It is true that the French school protests against the adjective “optimistic,” and refuses to be called “orthodox.” Its protests would be justified if optimism implied quietism—that selfish contentment of the well-to-do bourgeois who feels that everything is for the best in this best of all worlds—or the attenuated humanitarianism of those who think that they can allay suffering by kind words or good deeds. It is nothing of the kind. We have already protested against interpreting laissez-faire as a mere negation of all activity. It ought to be accepted in the English sense of fair play and of keeping a clear field for the combatants. The economists both of the past and of the present have always been indefatigable wranglers and controversialists of the first order, and they have never hesitated to denounce abuses. But their optimism is based upon the belief that the prevalence of evil in the economic structure is due to the imperfect realisation of liberty. The best remedy for these defects is greater and more perfect liberty;[691] hence the title “Liberal,” to which the school lays claim. The liberty of the worker is the best guarantee against the exploitation of his labour and the reduction of wages. M. Émile Ollivier, the author of the law which suppressed combination fines, declared that freedom of combination would put an end to strikes. Free loans would cause the disappearance of usury. Freedom of trade would put an end to the adulteration of goods and the reign of trusts. Competition would everywhere secure cheap production and just distribution.[692]
This optimism, strengthened and intensified, deepened their distrust of every kind of social reform undertaken with a view to protecting the weak, whether by the masters themselves or through the intervention of the State. Liberty, so they thought, would finally remedy the evils which it seemed to create, while State intervention merely aggravated the evils it sought to correct.[693]
What seems still more singular is their scant respect for “associationism” as outlined in our previous chapter. It found just as little favour as State control. They did not display quite the same contempt for it as was shown by the Revolutionists. It was no longer actually condemned, and they put forward a formal plea for the right of combination, in politics, in religion, industry, commerce, and labour. But they always interpreted it as a mere right of coalition or association with a view to protecting or strengthening individual activity. Association as an instrument of social transformation that would set up co-operation in place of competition, and which in the name of solidarity demanded certain sacrifices from the individual for the sake of the community, was not to the liking of the Liberal Individualist school. Even the less ambitious and less complete forms, such as the co-operative and the mutual aid society, seemed to them to be full of illusions and deceptions, if not actually vicious.[694]
The most striking characteristic of the French school is its unbounded faith in individual liberty. This distinctive trait has never been lacking throughout the century and a half that separates us from the time of the Physiocrats. Its most eminent representatives, while spurning the title Orthodox or Classical, have repeatedly declared that they wish for no other name than Liberal.[695]
It is also marked by a certain want of sympathy with the masses in their sufferings. Science, doubtless, does not make for sympathy. But what we merely wish to note is the presence of a certain tendency—already very pronounced in Malthus—to believe that people’s misfortunes result from their vices or their improvident habits.[696] The Liberal school was quite prepared to extend an enthusiastic welcome to the teaching of Darwin. He pointed out that a necessary condition of progress was the natural selection of the best by the elimination of the incapable, and that the price paid is not a bit too high. Belief in the virtue of competition led to the glorification of the struggle for life.
But the Liberal school failed to demonstrate the goodness of all natural laws; neither did it succeed in arresting the progress of either socialism or Protection. The end of the nineteenth century found it submerged beneath the waters of both currents. Yet it never once lost confidence. Its fidelity to principle, its continuity of doctrine, its resolute, noble disdain of unpopularity, have won for it a unique position; and it deserves better than the summary judgment of foreign economists, who describe it as devoid of all originality, or at best as only a pale reflection of the doctrine of Adam Smith.
In this chapter we are to study the period when Liberalism and Optimism were at the height of their fame. It runs from 1830 to 1850. It was during this epoch that the union of political and economic liberty took place. Henceforth they are combined in a single cult known as Liberalism. Economic liberty—that is, the free choice of vocation and the free exchange of the fruits of one’s toil—no longer figured in the category of necessary liberties, alongside of liberty of conscience or freedom of the press. Like the others it was one of the successes already achieved by democracy or civilisation, and to attempt to suppress it was as vain as to try to make a river flow backward. It was just a part of the wider movement towards freedom from all servitude.
The appearance of political economy at the time when the old régime was showing signs of disintegration is not without significance. The Physiocrats, who were the first Liberal Optimists, were unjustly ignored and neglected by their own descendants, not because of their economic errors so much as because of their political doctrines, especially their acceptance of legal despotism, which seemed to the Liberals of 1830, if not an actual monstrosity, at least a sufficiently typical survival of the old régime to discredit the whole Physiocratic system.[697]
Charles Dunoyer’s book, which appeared in 1845,[698] and which bears the significant title of De la Liberté du Travail, ou simple Exposé des Conditions dans lesquelles les Forces humaines s’exercent avec le plus de Puissance, exactly marks this era of politico-economic Liberalism. But although Dunoyer’s book is a eulogy of liberty in all its forms, especially its competitive aspects, the optimistic note is not so marked as it is in another much more celebrated work which appeared about the same date—Les Harmonies économiques of Bastiat (1850). The Harmonies and the other works of Bastiat contain all the essential traits of the Liberal doctrine. His extreme optimism and his belief in final causes have been disavowed by a great many of the Liberal economists, but he remains the best known figure of the Optimistic Liberal group, and possibly of the whole French school.
Another economist whose name is inseparably linked with the Optimistic doctrine, and of whom we have already made some mention, is the American Carey.[699] In many respects Carey ought to be given first place, were it only because of his priority as a writer, and especially, perhaps, since he accuses Bastiat of plagiarism. In his treatment of certain aspects of the subject, such as the question of method, in the logical consistency of his argument, and in the scope of his discussion of such a problem as that of rent, he displays a marked superiority. In our exposition of Bastiat’s doctrine we shall give to Carey’s the attention which it deserves. Our decision to give Bastiat and not Carey the central position in this chapter is due in the first place to the consideration that we are writing primarily for French students, who will be more frequently called upon to read Bastiat than Carey; and in the second place to the fact that the works of the American economist appeared at a time when economic instruction scarcely existed in the United States, and consequently his writings never exercised the same influence as those of the French economist, which appeared just when the war of ideas was at its fiercest. Finally, Carey’s doctrine is lacking in the beautiful unity of conception of the Harmonies, so that alongside of the advocacy of free competition among individuals is presented an outline of national Protection. Thus we have been forced to divide our treatment of Carey into two sections. The heterogeneous, not to say contradictory, character of his doctrines accounts for his appearing in two different chapters.