Section 6 - The Law - Frederic Bastiat

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Section six Rousseau. Although this politician, the paramount authority of the democrats,
makes the social edifice rest upon thegeneral will, no one has so completely
admitted the hypothesis of the entire passivenessof human nature in the presence of the
lawgiver. If it is true thata great prince is a rare thing,

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how much more so must a greatlawgiver be. The former has only to
follow the pattern proposed to him bythe latter. This latter is the engineer
who invents the machine. The formeris merely the workman who sets it in
motion. And what part have mento act in all this? That of

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the machine which is set in motion? Or or rather, are they not
the brute matter of which the machineis made. Thus, between the legislator
and the prince, between the princeand his subjects, there are this same
relations as those that exist between theagricultural writer and the agriculturist, the agriculturist

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and the clod. At what avast height, then, is the politician
placed who rules over legislators themselves andteaches them their trade in such imperative terms
as the following. Would you giveconsistency to the state, bring the extremes

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together as much as possible, sufferneither wealthy persons nor beggars. If the
soil is poor and barren, orthe country too much confined for the inhabitants,
turned to industry and the arts,whose productions you will exchange for the
provisions which you require on a goodsoil. If you are short of inhabitants,

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give all your attention to agriculture,which multiplies men, and banish the
arts which only serve to depopulate thecountry. Pay attention to extensive and convenient
coasts. Cover the sea with vessels, and you will have a brilliant and
short experience. If your seas washonly inaccessible rocks, Let the people be

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barbarous and eat fish. They willlive more quietly, perhaps better, and
most certainly more happily. In short, besides those maxims which are common to
all, every people has its ownparticular circumstances which demand a legislation peculiar to
itself. It was thus that theHebrews formerly and the Arabs more recently had

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religion for their principal object. Thatof the Athenians was literature. That of
Carthage, entire commerce of roads,naval affairs of Sparta, war and of
Rome virtue. The author of thespirit of laws has shown own the art

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by which the legislator should frame hisinstitutions towards each of these objects. But
if the legislator, mistaking his object, should take up a principle different from
that which arises from the nature ofthings, if one should tend to slavery
and the other to liberty, ifone to wealth and the other to population,

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one to peace and the other toconquests, the laws will insensibly become
enfeebled, the constitution will be impaired, and the state will be subject to
incessant agitations until it is destroyed orbecomes changed and invincible nature regains her empire.

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But if nature is sufficiently invincible toregain its empire, why does not
Rousseau admit that it has no needof the legislator to gain its empire from
the beginning? Why does he notallow that, by obeying their own impulse,
men would of themselves apply agriculture toa fertile district and commerce to extensive

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and commodious coasts without the interference ofa the Surgius, a Solon, or
a Rousseau, who would undertake itat the risk of deceiving themselves. Be
that as it may, we seewith what a terrible responsibility Rousseau invests inventors,

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institutors, conductors, and manipulators ofsocieties. He is therefore very exacting
with regard to them. He whodares to undertake the institutions of a people
ought to feel that he can,as it were, transform every individual who
is by himself a perfect and solitarywhole, receiving his life and being from

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a larger whole of which he formsa part. He must feel that he
can change the constitution of man,to fortify it and substitute a social and
moral existence for the physical and independentone that we have all received from nature.
In a word, he must deprivemen of his own powers to give

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him others that are foreign to him. Poor human nature, what would become
of its dignity if it were intrustedto the disciples of Rousseau? Rainal the
climate, that is, the airand the soil, is the first element
for the legislator. His resources describehim his duties. First, he must

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console his local position. A populationdwelling upon maritime shores must have laws fitted
for navigation. If the colony islocated in an inland region, a legislator
must provide for the nature of thesoil and for its degree of fertility.
It is more especially in the distributionof property that the wisdom of legislation will

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appear as a general rule. Andin every country, when a new colony
is founded, lands should be givento each man sufficient for the support of
his family. In an uncultivated islandwhich you are colonizing with children, it
will only be needful to let thegerms of truth expand in the development of

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reason. But when you establish oldpeople in a new country, the skill
consists in only allowing it those injuriousopinions and customs which it is impossible to
cure and correct. If you wishto prevent them from being perpetuated, you
will act upon the rising generation bya general and public education of the children.

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A prince or a legislator ought neverto found a colony without previously sending
wise men there to instruct the youth. In a new colony, every facility
is open to the precautions of thelegislator who desires to purify the tone and
manners of the people. If hehas genius in virtue. The lands and

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the men that are at his disposalwill inspire his soul with a plan of
society that a writer can only vaguelytrace, and in a way that would
be subject to the instability of allhypotheses, which are varied and complicated by
an infinity of circumstances too difficult toforesee and to combine. One would think

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it was a professor of agriculture whowas saying to his pupils, the climate
is the only rule for the agriculturist. His resources dictate to him his duties.
The first thing he has to consideris his local position. If he
is on a clayey soil, hemust do so, and soul if he

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has to contend with sand, thisis the way in which he must set
about it. Every facility is opento the agriculturist who wishes to clear and
improve his soil. If he onlyhas the skill. The manure which he
has at his disposal will suggest tohim a plan of operation which professor can

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only vaguely trace, and in away that would be subject to the uncertainty
of all hypotheses, which vary andare complicated by an infinity of circumstances too
difficult to foresee and to combine.But o civilized writers deign to remember sometimes
that this clay, this send,this manure of which you are disposing in

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so arbitrary a manner, are menyour equals, intelligent and free beings like
yourselves, who have received from God, as you have, the faculty of
seeing, of foreseeing, of thinking, and of judging for themselves. Maybely
he is supposing the laws to beworn out by time and by the neglect

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of security and continues. Thus,under these circumstances we must be convinced that
the bonds of government are slack.Give them a new tension. It is
the reader who is addressed, andthe evil will be remedied. Think less
of punishing the faults than of encouragingthe virtues that you want. By this

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method, you will bestow upon yourrepublic the vigor of youth. Through ignorance
of this, a free people haslost its liberty. But if the evil
has made so much way that theordinary magistrates are enabled to remedy, it
effectually have recourse to an extraordinary magistracy, whose time should be short and expower

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considerable. The imagination of the citizensrequires to be impressed in this style.
He goes on through twenty volumes.There was a time when, under the
influence of teaching like this, whichis a foundation of classical education, everyone
was for placing himself beyond and abovemankind for the sake of arranging, organizing,

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and instituting it in his own way. Condalac, take upon yourself,
my lord, the character of Lycurgusor Solon. Before you finish reading this
essay, amuse yourself with giving lawsto some wild people in America or in

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Africa. Establish those roving men infixed dwellings. Teach them to keep flocks,
endeavor to develop the social qualities thatnature has implanted in them. Make
them begin to practice the duties ofhumanity. Cause the pleasures of the passions
to become distasteful to them by punishments. And you will see these barbarians,

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with every plan of your legislation,lose advice and gain a virtue. All
these people have had laws, butfew among them have been happy. Why
is this because the legislators have almostalways been ignorant of the object of society,
which is to unite families by acommon interest. Impartiality and law consist

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in two things, in establishing equalityin the fortunes and in the dignity of
the citizens. In proportion to thedegree of equality established by the laws,
the dare will they become to everycitizen. How can averice, ambition,
dissipation, idleness, sloth, inthe hatred or jealousy agitate men who are

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equal in fortune and dignity, andto whom the laws leave new hope of
disturbing their equality. What has beentold to you of the Republic of Sparta
ought to enlighten you on this question. No other states and laws more in
accordance with the order of nature orof equality. It is not to be

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wondered at that the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies should have looked upon the human race
as inert matter, ready to receiveeverything, form, figure, impulse,
movement in life from a great prince, or a great legislator, or a
great genius. These ages were rearlyin the study of antiquity, and antiquity

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presents everywhere in Egypt, Persia,Greece and Rome the spectacle of a few
men molding mankind according to their fancy, and men kind to this end enslaved
by force or by imposture. Andwhat does this prove that, because men
in society are improvable error, ignorance, despotism, slavery, and superstition must

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be more prevalent in early times.The mistake of the writers quoted above is
not that they have asserted this fact, but that they have proposed it as
a rule for the admiration and imitationof future generations. Their mistake has been,
with an inconceivable absence of discernment,and upon the faith of a puerile

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conventionalism, that they have admitted whatis inadmissible visualize the grandeur, dignity,
morality, and wellbeing of the artificialsocieties of the ancient world. They have
not understood that time produces and spreadsenlightenment, and that in proportion to the
increase of enlightenment, right ceases tobe upheld by force, and society regains

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possession of herself. And in fact, what is the political work that we
are endeavoring to promote. It isno other than the instinctive effort of every
people towards liberty. And what isliberty whose name can make every heartbeat and
which can agitate the world, butthe union of all liberties the liberty of

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conscience, of education, of association, of the press, of movement,
of labor, and of exchange,in other words, the free exercise for
all of all the inoffensive faculties.And again, in other words, the
destruction of all despotisms, even oflegal despotism, and the reduction of law

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to its only rational sphere, whichis to regulate the individual right of legitimate
defense or to repress injustice. Thistendency of the human race, it must
be admitted, is greatly thwarted,particularly in our country, by the fatal
disposition resulting from classical teaching, andcommon to all politicians, of placing themselves

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beyond mankind to arrange organized and regulatedthe into their fancy. For whilst society
is struggling to realize liberty, thegreat men who placed themselves at its head,
imbued with the principles of the seventeenthand eighteenth centuries, think only of

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subjecting it to the philanthropic despotism oftheir social inventions, and making it bear
with facility. According to the expressionof Rousseau, the yoke of public felicity
is pictured in their own imaginations.This was particularly the case in seventeen eighty

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nine no sooner was the old systemdestroyed than society was to be submitted to
other artificial arrangements, always with thesame starting point, the omnipotence of the
law. End of Section six