Part 15

When an abuse has once taken root, everything is arranged on the assumption of its continuance. Some men depend upon it for subsistence, others depend upon them, and so on, till a formidable edifice is erected.

Would you venture to pull it down? All cry out, and remark this--the men who bawl out appear always at first sight to be in the right, because it is far easier to show the derangements which must accompany a reform than the arrangements which must follow it.

The supporters of abuses cite particular instances of sufferings; they point out particular employers who, with their workmen, and the people who supply them with materials, are about to be injured; and the poor reformer can only refer to the general good which must gradually diffuse itself over the masses. That by no means produces the same sensation.

Thus, when the question turns on the abolition of slavery. "Poor men!" is the language addressed to the negroes, "who is henceforth to support you. The manager handles the lash, but he likewise distributes the cassava."

The slaves regret to part with their chains, for they ask themselves, "Whence will come the cassava?"

They fail to see that it is not the manager who feeds them, but their own labour--which feeds both them and the manager.

When they set about reforming the convents in Spain, they asked the beggars, "Where will you now find food and clothing? The prior is your best friend. Is it not very convenient to be in a situation to address yourselves to him?"

And the mendicants replied, "True; if the prior goes away, we see very clearly that we shall be losers, and we do not see at all so clearly who is to come in his place."

They did not take into account that if the convents bestowed alms, they lived upon them; so that the nation had more to give away than to receive.

In the same way, workmen! monopoly, quite imperceptibly, saddles you with taxes, and then, with the produce of these taxes, finds you employment.

And your sham friends exclaim, "But for monopolies, where would you find employment?"

And you, like the Spanish beggars, reply, "True, true; the employment which the monopolists find us is certain. The promises of liberty are of uncertain fulfilment."

For you do not see that they take from you in the first instance the money with part of which they afterwards afford you employment.

You ask, Who is to find you employment? And the answer is, that you will give employment to one another! With the money of which he is no longer deprived by taxation, the shoemaker will dress better, and give employment to the tailor. The tailor will more frequently renew his _chaussure_, and afford employment to the shoemaker; and the same thing will take place in all other departments of trade.

It has been said that under a system of free trade we should have fewer workmen in our mines and spinning-mills.

I do not think so. But if this happened, we should necessarily have a greater number of people working freely and independently, either in their own houses or at out-door employment.

For if our mines and spinning-factories are not capable of supporting themselves, as is asserted, without the aid of taxes levied from the _public at large_, the moment these taxes are repealed _everybody_ will be by so much in better circumstances; and it is this improvement in the general circumstances of the community which lends support to individual branches of industry.

Pardon my dwelling a little longer on this view of the subject; for my great anxiety is to see you all ranged on the side of liberty.

Suppose that the capital employed in manufactures yields 5 per cent, profit. But Mondor has an establishment in which he employs £100,000, at a loss, instead of a profit, of 5 per cent. Between the loss and the gain supposed there is a difference of £10,000. What takes place? A small tax of £10,000 is coolly levied from the public, and handed over to Mondor. You don't see it, for the thing is skilfully disguised. It is not the tax-gatherer who waits upon you to demand your share of this burden; but you pay it to Mondor, the ironmaster, every time that you purchase your trowels, hatchets, and planes. Then they tell you that unless you pay this tax, Mondor will not be able to give employment; and his workmen, James and John, must go without work. And yet, if they gave up the tax, it would enable you to find employment for one another, independently of Mondor.

And then, with a little patience, after this smooth pillow of protection has been taken from under his head, Mondor, you may depend upon it, will set his wits to work, and contrive to convert his loss into a profit, and James and John will not be sent away, in which case there will be profit for everybody.

You may still rejoin, "We allow that, after the reform, there will be more employment, upon the whole, than before; in the meantime, James and John are starving."

To which I reply:

1st, That when labour is only displaced, to be augmented, a man who has a head and hands is seldom left long in a state of destitution.

2d, There is nothing to hinder the State's reserving a fund to meet, during the transition, any temporary want of employment, in which, however, for my own part, I do not believe.

3d, If I do not misunderstand the workmen, they are quite prepared to encounter any temporary suffering necessarily attendant on a transfer of labour from one department to another, by which the community are more likely to be benefited and have justice done them. I only wish I could say the same thing of their employers!

What! will it be said that because you are workmen you are for that reason unintelligent and immoral? Your pretended friends seem to think so. Is it not surprising that in your hearing they should discuss such a question, talking exclusively of wages and profits without ever once allowing the word justice to pass their lips? And yet they know that restriction is unjust. Why have they not the courage to admit it, and say to you, "Workmen! an iniquity prevails in this country, but it is profitable to you, and we must maintain it." Why? because they know you would disclaim it.

It is not true that this injustice is profitable to you. Give me your attention for a few moments longer, and then judge for yourselves.

What is it that we protect in France? Things which are produced on a great scale by rich capitalists and in large establishments, as iron, coal, cloth, and textile fabrics; and they tell you that this is done, not in the interest of employers, but in yours, and in order to secure you employment.

And yet whenever _foreign labour_ presents itself in our markets, in such a shape that it may be injurious to you, but advantageous for your employers, it is allowed to enter without any restriction being imposed.

Are there not in Paris thirty thousand Germans who make clothes and shoes? Why are they permitted to establish themselves alongside of you while the importation of cloth is restricted? Because cloth is manufactured in grand establishments which belong to manufacturing legislators. But clothes are made by workmen in their own houses. In converting wool into cloth, these gentlemen desire to have no competition, because that is their trade; but in converting cloth into coats, they allow it, because that is your trade.

In making our railways, an embargo was laid on English rails, but English workmen were brought over. Why was this? Simply because English rails came into competition with the iron produced in our great establishments, while the English labourers were only your rivals.

We have no wish that German tailors and English navvies should be kept out of France. What we ask is, that the entry of cloth and rails should be left free. We simply demand justice and equality before the law, for all.

It is a mockery to tell us that customs restrictions are imposed for your benefit. Tailors, shoemakers, carpenters, masons, blacksmiths, shopkeepers, grocers, watchmakers, butchers, bakers, dressmakers! I defy you all to point out a single way in which restriction is profitable to you, and I shall point out, whenever you desire it, four ways in which it is hurtful to you.

And, after all, see how little foundation your journalists have for attributing self-abnegation to the monopolists.

I may venture to denominate the rate of wages which settles and establishes itself naturally under a regime of freedom, the _natural rate of wages_. When you affirm, therefore, that restriction is profitable to you, it is tantamount to affirming that it adds an _overplus to your natural_ wages. Now, a surplus of wages beyond the natural rate must come from some quarter or other; it does not fall from the skies, but comes from those who pay it.

You are landed, then, in this conclusion by your pretended friends, that the policy of protection has been introduced in order that the interests of capitalists should be sacrificed to those of the workmen.

Do you think this probable?

Where is your place, then, in the Chamber of Peers? When did you take your seat in the Palais Bourbon? Who has consulted you? And where did this idea of establishing a policy of protection take its rise?

I think I hear you answer, "It is not we who have established it. Alas! we are neither Peers, nor Deputies, nor Councillors of State. The capitalists have done it all."

Verily, they must have been in a good humour that day! What! these capitalists have made the law; they have established a policy of prohibition for the express purpose of enabling you to profit at their expense!

But here is something stranger still.

How does it come to pass that your pretended friends, who hold forth to you on the goodness, the generosity, and the self-abnegation of capitalists, never cease condoling with you on your being deprived of your political rights? From their point of view, I would ask what you could make of such rights if you had them? The capitalists have a monopoly of legislation;--granted. By means of this monopoly, they have adjudged themselves a monopoly of iron, of cloth, of textile fabrics, of coal, of wood, of meat,--granted likewise. But here are your pretended friends, who tell you that in acting thus, capitalists have impoverished themselves, without being under any obligation to do so, in order to enrich you who have no right to be enriched! Assuredly, if you were electors and deputies tomorrow, you could not manage your affairs better than they are managed for you; you could not manage them so well.

If the industrial legislation under which you live is intended for your profit, it is an act of perfidy to demand for you political rights; for these new-fashioned democrats never can get quit of this dilemma--the law made by the bourgeoisie either gives you more, or it gives you less than your natural wages. If that law gives you less, they deceive you, in soliciting you to maintain it. If it gives you more, they still deceive you, by inviting you to demand political rights at the very time when the bourgeoisie are making sacrifices for you, which, in common honesty, you could not by your votes exact, even if you had the power.

Workmen! I should be sorry indeed if this address should excite in your minds feelings of irritation against the rich. If self-interest, ill understood, or too apt to be alarmed, still maintains monopoly, let us not forget that monopoly has its root in errors which are common to both capitalists and labourers.

Instead of exciting the one class against the other, let us try to bring them together. And for that end what ought we to do? If it be true that the natural social tendencies concur in levelling inequalities among men, we have only to allow these tendencies to act, remove artificial obstructions which retard their operation, and allow the relations of the various classes of society to be established on principles of Justice--principles always mixed up, in my mind at least, with the principle of Liberty.

VII. A CHINESE STORY.

We hear a great outcry against the cupidity and the egotism of the age!

For my own part, I see the world, Paris especially, peopled with Deciuses.

Open the thousand volumes, the thousand newspapers of all sorts and sizes, which the Parisian press vomits forth every day on the country--are they not all the work of minor saints?

How vividly they depict the vices of the times! How touching the tenderness they display for the masses! How liberally they invite the rich to share with the poor, if not the poor to share with the rich! How many plans of social reforms, social ameliorations, and social organizations! What shallow writer fails to devote himself to the wellbeing of the working classes? We have only to contribute a few shillings to procure them leisure to deliver themselves up to their humane lucubrations.

And then they declare against the egotism and individualism of our age!

There is nothing which they do not pretend to enlist in the service of the working classes--there is positively no exception, not even the Customhouse. You fancy, perhaps, that the Customhouse is merely an instrument of taxation, like the _octroi_ or the toll-bar? Nothing of the kind. It is essentially an institution for promoting the march of civilization, fraternity, and equality. What would you be at? It is the fashion to introduce, or affect to introduce, sentiment and sentimentalism everywhere, even into the toll-gatherer's booth.

The Customhouse, we must allow, has a very singular machinery for realizing philanthropical aspirations.

It includes an army of directors, sub-directors, inspectors, sub-inspectors, comptrollers, examiners, heads of departments, clerks, supernumeraries, aspirant-supernumeraries, not to speak of the officers of the active service; and the object of all this complicated machinery is to exercise over the industry of the people a negative action, which is summed up in the word obstruct.

Observe, I do not say that the object is to tax, but to obstruct. To prevent, not acts which are repugnant to good morals or public order, but transactions which are in themselves not only harmless, but fitted to maintain peace and union among nations.

And yet the human race is so flexible and elastic that it always surmounts these obstructions. And then we hear of the labour market being glutted.

If you hinder a people from obtaining its subsistence from abroad, it will produce it at home. The labour is greater and more painful, but subsistence must be had. If you hinder a man from traversing the valley, he must cross the hills. The road is longer and more difficult, but he must get to his journey's end.

This is lamentable, but we come now to what is ludicrous. When the law has thus created obstacles, and when, in order to overcome them, society has diverted a corresponding amount of labour from other employments, you are no longer permitted to demand a reform. If you point to the obstacle, you are told of the amount of labour to which it has given employment. And if you rejoin that this labour is not created, but displaced, you are answered, in the words of the _Esprit Public_, "The impoverishment alone is certain and immediate; as to our enrichment, it is more than problematical."

This reminds me of a Chinese story, which I shall relate to you.

There were in China two large towns, called _Tchin_ and _Tchan_.

A magnificent canal united them. The Emperor thought fit to order enormous blocks of stone to be thrown into it, for the purpose of rendering it useless.

On seeing this, Kouang, his first mandarin, said to him:

"Son of Heaven! this is a mistake."

To which the Emperor replied:

"Kouang! you talk nonsense."

I give you only the substance of their conversation.

At the end of three months, the Celestial Emperor sent again for the mandarin, and said to him:

"Kouang, behold!"

And Kouang opened his eyes, and looked.

And he saw at some distance from the canal a multitude of men at work. Some were excavating, others were filling up hollows, levelling, and paving; and the mandarin, who was very knowing, said to himself, They are making a highway.

When other three months had elapsed, the Emperor again sent for Kouang, and said to him:

"Look!"

And Kouang looked.

And he saw the road completed, and from one end of it to the other he saw here and there inns for travellers erected. Crowds of pedestrians, carts, palanquins, came and went, and innumerable Chinese, overcome with fatigue, carried backwards and forwards heavy burdens from Tchin to Tchan, and from Tchan to Tchin; and Kouang said to himself, It is the destruction of the canal which gives employment to these poor people. But the idea never struck him that their labour was simply _diverted from other employments_.

Three months more passed, and the Emperor said to Kouang: "Look!"

And Kouang looked.

And he saw that the hostelries were full of travellers, and that to supply their wants there were grouped around them butchers' and bakers' stalls, shops for the sale of edible birds' nests, etc. He also saw that, the artisans having need of clothing, there had settled among them tailors, shoemakers, and those who sold parasols and fans; and as they could not sleep in the open air, even in the Celestial Empire, there were also masons, carpenters, and slaters. Then there were officers of police, judges, fakirs; in a word, a town with its faubourgs had risen round each hostelry.

And the Emperor asked Kouang what he thought of all this. And Kouang said that he never could have imagined that the destruction of a canal could have provided employment for so many people; for the thought never struck him that this was not employment created, but _labour diverted_ from other employments, and that men would have eaten and drank in passing along the canal as well as in passing along the highroad.

However, to the astonishment of the Chinese, the Son of Heaven at length died and was buried.

His successor sent for Kouang, and ordered him to have the canal cleared out and restored.

And Kouang said to the new Emperor:

"Son of Heaven! you commit a blunder."

And the Emperor replied:

"Kouang, you talk nonsense."

But Kouang persisted, and said: "Sire, what is your object?"

"My object is to facilitate the transit of goods and passengers between Tchin and Tchan, to render carriage less expensive, in order that the people may have tea and clothing cheaper."

But Kouang was ready with his answer. He had received the night before several numbers of the Moniteur Industriel, a Chinese newspaper. Knowing his lesson well, he asked and obtained permission to reply, and after having prostrated himself nine times, he said:

"Sire, your object is, by increased facility of transit, to reduce the price of articles of consumption, and bring them within reach of the people; and to effect that, you begin by taking away from them all the employment to which the destruction of the canal had given rise. Sire, in political economy, nominal cheapness-" _The Emperor_: "I believe you are repeating by rote." _Kouang_: "True, Sire; and it will be better to read what I have to say." So, producing the _Esprit Public_, he read as follows: "In political economy, the nominal cheapness of articles of consumption is only a secondary question. The problem is to establish an equilibrium between the price of labour and that of the means of subsistence. The abundance of labour constitutes the wealth of nations; and the best economic system is that which supplies the people with the greatest amount of employment. The question is not whether it is better to pay four or eight cash for a cup of tea, or five or ten tales for a shirt. These are puerilities unworthy of a thinking mind. Nobody disputes your proposition. The question is whether it is better to pay dearer for a commodity you want to buy, and have, through the abundance of employment and the higher price of labour, the means of acquiring it; or whether, it is better to limit the sources of employment, and with them the mass of the national production--to transport, by improved means of transit, the objects of consumption, cheaper, it is true, but taking away at the same time from classes of our population the means of purchasing these objects even at their reduced price."

Seeing the Emperor still unconvinced, Kouang added, "Sire, deign to give me your attention. I have still another quotation from the _Moniteur Industriel_ to bring under your notice."

But the Emperor said:

"I don't require your Chinese journals to enable me to find out that to create _obstacles_ is to divert and misapply labour. But that is not my mission. Go and clear out the canal; and we shall reform the Customhouse afterwards."

And Kouang went away tearing his beard, and appealing to his God, "O Fo! take pity on thy people; for we have now got an Emperor of the English school, and I see clearly that in a short time we shall be in want of everything, for we shall no longer require to do anything."

VIII. POST HOC, ERGO PROPTER HOC.

This is the greatest and most common fallacy in reasoning.

Real sufferings, for example, have manifested themselves in England.*

* This was written in January 1848.--Translator.

These sufferings come in the train of two other phenomena:

1st, The reformed tariff;

2d, Two bad harvests in succession.

To which of these two last circumstances are we to attribute the first?

The protectionists exclaim:

It is this accursed free-trade which does all the harm. It promised us wonderful things; we accepted it; and here are our manufactures at a standstill, and the people suffering: _Cum hoc, ergo propter hoc_.

Free-trade distributes in the most uniform and equitable manner the fruits which Providence accords to human labour. If we are deprived of part of these fruits by natural causes, such as a succession of bad seasons, free-trade does not fail to distribute in the same manner what remains. Men are, no doubt, not so well provided with what they want; but are we to impute this to free-trade, or to the bad harvests?

Liberty acts on the same principle as insurances. When an accident, like a fire, happens, insurance spreads over a great number of men, and a great number of years, losses which, in the absence of insurance, would have fallen all at once upon one individual. But will any one undertake to affirm that fire has become a greater evil since the introduction of insurance?

In 1842, 1843, and 1844, the reduction of taxes began in England. At the same time the harvests were very abundant; and we are led to conclude that these two circumstances concurred in producing the unparalleled prosperity which England enjoyed during that period.

In 1845, the harvest was bad; and in 1846, worse still.

Provisions rose in price; and the people were forced to expend their resources on first necessaries, and to limit their consumption of other commodities. Clothing was less in demand, manufactories had less work, and wages tended to fall.

Fortunately, in that same year, the barriers of restriction were still more effectually removed, and an enormous quantity of provisions reached the English market. Had this not been so, it is nearly certain that a formidable revolution would have taken place.