We should not see towns peopled at the expense of rural
districts, nor rural districts at the expense of towns. We should not
see those great displacements of capital, of labour, and of population,
which legislative measures occasion; displacements, which render so
uncertain and precarious the very sources of existence, and thus
aggravate to such an extent the responsibility of Governments.
Unhappily, law is by no means confined to its own department. Nor is it
merely in some indifferent and debateable views that it has left its
proper sphere. It has done more than this. It has acted in direct
opposition to its proper end; it has destroyed its own object; it has
been employed in annihilating that justice which it ought to have
established, in effacing amongst Rights, that limit which was its true
mission to respect; it has placed the collective force in the service of
those who wish to traffic, without risk, and without scruple, in the
persons, the liberty, and the property of others; it has converted
plunder into a right, that it may protect it, and lawful defence into a
crime, that it may punish it.
How has this perversion of law been accomplished? And what has resulted
from it?
The law has been perverted through the influence of two very different
causes--bare egotism and false philanthropy.
Let us speak of the former.
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