Section 1. There Shall Be Taxes Levied Upon Every Citizen, and

especially upon iron founders.

SEC. 2. The proceeds of this tax shall be applied to the creation of armed corps, to which the title of the fraternal constabulary shall be given.

SEC. 3. It shall be the duty of the fraternal constabulary to make their way into the warehouses of hatchets, saws, etc., to take possession of these tools, and to distribute them to such workingmen as may desire them.

Thanks to this ingenious device, you see, my lord, that I shall no longer be obliged to bear the risks, the costs, the odium, or the scruples of robbery. The State will rob for me as it has for you. We shall both be playing the same game.

It remains to be seen what would be the condition of French society on the realization of my second hypothesis, or what, at least, is the condition of it after the almost complete realization of the first hypothesis. I do not desire to discuss here the economy of the question. It is generally believed that in advocating free trade we are exclusively influenced by the desire to allow capital and labor to take the direction most advantageous to them. This is an error. This consideration is merely secondary. That which wounds, afflicts, and is revolting to us in the protective system, is the denial of right, of justice, of property; it is the fact that the system turns the law against justice and against property, when it ought to protect them; it is that it undermines and perverts the very conditions of society. And to the question in this aspect I invite your most serious consideration.

What is law, or at least what ought it to be? What is its rational and moral mission? Is it not to hold the balance even between all rights, all liberties, and all property? Is it not to cause justice to rule among all? Is it not to prevent and to repress oppression and robbery wherever they are found?

And are you not shocked at the immense, radical, and deplorable innovation introduced into the world by compelling the law itself to commit the very crimes to punish which is its especial mission--by turning the law in principle and in fact against liberty and property?

You deplore the condition of modern society. You groan over the disorder which prevails in institutions and ideas. But is it not your system which has perverted everything, both institutions and ideas?

What! the law is no longer the refuge of the oppressed, but the arm of the oppressor! The law is no longer a shield, but a sword! The law no longer holds in her august hands a scale, but false weights and measures! And you wish to have society well regulated!

Your system has written over the entrance of the legislative halls these words: "Whoever acquires any influence here can obtain his share of the legalized pillage."

And what has been the result? All classes of society have become demoralized by shouting around the gates of the palace: "Give me a share of the spoils."

After the revolution of February, when universal suffrage was proclaimed, I had for a moment hoped to have heard this sentiment: "No more pillage for any one, justice for all." And that would have been the real solution of the social problem. Such was not the case. The doctrine of protection had for generations too profoundly corrupted the age, public sentiments and ideas. No. In making inroads upon the National Assembly, each class, in accordance with your system, has endeavored to make the law an instrument of rapine. There have been demanded heavier imposts, gratuitous credit, the right to employment, the right to assistance, the guaranty of incomes and of minimum wages, gratuitous instruction, loans to industry, etc., etc.; in short, every one has endeavored to live and thrive at the expense of others. And upon what have these pretensions been based? Upon the authority of your precedents. What sophisms have been invoked? Those that you have propagated for two centuries. With you they have talked about equalizing the conditions of labor. With you they have declaimed against ruinous competition. With you they have ridiculed the let alone principle, that is to say, liberty. With you they have said that the law should not confine itself to being just, but should come to the aid of suffering industries, protect the feeble against the strong, secure profits to individuals at the expense of the community, etc., etc. In short, according to the expression of Mr. Charles Dupin, socialism has come to establish the theory of robbery. It has done what you have done, and that which you desire the professors of political economy to do for you.

Your cleverness is in vain, Messieurs Protectionists, it is useless to lower your tone, to boast of your latent generosity, or to deceive your opponents by sentiment. You cannot prevent logic from being logic.

You cannot prevent Mr. Billault from telling the legislators, "You have granted favors to one, you must grant them to all."

You cannot prevent Mr. Cremieux from telling the legislators: "You have enriched the manufacturers, you must enrich the common people."

You cannot prevent Mr. Nadeau from saying to the legislators: "You cannot refuse to do for the suffering classes that which you have done for the privileged classes."

You cannot even prevent the leader of your orchestra, Mr. Mimerel, from saying to the legislators: "I demand twenty-five thousand subsidies for the workingmen's savings banks;" and supporting his motion in this manner:

"Is this the first example of the kind that our legislation offers? Would you establish the system that the State should encourage everything, open at its expense courses of scientific lectures, subsidize the fine arts, pension the theatre, give to the classes already favored by fortune the benefits of superior education, the most varied amusements, the enjoyment of the arts, and repose for old age; give all this to those who know nothing of privations, and compel those who have no share in these benefits to bear their part of the burden, while refusing them everything, even the necessaries of life?

"Gentlemen, our French society, our customs, our laws, are so made that the intervention of the State, however much it may be regretted, is seen everywhere, and nothing seems to be stable or durable if the hand of the State is not manifest in it. It is the State that makes the Sevres porcelain, and the Gobelin tapestry. It is the State that periodically gives expositions of the works of our artists, and of the products of our manufacturers; it is the State which recompenses those who raise its cattle and breed its fish. All this costs a great deal. It is a tax to which every one is obliged to contribute. Everybody, do you understand? And what direct benefit do the people derive from it? Of what direct benefit to the people are your porcelains and tapestries, and your expositions? This general principle of resisting what you call a state of enthusiasm we can understand, although you yesterday voted a bounty for linens; we can understand it on the condition of consulting the present crisis, and especially on the condition of your proving your impartiality. If it is true that, by the means I have indicated, the State thus far seems to have more directly benefited the well-to-do classes than those who are poorer, it is necessary that this appearance should be removed. Shall it be done by closing the manufactories of tapestry and stopping the exhibitions? Assuredly not; but by giving the poor a direct share in this distribution of benefits."

In this long catalogue of favors granted to some at the expense of all, one will remark the extreme prudence with which Mr. Mimerel has left the tariff favors out of sight, although they are the most explicit manifestations of legal spoliation. All the orators who supported or opposed him have taken upon themselves the same reserve. It is very shrewd! Possibly they hope, by giving the poor a direct participation in this distribution of benefits, to save this great iniquity by which they profit, but of which they do not whisper.

They deceive themselves. Do they suppose that after having realized a partial spoliation by the establishment of customs duties, other classes, by the establishment of other institutions, will not attempt to realize universal spoliation?

I know very well you always have a sophism ready. You say: "The favors which the law grants us are not given to the manufacturer, but to manufactures. The profits which it enables us to receive at the expense of the consumers are merely a trust placed in our hands. They enrich us, it is true, but our wealth places us in a position to expend more, to extend our establishments, and falls like refreshing dew upon the laboring classes."

Such is your language, and what I most lament is the circumstance that your miserable sophisms have so perverted public opinion that they are appealed to in support of all forms of legalized spoliation. The suffering classes also say. "Let us by act of the Legislature help ourselves to the goods of others. We shall be in easier circumstances as the result of it; we shall buy more wheat, more meat, more cloth, and more iron; and that which we receive from the public taxes will return in a beneficent shower to the capitalists and landed proprietors."

But, as I have already said, I will not to-day discuss the economical effects of legal spoliation. Whenever the protectionists desire, they will find me ready to examine the sophisms of the ricochets, which, indeed, may be invoked in support of all species of robbery and fraud.

We will confine ourselves to the political and moral effects of exchange legally deprived of liberty.

I have said: The time has come to know what the law is, and what it ought to be.

If you make the law for all citizens a palladium of liberty and of property; if it is only the organization of the individual law of self-defense, you will establish, upon the foundation of justice, a government rational, simple, economical, comprehended by all, loved by all, useful to all, supported by all, entrusted with a responsibility perfectly defined and carefully restricted, and endowed with imperishable strength. If, on the other hand, in the interests of individuals or of classes, you make the law an instrument of robbery, every one will wish to make laws, and to make them to his own advantage. There will be a riotous crowd at the doors of the legislative halls, there will be a bitter conflict within; minds will be in anarchy, morals will be shipwrecked; there will be violence in party organs, heated elections, accusations, recriminations, jealousies, inextinguishable hates, the public forces placed at the service of rapacity instead of repressing it, the ability to distinguish the true from the false effaced from all minds, as the notion of justice and injustice will be obliterated from all consciences, the government responsible for everything and bending under the burden of its responsibilities, political convulsions, revolutions without end, ruins over which all forms of socialism and communism attempt to establish themselves; these are the evils which must necessarily flow from the perversion of law.

Such, consequently, gentlemen, are the evils for which you have prepared the way by making use of the law to destroy freedom of exchange; that is to say, to abolish the right of property. Do not declaim against socialism; you establish it. Do not cry out against communism; you create it. And now you ask us Economists to make you a theory which will justify you! Morbleu! make it yourselves.