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Page 37
"Emancipate Italy, Poland, and Hungary."
"Rear and perfect the saddle-horse."
"Encourage the arts, and provide us with musicians and dancers."
"Restrict commerce, and at the same time create a merchant navy."
"Discover truth, and put a grain of reason into our heads. The mission
of Government is to enlighten, to develop, to extend, to fortify, to
spiritualize, and to sanctify the soul of the people."
"Do have a little patience, gentlemen," says Government in a beseeching
tone. "I will do what I can to satisfy you, but for this I must have
resources. I have been preparing plans for five or six taxes, which are
quite new, and not at all oppressive. You will see how willingly people
will pay them."
Then comes a great exclamation:--"No! indeed! where is the merit of
doing a thing with resources? Why, it does not deserve the name of a
Government! So far from loading us with fresh taxes, we would have you
withdraw the old ones. You ought to suppress
"The salt tax,
"The tax on liquors,
"The tax on letters,
"Custom-house duties,
"Patents."
In the midst of this tumult, and now that the country has two or three
times changed its Government, for not having satisfied all its demands,
I wanted to show that they were contradictory. But what could I have
been thinking about? Could I not keep this unfortunate observation to
myself?
I have lost my character for ever! I am looked upon as a man without
_heart_ and without _feeling_--a dry philosopher, an individualist, a
plebeian--in a word, an economist of the English or American school.
But, pardon me, sublime writers, who stop at nothing, not even at
contradictions. I am wrong, without a doubt, and I would willingly
retract. I should be glad enough, you may be sure, if you had really
discovered a beneficent and inexhaustible being, calling itself the
Government, which has bread for all mouths, work for all hands, capital
for all enterprises, credit for all projects, oil for all wounds, balm
for all sufferings, advice for all perplexities, solutions for all
doubts, truths for all intellects, diversions for all who want them,
milk for infancy, and wine for old age--which can provide for all our
wants, satisfy all our curiosity, correct all our errors, repair all our
faults, and exempt us henceforth from the necessity for foresight,
prudence, judgment, sagacity, experience, order, economy, temperance and
activity.
What reason could I have for not desiring to see such a discovery made?
Indeed, the more I reflect upon it, the more do I see that nothing could
be more convenient than that we should all of us have within our reach
an inexhaustible source of wealth and enlightenment--a universal
physician, an unlimited treasure, and an infallible counsellor, such as
you describe Government to be. Therefore it is that I want to have it
pointed out and defined, and that a prize should be offered to the first
discoverer of the phoenix. For no one would think of asserting that this
precious discovery has yet been made, since up to this time everything
presenting itself under the name of the Government is immediately
overturned by the people, precisely because it does not fulfil the
rather contradictory conditions of the programme.
I will venture to say that I fear we are, in this respect, the dupes of
one of the strangest illusions which have ever taken possession of the
human mind.
Man recoils from trouble--from suffering; and yet he is condemned by
nature to the suffering of privation, if he does not take the trouble to
work. He has to choose, then, between these two evils. What means can he
adopt to avoid both? There remains now, and there will remain, only one
way, which is, _to enjoy the labour of others_. Such a course of conduct
prevents the trouble and the satisfaction from preserving their natural
proportion, and causes all the trouble to become the lot of one set of
persons, and all the satisfaction that of another. This is the origin of
slavery and of plunder, whatever its form may be--whether that of wars,
impositions, violence, restrictions, frauds, &c.--monstrous abuses, but
consistent with the thought which has given them birth. Oppression
should be detested and resisted--it can hardly be called absurd.
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