And what is liberty?
"Once for all: liberty consists, not only in the right granted, but
in the power given to man, to exercise, to develop his faculties
under the empire of justice, and under the protection of the law.
"And this is no vain distinction; there is a deep meaning in it,
and its consequences are not to be estimated. For when once it is
admitted that man, to be truly free, must have the power to
exercise and develop his faculties, it follows that every member of
society has a claim upon it for such instruction as shall _enable_
it to display itself, and for the instruments of labour, without
which human activity can find no scope. Now, by whose intervention
is society to give to each of its members the requisite instruction
and the necessary instruments of labour, unless by that of the
State?"
Thus, liberty is power. In what does this power consist? In possessing
instruction and instruments of labour. Who is to give instruction and
instruments of labour? Society, _who owes them_. By whose intervention
is society to give instruments of labour to those who do not possess
them?
By the _intervention of the State_. From whom is the State to obtain
them?
It is for the reader to answer this question, and to notice whither all
this tends.
One of the strangest phenomena of our time, and one which will probably
be a matter of astonishment to our descendants, is the doctrine which is
founded upon this triple hypothesis: the radical passiveness of
mankind,--the omnipotence of the law,--the infallibility of the
legislator:--this is the sacred symbol of the party which proclaims
itself exclusively democratic.
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