To that we reply, that according to the most learned physicians the left side of the body has a natural feebleness, which is quite reassuring as regards the labour of the future.
Should your Majesty consent to pass the measure now proposed, a great principle will be established: All wealth proceeds from the intensity of labour. It will be easy for us to extend and vary the applications of this principle. We may decree, for example, that it shall no longer be permissible to work but with the foot; for this is no more impossible (as we have seen) than to extract iron from the mud of the Seine. You see then, Sire, that the means of increasing national labour can never fail. And after all has been tried, we have still the practically ex-haustless resource of amputation.
To conclude, Sire, if this report were not intended for publicity, we should take the liberty of soliciting your attention to the great influence which measures of this kind are calculated to confer on men in power. But that is a matter which we must reserve for a private audience.
XVII. DOMINATION BY LABOUR.
In the same way that in time of war we attain the mastery by superiority in arms, do we not, in time of peace, arrive at domination by superiority in labour?"
This is a question of the highest interest at a time when no doubt seems to be entertained that in the field of industry, as in the field of battle, the stronger crushes the weaker.
To arrive at this conclusion, we must have discovered between the labour which is applied to commodities and the violence exercised upon men, a melancholy and discouraging analogy; for why should these two kinds of operations be thought identical in their effects, if they are essentially different in their own nature?
And if it be true that in industry, as in war, predominance is the necessary result of superiority, what have we to do with progress or with social economy, seeing that we inhabit a world where everything has been so arranged by Providence that one and the same effect—namely, oppression—proceeds necessarily from two opposite principles?