Part 15 (1/2)
No society can exist unless the laws are respected to a certain degree, but the safest way to make them respected is to make them respectable.
When law and morality are in contradiction to each other, the citizen finds himself in the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense, or of losing his respect for the law--two evils of equal magnitude, between which it would be difficult to choose.
It is so much in the nature of law to support justice, that in the minds of the ma.s.ses they are one and the same. There is in all of us a strong disposition to regard what is lawful as legitimate, so much so, that many falsely derive all justice from law. It is sufficient, then, for the law to order and sanction plunder, that it may appear to many consciences just and sacred. Slavery, protection, and monopoly find defenders, not only in those who profit by them, but in those who suffer by them. If you suggest a doubt as to the morality of these inst.i.tutions, it is said directly--”You are a dangerous innovator, a utopian, a theorist, a despiser of the laws; you would shake the basis upon which society rests.”
If you lecture upon morality, or political economy, official bodies will be found to make this request to the Government:--
”That henceforth science be taught not only with sole reference to free exchange (to liberty, property, and justice), as has been the case up to the present time, but also, and especially, with reference to the facts and legislation (contrary to liberty, property, and justice) which regulate French industry.
”That, in public pulpits salaried by the treasury, the professor abstain rigorously from endangering in the slightest degree the respect due to the laws now in force.”[7]
So that if a law exists which sanctions slavery or monopoly, oppression or plunder, in any form whatever, it must not even be mentioned--for how can it be mentioned without damaging the respect which it inspires?
Still further, morality and political economy must be taught in connexion with this law--that is, under the supposition that it must be just, only because it is law.
Another effect of this deplorable perversion of the law is, that it gives to human pa.s.sions and to political struggles, and, in general, to politics, properly so called, an exaggerated preponderance.
I could prove this a.s.sertion in a thousand ways. But I shall confine myself, by way of ill.u.s.tration, to bringing it to bear upon a subject which has of late occupied everybody's mind--universal suffrage.
Whatever may be thought of it by the adepts of the school of Rousseau, which professes to be _very far advanced_, but which I consider twenty centuries _behind, universal_ suffrage (taking the word in its strictest sense) is not one of those sacred dogmas with respect to which examination and doubt are crimes.
Serious objections may be made to it.
In the first place, the word _universal_ conceals a gross sophism. There are, in France, 36,000,000 of inhabitants. To make the right of suffrage universal, 36,000,000 of electors should be reckoned. The most extended system reckons only 9,000,000. Three persons out of four, then, are excluded; and more than this, they are excluded by the fourth. Upon what principle is this exclusion founded? Upon the principle of incapacity.
Universal suffrage, then, means--universal suffrage of those who are capable. In point of fact, who are the capable? Are age, s.e.x, and judicial condemnations the only conditions to which incapacity is to be attached?
On taking a nearer view of the subject, we may soon perceive the motive which causes the right of suffrage to depend upon the presumption of incapacity; the most extended system differing only in this respect from the most restricted, by the appreciation of those conditions on which this incapacity depends, and which const.i.tutes, not a difference in principle, but in degree.
This motive is, that the elector does not stipulate for himself, but for everybody.
If, as the republicans of the Greek and Roman tone pretend, the right of suffrage had fallen to the lot of every one at his birth, it would be an injustice to adults to prevent women and children from voting. Why are they prevented? Because they are presumed to be incapable. And why is incapacity a motive for exclusion? Because the elector does not reap alone the responsibility of his vote; because every vote engages and affects the community at large; because the community has a right to demand some securities, as regards the acts upon which his well-being and his existence depend.
I know what might be said in answer to this. I know what might be objected. But this is not the place to exhaust a controversy of this kind. What I wish to observe is this, that this same controversy (in common with the greater part of political questions) which agitates, excites, and unsettles the nations, would lose almost all its importance if the law had always been what it ought to be.
In fact, if law were confined to causing all persons, all liberties, and all properties to be respected--if it were merely the organisation of individual right and individual defence--if it were the obstacle, the check, the chastis.e.m.e.nt opposed to all oppression, to all plunder--is it likely that we should dispute much, as citizens, on the subject of the greater or less universality of suffrage? Is it likely that it would compromise that greatest of advantages, the public peace? Is it likely that the excluded cla.s.ses would not quietly wait for their turn? Is it likely that the enfranchised cla.s.ses would be very jealous of their privilege? And is it not clear, that the interest of all being one and the same, some would act without much inconvenience to the others?
But if the fatal principle should come to be introduced, that, under pretence of organisation, regulation, protection, or encouragement, the law may take from one party in order to give to another, help itself to the wealth acquired by all the cla.s.ses that it may increase that of one cla.s.s, whether that of the agriculturists, the manufacturers, the s.h.i.+powners, or artists and comedians; then certainly, in this case, there is no cla.s.s which may not pretend, and with reason, to place its hand upon the law, which would not demand with fury its right of election and eligibility, and which would overturn society rather than not obtain it. Even beggars and vagabonds will prove to you that they have an incontestable t.i.tle to it. They will say--”We never buy wine, tobacco, or salt, without paying the tax, and a part of this tax is given by law in perquisites and gratuities to men who are richer than we are. Others make use of the law to create an artificial rise in the price of bread, meat, iron, or cloth. Since everybody traffics in law for his own profit, we should like to do the same. We should like to make it produce the _right to a.s.sistance_, which is the poor man's plunder. To effect this, we ought to be electors and legislators, that we may organise, on a large scale, alms for our own cla.s.s, as you have organised, on a large scale, protection for yours. Don't tell us that you will take our cause upon yourselves, and throw to us 600,000 francs to keep us quiet, like giving us a bone to pick. We have other claims, and, at any rate, we wish to stipulate for ourselves, as other cla.s.ses have stipulated for themselves!” How is this argument to be answered?
Yes, as long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true mission, that it may violate property instead of securing it, everybody will be wanting to manufacture law, either to defend himself against plunder, or to organise it for his own profit. The political question will always be prejudicial, predominant, and absorbing; in a word, there will be fighting around the door of the Legislative Palace.
The struggle will be no less furious within it. To be convinced of this, it is hardly necessary to look at what pa.s.ses in the Chambers in France and in England; it is enough to know how the question stands.
Is there any need to prove that this odious perversion of law is a perpetual source of hatred and discord,--that it even tends to social disorganisation? Look at the United States. There is no country in the world where the law is kept more within its proper domain--which is, to secure to every one his liberty and his property. Therefore, there is no country in the world where social order appears to rest upon a more solid basis. Nevertheless, even in the United States, there are two questions, and only two, which from the beginning have endangered political order. And what are these two questions? That of slavery and that of tariffs; that is, precisely the only two questions in which, contrary to the general spirit of this republic, law has taken the character of a plunderer. Slavery is a violation, sanctioned by law, of the rights of the person. Protection is a violation perpetrated by the law upon the rights of property; and certainly it is very remarkable that, in the midst of so many other debates, this double _legal scourge_, the sorrowful inheritance of the Old World, should be the only one which can, and perhaps will, cause the rupture of the Union. Indeed, a more astounding fact, in the heart of society, cannot be conceived than this:--That _law should have become an instrument of injustice_.
And if this fact occasions consequences so formidable to the United States, where there is but one exception, what must it be with us in Europe, where it is a principle--a system?
M. Montalembert, adopting the thought of a famous proclamation of M.
Carlier, said, ”We must make war against socialism.” And by socialism, according to the definition of M. Charles Dupin, he meant plunder.
But what plunder did he mean? For there are two sorts--_extra-legal_ and _legal plunder_.
As to extra-legal plunder, such as theft, or swindling, which is defined, foreseen, and punished by the penal code, I do not think it can be adorned by the name of socialism. It is not this which systematically threatens the foundations of society. Besides, the war against this kind of plunder has not waited for the signal of M. Montalembert or M.
Carlier. It has gone on since the beginning of the world; France was carrying it on long before the revolution of February--long before the appearance of socialism--with all the ceremonies of magistracy, police, gendarmerie, prisons, dungeons, and scaffolds. It is the law itself which is conducting this war, and it is to be wished, in my opinion, that the law should always maintain this att.i.tude with respect to plunder.
But this is not the case. The law sometimes takes its own part.