![]() ![]() It is enough to name some of the best defined forms of spoliation to indicate the position it occupies in human affairs. “When spoliation becomes a means of subsistence for a body of men united by social ties, in course of time they make a law that sanctions it, a morality that glorifies it. Citizen has not learned to take into the account what is not seen, John Q. It talks of the effect of this money upon labor it points to the cook and purveyor of the Minister it shows an emigrant, a soldier, and a general, living upon the money it shows, in fact, what is seen, and if John Q. But if the State were to say to him, “I take this money that I may give you a little prize in case you cultivate your field well or that I may teach your son something that you have no wish that he should learn or that the Minister may add another to his score of dishes at dinner I take it to build a cottage in Algeria, in which case I must take more money every year to keep an emigrant in it, and another to maintain a soldier to guard this emigrant, and yet more to maintain a general to guard this soldier,” etc., etc., I think I hear poor James exclaim, “This system of law is very much like a system of cheat!” The State foresees the objection, and what does it do? It jumbles all things together, and brings forward just that provoking reason which ought to have nothing whatever to do with the question. Citizen, unless I am much mistaken, will pay for all this without hesitation. “If the State says to him, “I take your money to pay the gendarme, who saves you the trouble of providing for your own personal safety for paving the street that you are passing through every day for paying the magistrate who causes your property and your liberty to be respected to maintain the soldier who maintains our frontiers,” John Q. ![]() For ourselves, we consider that Government is and ought to be nothing whatever but common force organized, not to be an instrument of oppression and mutual plunder among citizens but, on the contrary, to secure to everyone his own, and to cause justice and security to reign.” Those who proclaim it, for the sake of the pleasure of accusing all Governments of weakness, and thus exposing them to your attacks, are only flattering and deceiving you, while they are deceiving themselves. But as regards the third system, which partakes of both the others, and which consists in exacting everything from Government, without giving it anything, it is chimerical, absurd, childish, contradictory, and dangerous. We have to choose between these two systems. According to the other, this twofold activity ought to be little felt. According to one of them, Government ought to do much, but then it ought to take much. “Citizens! In all times, two political systems have been in existence, and each may be maintained by good reasons. ![]()
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