In order to carry it beyond its natural limits, they set to conquering colonies and opening new markets. In order to confine it within its natural bounds, they invent all sorts of restrictions and fetters.
This intervention of Force in human transactions is the source of innumerable evils.
The Increase of this force itself is an evil to begin with; for it is very evident that the State cannot make conquests, retain distant countries under its rule, or divert the natural course of trade by the action of tariffs, without greatly increasing the number of its agents.
The Diversion of the public Force from its legitimate functions is an evil still greater than its Increase. Its rational mission was to protect Liberty and Property; and here you have it violating Liberty and Property. All just notions and principles are thus effaced from men’s minds. The moment you admit that Oppression and Spoliation are legitimate, provided they are legal—provided they interfere only by means of the Law or public Force, you find by degrees each class of citizens demanding that the interest of every other class should be sacrificed to it.
This intervention of Force in the business of Exchanges, whether it succeeds in promoting or in restraining them, cannot fail to occasion both the Loss and Displacement of labour and capital, and, of consequence, a disturbance of the natural distribution of the population. On one side, natural interests disappear, on the other, artificial interests are created, and men are forced to follow the course of these interests. It is thus we see important branches of industry established where they ought not to be. France makes sugar; England spins cotton, brought from the plains of India. Centuries of war, torrents of blood, the dissipation of vast treasures, have brought about these results, and the effect has been to substitute in Europe sickly and precarious for sound and healthy enterprises, and to open the door to commercial crises, to stoppages, to instability, and finally to Pauperism.
But I find I am anticipating. What we ought first to do is to [p116] acquaint ourselves with the free and natural development of human societies, and then investigate the Disturbances.
Moral Force of Exchange.—We must repeat, at the risk of wounding modern sentimentalism, that Political Economy belongs to the region of business, and business is transacted under the influence of personal interest. In vain the puritans of socialism cry out, “This is frightful; we shall change all this.” Such declamations involve a flat contradiction. Do we make purchases on the Quai Voltaire in the name of Fraternity?
It would be to fall into another kind of declamation to attribute morality to acts determined and governed by self-interest. But a good and wise Providence may so have arranged the social order that these very acts, destitute of morality in their motives, may nevertheless tend to moral results. Is it not so in the case of labour? Now, I maintain that Exchange, whether in the incipient state of simple barter, or expanded into a vast and complicated commerce, develops in society tendencies more noble than the motive which gives rise to it.
I have certainly no wish to attribute to only one of our powers all that constitutes the grandeur, the glory, and the charm of our existence. As there are two forces in the material world—one which goes from the circumference to the centre, the other from the centre to the circumference—there are also two principles in the social world, self-interest and sympathy. It were a misfortune indeed did we fail to recognise the benefits and joys of the sympathetic principle, as manifested in friendship, love, filial piety, parental tenderness, charity, patriotism, religion, enthusiasm for the good and the beautiful. Some have maintained that the sympathetic principle is only a magnificent form of self-love, that to love others is at bottom only an intelligent way of loving ourselves. This is not the place to enter on the solution of that problem. Whether these two native energies are distinct or confounded, it is enough for us to know that, far from being antagonistic, as is constantly said, they act in combination, and concur in the realization of one and the same result, the general good.
I have established these two propositions:—