Democracy in France. January 1849

by François Guizot

Nor is this all. Independently of these diversities and inequalities among individuals, whether proprietors or labourers, other diversities and other inequalities exist among the kinds of property and of labour. These differences are not less real than the others, though they are less apparent; nor are they more incompatible with unity of laws or equality of civil rights.

Moveable property, or capital, has acquired, and continues to acquire, an ever increasing extension and importance in the communities of modern Europe. It is evident that the progress of civilization in our times is entirely in favour of its development; a just requital for the immense services which capital has rendered to civilization.

But this is not enough: efforts are continually made to assimilate immoveable to moveable property; to render land as transferable, as divisible, as convenient to possess and to improve as capital. All the proposed innovations, direct or indirect, in the laws relating to landed property, have this object in view, either openly or covertly.

But though a movement so favourable to capital is going on, landed property is still the most considerable in France, and still holds the first place in the estimation and the desires of the people. Those who possess it addict themselves more and more to the enjoyment of it, and those who do not possess it are more and more eager after its acquisition. The great proprietor is returning to the taste for living on his estate: the tradesman, who has earned a competence, retires to the country to enjoy repose: the peasant thinks of nothing but how to add field to field. Whilst everything is done to favour the development of capital, landed property is more in request and more prized than ever.

It may be confidently predicted that if, as I hope, social order triumphs over its insane or depraved enemies, the attacks of which landed property is now the object, and the dangers with which it is threatened, will, in the end, enhance its preponderance in society.

Whence arises this preponderance? Is it merely because, of all sorts of property, land is the most secure, the least variable;—that which best resists the perturbations, and survives the calamities of society?

This motive, though real, powerful, and obvious, is far from being the only one. There are other motives, or rather we may call them deep-seated instincts, whose empire over man is great, even when he is unconscious of it. These secure the social preponderance of landed property, or restore it when transiently shaken or enfeebled. Among these instincts two appear to me the most powerful; it will be sufficient to indicate them, for an attempt to fathom their depths would carry me too far.

Moveable property, or capital, may procure a man all the advantages of wealth; but property in land gives him much more than this. It gives him a place in the domain of the world—it unites his life to the life which animates all creation. Money is an instrument by which man can procure the satisfaction of his wants and his desires. Landed property is the establishment of man as sovereign in the midst of nature. It satisfies not only his wants and his desires, but tastes deeply implanted in his nature. For his family, it creates that domestic country called home, with all the living sympathies and all the future hopes and projects which people it. And whilst property in land is more consonant than any other to the nature of man, it also affords a field of activity the most favourable to his moral development, the most suited to inspire a just sentiment of his nature and his powers. In almost all the other trades or professions, whether commercial or scientific, success appears to depend solely on himself—on his talents, address, prudence, and vigilance. In agricultural life, man is constantly in the presence of God, and of his power. Activity, talents, prudence and vigilance are as necessary here as elsewhere to the success of his labours, but they are evidently no less insufficient than they are necessary. It is God who rules the seasons and the temperature, the sun and the rain, and all those phenomena of nature which determine the success or the failure of the labours of man on the soil which he cultivates. There is no pride which can resist this dependence, no address which can escape it. Nor is it only a sentiment of humility as to his power over his own destiny which is thus inculcated upon man; he learns also tranquillity and patience. He cannot flatter himself that the most ingenious inventions or the most restless activity will ensure his success; when he has done all that depends upon him for the cultivation and the fertilization of the soil, he must wait with resignation. The more profoundly we examine the situation in which man is placed by the possession and cultivation of the soil, the more do we discover how rich it is in salutary lessons to his reason, and benign influences on his character. Men do not analyze these facts, but they have an instinctive sentiment of them, which powerfully contributes to that peculiar respect in which they hold property in land, and to the preponderance which that kind of property enjoys over every other. This preponderance is a natural, legitimate and salutary fact, which, especially in a great country, society at large has a strong interest in recognising and respecting.

What I have just shown with relation to property, is equally true with relation to labour. It is the glory of modern civilization to have understood and proclaimed the moral value and the social importance of labour; to have raised it to the estimation and the rank which justly belong to it. If I had to point out the most profound evil, the most fatal vice, of the state of things which prevailed in France up to the sixteenth century, I should say, without hesitation, the contempt in which labour was held. Contempt of labour and pride in idleness are certain signs either that society is under the dominion of brute force, or that it is verging to its decline. Labour is the law which God has enjoined on man. It is by labour that he developes and improves everything around him—by labour that he developes and improves his own nature. Labour is become the surest pledge of peace between nations. The respect and the liberty enjoyed by labour tend more than anything to calm the anxieties which we might otherwise too justly feel, and to raise our hopes for the prospects of the human race. By what fatality then has it happened that the word labour, so honourable to modern civilization, is become a war-cry and a source of disasters in France? It is because that word is made a cloak for a great and pernicious lie. It is not labour, its interests or its rights, which are the object of the ferment excited in its name; the war which has been declared on the plea of protecting labour, is not in fact waged in its behalf, nor, if successful, would redound to its advantage. It is, on the contrary, directed against labour, whose ruin and degradation would be its infallible result.

Labour, like family, property, and everything else in this world, is subject to natural and general laws; among which are, diversity and inequality of the kinds and the results of labour, and of the stations of those by whom it is performed. Intellectual labour is superior to manual. Descartes, who enlightened France, and Colbert, who laid the foundations of her prosperity, performed a labour superior to that of the workman who prints the works of Descartes, or who helps to produce the manufactures fostered by Colbert; and among these very workmen, those who are intelligent, moral, and industrious, justly attain to a situation superior to that which the same description of labour can secure to the dull, the lazy, or the licentious. The variety of tasks and vocations allotted to man is infinite. Labour is everywhere—in the house of a father of a family, who educates his children and superintends his affairs; in the cabinet of a statesman who takes part in the government of his country; in that of the magistrate who administers its laws; of the philosopher who instructs, and of the poet who charms it; in the fields, on the ocean, on the highways, in the manufactories and the workshops; and in every situation, in every variety of labour, in every class of labourers, diversity and inequality arise and subsist; inequality of intellectual power, of moral merit, of social importance, of material wealth. These are the natural, primitive, universal laws of labour, originating in the nature and condition of man, or, to speak more properly, ordained by the wisdom of God. It is against these laws that the war of which we are witnesses is waged; it is this hierarchy of labour, founded on the decrees of God and the free actions of man, which it is the object of this war to abolish; and to substitute—what?—the degradation and the ruin of labour, by the reduction of all labour and all labourers to the same level! Examine the meaning which is usually affixed to the word labour in the language of these enemies of social order. They do not distinctly say that material and manual work are the only real work; indeed they occasionally affect great respect for purely intellectual labour: but they omit to mention the various sorts of higher labour which are performed on every stage of the social scale; their whole attention is absorbed by material labour, which they constantly represent as the kind of labour whose importance throws every other into the shade. In short, they talk in a manner to excite and keep alive in the minds of the men employed in physical labour, the opinion that theirs only has a claim to the name and the rights of labour. Even when speaking not of labour, but of labourers, they hold the same levelling and depreciating language;—ascribing the rights of labour to workmen, as such, independently of all degrees of personal merit. Thus the coarsest and most ordinary labour is assumed as the standard to which all the higher degrees are adjusted; and diversity and inequality are abolished, for the supposed advantage of that which is the least and the lowest in the scale!