Part 29

This variety of spoliation being the principal subject of the present volume, I shall not enlarge upon it in this place, but content myself with one remark.

When monopoly is an isolated fact, it never fails to enrich the man who is invested with it. It may happen, then, that other classes of producers, in place of waiting for the downfall of this monopoly, demand for themselves similar monopolies. This species of spoliation, thus erected into a system, becomes the most ridiculous of mystifications for everybody; and the ultimate result is, that each man believes himself to be deriving greater profit from a market which is impoverished by all.

It is unnecessary to add, that this strange régime introduces a universal antagonism among all classes, all professions, and all nations; that it calls for the interposition (constant, but always uncertain) of government action; that it gives rise to all the abuses we have enumerated; that it places all branches of industry in a state of hopeless insecurity; and that it accustoms men to rely upon the law, and not upon themselves, for their means of subsistence. It would be difficult to imagine a more active cause of social perturbation.

But it may be said, Why make use of this ugly term, Spoliation? It is coarse, it wounds, irritates, and turns against you all calm and moderate men--it envenoms the controversy.

To speak plainly, I respect the persons, and I believe in the sincerity of nearly all the partisans of protection; I claim no right to call in question the personal probity, the delicacy, the philanthropy, of any one whatsoever. I again repeat that protection is the fruit, the fatal fruit, of a common error, of which everybody, or at least the majority of men, are at once the victims and the accomplices. But with all this I cannot prevent things being as they are.

Figure Diogenes putting his head out of his tub, and saying, "Athenians, you are served by slaves. Has it never occurred to you, that you thereby exercise over your brethren the most iniquitous species of spoliation?"

Or, again, figure a tribune speaking thus in the forum: "Romans, you derive all your means of existence from the pillage of all nations in succession."

JUSTIFICATION.

In saying so, they would only speak undoubted truth. But are we to conclude from this that Athens and Rome were inhabited only by bad and dishonest people, and hold in contempt Socrates and Plato, Cato and Cincinnatus?

Who could entertain for a moment any such thought? But these great men lived in a social medium which took away all consciousness of injustice. We know that Aristotle could not even realize the idea of any society existing without slavery.

Slavery in modern times has existed down to our own day without exciting many scruples in the minds of planters. Armies serve as the instruments of great conquests, that is to say, of great spoliations. But that is not to say that they do not contain multitudes of soldiers and officers personally of as delicate feelings as are usually to be found in industrial careers, if not indeed more so; men who would blush at the very thought of anything dishonest, and would face a thousand deaths rather than stoop to any meanness.

We must not blame individuals, but rather the general movement which carries them along, and blinds them to the real state of the case; a movement for which society at large is responsible.

The same thing holds of monopoly. I blame the system, and not individuals--society at large, and not individual members of society. If the greatest philosophers have been unable to discover the iniquity of slavery, how much more easily may agriculturists and manufacturers have been led to take a wrong view of the nature and effects of a system of restriction!

II. TWO PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY.

Having reached, if he has reached, the end of the last chapter, I fancy I hear the reader exclaim:

"Well, are we wrong in reproaching economists with being dry and cold? What a picture of human nature! What! Is spoliation, then, to be regarded as an inevitable, almost normal, force, assuming all forms, at work under all pretexts, by law and without law, jobbing and abusing things the most sacred, working on feebleness and credulity by turns, and making progress just in proportion as these are prevalent! Is there in the world a more melancholy picture than this?"

The question is not whether the picture be melancholy, but whether it is true. History will tell us.

It is singular enough that those who decry political economy (or economisme, as they are pleased to call it), because that science studies man and the world as they are, are themselves much further advanced in pessimism, at least as regards the past and the present, than the economists whom they disparage. Open their books and their journals; and what do you find? Bitterness, hatred of society, carried to such a pitch that the very word civilization is in their eyes the synonym of injustice, dis-order, and anarchy. They go the length even of denouncing liberty, so little confidence have they in the development of the human race as the natural result of its organization. Liberty! it is liberty, as they think, which is impelling us nearer and nearer to ruin.

True, these writers are optimists in reference to the future. For if the human race, left to itself, has pursued a wrong road for six thousand years, a discoverer has appeared, who has pointed out the true way of safety; and however little the flock may regard the pastor's crook, they will be infallibly led towards the promised land, where happiness, without any effort on their part, awaits them, and where order, security, and harmony are the cheap reward of improvidence.

The human race have only to consent to these reformers changing (to use Rousseau's expression) its physical and moral constitution.

It is not the business of political economy to inquire what society might have become had God made man otherwise than He has been pleased to make him. It may perhaps be a subject of regret that in the beginning, Providence should have forgotten to call to its counsels some of our modern organisateurs. And as the celestial mechanism would have been very differently constructed had the Creator consulted Alphonsus the Wise, in the same way had He only taken the advice of Fourrier, the social order would have had no resemblance to that in which we are forced to breathe, live, and move. But since we are here--since in eo vivimus, movemur, et minus--all we have to do is to study and make ourselves acquainted with the laws of the social order in which we find ourselves, especially if its amelioration depends essentially on our knowledge of these laws.

We cannot prevent the human heart from being the seat of insatiable desires.

We cannot so order it that these desires should be satisfied without labour.

We cannot so order it that man should not have as much repugnance to labour as desire for enjoyment.

We cannot so order it that from this organization there should not result a perpetual effort on the part of certain men to increase their own share of enjoyments at the expense of others; throwing over upon them, by force or cunning, the labour and exertion which are the necessary condition of such enjoyments being obtained.

It is not for us to go in the face of universal history, or stifle the voice of the past, which tells us that such has been the state of things from the beginning. We cannot deny that war, slavery, thraldom, priestcraft, government abuses, privileges, frauds of every kind, and monopolies, have been the incontestable and terrible manifestations of these two sentiments combined in the heart of man--desire of enjoyments, and repugnance to fatigue.

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread. Yes, but every one desires to have the greatest possible quantity of bread, with the least possible amount of sweat. Such is the testimony of history.

But let us be thankful that history also shows us that the diffusion of enjoyments and of efforts has a tendency to become more and more equal among men.