Liberty of education?--But parents would be paying
professors to teach their sons immorality and error; besides, if we are
to believe M. Thiers, education, if left to the national liberty, would
cease to be national, and we should be educating our children in the
ideas of the Turks or Hindoos, instead of which, thanks to the legal
despotism of the universities, they have the good fortune to be educated
in the noble ideas of the Romans. Liberty of labour?--But this is only
competition, whose effect is to leave all productions unconsumed, to
exterminate the people, and to ruin the tradesmen. The liberty of
exchange?--But it is well known that the protectionists have shown, over
and over again, that a man must be ruined when he exchanges freely, and
that to become rich it is necessary to exchange without liberty. Liberty
of association?--But, according to the socialist doctrine, liberty and
association exclude each other, for the liberty of men is attacked just
to force them to associate.
You must see, then, that the socialist democrats cannot in conscience
allow men any liberty, because, by their own nature, they tend in every
instance to all kinds of degradation and demoralisation.
We are therefore left to conjecture, in this case, upon what foundation
universal suffrage is claimed for them with so much importunity.
The pretensions of organisers suggest another question, which I have
often asked them, and to which I am not aware that I ever received an
answer:--Since the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is
not safe to allow them liberty, how comes it to pass that the tendencies
of organisers are always good? Do not the legislators and their agents
form a part of the human race? Do they consider that they are composed
of different materials from the rest of mankind? They say that society,
when left to itself, rushes to inevitable destruction, because its
instincts are perverse.
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