Although this ideal order of things has never been anywhere actually realized, and perhaps may never be so, except in a very elusory shape, we may nevertheless assume its existence. What is the object of our inquiry? We are seeking to discover the modifications which services undergo when they enter the public domain; and for the purposes of science we must discard the consideration of individual and local acts of violence, and regard the public service simply as such, and as existing under the most legitimate circumstances. In a word, we must investigate the transformation which it undergoes from the single circumstance of its having become public, apart from the causes which have made it so, and of the abuses which may mingle with the means of execution.
The process is this:—
The citizens name mandatories. These mandatories meet, and decide, by a majority, that a certain class of wants—the want of education, for example—can no longer be supplied by free exertions [p430] and free exchanges made by the citizens themselves, and they decree that education shall be provided by functionaries specially delegated and intrusted with the work of instruction. So much for the service rendered. As regards the services received, as the State has secured the time and abilities of these new functionaries for the benefit of the citizens, it must also take from the citizens a part of their means for the benefit of the functionaries. This is effected by an assessment or general contribution.
In all civilized communities such contributions are paid in money. It is scarcely necessary to say that behind this money there is labour. In reality, it is a payment in kind. In reality, the citizens work for the functionaries, and the functionaries work for the citizens, just as, in free and private transactions, the citizens work for one another.
We set down this observation here, in order to elude a very widely-spread sophism which springs from the consideration of money. We hear it frequently said that money received by public functionaries falls back like refreshing rain on the citizens. And we are led to infer that this rain is a second benefit added to that which results from the service. Reasoning in this way, people have come to justify the existence of functions the most parasitical. They do not consider that if this service had remained in the domain of private activity, the money (which, in place of going to the treasury, and from the treasury to the functionaries) would have gone directly to men who voluntarily undertook the duty, and in the same way would have fallen back like rain upon the masses. This sophism will not stand examination, when we extend our regards beyond the mere circulation of money, and see that at the bottom it is labour exchanged for labour, services for services. In public life, it may happen that functionaries receive services without rendering any in return; and then there is a loss entailed on the taxpayer, however we may delude ourselves with reference to this circulation of specie.
Be this as it may, let us resume our analysis:—
We have here, then, an exchange under a new form. Exchange includes two terms—to give, and to receive. Let us inquire then how this transaction, which from being private has become public, is affected in the double point of view of services rendered and services received.
In the first place, it is proved beyond doubt that public services always, or nearly always, extinguish, in law or in fact, private services of the same nature. The State, when it undertakes a service, generally takes care to decree that no other body shall render it, [p431] more especially if one of its objects be to derive a revenue from it. Witness the cases of postage, tobacco, gunpowder, etc. Did the State not take this precaution, the result would be the same. What manufacturer would engage to render to the public a service which the State renders for nothing? We scarcely meet with any one who seeks a livelihood by teaching law or medicine privately, by the formation of high-roads, by rearing thoroughbred horses, by founding schools of arts and design, by clearing lands in Algeria, by establishing museums, etc. And the reason is this, that the public will not go to purchase what the State gives it for nothing. As M. de Cormenin has said, the trade of the shoemakers would soon be put an end to, even were it declared inviolable by the first article of the constitution, if Government took it into its head to furnish shoes to everybody gratuitously.
In truth, in the word gratuitous, as applied to public services, there lurks the grossest and most puerile of sophisms.
For my own part, I wonder at the extreme gullibility of the public in allowing itself to be taken in with this word. What! it is said, do you not wish gratuitous education? gratuitous studs?