They aspire only to make the law.
To show how universal this strange disposition has been in France, I had
need not only to have copied the whole of the works of Mably, Raynal,
Rousseau, Fenelon, and to have made long extracts from Bossuet and
Montesquieu, but to have given the entire transactions of the sittings
of the Convention, I shall do no such thing, however, but merely refer
the reader to them.
It is not to be wondered at that this idea should have suited Buonaparte
exceedingly well. He embraced it with ardour, and put it in practice
with energy. Playing the part of a chemist, Europe was to him the
material for his experiments. But this material reacted against him.
More than half undeceived, Buonaparte, at St. Helena, seemed to admit
that there is an initiative in every people, and he became less hostile
to liberty. Yet this did not prevent him from giving this lesson to his
son in his will:--"To govern, is to diffuse morality, education, and
well-being."
After all this, I hardly need show, by fastidious quotations, the
opinions of Morelly, Babeuf, Owen, Saint Simon, and Fourier. I shall
confine myself to a few extracts from Louis Blanc's book on the
organisation of labour.
"In our project, society receives the impulse of power." (Page 126.)
In what does the impulse which power gives to society consist? In
imposing upon it the _project_ of M.
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