If it be a misfortune that the sense of responsibility should be extinguished in the individual, it is no less a misfortune that it should be developed in the State in an exaggerated form. Man, however degraded, has always as much light left him as to see the quarter from whence good or evil comes to him; and when the State assumes the charge of all, it becomes responsible for all. Under the dominion of such artificial arrangements, a people which suffers can only lay the blame on its Government, and its only remedy, its only policy, is to overturn it. Hence an inevitable succession of revolutions. I say inevitable, for under such a régime the people must necessarily suffer; and the reason of it is that public services, besides disturbing and unsettling values, which is injustice, lead also to the destruction of wealth, which is ruin; ruin and injustice, suffering and discontent—four fatal causes of effervescence in society, which, combined with the displacement of responsibility, cannot fail to bring about political convulsions like those from which we have been suffering for more than half a century.
Without desiring to indulge in digressions, I cannot help remarking, that when things are organized in this fashion, when Government has assumed gigantic proportions by the successive transformation of free and voluntary transactions into public services, it is to be feared that revolutions, which constitute in themselves so great an evil, have not even the advantage of being a remedy, unless the remedy is forced upon us by experience. The displacement of responsibility has perverted public opinion. The people, accustomed to expect everything from the State, never accuse Government of doing too much, but of not doing enough. They overturn it, and replace it by another, to which they do not say, “Do less,” but “Do more;” so that, having fallen into one ditch, they set to work to dig another.
At length the moment comes when their eyes are opened, and it is felt to be necessary to curtail the prerogatives and responsibilities of Government. Here we are stopped by difficulties of another kind. Functionaries alleging vested rights rise up and [p435] coalesce, and we are averse to bear hard on numerous interests to which we have given an artificial existence. On the other hand, the people have forgotten how to act for themselves. At the moment they have succeeded in reconquering the liberty of which they were in quest, they are afraid of it, and repudiate it. Offer them a free and voluntary system of education:[98] they believe that all science is about to be extinguished. Offer them religious liberty: they believe that atheism is about to invade us,—so often has it been dinned into their ears that all religion, all wisdom, all science, all learning, all morality, resides in the State or flows from it.
But we shall find a place for such reflections elsewhere, and must now return to the argument.
We set ourselves to discover the true part which competition plays in the development of wealth, and we found that it consisted in giving an advantage in the first instance to the producer; then turning this advantage to the profit of the community; and constantly enlarging the domain of the gratuitous, and consequently the domain of equality.
But when private services become public services, they escape competition, and this fine harmony is suspended. In fact, the functionary is divested of that stimulant which urges on to progress, and how can progress turn to the public advantage when it no longer exists? A public functionary does not act under the spur of self-interest, but under the influence of the law. The law says to him, “You will render to the public such or such a determinate service, and you will receive from it in return a determinate recompense.” A little more or a little less zeal has no effect in changing these two fixed terms. On the contrary, private interest whispers in the ear of the free labourer, “The more you do for others, the more others will do for you.” In this case, the recompense depends entirely on the efforts of the workman being more or less intense, and more or less skilful. No doubt esprit de corps, the desire for advancement, devotion to duty, may prove active stimulants with the functionary; but they never can supply the place of the irresistible incitement of personal interest. All experience confirms this reasoning. Everything which has fallen within the domain of Government routine has remained almost stationary. It is doubtful whether our system of education now is better than it was in the reign of Francis the First; and no one would think of comparing the activity of a government office with the activity of a manufactory. [p436]
In proportion, then, as private services enter into the class of public services, they become, at least to a certain extent, sterile and motionless, not to the injury of those who render these services (their salaries are fixed), but to the detriment of the public at large.
Along with these inconveniences, which are immense, not only in a moral and political, but in an economical point of view—inconveniences which, trusting to the sagacity of the reader, I have only sketched—there is sometimes an advantage in substituting collective for individual action. In some kinds of services, the chief merit is regularity and uniformity. It may happen that, under certain circumstances, such a substitution gives rise to economy, and saves, in relation to a given satisfaction, a certain amount of exertion to the community. The question to be resolved, then, is this: What services should remain in the domain of private exertion? What services should pertain to collective or public exertion? The inquiry, which we have just finished, into the essential differences which characterize these two kinds of services, will facilitate the solution of this important problem.
And, first of all, it may be asked, is there any principle to enable us to distinguish what may legitimately enter the circle of collective action, and what should remain in the circle of private action?
I begin by intimating that what I denominate here public action is that great organization which has for rule the law, and for means of execution, force; in other words, the Government. Let it not be said that free and voluntary associations display likewise collective exertion. Let it not be supposed that I use the term private action as synonymous with isolated action. What I say is, that free and voluntary association belongs still to the domain of private action, for it is one of the forms of exchange, and the most powerful form of all. It does not impair the equivalence of services, it does not affect the appreciation of values, it does not displace responsibilities, it does not exclude free will, it does not destroy competition nor its effects; in a word, it has not constraint for its principle.