—If they say to you: I would allow free trade, if a stranger, in bringing us one thing, took away another; but he will carry off our specie—
Reply: Neither specie nor coffee grow in the fields of Beauce or come out of the manufactories of Elbeuf. For us to pay a foreigner with specie is like paying him with coffee.
—If they say to you: Eat meat—
Reply: Let it come in.
—If they say to you, like the Presse: When you have not the money to buy bread with, buy beef—
Reply: This advice is as wise as that of Vautour to his tenant, "If a person has not money to pay his rent with, he ought to have a house of his own."
—If they say to you, like the Presse: The State ought to teach the people why and how it should eat meat—
Reply: Only let the State allow the meat free entrance, and the most civilized people in the world are old enough to learn to eat it without any teacher.
—If they say to you: The State ought to know everything, and foresee everything, to guide the people, and the people have only to let themselves be guided—
Reply: Is there a State outside of the people, and a human foresight outside of humanity? Archimedes might have repeated all the days of his life, "With a lever and a fulcrum I will move the world," but he could not have moved it, for want of those two things. The fulcrum of the State is the nation, and nothing is madder than to build so many hopes on the State; that is to say, to assume a collective science and foresight, after having established individual folly and short-sightedness.