral
degradation. Happily, these vulgar maxims exhibit economy and luxury in
a false light, taking account, as they do, of those immediate
consequences _which are seen_, and not of the remote ones, _which are
not seen_. Let us see if we can rectify this incomplete view of the
case.
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