The law can only produce one of these results.
_Partial_ plunder.--This is the system which prevailed so long as the
elective privilege was _partial_--a system which is resorted to to avoid
the invasion of socialism.
_Universal_ plunder.--We have been threatened by this system when the
elective privilege has become universal; the masses having conceived the
idea of making law, on the principle of legislators who had preceded
them.
_Absence_ of plunder.--This is the principle of justice, peace, order,
stability, conciliation, and of good sense, which I shall proclaim with
all the force of my lungs (which is very inadequate, alas!) till the day
of my death.
And, in all sincerity, can anything more be required at the hands of the
law? Can the law, whose necessary sanction is force, be reasonably
employed upon anything beyond securing to every one his right? I defy
any one to remove it from this circle without perverting it, and
consequently turning force against right. And as this is the most fatal,
the most illogical social perversion which can possibly be imagined, it
must be admitted that the true solution, so much sought after, of the
social problem, is contained in these simple words--LAW IS ORGANISED
JUSTICE.
Now it is important to remark, that to organise justice by law, that is
to say by force, excludes the idea of organising by law, or by force any
manifestation whatever of human activity--labour, charity, agriculture,
commerce, industry, instruction, the fine arts, or religion; for any one
of these organisations would inevitably destroy the essential
organisation.
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