Depart from this point, make the law religious, fraternal, equalising,
industrial, literary, or artistic, and you will be lost in vagueness and
uncertainty; you will be upon unknown ground, in a forced Utopia, or,
which is worse, in the midst of a multitude of Utopias, striving to gain
possession of the law, and to impose it upon you; for fraternity and
philanthropy have no fixed limits, like justice. Where will you stop?
Where is the law to stop? One person, as M. de Saint Cricq, will only
extend his philanthropy to some of the industrial classes, and will
require the law to _dispose of the consumers in favour of the
producers_. Another, like M. Considerant, will take up the cause of the
working classes, and claim for them by means of the law, at a fixed
rate, _clothing, lodging, food, and everything necessary for the support
of life_. A third, as, M. Louis Blanc, will say, and with reason, that
this would be an incomplete fraternity, and that the law ought to
provide them with instruments of labour and the means of instruction. A
fourth will observe that such an arrangement still leaves room for
inequality, and that the law ought to introduce into the most remote
hamlets luxury, literature, and the arts. This is the high road to
communism; in other words, legislation will be--what it now is--the
battle-field for everybody's dreams and everybody's covetousness.
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