Let alone, they say, let pass; let competition and monopoly act, especially in times of famine, and even though famine is the effect of competition and monopoly.What logic! but, above all, what morality!
But why, then, should there not be a tariff for farmers as well as for bakers? Why not a registration of the sowing, of the harvest, of the vintage, of the pasturage, and of the cattle, as well as a stamp for newspapers, circulars, and orders, or an administration for brewers and wine-merchants?
Under the monopoly system this would be, I admit, an increase of torments;
but with our tendencies to unfairness in trade and the disposition of power to continually increase its personnel and its budget, a law of inquisition regarding crops is becoming daily more indispensable.
Besides, it would be difficult to say which, free trade or the maximum, causes the more evil in times of famine.
But, whichever course you choose, -- and you cannot avoid the alternative, - - the deception is sure and the disaster immense.With the maximum goods seek concealment; the terror increasing from the very effect of the law, the price of provisions rises and rises; soon circulation stops, and the catastrophe follows, as prompt and pitiless as a band of plunderers.With competition the progress of the scourge is slower, but no less fatal: how many deaths from exhaustion or hunger before the high prices attract food to the market! how many victims of extortion after it has arrived! It is the story of the king to whom God, in punishment for his pride, offered the alternative of three days' pestilence, three months' famine, or three years' war.David chose the shortest; the economists prefer the longest.
Man is so miserable that he would rather end by consumption than by apoplexy;
it seems to him that he does not die as much.This is the reason why the disadvantages of the maximum and the benefits of free trade have been so much exaggerated.
For the rest, if France during the last twenty-five years has experienced no general famine, the cause is not in the liberty of commerce, which knows very well, when it wishes, how to produce scarcity in the midst of plenty and how to make famine prevail in the bosom of abundance; it is in the improvement in the methods of communication, which, shortening distances, soon restore the equilibrium disturbed for a moment by local penury.A
striking example of that sad truth that in society the general welfare is never the effect of a conspiracy of individual wills!
The farther we delve into this system of illusory compromises between monopoly and society, -- that is, as we have explained in 1 of this chapter, between capital and labor, between the patriciate and the proletariat, -the more we discover that it is all foreseen, regulated, and executed in accordance with this infernal maxim, with which Hobbes and Machiavel, those theorists of despotism, were unacquainted: EVERYTHING BY THE PEOPLE
AND AGAINST THE PEOPLE.While labor produces, capital, under the mask of a false fecundity, enjoys and abuses; the legislator, in offering his mediation, thought to recall the privileged class to fraternal feelings and surround the laborer with guarantees; and now he finds, by the fatal contradiction of interests, that each of these guarantees is an instrument of torture.
It would require a hundred volumes, the life of ten men, and a heart of iron, to relate from this standpoint the crimes of the State towards the poor and the infinite variety of its tortures.A summary glance at the principal classes of police will be enough to enable us to estimate its spirit and economy.
After having sown trouble in all minds by a confusion of civil, commercial, and administrative laws, made the idea of justice more obscure by multiplying contradictions, and rendered necessary a whole class of interpreters for the explanation of this system, it has been found necessary also to organize the repression of crimes and provide for their punishment.Criminal justice, that particularly rich order of the great family of non-producers, whose maintenance costs France annually more than six million dollars, has become to society a principle of existence as necessary as bread is to the life of man; but with this difference, -- that man lives by the product of his hands, while society devours its members and feeds on its own flesh.
It is calculated by some economists that there is, In London..1 criminal to every 89 inhabitants.
In Liverpool..1 " " " 45 "
In Newcastle..1 " " " 27 "
But these figures lack accuracy, and, utterly frightful as they seem, do not express the real degree of social perversion due to the police.
We have to determine here not only the number of recognized criminals, but the number of offences.The work of the criminal courts is only a special mechanism which serves to place in relief the moral destruction of humanity under the monopoly system; but this official exhibition is far from including the whole extent of the evil.Here are other figures which will lead us to a more certain approximation.
The police courts of Paris disposed, In 1835....of 106,467 cases.
In 1836...." 128,489 "
In 1837...." 140,247 "
Supposing this rate of increase to have continued up to 1846, and to this total of misdemeanors adding the cases of the criminal courts, the simple matters that go no further than the police, and all the offences unknown or left unpunished, -- offences far surpassing in number, so the magistrates say, those which justice reaches, -- we shall arrive at the conclusion that in one year, in the city of Paris, there are more infractions of the law committed than there are inhabitants.And as it is necessary to deduct from the presumable authors of these infractions children of seven years and under, who are outside the limits of guilt, the figures will show that every adult citizen is guilty, three or four times a year, of violating the established order.
