Moreover, if we
come to higher considerations, we may observe that wants and desires
arise the one from the other, and originate in regions which are more
and more refined in proportion as the public wealth allows of their
being satisfied; that Government ought not to take part in this
correspondence, because in a certain condition of present fortune it
could not by taxation stimulate the arts of necessity without checking
those of luxury, and thus interrupting the natural course of
civilisation. I may observe, that these artificial transpositions of
wants, tastes, labour, and population, place the people in a precarious
and dangerous position, without any solid basis."
These are some of the reasons alleged by the adversaries of State
intervention in what concerns the order in which citizens think their
wants and desires should be satisfied, and to which, consequently, their
activity should be directed. I am, I confess, one of those who think
that choice and impulse ought to come from below and not from above,
from the citizen and not from the legislator; and the opposite doctrine
appears to me to tend to the destruction of liberty and of human
dignity.
But, by a deduction as false as it is unjust, do you know what
economists are accused of? It is, that when we disapprove of government
support, we are supposed to disapprove of the thing itself whose support
is discussed; and to be the enemies of every kind of activity, because
we desire to see those activities, on the one hand free, and on the
other seeking their own reward in themselves.
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