This happens because, while the government manifests so much ability, the people show so little. Thus, when they are called upon to choose their agents, those who are to determine the sphere of, and compensation for, governmental action, whom do they choose? The agents of the government. They entrust the executive power with the determination of the limit of its activity and its requirements. They are like the Bourgeois Gentilhomme, who referred the selection and number of his suits of clothes to his tailor.
However, things go from bad to worse, and at last the people open their eyes, not to the remedy, for there is none as yet, but to the evil.
Governing is so pleasant a trade that everybody desires to engage in it. Thus the advisers of the people do not cease to say: "We see your sufferings, and we weep over them. It would be otherwise if we governed you."
This period, which usually lasts for some time, is one of rebellions and insurrections. When the people are conquered, the expenses of the war are added to their burdens. When they conquer, there is a change of those who govern, and the abuses remain.
This lasts until the people learn to know and defend their true interests. Thus we always come back to this: there is no remedy but in the progress of public intelligence.
Certain nations seem remarkably inclined to become the prey of governmental spoliation. They are those where men, not considering their own dignity and energy, would believe themselves lost, if they were not governed and administered upon in all things. Without having traveled much, I have seen countries where they think agriculture can make no progress unless the State keeps up experimental farms; that there will presently be no horses if the State has no stables; and that fathers will not have their children educated, or will teach them only immoralities, if the State does not decide what it is proper to learn. In such a country revolutions may rapidly succeed one another, and one set of rulers after another be overturned. But the governed are none the less governed at the caprice and mercy of their rulers, until the people see that it is better to leave the greatest possible number of services in the category of those which the parties interested exchange after a fair discussion of the price.
We have seen that society is an exchange of services, and should be but an exchange of good and honest ones. But we have also proven that men have a great interest in exaggerating the relative value of the services they render one another. I cannot, indeed, see any other limit to these claims than the free acceptance or free refusal of those to whom these services are offered.
Hence it comes that certain men resort to the law to curtail the natural prerogatives of this liberty. This kind of spoliation is called privilege or monopoly. We will carefully indicate its origin and character.
Every one knows that the services which he offers in the general market are the more valued and better paid for, the scarcer they are. Each one, then, will ask for the enactment of a law to keep out of the market all who offer services similar to his.
This variety of spoliation being the chief subject of this volume, I will say little of it here, and will restrict myself to one remark: