The question which presents itself on the threshold of Politics, as a science, then, is this:—
What are the services which should remain in the domain of private activity? And what are the services which should fall within that of public or collective activity?
The problem, then, is this:—
In the great circle called society, to trace accurately the inscribed circle called government.
It is evident that this problem belongs to Political Economy, since it implies the comparative examination of two very different forms of exchange.
This problem once solved, there remains another, namely, what is the best organization of public services? This last belongs to pure Politics, and we shall not enter upon it.
Let us examine, then, first of all, the essential differences by which public and private services are characterized, which is a preliminary inquiry necessary to enable us to fix accurately the line which should divide them.
The whole of the preceding portion of this work has been devoted to exhibit the evolution of private services. We have had a glimpse of it in this formal or tacit proposition: Do this for me, and I shall do that for you; which implies, whether as regards what we give away or what we receive, a double and reciprocal consent. We can form no correct notion, then, of barter, exchange, appreciation, value, apart from the consideration of liberty, nor of liberty apart from responsibility. In having recourse to exchange, each party consults, on his own responsibility, his wants, his tastes, his desires, his faculties, his affections, his convenience, his entire situation; and we have nowhere denied that to the exercise of free will is attached the possibility of error, the possibility of a foolish and irrational choice. The error belongs not to exchange, but to human imperfection; and the remedy can only reside in responsibility itself (that is to say, in liberty), seeing that liberty is the source of all experience. To establish restraint in the business of exchange, to destroy free will under the pretext that man may err, would be no improvement, unless it were [p429] first proved to us that the agent who organizes the restraint does not himself participate in the imperfection of our nature, and is subject neither to the passions nor to the errors of other men. On the contrary, is it not evident that this would be, not only to displace responsibility, but to annihilate it, at least as regards all that is valuable in its remunerative, retributive, experimental, corrective, and, consequently, progressive character? Again, we have seen that free exchanges, or services voluntarily rendered and received, are, under the action of competition, continually extending the co-operation of gratuitous forces, as compared with that of onerous forces, the domain of community as compared with the domain of property, and thus we have come to recognise in liberty that power which promotes progressive equality, or social harmony.
We have no need to describe the form which exchanges assume when thus left free. Restraint takes a thousand shapes; liberty has but one. I repeat once more, that the free and voluntary transmission of private services is defined by the simple words: “Give me this, and I will give you that; do this for me, and I shall do that for you”—Do ut des; facio ut facias.[96]
The same thing does not hold with reference to the exchange of public services. Here constraint is to a certain extent inevitable, and we encounter an infinite number of different forms, from absolute despotism, down to the universal and direct intervention of all the citizens.