How, in fact, can we imagine force encroaching upon the
liberty of citizens without infringing upon justice, and so acting
against its proper aim?
Here I am encountering the most popular prejudice of our time. It is
not considered enough that law should be just, it must be philanthropic.
It is not sufficient that it should guarantee to every citizen the free
and inoffensive exercise of his faculties, applied to his physical,
intellectual, and moral development; it is required to extend
well-being, instruction, and morality, directly over the nation. This is
the fascinating side of socialism.
But, I repeat it, these two missions of the law contradict each other.
We have to choose between them. A citizen cannot at the same time be
free and not free. M. de Lamartine wrote to me one day thus:--"Your
doctrine is only the half of my programme; you have stopped at liberty,
I go on to fraternity." I answered him:--"The second part of your
programme will destroy the first." And in fact it is impossible for me
to separate the word _fraternity_ from the word _voluntary_. I cannot
possibly conceive fraternity _legally_ enforced, without liberty being
_legally_ destroyed, and justice _legally_ trampled under foot. Legal
plunder has two roots: one of them, as we have already seen, is in human
egotism; the other is in false philanthropy.
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