By the
former, those whom the State employs, escape their part of the loss, by
adding it to that which their fellow-citizens have already suffered.
There is an article in our constitution which says:--"Society favours
and encourages the development of labour--by the establishment of public
works, by the State, the departments, and the parishes, as a means of
employing persons who are in want of work."
As a temporary measure, on any emergency, during a hard winter, this
interference with the tax-payers may have its use. It acts in the same
way as securities. It adds nothing either to labour or to wages, but it
takes labour and wages from ordinary times to give them, at a loss it is
true, to times of difficulty.
As a permanent, general, systematic measure, it is nothing else than a
ruinous mystification, an impossibility, which shows a little excited
labour _which is seen_, and hides a great deal of prevented labour
_which is not seen_.
VI.--The Intermediates.
Society is the total of the forced or voluntary services which men
perform for each other; that is to say, of _public services_ and
_private services_.
The former, imposed and regulated by the law, which it is not always
easy to change, even when it is desirable, may survive with it their own
usefulness, and still preserve the name of _public services_, even when
they are no longer services at all, but rather _public annoyances_.
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